Re: Hero Pools - restrictions on player choice have gotten out of control

Every playing Overwatch for 13 seasons and giving them way too much of my money. Hero Pools is a final blessing in disguise for me to quit and get on with my life. At least it’s coming around the same time as Doom Eternal.

2 Likes

Why is it so hard to make new maps? That is probably the single best anti-stagnation feeling you can have.

By now every AAA worth a SoCal CS intern has map-design tools where the level designer can leverage procedurally-generated base templates. Then they polish it up, playtest, tweak, and ship.

Imagine having 4 new maps and maybe a new game mode ready to go this actual OWL season…instead of next Blizzcon?

Then everything would feel fresh without chopping away our hero freedom. Maybe they should monetize comp mode with a sub fee to pay for the additional anti-stagnation resources.

they banned oni in sf4.

Instead of actually balancing a game they introduce rng mechanics to a “competitive shooter”?

This is going to go down in history as a ‘what not to do’ in game design courses.

Hahahhahahaa I only come here to see what I was expecting… people complaining about changes LoL. Jesus Christ! Get good at this game! Trash onetrick players and other whinning kids are going to complain about every single change they make to the game. Just get better! It’s not the end of the world… 1 tank/support and 2 dps per week! How bad is that? The meta is going to change every week, that’s a good thing.

As for myself I can’t wait to get this implemented. I’m decent at almost every hero in this game, I’ve tried to learn every hero so I can be better against them, and that is what Overwatch is all about. Great changes to come!

I like this new feature. :slight_smile:

1 Like

I just can’t imagine the community outrage if litterally any other class based/character based game got a change like this. Imagine playing Smash and you can’t play the character you’ve mastered.

Here is Linkzrs opinion from his stream:

Nightbot: Linkzr doesn’t like the hero pool system from a pro player’s standpoint, especially combined with aggressive hero balancing. Seems good for casual players and league viewers, but as a pro it means a lot of uncertainty and not enough practice time. 2 week rotation would be better. Feels like an impractical band-aid fix with casual potential. In short: Fun for viewers, very bad for pros, very good for ranked.

we freakinpaid for this game you idiot. We have rights to talk about this shxt game.

Wonder if they intend to make the bans even per role or just aggressively shut down X meta by wiping out things they don’t like for a week.

Two bans from the Tank role is pretty severe… In this example Rein will end up with 100% pickrate and a ton of hate for any duo that don’t pick him… =_=“

jesus you people hate on everything that ins’t 4-5 dps comps…

Viable and available are not the same thing - you can still choose them

meta with unlimited heroes, 2 heroes became the only characters you needed if i remember correctly, might be 3.
but still 3 heroes of what? 16 possible? in 12 slots?
that’s pretty bad.
so they fixed it.

then before role qeue we had 3 tanks and 3 supports.
that was bad because dps didn’t felt included in the meta.
so they fixed it.

now hero pools are out so there is no long term metas that reign for a long period of time.

all of these was at the expense of player freedom, but it was structure that needed to be established in order to create a healthier game overall.

but let’s not forget that overwatch is a very experimental game.
changes like these are to be expected.

  1. It’s not RNG.
  1. They aren’t giving up on balancing the game.
  1. They aren’t relying on this as a fix; they are experimenting with a new season, as they should with seasons.

As someone who actually understands what’s going on, I think it will go down in history as a huge step in the right direction for game balance.

3 Likes

Yes…you paid for their game. If your vision of what OW should be doesn’t match with theirs then tough luck. Find another game you like better.

1 Like

Heros pools are the dumbest idea this guys ever had. Bye Bye my sctock from blizzard.

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They should keep hero pools, remove role queue for QP (period. Entirely) and Keep role queue to group finder. Or allow groups with different team comps to queue for comp.

but you are throwing if you pick any other hero

OK, so what if the counter hero you really need for a given enemy comp is banned that week? Since you’re effectively set up for failure, that enemy comp becomes the meta for that week. That to me sounds like the exact opposite of what this idea was trying to accomplish.

This is a flat out lie. EVO has never banned Ice Climbers for wobbling. The commentators mentioned the discussion onstream that was brewing in the Smash community about banning, but Icies never even broke into quarterfinals so it didn’t matter. And now that Melee is out of rotation at EVO, it definitely doesn’t matter.

Other grassroots tournaments ban wobbling tech outright as an immediate DQ or stock loss, with only one tournament in recent memory (Get On My Level 2019) with an actual venue banning Ice Climbers as a pick.

The conditions to actually start a wobble are already extremely niche and difficult to set up so even though it’s a killjoy, it’s still a well-earned stock.

  • both Nana and Popo must be alive on one stock
  • Icies must have experienced a desync within a second of grabbing the enemy
  • high percent on the enemy, which almost always means high percent on Icies themselves
  • the GameCube or Wii cannot have been running for more than a couple of hours, else the polling rate and refresh rate will have desynced, increasing the chances of a mash out
    • grabbed players CAN still escape with a high button mash APM, Westballz famously did this on a set onstream

In fact, one of the tournaments that previously banned Icies now ALLOW them again. Making it purely up to the tournament organizers.