I joked about this on someone else’s post earlier, but it made think of this hypothetical:
Let’s say I one-trick a hero no one wants to play with and against in a certain rank, and that hero gets banned repeatsdly in my rank. I then derank cause I don’t know how to play anyone else. This keeps happening until the ban meta in the lower rank I’m now in is different, and my hero is no longer a consistent target. I’m now in a lower-rank as a higher-skilled player who can play their one-trick hero.
I’ll rank up, but can’t I just repeat this process and continually terrorize lower rank games? I wouldn’t be deranking intentionally after all, I’d just be deranking by being bad at the game (when my one-trick hero is banned).
I mean technically, smurfing isn’t illegal. But it is a richard thing to do.
Otherwise… I dunno. There’s a reason if your hero is constantly getting banned, given it has nothing to do with you as a player. If the devs do as they said and keep in mind which heroes are getting banned constantly, then maybe there’s something there.
It depends on how high of a rank they are and what we considered to be too low of a rank for them. I don’t doubt this could happen but the number of players being so much worse at every other hero that their skill drops from like gm to gold seems so insignificant compared to the gains of a ban system.
People underestimate how much skill carries on from one hero to another. I have a friend that is a top500 mono ball in my server and that even plays in the pro scene (nothing blizzard official, mind you, they decided that SA has to compete in the same servers as NA with 150+ ping, basically killing the official pro scene for us) and last tournament they placed a hero ban rule within one week from the tournament.
Being a famous ball main, the other team insta-banned ball in every single match. They still could hold together because she’d play Venture instead, for instance. Not the same, really, but they got to put up a fight still.
I actually saw this without hero bans when moth meta ended. There could be a chaos for a few months and then people would be in the right tier, UNLESS Blizz heavily inflated the tiers like this season. OW2 devs regularly inflate the tiers of the new accounts which ruined the match quality. Idk why they terrorize their own game, but they just do it whenever possible. The chaos created by hero bans would be nothing compared to this.
More I think about the bans, less of a good idea they seem to be for Overwatch. Take this for example:
This premise has been stated in support of the bans over and over. And, in theory, sure, the problematic heroes get banned consistently enough to get the devs to look into them a change something. But what? What do you need to change in a hero like Sombra for her not to get banned? And will it still be a hero that Sombra players will want to play?
This is half of the problem, however. Let’s suppose that bans affect real changes to the commonly banned heroes and your Sombras, Anas, Widowmakers are “looked into” to a point where they no longer get banned because they’re not worth playing. Mission accomplished? But the bans are still here, this means that now there’s a different group of heroes who are now consistently banned. Your heroes perchance? Now, Blizzard sets out to change, nerf, rework this group and then the next one and then the next one. It creates a self perpetuating cycle of ban metas and heroes getting looked into. Where do we end up? Who’s having fun in the long run?
Better spot for whom? What about the minority? Will you bravely accept your heroes’ “fixes and alterations” when the churn comes for them and they’re no longer fun for you to play? Will those Sombra and Ana players speak out in your defense?
They can start with a vaccination. It was pretty obvious that virus was not the correct approach. And quadrupling down on it will not magically change reality…
I think that kinda proves my point though. The fact she was still able to still hold it together shows at most her venture gameplay is like one skill tier below her ball. I understand for pro play that could be a massive gap but in ranked it’s not as bad. I think if someone is like gm one trick there will be some hero they are competent enough at to play on at least one skill tier below. I just find it hard to believe there’s anyone out there who is GM level one trick but is like plat on anything else.
If you’re only good at that rank on one hero, I’d argue you deranking wouldn’t even be throwing or smurfing. It’d either mean you’re ranked where you’re supposed to be, or some other variant of “you’re not actually good at the game, you’re just good at a single hero”.
On that note, you’re playing a whole game here. Why limit yourself to one character?
I actually think that people would do MUCH better on another character than they suspect.
“But I’d be soft throwing” is just an excuse to never try.
You wouldn’t be throwing if you actually fell in rank that badly, just demonstrating that your last “rank” was only in a game that allowed the one “skill” (I.E. character) you practiced.
Now that the rules have changed people will have to engage in the multi character aspect or fall in rank… that’s all.
You’d fall to a rank that more accurately reflects your overall skill yeah, but my point is that they’d end up making more polarizing games than someone who is naturally at that skill level, e.g. someone who is plat 1 because they have a 50% win rate from really close games vs someone who is plat 1 because they have a 50% winrate from stomping the enemy when their one trick hero isn’t banned and getting stomped when their one trick hero is banned. So by refusing to learn another hero, the one trick could end up becoming a gatekeeper of sorts like the way some people play bad on purpose to stay in low ranks and then stomp people, except it’d be genuine for the one trick.
Obviously it’s gonna be rare for someone to be very good at one hero and genuinely suck at the rest and have that hero be disliked enough to be consistently banned. It’s just a thought I had, though I guess an intentional thrower could use bans as a smokescreen to sandbag due to their “main” being banned.