SOME KEY POINTS:
Hero pools will be the same for owl and ladder:
“Starting April 13, we intend to address this by having a single, unified Hero Pool, allowing both the Overwatch League and Competitive Play to mirror each other as closely as possible and making a more consistent viewing and play experience.”
Changing how it works:
“we’ll compile hero play rates from high-level Competitive Play matches from the preceding two weeks”
“Every sunday”
Map pools are being removed:
“To simplify the competitive experience, we are going to no longer have rotating Map Pools starting April 14. Instead, Competitive Play will include all of the maps”
Paris and horizon are not in rotation and are being reworked:
“we’re taking a look at Paris first with an eye toward updating the map’s layout and making it more fun to play.”
“Competitive Play will include all of the maps, with the exception of Paris and Horizon Lunar Colony. When we make updates to those two maps to improve their play in the future, we’ll add them back into the pool at that time.”
Also this is my 100th topic
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Yay, map pools was terrible IMO.
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Oh thank god Map pools are going away.
I like the unified hero pools, OWL had better bans anyways.
HLC and Paris are going to be banned on April 14 until they are updated, thank god.
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I’m all happy for that and thank christ they don’t include lunar colony and Paris as well
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“We’ve seen a lot of good feedback that these two maps could use some changes, and we want to improve them in future game updates.” I’m interested to see what they do with this.
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they recognized horizon and paris are hot garbage
wow, Im impressed
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Peopled only liked map pools because it banned Paris. If its not doing that, its useless.
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This helped make my mood a little bit better, but doesnt change the fact sym is banned right now and I’m still pissed off
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Woah. They actually disabled Horizon and Paris. I liked Horizon but Paris was just… ugh. Glad they’re working on them.
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Hopefully Hero pools will go to experimental instead of comp.
Been pretty put out with it so far despite it being great for data gathering.
Well, good thing the balance team seems to not be completely commandeered by ow2.
Now if they don’t mind giving us balance change every 2 weeks plz.
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ABSOLUTE STONKS right here, also woohoo for PAris rework
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Sym is only going to be banned until April 13th when they unveil the new hero bans.
It took them this long to actually make a change most people already knew they wanted. Honestly, I feel like Blizzard should be somewhat congratulated, however after all their incompetency I feel that the bar has been lowered to such a degree that applying basic common sense is now an achievement for them, I don’t think I should.
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Ugh…
To determine a week’s Hero Pool, we’ll compile hero play rates from high-level Competitive Play matches from the preceding two weeks. Heroes with play rates above a certain threshold will be eligible to be removed
so theyre going to base hero pools based on what the top 1-5% of the population is doing…
look - Im not saying they dont work or dont have a purpose…but in those places there is extra pressure to play particular heroes…the REST of the player base doesnt do that…and as such hero pools dont really serve any REAL purpose outside of top tier play…
they need to be capped…otherwise they are just arbitrary for everyone that doesnt already play the game in that particular way
as for the map bans…the 2 map ban is better than what they had before…but plenty still enjoy those maps…i wouldve preferred a lower chance of getting them than an outright ban…but its at least better
but i applaud the decision to make changes based on feedback…even if some of them (hero pools in general) were poorly made
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Well, at least they’re not going down.
It’s the OW Dev Team we’re talking about here, that sounds more like foreshadowing than something I should take comfort in.
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