I don’t want to wait another 1-2 months before Blizzard finally nerfs Dva. I want her out of my games now. Blizzard has consistently failed us when it comes to balancing, often leading to long periods of time with broken stale meta’s. We need player-decided hero bans.
Common Counter Arguments:
“They already tried that before”
No they didn’t, they had Hero pools. At one point they had a cat decide who would be banned and it picked… Mei…
“What if your main gets banned, bet you’ll quit!”
Nope. I wont, and thats a terrible argument. If a hero is obviously overtuned and actively ruining the game for other players then allow players the agency to remove said hero.
“People will quit if they can’t play their hero!”
Gg I don’t care, ask Blizzard to balance your character appropriately then.
They HAVE NOT, tried hero bans before. They tried HERO POOLS. Player-decided hero bans are completely different and if you don’t understand that then idk what to tell ya bud
They failed because they were not done properly. Doing a blanket “you cant play x hero this week” was the dumbest way to do it. Hero bans should be decided by the people who are playing the individual game and not some broad mandate from on high that is a constant all week.
The only reason they cant really work right now though is a lack of redundancy for heroes that means you could ban out an entire playstyle and suddenly another hero could run rampant over the lobby with no counterplay.
a hero pool is the heros that remain after a hero ban is applied
as such, yes, they have already tried hero bans, and again, they failed misersably
as for player-decided bans, this is even a worse idea, as the bans will likely result in players blaming and attacking each other. Also, the bans will likely be more about personal predjudices – unwarranted hatred for Mercy and Symm, for example - rather than players choosing to ban weak/unbalanced characters.
This idea would also be horrible for OTP players. I get that some folks have a baseless hatred of OTPs and would like this, but thats irrelevant given that the game devs have stated clearly and multiple times that OTP play is a perfectly legit way to play this game
Hero bans are unlikely to work outside of organized play, like tournaments. There’s a few major issues I see:
Lack of alternate characters: for game with hero bans, there’s usually another character that provide similar abilities that plays similarly. There’s a distinct lack of this in Overwatch. A big problem in a game with hard counters.
Shallow hero pools: Overwatch characters are pretty unique, which has led to many players having only one or two characters they are good at. Bans one or both could lead to useless teammates.
There’s 40 characters. banning 1-2 (max 1 per role) with 1-2 protected heroes from ban (1 chosen per team before ban) won’t cause a lack of alternate characters.
There really isn’t a scenario where a non-banned hero couldn’t fill the shoes of a banned hero
no player should have to enter the game only to find out that they cant play their favorite character because of some other player’s unwarranted hatred, like
OTPs have been declared multiple times by the game devs as being perfectly fine…hero bans would effectively end that
Lucio. And no, Juno isn’t even a vague replacement.
Actually, a lot of supports are a difficult replacement as they form the core of a team comp. Tank has the same issue.
We saw this in full effect during the 2024 Overwatch section of the esports world cup. Tanks and supports were the heaviest bans to force teams off of comps or playstyles. Which definitely added a layer of strategy to matches.
It gives the players the ability to vote for what they find unbalanced. If one particular hero is considered eggregiously OP, I’m sure plenty of people would be fine with an uptick in monkey to avoid it. You are still facing the lesser of two evils.
On top of that, it gives the devs valuable insight into what heroes and/or balance the players care about. If one particular hero is banned in 95% of games, it’s a lot more informative than just using winrates and pickrates. It may indicate a hero is overtuned, or even that the community doesnt like that particular hero and may warrant being reworked.
this whole concept seems to be like an unearned punishment
Player x enters the game and finds out that the player he/she wants to play is banned
it gets to feeling personal, like, why am I being punished when I did nothing to earn said punishment
the next question becomes - why should I continue to play a game that punishes me when Ive done nothing wrong? There are other games where I am not punished without reason
The problem is, like have stated later in my post, that certain characters become unstoppable
E.g. banning Ana means mauga+hog is unchecked
Banning Sombra makes widow, ball doomfist a nightmare
Banning Kiri makes Ana very strong
Etc, even if the data is helpful, it ruins the matches bc there is no counterplay aside from being infinitely better
Except complaints about heroes tend to be cyclical. A few seasons back, Orisa was completely off the radar as being a viable tank until supports got buffed to the point where Orisa was the only one who could survive. She didn’t get better, she just existed better than the others. So she was picked a lot more and then the Orisa complaints came flooding in.
You ban D. Va and then Winston will take her place as the most complained about until they’re both being banned 50% of the time and being complained about 100% of the time. And people are already annoyed with Winston in this season.
You ban Sombra (highly complained about) and here comes uncontested Widows (also highly complained about).
No Kiriko (highly complained about)? Enjoy the Ana anti-nades (used to be the flavor of the month to bemoan).