This episode was recorded on 24/02/23. Podcast links below! If you're enjoying this content, why not check out SVB's stream (www.twitch.tv/svb_) or other entertainment content from SVB on his second RUclips channel the SVB-Side: www.youtube.com/@SVB-Side The best way to support my content is still www.patreon.com/svb Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/ow_svb/the-great-hero-ban-debate Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6sRWutKTc0gnWuguo62Vpa Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/svbs-group-up/id1490256265
Agreed, however I wish he’d be a bit more assertive at times as well as occasionally letting it take its own course now and again….but these are minimal things on the whole. I appreciate what he does and that he gets all these people together
Bro I was just about to comment this! Queuing people in at the right time for counter arguments and even keeping his guests on topic. What a great podcast
Svb's ability as a host to get equal input from 4 other guests is actually really impressive to me, I think hero bans are a healthy addition to OW if done conservatively Edit: and honestly good on the other guests, everyone was really respectful and contributed really well to the discussion
I'm really liking the 4 person + moderator debate. It makes it feel more like a debate than a forum. I understand not every topic is divisive enough to get this kind of debate going, but I'm really enjoying this.
I don't like the idea that a 3 stack could decide that widow or whatever would be banned. Cause it's bad for the solo queue players that would rarely have any say in what hero would be banned. So every player getting a 20% chance for their vote seems better. So even if you have a 3 stack they would have a 60% chance of banning widow if the other players picks something else. This system would also make it more random and most likely let the one tricks play some more games on their hero.
SVB really becoming one of the best creators we have for OW, depending on what you're looking for (entertainment vs analysis), he prolly already is. The man's a legend!
Damn Jake's ban system is pretty good. I hope it's just 1 hero per team, it could make the meta waaay more varied from just having 2 heroes banned. It can make people actually learn the game. Excellent excellent excellent episode sooo interesting to listen to.
I also think it's worth saying that there's no reason why the OWL ruleset and ranked ruleset have to be the same. They're two different groups that have two different needs. I also think that new new players (so started with OW2) will be disproportionately impacted because of the time it takes in hours for a person to achieve mastery of multiple heroes. Easiest way I can see around this is the hero ban system starts in say Diamond where it actually begins mattering anyways.
What should happen is that both teams load into the competitive match but nobody’s name is shown until the band are picked. When the band are picked and locked in, the name plates, title card, and background card reveal themselves and the match starts. At which point you will be able to chose the character you want provided that it is in your role and that they aren’t banned
@@-NoNo. Ye ye i know what you mean xd. Anyway its not like this is the first time ever a ban system has been implemented into an esport, so its not like theyre going in blind. But idk if the higher up give enough fk to actually spend resources into balancing, maybe things will change now and we will get patches per 2 weeks for real *copium*
@@-NoNo. because blizzard caters to the complainers about “their characters,” plus the average players want to play the same game as their favorite streamers, so if they have a ban system the lower ranks would demand one too. Not that they would know how to use it properly, but just because it’s a “*flats* has a ban system, I want one too,” kinda thing.
Really loved the additional control you exerted on the conversation to keep it focused and salient. I think it adds SO MUCH value and creates something that's much easier to consume. Well done!!!
Not opposed to hero bans, but there just needs to be more supports for this to happen. I feel maybe around 10 or 12 supports this would be more realistic. So maybe next year for rank they could try this.
As a master support player that switches from bap, ana, zen, kiriko, lucio...I am fine with this because changes the game and I feel it is still skillfull playing diffent comps and banning two support will not be pain. But the players the only main one character or people who only play one comp hmmmm suck for cheese. also, I don't think it will lock one comp because I think there is enough support to not completly stop a strategy(only allow 2 blind bans). in addition, I played rainbow 6 siete most of the bans are confort bans or to prevent cheese or single way to play.
We already have 8 supports and we have two more coming in the next two seasons. I think it should be one hero ban per team. So it would be possible now but if we wait for your suggestion of ten supports then we'd have it by this summer. I didn't like how Blizz did it previously and I don't think they would do it that way again but even then. 8 supports and only one was ever banned at a time. Then you have a second healer so that still leaves you with 6 choices to play.....how many more do you need since you can only play one at a given time?
Honestly I could work with the 8 we have - the people who can play multiple heroes will be able to switch to those, the people who are one tricks now will probably remain one-tricks in the future. The supports we have already give us enough diversity, I guess we can wait for more overlap but that's what hero bans are trying to achieve, disallow a certain specific strategy. If we get a second Lucio, what even is the point of banning Lucio in the first place?
In my rank, people don't need a reason to quit or throw. Banning an OTP would ruin lower level play. Also, lots of OTPs would almost never get to play their favorite hero. Over time, it would push players away from the game. Activision isn't ever going to greenlight ANYTHING that's almost guaranteed to push people away. If people quit playing, they quit spending. ABK ain't never gonna lose a penny to make top ranked players feel good. If 100% of Master+ quit playing, it would be a tiny drop. If 20% of metal ranks quit, that's MILLIONS of people who are no longer enticed to spend money. I could be wrong. Player bans MIGHT not ruin the game, but at my rank, Sombra and Ball would NEVER get to play the game. I get the whole, "you should be more diverse" argument, but it's a video game. You don't get to tell 30 million people that your opinion is the right opinion. Plenty of casuals just want to play their hero. They don't care about getting out of bronze, they just wanna play the kawaii fox girl. Imagine casual OTPs trying to tell you that hero swapping is the wrong way to have fun. It's absurd. This isn't CSGO or Valorant. This is Overwatch.
I think it would be fine bc of the fact there are so many heroes if someone one tricks solider it'll force them to play something like genji that they have been scared to try, people play ow for ow not for a hero
great episode, SVB! shout-out to all of your guests! Since the Devs are not only listening to your podcast, but actually are showing up on it - i feel really hopeful for this idea about hero bans to come through. cheers! P.s.: thoughts about the actual system: as there are not so many supports, why can't we limit the ban choice to tank and dd role for the start and include the support role when it will have enough heroes?
The way smash bros works in tourneys, while not exactly bans, in smash after player 1 wins, player 2 gets to switch their character to counter player 1's character, player 1 does have the chance to switch their character but because they won they have to switch before player 2. So player 2 has the advantage and oppurtunity to counter player 1 while this gives the loser an advantage for the next game, in a full set, lets say player 2 now wins with their counter pick, now they are the winner so player 1 gets the counter pick advantage and it comes down to whos adaptable which is insanely fun to watch and you still have the advantage winning the first game since you'll get the same advantage if you lose the second. Now to implement this idea into overwatch, the way this would work, after a map, both teams get to pick a ban, however the winner will have to pick first so that the losing team gets the advantage the next map. However if they now win this next map they are giving the other team the advantage for the next map so whoever wins the first map will always have the "advantage" as they should but will let the team thats more adaptable and fluid with each other. The better team SHOULD be more adaptable and work better with each other instead of highlighting individual skill, so the better team should be the better TEAM not just the better players.
Genuinely, i wish SVB was a teacher/professor in proper education. The patience and ability to hold conversations and get the meaning out of people is an extremely difficult skill and he's got it
I just know that if I'm unable to play my favorite heroes in comp, then I'll stop playing OW. Simple as that. I'll just leave the game to the tryhards found in this podcast. God, these people are so detached to the metal ranks and the majority of OW playerbase.
With the utmost respect - you don’t play the game. Quite simply, you would not be in the metal ranks if you were playing hundreds of comp games a season.
In addendum, below plats makes up 40% of the player base. You are not even a plurality. If you lump plat in with it, you’re roughly 62% of the player base. In my humble opinion - as someone whose climbed from bronze to masters on tank, and diamond on support, there is no real difference between golds and bronzes, but there is a difference between plat and bronze. So I don’t lump plat with the metal ranks.
@@noahodum9737 wow, so much wrong here. Firstly, I do play the game. I've been playing since the launch of OW1. Secondly, when the community says "metal ranks" that means bronze through diamond. So, with the utmost respect, evidently, you don't play the game.
If you can’t stand a match where you can’t play your favourite hero out of a session, I don’t know what to tell you other than this: overwatch is supposed to be varied in teamcomps and one tricking being viable is not something the devs really want to see, when overwatch plays like overwatch, the best players are the ones who can play the most heroes at the highest level, not the player who is the best at just one thing
Wonderful discussion with excellent moderating as always, I'd like a chance to throw in my two cents. For the pro-context I'm not particularly strongly opinionated one way or the other, I like both Freedos and Johnny's plans. Jake's plan just doesn't feel focused enough for what I would like to see out of professional play. But overall, I would love pro play to just experiment and whatever they find is most satisfying for them just roll with it. Surprisingly, while there was a lot of discussion about the ban system being too complex as suggested for pro play, no one then seriously considered what I feel is the simplest form of a ranked ban system. Jake mentioned it very briefly, but I suggest that when you pick your roll, you pick a hero you would like to ban before seeing map or teammates or anything, you must do this in order to queue. With the option of course to have no ban. Then as the game loads, it checks all 10 players and any hero that received three or more bans gets banned, there's no reason to limit the ban votes to only one team. This gives potentially zero bans with a maximum of up to three bans in any given game. If there is a true meta problem, it's very likely you would see five or six bans on the same hero. Show everyone the vote count for each hero, but don't attribute those to specific players. Now there's almost no room for toxicity, the bans very fluidly and organically reflect that skill ratings distaste of particular heroes, it does not give undue hate against one tricks unless their hero is problematic, stacks can have a meaningful effect on the game without taking over the whole ban system, and there's a very clear set of actionable data points for not just the devs, but also for the community to see how frequently other players are banning a particular option. I think this really neatly and succinctly hits every point that a casual audience would like to see, especially the option to have no ban, which simply reduces the chance of a consensus on anything. If you do not believe in banning heroes, select no ban and you may just get your wish. If there are no meta problems, then nothing will be banned and the game is healthy as it should be.
A potential fix for stacking teams is the leader of the group chooses one hero for everyone, and they only get one vote. Then the system adds nulls or something to fill the other vote spots. For example, 4 people are stacking, and they choose to ban Brig, now 3 ban choice spots can't be filled because there is a stack, so it either decides from two heroes, the 4 stack and the one random, or it makes the other 3 spots null, and if the system lands on null, it randomizes what to ban. Just an idea can defiantly be fleshed out
If bans mess up a team that much then you have no faith in what the current balance is. You could also say that players need to get good and learn more than one hero/comp
Not really. Mobas do bans because of balance and because you can’t switch characters mid match/round. The devs are trying to avoid hard counters and rock paper scissors metas. Bans would hurt this game more as the focus has been more about maining characters. Plus if teams agree to ban the same support or soft counter to a character you just make the game less fun to watch. Other games have more characters with more duplication and overlap where as overwatch Dosent. Imagine your team running pharah/mercy and you ban soldier, Ashe, Ana dva. And just limiting your options completely for the hitscan category. This game just isn’t built for a ban system.
SVB, have you thought of hosting a group from all comp levels? Like a “masters only”, “diamond only”, “plat only” group up episode? I’m sure there’s some interesting points to be made from those of us not sitting at GM+. There’s also lots of streamers and content creators at virtually any level that would love to be on here, not to mention the cross-promotional benefits.
Hero pools was one of the only times I've ever put overwatch down for a significant period of time. You can handwave it as a different system than hero bans but ultimately I do not believe in an Overwatch that says "no you can't play the hero you want to play" even if it's just for one map one time.
That is valid! I wonder, if something like hero bans were introduced into ladder, what could be done to preserve that stance. You could leave them out of Open Queue but I think that would still be band-aiding the problem for people who want role queue but not hero bans. It's all tough. I think they should at least try it on the experimental card though, and maybe limit it to diamond or masters and up, but then we get into the issue of there being a sort of a different game based on where on the ladder you fall.
@@Thr3leven yeah like the point they all kept returning to the entire podcast was that it becomes a matter of implementation and there are pros and cons of any implementation and it’s worth trying to find a good one. Like I mean you could split it between unranked and comp where QP won’t have bans which would be okay I guess. I dunno it’s all just wonky if you start flipping the off switch on heroes and I don’t really like it. Granted I’m basically a lucio otp and they acknowledged as well that his uniqueness is one of the bigger wrenches in the idea but for real there has never been a less fun week of overwatch than the week they turned Lucio off and I won’t go back to that unless they make a hero that’s so similar to lucio in terms of movement and utility that it renders turning lucio off moot
if we were to go for a “blind ban system”, i would actually argue it’d be cool to pair it with Ml7’s idea of having the top 3 heroes you want to play displayed when you hover over smns profile (he explains it on his yt channel in depth). if you can still see the preference of roles for your own team (not the enemy team), you can at least try to not ban the hero your team wants to play the most but you dont have to argue in voice chat over it :)
I think that even if it isn't blind for your own team, it makes sense to be able to see their hero preferences because it will take a lot longer to ask people, there are big language barriers on some regions, and a lot of people are afk at the start of a match anyway. There are a lot of maps where I would ban pharah because I am just not good at countering her, but if I have two dps that prefer to play widow, ashe, cass, soldier, then I would for sure ban something else.
Speaking as a long-time player of Overwatch (day 1 Overwatch 1) who's never been higher ranked than Diamond, I certainly hope we NEVER get hero bans in game, at least not for ranks below Master. If they implemented hero bans for the lower ranks, the only hero that would ever get banned would be the currently perceived OP hero of the month, whether that's the newest hero added in a season or another hero that recently got a buff. If the latter, and that's the only hero you like to play, well then you'll basically be forced to throw the match as you'll be playing a hero you're not good at/don't like playing.
We already know how this all shakes out from another Blizzard title. People pounded their fists that Heroes of the Storm needed pick/bans for years. They finally got it, it was pretty unsuccessful. People didn't understand how to counterpick/ban, so they would just crutch on an established meta of bans whether they made sense or not. People got salty when teammates picked/banned the wrong thing. It was used to actively grief people if you recognized an opponent's username and knew their preferred picks. All of these problems would translate directly to Overwatch. There were so many layers of problems, it is NOT the panacea that people think it is.
Well hots had extremely casual player base. Dota also had picks/bans mode, one person who pressed the button to be captain made all choices. And usually they knew their sht, every time I played that mode people had more or less good understanding of what and why to ban, even though dota had like 5 bans for each team and 5 picks. So I’m pretty sure ow can handle like 1-2 ban per team without pick phase.
U could just pick another character then. The ban would probably only be 1 for each category. The game needs it cos mercy pocket and widow being in 98% of games is a terrible experience
@@serenity.4 the problem is being forced off your preffered hero, its just not a fun mechanic unless there was way more heroes than there already are, all heroes should be available to the people who have them unlocked, plus since they already tried hero pools and map pools already, im hoping they leave it as is, as they said in the podcast, the maps in overwatch are the variety
In OWL, it could be interesting incorporating the half-time break into hero bans. Let's say you Ban one each at the start of the game, on half time you might either choose to ban an aditional hero, you could change the hero you ban (ban a different one) or rules could change to where all bans aren't in effect anymore (you can play evryone again), or you might play the first two maps without bans and then at the half time each team get's to ban someone. You don't wanna make it too compllicated, but adding some variety and mid-match strategy would definitely bring some more depth to it.
Imho we don't have enough heroes for hero bans yet. And in pro play, 90% of the time people teams will ban things that break the meta because everyone plays the meta. It will homogenize team comps even more because teams now have a chance to get rid of the oddball comp that that ONE team is practicing that could break the meta.
Not always, if you ban the meta you have to make sure you are the worse one at it. So sometimes a worse team won’t ban the meta because they think they are the better of the two and so get rolled. Next map they may nerf something else and the team that just won could try to ban ahead of their ban so they can play their second best comp or something. As you see it’s complicated even with just 2 bans
I would rather have ban queues instead of ban picks once we're IN a game. I think people should pick up to 2 heroes that they just flat out don't want to see in their games and then they get paired with other people with at least one of those bans. that way, one tricks can play their hero and people who want to delete them from the game can never run into them. The downside is longer queue times (potentially) but you can also not ban any heroes to keep the time the same as it is now. This should also only apply to ranked and not QP
Hero ban for masters and grandmaster rank play. Blizzard still need to attract people to the game in lower ranks. Hero ban in lower ranks not gonna help selling those $20 skins they need to pay for the content.
In regards to the hero ban system giving data I have a idea that could make it so the Devs actually find out why we don't like certain heroes in our game. For instance let's say 55% of people ban sojourn, that gives the devs the data that 55% of ppl don't like the hero. But they are then going to assume it's because of the oneshot. So they will nerf that. While in fact 60% of people that banned sojourn banned the hero because they feel like they can never get to her because her slide provides so much distance and gives her acces to highground at the same time. What if during you selecting the hero you want to ban you get presented with the option to include what you don't like about her. The options are presented as such: Ultimate, ability 1, ability 2, weapon, other (in other would be things like passive and healthpool. If you select ability 1 for example you can choose out of options like distance, height, cooldown to short. After the game is finished you are presented with the exact same hero ban system with the same hero you choose asking you again as to why. After you completed that you get 10 legacy credits if your answers are the same. The reason you have to put the same answers in is because otherwise people will just click a thing to get the 10 credits and this way it will provide the Devs with actual information of why they don't like said hero. The Devs then have the data that 60% of the 55% that banned sojourn don't like the fact that she covers so much distance and can still gain highground during her slide. While 40% of the people banned her because of her weapon and 80% of those thought the 1shot was a problem and 20% the amount of time she keeps her railgun charge. This gives them actual information across every rank. For instance: 80% of the people might ban zen for example while 9/10 times in silver and bronze they would ban zen because he doesn't heal enough and in gold- plat it's because he does to much damage with his leftclick while in diamond and above it's the discord orb damage increased number or how long the discord orb stays on you. It all provides the Devs with different information. They could then for example nerf the discord orb so that it only applies/stays on the target if zen is actually looking at him and there is no shield up for longer than 1,5 seconds and to compensate increase his healing amount by 10% while reducing his amount of ammo by 10%. Even if they only implement the hero ban system in every second or third week of every season and in the last 2 weeks for each season this gives them allot of data to fix what people hate to play against and why. You could even make it so it knows what role you qued for and that as a support you hate zen because he has the ability to 1shot you across the map, as tank the discord lasts to long or increases of damage done via discord is too high. As dps it's his kick
I know I'm late to this but the idea that's missing here is having an anti-hero-ban pick for players before the ban phase. For Ranked: Let players lock in a hero that cannot be banned for the whole match, then allow some sort of ban system. Allow players to set up in their profile a hero per role to automatically select for anti-ban. For Pro-play: Have anti-bans be limited to, say, 2 or 3 heroes for the entire team, then follow that with a ban phase. This allows certain star players or core comps to shine for a team while promoting some strategy and variation match to match. Side note: Anti-bans and ban picks apply to both teams.
Wouldn’t anti bans defeat the point? So many people one trick in ranked, so you are never going to ban a hero when it would actually affect you. Good luck banning Moira in Bronze when its 100% anti ban, or Sojourn in GM for the same reason. It essentially makes it pointless.
@@YazzPott If the point of bans is to make a meta less stale and to introduce some other level of strategy without affecting the casual experience, then anti-bans are the only way to go. If the community as a whole is tired of a certain hero being played, then people will not choose to anti-ban it for most matches, then it will be banned for both sides (assuming someone chooses to ban it). If one-tricks want their hero available, it's available for both teams to pick. There's no loss in fair play for both sides, it allows players who want to practice or enjoy a specific hero to guarantee it for the match (while not being sniped by a teammate), and gives the community a fair level of empowerment to decide what they want the game ecosystem to be like. If people want to "troll" by anti-banning something in spite of the community, they're the ones who would have to face it every match. Even considering the amount of one-tricks and trolls, it would still make a significant difference without any significant drawbacks.
@@spfCoW I agree with the sentiment, I just dont see the value in having 1 person hold 9 other people hostage with a hero no one but them wants to play, it defeats the purpose of bans. It also doesnt really add to meta diversity, since again, people want freedom from stuff like Soj/Mercy, maybe Moira and idk Torb in bronze, not sure im not down there but I hear complaints. When would you ever see a ban of those heroes go through? Are people going to opt out of Kiriko even though shes overpowered? Of course not, even if everyone besides the 2 Kiri players in the lobby are sick of it. I agree that it has no drawbacks, but I also think it has absolutely no positives either, its the same game with a pretend choice that is only going to matter with heroes that no one was going to pick in 90% of games anyway.
SVB did an awesome job putting this together and keeping the conversation flowing constructively. I hope the devs tune in to this one and just go for it. The mid season misery patch just isn't fast enough! The game cannot withstand another period like early December where Doom and Hog deleted fun from the game. Bans would of shut it down day one.
Idea: add a hero swap point on KOTH maps. It can be the actual point. Make it to where if you use that swap point intsead of the spawn ship then you do not transfer ult charge, AND it takes 5 seconds of no combat to swap AND only if you are full hp. If the point gets contested at any time, then the hero swap mechanic is disabled. This would allow for a more fluid team comp, on the fly counter picks.
The day hero bans are added to overwatch ranked will be the one of the best days I will have playing this game, Perma ban Mercy every game and the fun aspect goes substantially higher especially for EU players where the moment they start to lose pharah mercy/ echo mercy gets absolutely locked. I would be so happy to ban mercy as a person that enjoys all roles.
With a hero ban system no team would have ever let Hadi play Rein. Ans would have been perma benched as every team would pick widow so you can't risk putting him in. Ameng and Ball, Blase and Doom, Dding and Pharah We would lose so many great stories. Players are synonymous with 1 or 2 heroes. Metas wouldn't get broken as as soon as a counter strategy starts to rise, the Meta teams would just ban it. You would see less players and teams on the heroes and Comps that make them special.
I play ranked with two friends so I know what we would ban all the time. Havana? Junkertown? Colesseo? Rialto? Widow. Lijang? Symmetra Anywhere else? Mercy, Orisa, or Junkrat. These are not strategy picks. You just sometimes get tired of these heroes.
I’ve been thinking about hero band a lot recently, but less so in season 3 because the balance is just the best it’s ever been. It makes sense when there are 1-2 characters in each category that dominate ladder, like when you knew every game was going to be orisa/hog, sojourn/reaper, Lucio/kiriko, banning even just 1 of those characters would bring diversity. My plan on implementing hero bans on ladder would be 2 15 second pickem rounds before every game, one where everyone picks 3 heroes they want to ban, then round 2 takes the top 3 picked and everyone picks 2 of those 3 to be banned for that match, the top 2 picked are banned. The most important outcome of this would be showing devs immediate feedback on who players from all skill think is broken and who is broken on which map. If a hero is banned universally, they now have a tallest poppy to chop. The information would be invaluable from a balance perspective. If you don’t want to pick, fine, you don’t have to, maybe there can even be an opt-out of the ban round if over 50% of that match don’t want to on the first round too, or if the picks are too diverse it gets skipped. I’ve seen many people say “well what about muh one trick” and I say screw one tricks. The basis of overwatch as a game with 30+ heroes is not to play a singular character, and if you’re playing competitive as a one trick, you are not a serious-minded competitive player in the game. So I’d have no sympathy if it was implemented. I think it would make every game just a bit more interesting, and would provide more diversity that especially at high ranks would be appreciated
I don’t think your idea is bad or anything, and I don’t care about one tricks either, but for you to say players who are one tricks aren’t competitive is a flat out lie. If anything they are more competitive because they are trying to show they are better than you at that hero. The rest of your novel is not the point here, I’m just arguing that one trick players are probably more competitive than the average person playing comp.
@@PoohOnYourShoe I respect and understand your opinion, but in a game where certain characters can be completely shut down in multiple ways, and those counters also have counters, and the expectation from a game design perspective is to swap, it fundamentally makes you less competitive if you do not swap after being countered. I respect one tricks who can climb and kick ass. But some games those heroes just don’t and can’t work. The competitive thing to do is swap to one who does.
I think hero bans would suck in ranked. Not being able to play your favorite heroes simply because someone doesn’t like them just seems like a drag. I’d rather see reworks over time for certain heroes.
Well I see were you are coming from but I disagree. If you can't play a character you wanna play because it gets banned all the time thats annoying for sure. However, if the same hero were to get reworked to be less annoying and less frequently banned, they probably wouldn't be the same as they were prior to the rework right? So with hero bans you don't get to play a hero for a certain amount of your games but if they get reworked you don't get to play the original version of that hero ever
Sure. But 1 person in the match being unhappy bcuz of that hero not being playable is better than 5 people in a match having their game ruined bcuz someone played that character. Assuming that the bans would typically fall onto busted characters. Or ones that are very not fun to play against. Either way.
Let’s be real, people rarely one trick meta characters unless that char gets megabuffed into meta. NO ONE will ban fun meta characters like ana or kiriko on ladder. The only people who “one-tricked” sojourn or orisa are people dedicated to climbing during their time of meta. Mercy mains may be the only true one trick category that would get hurt the most. But all that would tell me is the devs need to balance mercy better, which in the end would provide a better impact on the game as a whole.
SVB you are amazing host. I really appreciate how you make sure that people don't go off topic As for ban system: it doesn't solve problem with meta because it creates ban meta. "Ban nr 1 strongest thing on this map" "ok I guess I will go second best thing on this map". Stuff like you ban Widow then they will play Hanzo on sniper maps. Cool I guess? Targeting people's mains would also be a thing for sure. There are many people who play 1-3 characters in their role, now imagine that only one of those picks is viable on certain map like idk, you are Orisa, Rein, Monkey player and you play watchpoint Gibraltar. They ban monkey pick and what do you do? Play Rein or Orisa and troll the lobby? Play Dva who you have no idea how to play? This kinda sucks. We need balance and proper map reworks. If Pharah is annoying af then nerf her infinite airtime. If Widow is op on sniper maps, then rework maps to have more flank routes and cover. If something enables another hero too much (like Hog Suzu combo) then it's time to look at the problematic abilities. Ban system is lazy solution that doesn't solve shit
Highly disagree on Bans in widespread player comp. The game already matches you based on your estimate skill level by role, and the vast majority of players predominantly only play one or two heroes if the Dev Blogs are to be believed. Banning out someone's best immediately tanks the integrity of the match, not to mention additional efforts for people to sweat climb the ladder (stream snipes, friend lists, career profile, 3rd party websites/plugins etc). If your lobby gets unlucky and has both tanks be Plat in a lobby of diamonds, and one team bans Rein and the other bans a DPS, if one of those tanks was a Rein player it instantly fucks the whole lobby's balancing effort. From years in LoL's convoluted ranked system people in general will always have something to bitch at whether or not a ban happens. People have gone a legitimate decade without ever seeing a Yasuo or Darius just because they refuse to learn how he works or is countered. Many afk the lobby or use it to grief teammates before a match even starts. A banning lobby means well but the actual effort to utilize it is lost on most players. IMO the agency of a player to pick what they want outweighs the brief catharsis of a semi 1/5 chance of choosing what someone cannot. If a character is that bad of a problem, that's on the devs to fix it. Sure a pure one trick leaving a lobby they had their hero banned sucks and they play the ladder scummy, but to them what they did could be seen as a favor because they know their 2nd best is not at the level of the lobby so they spare you the loss.
Pre-lock before you queue with ranked choice of 3 heroes. The bans are symmetrical and there's two per game one from each team. That way it's not a grief point like SVB pointed out and you have a greater probability of something you don't like being banned rather than feeling like the system doesn't listen to your input.
Given the proposed problems discussed here, including someone mentioning how Dota does bans, I'm surprised no one suggested a ban lottery. It's fast, simple, and egalitarian. Match starts, the first 10s in the hero select you can flag one hero to ban. For all heroes that were flagged by at least one player, ban half. Groups can't control the vote, tank players aren't left out for having just one person in their role. If you vote, you know there is always a 50% chance your ban goes through, and someone who mains that hero will still get to play them a minimum of half of all games. Also, do you not want any bans in the game? Don't vote. If only 2-4 heroes get flagged then there is only 1-2 bans. If every person votes you can have up to 5 heroes banned. You can put some more guard rails up to handle some extreme edge cases like 5 supports getting banned, or drop the ratio from 1/2 to 1/3rd, etc, but I think the core concept handles all the edge cases. You always get a voice. You can never be perma-locked from playing a hero, etc.
I think hero bans is a terrible idea, but that is just me. I want to play what I want to play which is usually what’s good. I can see hidden hero vans by each team in OWL though. But that would be iffy too because teams would ban based on the players best heroes.
Widowmaker bans. In Top500 people would ban Widow because they hate having her on the other team. In Bronze they will ban widow because they hate having widow on their own team.
hearing svb mention an overwatch draft mode makes me even more upset that paladins is such a flop due to its owner’s neglecting it (I think the publisher doesn’t care about it from what i heard but maybe it’s also a developer thing) because there’s no hero swapping in the game and the way it was balanced allows for you to just play the person you want, obv some comps would be better than another but casually you don’t feel forced to not play something
Long comment incoming...(edit: I have a lot to say) My stance on Hero Bans is.....we need more heroes before we can implement any system. Also, hot take, I think role-queue has ruined our chances for a simple hero ban system that Reinforce would enjoy. Another hot take, I think Hero Bans would be better for the RANKED game...not the pro game. Finally, I hate the word ban...it doesn't have to be a ban. I think pools could work...(this is when you stop reading my comment cause you think I'm off the goop as Custa would say but if you're intrigued continue) For SVB, Great talk...about this podcast format, I think there are too many people with too many thoughts so it is tough to keep track. I'd limit it to 3 guests plus you haha. Last but not least...my cringe hero ban(kind of) idea My ideal system is honestly...each team can't pick the same heroes (crazy right). During the pick phase, there is a snake draft for each team. Each player gets the opportunity to pick 4 heroes to go to the map with (4 tanks, 8 DPS, 8 Supports). All heroes selected aren't duplicates. It is kind of like picking your starting 11 in football or other sports. Once Tracer is picked by one team, they can't be picked by the other. That is guaranteed diversity with enough opportunity for preparation to provide high quality matches that can keep Custa happy lol. My idea wouldn't work now...because we don't have enough heroes. Another con is that there would be pick metas (edit: a pool of competitive heroes that are always picked but diversity when played). And finally, this would FUNDAMENTALLY change the way the game is played. It would make the game 100x more complex and limit player choice. The pro here is guaranteed "forced" diversity in game. It would solve most problems we have today at the cost of freedom (like role queue). Idk if people want more of that. I'd love to try it out though. You could keep your hero specialists, it isn't just straight RNG, edit: you could still play the heroes you want and so on. It is simple on the surface for Johnny and complex for Freedo. Anyways, not a lot of people would read this far for my comment so...congrats haha. That's my idea.
Don't think this is realistic idea or even a good idea. It sounds great when you compare it to games like Dota2 or something else where hero bans are a thing....but then you remember that those games have a hero roster of like 100+ to choose from. In comparison, right now, supports have like 8 heroes they can play. Some people off-role support so they only are proficient really at one or two heroes. Now you're talking about removing one of those heroes? Some heroes are good only because they directly counter another hero. Imagine what happens when one of them gets banned? What about people who 1 trick? Is blizz gonna change their stance on that? They have been pretty supportive of people playing the hero they want to play and mastering that hero. What do sym mains do when their hero gets banned in that game? Throw by picking something else because they aren't nearly as good on anything else? This will end up ruining more games than helping. It sounds incredibly disgenuine when people who play the game only at the highest level try to decide what is best for the game as a whole - what they are really saying is "this is what is best for me and the level that I play the game, the style in which i play and how i determine if the game is fun." People who are learning the game at lower elos and trying to progress through ranks of bronze and silver do not need a hero banned from their already decidedly small roster of characters they feel competent on. At the VERY least, Blizz needs to add a lot more heroes before they even attempt to do something like this.
just got this in my head. OWL could try a Lockout Elimination system if they aren't hero Swapping or it locks the hero you hade the most time on that map.
For maps its a simple fix, rainbow six does a really good system where 5 maps are put up (new ones are protected and it would have to be mode based) each team BANS one map, and the game randomly selects out of 3 possibilities (4 if teams ban the same map) easy fix push needs more maps for this to work though exactly this way, but it can still work, great data for the devs to see what map the players hatr
Here's how this would go in 1/4+ of my games. Enemy is tearing us apart we need to ban their carry but instead my team bans my sym to force a swap on our own team while the enemy continues to run rough shot over everything possibly letting the pressure off dive characters that were previously being countered. I think the team would be given incentive to target their own.
Maybe a stack only gets one vote. Or maybe every vote is always worth a 20% chance of selection every time, so collaboration between 3 people let's say results in a 60% chance of ban on that hero.
Hero bans are a even worse band aid solution then role que where we just remove the need for balance. Also we have so few heros the games with bans are oftentimes ones with hero rosters in the 100s
there are often things i disagree with on this podcast but i still definitely appreciate SVB hosting and actually doing the podcast and discussing important issues. thanks man
I disagree with hero ban. Imagine dva gets banned and you're playing tank. Your team bans Sojourn because she's busted then. The enemy team plays pharmacy and your team is unable to deal with the pharmacy. Given that dva was the hero that was banned, you now have very little agency in that game.
After watching this, I'm convinced blizzard of today won't implement it because it creates one more place of player friction that could result in player toxicity. It's the same reason why we can't see teammates SR now, why we only get rank updates every 5 games, Blizzard is softening the experience to be less toxic no matter what, so I'm just not convinced even if it provided good value 90%+ of the time. As long as there's a worst case, I don't think they would take the chance. Despite any toxicity created from a Soljurn running wild with insane buffs.
Would love to mention, paladins had pick and ban periods. Paladins is significantly more complex than OW and the ban phase was a wonderful aspect of the game
Idk if devs watch these but God do i hope they do. Its si nice to hear real intellectual conversation about his topic, id live to actually hear the devs full opinion on this
I think the issue with not enough collaboration in ranked bans could be solved with threat of denial of a ban. If the whole team can't agree to ban something it means the players can't agree to one hero that's broken and should be banned. Jake talks about this at 2:40:11 and so it's mainly an upside to have people be afraid to lose their team ban and instead work together to have a guaranteed ban.
I know down in gold I would spend half my time just banning symmetra. You won't believe how often people just ignore her or her turrets. The teleporter sentry bomb gets so old as a support. Banning her as often as possible would just save my mental.
@@brianq2558 I hit diamond just last night playing mainly Ana. If sym dares to go for any melt play then she is naded and pinged immediately for me. People tend to kill her before the pockets kick in.
Freedo needs to not site psychological studies he loosely remembers reading at some point. He doesn't know what he's talking about and the study he sited is bunk to begin with.
Bans are fine in owl, bans in ranked are bad cause there's no smooth implementation until we have 100+ heroes. 1. You can't have each person ban a character cause we don't have the roster. 2. If you have a vote system and it ends in a draw who gets to decide? If its random you will have a ton of toxicity towards someone for picking the "wrong" ban. 3. OTPs shouldn't be locked out of their characters, even with a private profile you have well known OTPs who will get targeted by bans. 4. Bans are slow, even the fastest system adds on a lot of time to actually playing the game and I wait in qs long enough as is. Keep that system to owl imo.
I think hero bans or something like it is mandatory if for no other reason than to distinguish ranked from qp a little bit However it would be awful to put in owl (or what’s left of it) because those players get paid to play a specific character or set of characters so say you have a really good dva specialist then boom you can ban their best player off the best characters which kinda defeats the point of having a competitive match
For ranked, let each player choose a ban and let the game randomly choose a character from that list. On the choose character, right click to ban and left click to select. Banning wouldn’t be mandatory.
Not a fan of any ban or pick system in ranked as is. If a Tourney mode or a Team queue mode came out, I’d be all for it. But as is, let players choose their heroes for themselves
I drop watching OW League usually when the game is one sided. So ads are ok if I know the next map can make a difference. Just like with football, each quarter can make a difference. For ranked, let each player choose a ban and let the game randomly choose a character from that list. On the choose character, right click to ban and left click to select. Banning wouldn’t be mandatory.
You might be able to copy Siege’s ban system, 3 maps are shown and each team bans one and if they both ban the same it’s a 50/50 of the remaining 2 and then each team bans 1 attacker and 1 defender by majority vote or random if there is a tie. That would mean you ban 1 character each in OW so two total for the game. Then deva can see the maps players don’t want to play and heroes who players find the most frustrating
The think hero bans should only be a last resort, because it wastes time for teams to vote on who to ban each match. If the devs do a good hotfix fast enough to fix glaring balance issues, I think there would be no point whatsoever in having hero bans.
15:00 i dont agree with what custa is saying because tgere is a massive difference between pools and bans, pools fully removes stuff u have no choice but with bans its a game to game scenario
Banning mercy anywhere from bronze to diamond would be op, so many players would literally have nothing to play - and trust me, there's a lot of people here that only play mercy. (Almost every game is and always has been ana mercy)
@@-NoNo. fair, honestly still Moira I'd different from mercy and while it is easy value there's also a skill curve the higher you go with the amounts of things you gotta do to actually get value, good apm, resource management, ability usage. Of course, Mercy has her skill as well, if not more, but once a player has devoted so much time to one hero and only that hero and reached a somewhat top rank they're used to that hero's mechanics and Playstyle, it's not that easy to just flex. But in ranks of gold and below, yeah it probably would still work.
@@darksplash873 yes yes I completely agree, the higher up you go, the more moira has to do to make up for the fact that she only heals, damages, and survives but those in and of themselves are pretty decent. We’ll have to see if they rework her so that she has utility in the future
@@-NoNo. yeah it would be nice if she had something more, but I think having good starting point heroes like Moira is nice, as long as they aren't op. There should always be a way to just unlock another tier of skill play as a hero to climb, not just because you get easy value. I like that she's easy to pick up, but it would be nice if she had a higher skill ceiling too
If Blizz did hero bans I think (this is for ranked not OWL) that it should be one ban per team. I also think it should be like the McRib. Let us have it then after a bit it goes away. Then it returns. Do that off and on and at random. A lot of people love hero bans but a lot also don't so I think this would appease everyone to a degree. As far as OWL is concerned I liked what Jake said where it's one hero ban for each team that is submitted before the first map and that's what they get through the whole match. I think that's fair and fun.
I oddly enough love how paladins handles bans for its comp system. If I remember right each team gets 2 bans that they do one at a time. It typically means one hero is banned based on map strength and the other on just overall annoyance. Tanks and damage are the ones who got banned the most because the supports were never really the focus for bans. If a support was banned then it was because it was the best support for a certain tank line up.
thats true, but often times (at least for the overwatch team) hero stats help inform them on what to nerf and how much to nerf it. i know that it doesn't always feel efficient, but the data is how they come to their conclusions. if a hero is being constantly banned then there won't be any decent stats for them to look at on where their power level is strongest in the current meta. this is especially true for new heroes because oftentimes, players just dont know how to counter it yet so they will ban it to avoid the broken thing, and the devs will have old stats from when the hero was very strong, but not necessarily contested in a way that's not only possible but fair. it's a fair point to bring up but the overwatch team will have to fundamentally change how they balance the game in order for it to be a pro and not a con.
For some reason listening to the ranked part of the debate, I really think there's a massive lack of perspective from a non T500 point of view. Everyone is hyper focused on the 0.001% of the playerbase and little to no consideration has been given to the other 99.999%.
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This episode was recorded on 24/02/23. Podcast links below! If you're enjoying this content, why not check out SVB's stream (www.twitch.tv/svb_) or other entertainment content from SVB on his second RUclips channel the SVB-Side: www.youtube.com/@SVB-Side
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SVB does such a phenomenal job moderating these discussions and making sure everyone gets a chance to input their opinions.
Agreed, however I wish he’d be a bit more assertive at times as well as occasionally letting it take its own course now and again….but these are minimal things on the whole. I appreciate what he does and that he gets all these people together
I was basing my comment off of older episodes but so far in this one svb is swinging rhe hammer as needed haha
Bro I was just about to comment this! Queuing people in at the right time for counter arguments and even keeping his guests on topic. What a great podcast
Svb's ability as a host to get equal input from 4 other guests is actually really impressive to me, I think hero bans are a healthy addition to OW if done conservatively
Edit: and honestly good on the other guests, everyone was really respectful and contributed really well to the discussion
I'm really liking the 4 person + moderator debate.
It makes it feel more like a debate than a forum. I understand not every topic is divisive enough to get this kind of debate going, but I'm really enjoying this.
Lol good job controlling Jake lmao he has that Adderall ramble going.
I was just about to type the same thing lol
Hes obnoxious
I don't like the idea that a 3 stack could decide that widow or whatever would be banned. Cause it's bad for the solo queue players that would rarely have any say in what hero would be banned. So every player getting a 20% chance for their vote seems better. So even if you have a 3 stack they would have a 60% chance of banning widow if the other players picks something else. This system would also make it more random and most likely let the one tricks play some more games on their hero.
Idk. If the 3 stack wants to ban widow on havana then the solo que should follow the lead on that one.
SVB really becoming one of the best creators we have for OW, depending on what you're looking for (entertainment vs analysis), he prolly already is. The man's a legend!
Damn Jake's ban system is pretty good. I hope it's just 1 hero per team, it could make the meta waaay more varied from just having 2 heroes banned. It can make people actually learn the game. Excellent excellent excellent episode sooo interesting to listen to.
Youre a legend svb thanks for putting this together man
I also think it's worth saying that there's no reason why the OWL ruleset and ranked ruleset have to be the same. They're two different groups that have two different needs. I also think that new new players (so started with OW2) will be disproportionately impacted because of the time it takes in hours for a person to achieve mastery of multiple heroes. Easiest way I can see around this is the hero ban system starts in say Diamond where it actually begins mattering anyways.
Agreed. I really don’t see what good a hero ban will do in gold. Team comp means nothing until higher ranks like you mentioned. Very good point!
What should happen is that both teams load into the competitive match but nobody’s name is shown until the band are picked. When the band are picked and locked in, the name plates, title card, and background card reveal themselves and the match starts. At which point you will be able to chose the character you want provided that it is in your role and that they aren’t banned
so what youre saying is an actual streamer mode, not that thing that they implemented
@@MefoWho I was talking about a ban system but sure ig
@@-NoNo. Ye ye i know what you mean xd. Anyway its not like this is the first time ever a ban system has been implemented into an esport, so its not like theyre going in blind. But idk if the higher up give enough fk to actually spend resources into balancing, maybe things will change now and we will get patches per 2 weeks for real *copium*
@@MefoWho I just don’t understand how it’s taken so long for a ban system. Like at least in masters-top500
@@-NoNo. because blizzard caters to the complainers about “their characters,” plus the average players want to play the same game as their favorite streamers, so if they have a ban system the lower ranks would demand one too. Not that they would know how to use it properly, but just because it’s a “*flats* has a ban system, I want one too,” kinda thing.
Really loved the additional control you exerted on the conversation to keep it focused and salient. I think it adds SO MUCH value and creates something that's much easier to consume. Well done!!!
SVB you are the man! This is high level discussion. I'm glad we are getting this kind of content so often
this is gold damn i so want "Jake's system" implemented
Not opposed to hero bans, but there just needs to be more supports for this to happen. I feel maybe around 10 or 12 supports this would be more realistic. So maybe next year for rank they could try this.
As a master support player that switches from bap, ana, zen, kiriko, lucio...I am fine with this because changes the game and I feel it is still skillfull playing diffent comps and banning two support will not be pain. But the players the only main one character or people who only play one comp hmmmm suck for cheese. also, I don't think it will lock one comp because I think there is enough support to not completly stop a strategy(only allow 2 blind bans). in addition, I played rainbow 6 siete most of the bans are confort bans or to prevent cheese or single way to play.
We already have 8 supports and we have two more coming in the next two seasons. I think it should be one hero ban per team. So it would be possible now but if we wait for your suggestion of ten supports then we'd have it by this summer. I didn't like how Blizz did it previously and I don't think they would do it that way again but even then. 8 supports and only one was ever banned at a time. Then you have a second healer so that still leaves you with 6 choices to play.....how many more do you need since you can only play one at a given time?
Honestly I could work with the 8 we have - the people who can play multiple heroes will be able to switch to those, the people who are one tricks now will probably remain one-tricks in the future. The supports we have already give us enough diversity, I guess we can wait for more overlap but that's what hero bans are trying to achieve, disallow a certain specific strategy. If we get a second Lucio, what even is the point of banning Lucio in the first place?
As they said in the podcast lucio is the single hero that if it gets banned there is literally not substitute
In my rank, people don't need a reason to quit or throw. Banning an OTP would ruin lower level play. Also, lots of OTPs would almost never get to play their favorite hero.
Over time, it would push players away from the game. Activision isn't ever going to greenlight ANYTHING that's almost guaranteed to push people away. If people quit playing, they quit spending. ABK ain't never gonna lose a penny to make top ranked players feel good. If 100% of Master+ quit playing, it would be a tiny drop. If 20% of metal ranks quit, that's MILLIONS of people who are no longer enticed to spend money.
I could be wrong. Player bans MIGHT not ruin the game, but at my rank, Sombra and Ball would NEVER get to play the game.
I get the whole, "you should be more diverse" argument, but it's a video game. You don't get to tell 30 million people that your opinion is the right opinion. Plenty of casuals just want to play their hero. They don't care about getting out of bronze, they just wanna play the kawaii fox girl. Imagine casual OTPs trying to tell you that hero swapping is the wrong way to have fun. It's absurd.
This isn't CSGO or Valorant. This is Overwatch.
I think it would be fine bc of the fact there are so many heroes if someone one tricks solider it'll force them to play something like genji that they have been scared to try, people play ow for ow not for a hero
@@seanlevi2618 I play for heroes. 🤷♂️ I don't play FPS games, but I play OW because of the heroes.
great episode, SVB! shout-out to all of your guests!
Since the Devs are not only listening to your podcast, but actually are showing up on it - i feel really hopeful for this idea about hero bans to come through. cheers!
P.s.: thoughts about the actual system: as there are not so many supports, why can't we limit the ban choice to tank and dd role for the start and include the support role when it will have enough heroes?
The way smash bros works in tourneys, while not exactly bans, in smash after player 1 wins, player 2 gets to switch their character to counter player 1's character, player 1 does have the chance to switch their character but because they won they have to switch before player 2. So player 2 has the advantage and oppurtunity to counter player 1 while this gives the loser an advantage for the next game, in a full set, lets say player 2 now wins with their counter pick, now they are the winner so player 1 gets the counter pick advantage and it comes down to whos adaptable which is insanely fun to watch and you still have the advantage winning the first game since you'll get the same advantage if you lose the second.
Now to implement this idea into overwatch, the way this would work, after a map, both teams get to pick a ban, however the winner will have to pick first so that the losing team gets the advantage the next map. However if they now win this next map they are giving the other team the advantage for the next map so whoever wins the first map will always have the "advantage" as they should but will let the team thats more adaptable and fluid with each other. The better team SHOULD be more adaptable and work better with each other instead of highlighting individual skill, so the better team should be the better TEAM not just the better players.
Genuinely, i wish SVB was a teacher/professor in proper education. The patience and ability to hold conversations and get the meaning out of people is an extremely difficult skill and he's got it
I just know that if I'm unable to play my favorite heroes in comp, then I'll stop playing OW. Simple as that. I'll just leave the game to the tryhards found in this podcast. God, these people are so detached to the metal ranks and the majority of OW playerbase.
With the utmost respect - you don’t play the game. Quite simply, you would not be in the metal ranks if you were playing hundreds of comp games a season.
In addendum, below plats makes up 40% of the player base. You are not even a plurality. If you lump plat in with it, you’re roughly 62% of the player base. In my humble opinion - as someone whose climbed from bronze to masters on tank, and diamond on support, there is no real difference between golds and bronzes, but there is a difference between plat and bronze. So I don’t lump plat with the metal ranks.
@@noahodum9737 wow, so much wrong here. Firstly, I do play the game. I've been playing since the launch of OW1. Secondly, when the community says "metal ranks" that means bronze through diamond.
So, with the utmost respect, evidently, you don't play the game.
@@tymiller176 you’re still there after playing this long? Yikes.
If you can’t stand a match where you can’t play your favourite hero out of a session, I don’t know what to tell you other than this: overwatch is supposed to be varied in teamcomps and one tricking being viable is not something the devs really want to see, when overwatch plays like overwatch, the best players are the ones who can play the most heroes at the highest level, not the player who is the best at just one thing
Wonderful discussion with excellent moderating as always, I'd like a chance to throw in my two cents. For the pro-context I'm not particularly strongly opinionated one way or the other, I like both Freedos and Johnny's plans. Jake's plan just doesn't feel focused enough for what I would like to see out of professional play. But overall, I would love pro play to just experiment and whatever they find is most satisfying for them just roll with it.
Surprisingly, while there was a lot of discussion about the ban system being too complex as suggested for pro play, no one then seriously considered what I feel is the simplest form of a ranked ban system. Jake mentioned it very briefly, but I suggest that when you pick your roll, you pick a hero you would like to ban before seeing map or teammates or anything, you must do this in order to queue. With the option of course to have no ban. Then as the game loads, it checks all 10 players and any hero that received three or more bans gets banned, there's no reason to limit the ban votes to only one team. This gives potentially zero bans with a maximum of up to three bans in any given game. If there is a true meta problem, it's very likely you would see five or six bans on the same hero. Show everyone the vote count for each hero, but don't attribute those to specific players. Now there's almost no room for toxicity, the bans very fluidly and organically reflect that skill ratings distaste of particular heroes, it does not give undue hate against one tricks unless their hero is problematic, stacks can have a meaningful effect on the game without taking over the whole ban system, and there's a very clear set of actionable data points for not just the devs, but also for the community to see how frequently other players are banning a particular option.
I think this really neatly and succinctly hits every point that a casual audience would like to see, especially the option to have no ban, which simply reduces the chance of a consensus on anything. If you do not believe in banning heroes, select no ban and you may just get your wish. If there are no meta problems, then nothing will be banned and the game is healthy as it should be.
A potential fix for stacking teams is the leader of the group chooses one hero for everyone, and they only get one vote. Then the system adds nulls or something to fill the other vote spots. For example, 4 people are stacking, and they choose to ban Brig, now 3 ban choice spots can't be filled because there is a stack, so it either decides from two heroes, the 4 stack and the one random, or it makes the other 3 spots null, and if the system lands on null, it randomizes what to ban. Just an idea can defiantly be fleshed out
banning a support (8 characters) is completely different than banning a DPS (20+ characters)
If bans mess up a team that much then you have no faith in what the current balance is. You could also say that players need to get good and learn more than one hero/comp
Not really. Mobas do bans because of balance and because you can’t switch characters mid match/round. The devs are trying to avoid hard counters and rock paper scissors metas. Bans would hurt this game more as the focus has been more about maining characters. Plus if teams agree to ban the same support or soft counter to a character you just make the game less fun to watch. Other games have more characters with more duplication and overlap where as overwatch Dosent. Imagine your team running pharah/mercy and you ban soldier, Ashe, Ana dva. And just limiting your options completely for the hitscan category. This game just isn’t built for a ban system.
Honestly in awe of how well SVB moderated this.
SVB, have you thought of hosting a group from all comp levels? Like a “masters only”, “diamond only”, “plat only” group up episode? I’m sure there’s some interesting points to be made from those of us not sitting at GM+. There’s also lots of streamers and content creators at virtually any level that would love to be on here, not to mention the cross-promotional benefits.
Hero pools was one of the only times I've ever put overwatch down for a significant period of time. You can handwave it as a different system than hero bans but ultimately I do not believe in an Overwatch that says "no you can't play the hero you want to play" even if it's just for one map one time.
That is valid! I wonder, if something like hero bans were introduced into ladder, what could be done to preserve that stance. You could leave them out of Open Queue but I think that would still be band-aiding the problem for people who want role queue but not hero bans.
It's all tough. I think they should at least try it on the experimental card though, and maybe limit it to diamond or masters and up, but then we get into the issue of there being a sort of a different game based on where on the ladder you fall.
@@Thr3leven yeah like the point they all kept returning to the entire podcast was that it becomes a matter of implementation and there are pros and cons of any implementation and it’s worth trying to find a good one. Like I mean you could split it between unranked and comp where QP won’t have bans which would be okay I guess.
I dunno it’s all just wonky if you start flipping the off switch on heroes and I don’t really like it. Granted I’m basically a lucio otp and they acknowledged as well that his uniqueness is one of the bigger wrenches in the idea but for real there has never been a less fun week of overwatch than the week they turned Lucio off and I won’t go back to that unless they make a hero that’s so similar to lucio in terms of movement and utility that it renders turning lucio off moot
SVB you the GOAT brother, I'm so glad you keep doing these discussions, I really think they mean alot to the community =)
if we were to go for a “blind ban system”, i would actually argue it’d be cool to pair it with Ml7’s idea of having the top 3 heroes you want to play displayed when you hover over smns profile (he explains it on his yt channel in depth).
if you can still see the preference of roles for your own team (not the enemy team), you can at least try to not ban the hero your team wants to play the most but you dont have to argue in voice chat over it :)
I think that even if it isn't blind for your own team, it makes sense to be able to see their hero preferences because it will take a lot longer to ask people, there are big language barriers on some regions, and a lot of people are afk at the start of a match anyway. There are a lot of maps where I would ban pharah because I am just not good at countering her, but if I have two dps that prefer to play widow, ashe, cass, soldier, then I would for sure ban something else.
Been waiting like 2 years or more for this 😂. Thanks as always SVB ❤
Why do all of you want there to be more gameplay in OWL? I swear americans love it when the sports are 90% ads and 10% gameplay.
Speaking as a long-time player of Overwatch (day 1 Overwatch 1) who's never been higher ranked than Diamond, I certainly hope we NEVER get hero bans in game, at least not for ranks below Master. If they implemented hero bans for the lower ranks, the only hero that would ever get banned would be the currently perceived OP hero of the month, whether that's the newest hero added in a season or another hero that recently got a buff. If the latter, and that's the only hero you like to play, well then you'll basically be forced to throw the match as you'll be playing a hero you're not good at/don't like playing.
lol Jake can go on talking forever. but he's going in circles sometimes
We already know how this all shakes out from another Blizzard title. People pounded their fists that Heroes of the Storm needed pick/bans for years. They finally got it, it was pretty unsuccessful. People didn't understand how to counterpick/ban, so they would just crutch on an established meta of bans whether they made sense or not. People got salty when teammates picked/banned the wrong thing. It was used to actively grief people if you recognized an opponent's username and knew their preferred picks. All of these problems would translate directly to Overwatch. There were so many layers of problems, it is NOT the panacea that people think it is.
Well hots had extremely casual player base. Dota also had picks/bans mode, one person who pressed the button to be captain made all choices. And usually they knew their sht, every time I played that mode people had more or less good understanding of what and why to ban, even though dota had like 5 bans for each team and 5 picks. So I’m pretty sure ow can handle like 1-2 ban per team without pick phase.
hero bans is a stupid idea for overwatch, its one of the only big shooter games where you can change your character on the fly
U could just pick another character then. The ban would probably only be 1 for each category. The game needs it cos mercy pocket and widow being in 98% of games is a terrible experience
@@serenity.4 the problem is being forced off your preffered hero, its just not a fun mechanic unless there was way more heroes than there already are, all heroes should be available to the people who have them unlocked, plus since they already tried hero pools and map pools already, im hoping they leave it as is, as they said in the podcast, the maps in overwatch are the variety
SVB: give me your brief stance on hero bans
Jake: 0:46 - 1:26
In OWL, it could be interesting incorporating the half-time break into hero bans. Let's say you Ban one each at the start of the game, on half time you might either choose to ban an aditional hero, you could change the hero you ban (ban a different one) or rules could change to where all bans aren't in effect anymore (you can play evryone again), or you might play the first two maps without bans and then at the half time each team get's to ban someone. You don't wanna make it too compllicated, but adding some variety and mid-match strategy would definitely bring some more depth to it.
Imho we don't have enough heroes for hero bans yet.
And in pro play, 90% of the time people teams will ban things that break the meta because everyone plays the meta. It will homogenize team comps even more because teams now have a chance to get rid of the oddball comp that that ONE team is practicing that could break the meta.
Not always, if you ban the meta you have to make sure you are the worse one at it. So sometimes a worse team won’t ban the meta because they think they are the better of the two and so get rolled. Next map they may nerf something else and the team that just won could try to ban ahead of their ban so they can play their second best comp or something. As you see it’s complicated even with just 2 bans
I would rather have ban queues instead of ban picks once we're IN a game. I think people should pick up to 2 heroes that they just flat out don't want to see in their games and then they get paired with other people with at least one of those bans. that way, one tricks can play their hero and people who want to delete them from the game can never run into them. The downside is longer queue times (potentially) but you can also not ban any heroes to keep the time the same as it is now. This should also only apply to ranked and not QP
i really enjoyed all the opinions and arguments from everyone in the debate. and damn, jake knows how to ramble sometimes.
Hero ban for masters and grandmaster rank play. Blizzard still need to attract people to the game in lower ranks. Hero ban in lower ranks not gonna help selling those $20 skins they need to pay for the content.
In regards to the hero ban system giving data I have a idea that could make it so the Devs actually find out why we don't like certain heroes in our game.
For instance let's say 55% of people ban sojourn, that gives the devs the data that 55% of ppl don't like the hero. But they are then going to assume it's because of the oneshot. So they will nerf that.
While in fact 60% of people that banned sojourn banned the hero because they feel like they can never get to her because her slide provides so much distance and gives her acces to highground at the same time.
What if during you selecting the hero you want to ban you get presented with the option to include what you don't like about her. The options are presented as such:
Ultimate, ability 1, ability 2, weapon, other (in other would be things like passive and healthpool.
If you select ability 1 for example you can choose out of options like distance, height, cooldown to short.
After the game is finished you are presented with the exact same hero ban system with the same hero you choose asking you again as to why.
After you completed that you get 10 legacy credits if your answers are the same.
The reason you have to put the same answers in is because otherwise people will just click a thing to get the 10 credits and this way it will provide the Devs with actual information of why they don't like said hero.
The Devs then have the data that 60% of the 55% that banned sojourn don't like the fact that she covers so much distance and can still gain highground during her slide. While 40% of the people banned her because of her weapon and 80% of those thought the 1shot was a problem and 20% the amount of time she keeps her railgun charge.
This gives them actual information across every rank. For instance:
80% of the people might ban zen for example while 9/10 times in silver and bronze they would ban zen because he doesn't heal enough and in gold- plat it's because he does to much damage with his leftclick while in diamond and above it's the discord orb damage increased number or how long the discord orb stays on you.
It all provides the Devs with different information.
They could then for example nerf the discord orb so that it only applies/stays on the target if zen is actually looking at him and there is no shield up for longer than 1,5 seconds and to compensate increase his healing amount by 10% while reducing his amount of ammo by 10%.
Even if they only implement the hero ban system in every second or third week of every season and in the last 2 weeks for each season this gives them allot of data to fix what people hate to play against and why.
You could even make it so it knows what role you qued for and that as a support you hate zen because he has the ability to 1shot you across the map, as tank the discord lasts to long or increases of damage done via discord is too high. As dps it's his kick
I know I'm late to this but the idea that's missing here is having an anti-hero-ban pick for players before the ban phase.
For Ranked: Let players lock in a hero that cannot be banned for the whole match, then allow some sort of ban system. Allow players to set up in their profile a hero per role to automatically select for anti-ban.
For Pro-play: Have anti-bans be limited to, say, 2 or 3 heroes for the entire team, then follow that with a ban phase. This allows certain star players or core comps to shine for a team while promoting some strategy and variation match to match.
Side note: Anti-bans and ban picks apply to both teams.
Wouldn’t anti bans defeat the point? So many people one trick in ranked, so you are never going to ban a hero when it would actually affect you. Good luck banning Moira in Bronze when its 100% anti ban, or Sojourn in GM for the same reason. It essentially makes it pointless.
@@YazzPott If the point of bans is to make a meta less stale and to introduce some other level of strategy without affecting the casual experience, then anti-bans are the only way to go. If the community as a whole is tired of a certain hero being played, then people will not choose to anti-ban it for most matches, then it will be banned for both sides (assuming someone chooses to ban it). If one-tricks want their hero available, it's available for both teams to pick.
There's no loss in fair play for both sides, it allows players who want to practice or enjoy a specific hero to guarantee it for the match (while not being sniped by a teammate), and gives the community a fair level of empowerment to decide what they want the game ecosystem to be like. If people want to "troll" by anti-banning something in spite of the community, they're the ones who would have to face it every match.
Even considering the amount of one-tricks and trolls, it would still make a significant difference without any significant drawbacks.
@@spfCoW I agree with the sentiment, I just dont see the value in having 1 person hold 9 other people hostage with a hero no one but them wants to play, it defeats the purpose of bans. It also doesnt really add to meta diversity, since again, people want freedom from stuff like Soj/Mercy, maybe Moira and idk Torb in bronze, not sure im not down there but I hear complaints. When would you ever see a ban of those heroes go through? Are people going to opt out of Kiriko even though shes overpowered? Of course not, even if everyone besides the 2 Kiri players in the lobby are sick of it.
I agree that it has no drawbacks, but I also think it has absolutely no positives either, its the same game with a pretend choice that is only going to matter with heroes that no one was going to pick in 90% of games anyway.
SVB did an awesome job putting this together and keeping the conversation flowing constructively. I hope the devs tune in to this one and just go for it. The mid season misery patch just isn't fast enough! The game cannot withstand another period like early December where Doom and Hog deleted fun from the game. Bans would of shut it down day one.
Idea: add a hero swap point on KOTH maps. It can be the actual point. Make it to where if you use that swap point intsead of the spawn ship then you do not transfer ult charge, AND it takes 5 seconds of no combat to swap AND only if you are full hp. If the point gets contested at any time, then the hero swap mechanic is disabled.
This would allow for a more fluid team comp, on the fly counter picks.
Hero bans just delay the inevitable...if you're not good enough to win in the Meta, then you won't be able to keep up and win in the Ban Meta.
The day hero bans are added to overwatch ranked will be the one of the best days I will have playing this game, Perma ban Mercy every game and the fun aspect goes substantially higher especially for EU players where the moment they start to lose pharah mercy/ echo mercy gets absolutely locked. I would be so happy to ban mercy as a person that enjoys all roles.
With a hero ban system no team would have ever let Hadi play Rein. Ans would have been perma benched as every team would pick widow so you can't risk putting him in. Ameng and Ball, Blase and Doom, Dding and Pharah
We would lose so many great stories. Players are synonymous with 1 or 2 heroes. Metas wouldn't get broken as as soon as a counter strategy starts to rise, the Meta teams would just ban it. You would see less players and teams on the heroes and Comps that make them special.
I play ranked with two friends so I know what we would ban all the time.
Havana? Junkertown? Colesseo? Rialto? Widow.
Lijang? Symmetra
Anywhere else? Mercy, Orisa, or Junkrat.
These are not strategy picks. You just sometimes get tired of these heroes.
I’ve been thinking about hero band a lot recently, but less so in season 3 because the balance is just the best it’s ever been. It makes sense when there are 1-2 characters in each category that dominate ladder, like when you knew every game was going to be orisa/hog, sojourn/reaper, Lucio/kiriko, banning even just 1 of those characters would bring diversity.
My plan on implementing hero bans on ladder would be 2 15 second pickem rounds before every game, one where everyone picks 3 heroes they want to ban, then round 2 takes the top 3 picked and everyone picks 2 of those 3 to be banned for that match, the top 2 picked are banned. The most important outcome of this would be showing devs immediate feedback on who players from all skill think is broken and who is broken on which map. If a hero is banned universally, they now have a tallest poppy to chop. The information would be invaluable from a balance perspective. If you don’t want to pick, fine, you don’t have to, maybe there can even be an opt-out of the ban round if over 50% of that match don’t want to on the first round too, or if the picks are too diverse it gets skipped.
I’ve seen many people say “well what about muh one trick” and I say screw one tricks. The basis of overwatch as a game with 30+ heroes is not to play a singular character, and if you’re playing competitive as a one trick, you are not a serious-minded competitive player in the game. So I’d have no sympathy if it was implemented.
I think it would make every game just a bit more interesting, and would provide more diversity that especially at high ranks would be appreciated
I don’t think your idea is bad or anything, and I don’t care about one tricks either, but for you to say players who are one tricks aren’t competitive is a flat out lie. If anything they are more competitive because they are trying to show they are better than you at that hero. The rest of your novel is not the point here, I’m just arguing that one trick players are probably more competitive than the average person playing comp.
@@PoohOnYourShoe I respect and understand your opinion, but in a game where certain characters can be completely shut down in multiple ways, and those counters also have counters, and the expectation from a game design perspective is to swap, it fundamentally makes you less competitive if you do not swap after being countered.
I respect one tricks who can climb and kick ass. But some games those heroes just don’t and can’t work. The competitive thing to do is swap to one who does.
I come from the future, where the horse is still running rampant.
I think hero bans would suck in ranked. Not being able to play your favorite heroes simply because someone doesn’t like them just seems like a drag. I’d rather see reworks over time for certain heroes.
Well I see were you are coming from but I disagree. If you can't play a character you wanna play because it gets banned all the time thats annoying for sure. However, if the same hero were to get reworked to be less annoying and less frequently banned, they probably wouldn't be the same as they were prior to the rework right? So with hero bans you don't get to play a hero for a certain amount of your games but if they get reworked you don't get to play the original version of that hero ever
Sure. But 1 person in the match being unhappy bcuz of that hero not being playable is better than 5 people in a match having their game ruined bcuz someone played that character.
Assuming that the bans would typically fall onto busted characters. Or ones that are very not fun to play against. Either way.
Let’s be real, people rarely one trick meta characters unless that char gets megabuffed into meta. NO ONE will ban fun meta characters like ana or kiriko on ladder. The only people who “one-tricked” sojourn or orisa are people dedicated to climbing during their time of meta. Mercy mains may be the only true one trick category that would get hurt the most. But all that would tell me is the devs need to balance mercy better, which in the end would provide a better impact on the game as a whole.
The best part of hero ban is that it’s valuable data for Blizzard to gauge what heroes the community things is too strong, across tiers.
SVB you are amazing host. I really appreciate how you make sure that people don't go off topic
As for ban system: it doesn't solve problem with meta because it creates ban meta. "Ban nr 1 strongest thing on this map" "ok I guess I will go second best thing on this map". Stuff like you ban Widow then they will play Hanzo on sniper maps. Cool I guess?
Targeting people's mains would also be a thing for sure. There are many people who play 1-3 characters in their role, now imagine that only one of those picks is viable on certain map like idk, you are Orisa, Rein, Monkey player and you play watchpoint Gibraltar. They ban monkey pick and what do you do? Play Rein or Orisa and troll the lobby? Play Dva who you have no idea how to play? This kinda sucks.
We need balance and proper map reworks. If Pharah is annoying af then nerf her infinite airtime. If Widow is op on sniper maps, then rework maps to have more flank routes and cover. If something enables another hero too much (like Hog Suzu combo) then it's time to look at the problematic abilities. Ban system is lazy solution that doesn't solve shit
Freedo is so goddamn good at articulating his thoughts
yeah man, it's crazy
Highly disagree on Bans in widespread player comp.
The game already matches you based on your estimate skill level by role, and the vast majority of players predominantly only play one or two heroes if the Dev Blogs are to be believed. Banning out someone's best immediately tanks the integrity of the match, not to mention additional efforts for people to sweat climb the ladder (stream snipes, friend lists, career profile, 3rd party websites/plugins etc). If your lobby gets unlucky and has both tanks be Plat in a lobby of diamonds, and one team bans Rein and the other bans a DPS, if one of those tanks was a Rein player it instantly fucks the whole lobby's balancing effort.
From years in LoL's convoluted ranked system people in general will always have something to bitch at whether or not a ban happens. People have gone a legitimate decade without ever seeing a Yasuo or Darius just because they refuse to learn how he works or is countered. Many afk the lobby or use it to grief teammates before a match even starts. A banning lobby means well but the actual effort to utilize it is lost on most players.
IMO the agency of a player to pick what they want outweighs the brief catharsis of a semi 1/5 chance of choosing what someone cannot. If a character is that bad of a problem, that's on the devs to fix it. Sure a pure one trick leaving a lobby they had their hero banned sucks and they play the ladder scummy, but to them what they did could be seen as a favor because they know their 2nd best is not at the level of the lobby so they spare you the loss.
Pre-lock before you queue with ranked choice of 3 heroes. The bans are symmetrical and there's two per game one from each team.
That way it's not a grief point like SVB pointed out and you have a greater probability of something you don't like being banned rather than feeling like the system doesn't listen to your input.
Given the proposed problems discussed here, including someone mentioning how Dota does bans, I'm surprised no one suggested a ban lottery. It's fast, simple, and egalitarian. Match starts, the first 10s in the hero select you can flag one hero to ban. For all heroes that were flagged by at least one player, ban half. Groups can't control the vote, tank players aren't left out for having just one person in their role. If you vote, you know there is always a 50% chance your ban goes through, and someone who mains that hero will still get to play them a minimum of half of all games. Also, do you not want any bans in the game? Don't vote. If only 2-4 heroes get flagged then there is only 1-2 bans. If every person votes you can have up to 5 heroes banned. You can put some more guard rails up to handle some extreme edge cases like 5 supports getting banned, or drop the ratio from 1/2 to 1/3rd, etc, but I think the core concept handles all the edge cases. You always get a voice. You can never be perma-locked from playing a hero, etc.
I think hero bans is a terrible idea, but that is just me. I want to play what I want to play which is usually what’s good. I can see hidden hero vans by each team in OWL though. But that would be iffy too because teams would ban based on the players best heroes.
Widowmaker bans. In Top500 people would ban Widow because they hate having her on the other team. In Bronze they will ban widow because they hate having widow on their own team.
hearing svb mention an overwatch draft mode makes me even more upset that paladins is such a flop due to its owner’s neglecting it (I think the publisher doesn’t care about it from what i heard but maybe it’s also a developer thing) because there’s no hero swapping in the game and the way it was balanced allows for you to just play the person you want, obv some comps would be better than another but casually you don’t feel forced to not play something
Long comment incoming...(edit: I have a lot to say)
My stance on Hero Bans is.....we need more heroes before we can implement any system.
Also, hot take, I think role-queue has ruined our chances for a simple hero ban system that Reinforce would enjoy.
Another hot take, I think Hero Bans would be better for the RANKED game...not the pro game.
Finally, I hate the word ban...it doesn't have to be a ban. I think pools could work...(this is when you stop reading my comment cause you think I'm off the goop as Custa would say but if you're intrigued continue)
For SVB, Great talk...about this podcast format, I think there are too many people with too many thoughts so it is tough to keep track. I'd limit it to 3 guests plus you haha.
Last but not least...my cringe hero ban(kind of) idea
My ideal system is honestly...each team can't pick the same heroes (crazy right). During the pick phase, there is a snake draft for each team. Each player gets the opportunity to pick 4 heroes to go to the map with (4 tanks, 8 DPS, 8 Supports). All heroes selected aren't duplicates. It is kind of like picking your starting 11 in football or other sports. Once Tracer is picked by one team, they can't be picked by the other. That is guaranteed diversity with enough opportunity for preparation to provide high quality matches that can keep Custa happy lol.
My idea wouldn't work now...because we don't have enough heroes. Another con is that there would be pick metas (edit: a pool of competitive heroes that are always picked but diversity when played). And finally, this would FUNDAMENTALLY change the way the game is played. It would make the game 100x more complex and limit player choice.
The pro here is guaranteed "forced" diversity in game. It would solve most problems we have today at the cost of freedom (like role queue). Idk if people want more of that. I'd love to try it out though. You could keep your hero specialists, it isn't just straight RNG, edit: you could still play the heroes you want and so on. It is simple on the surface for Johnny and complex for Freedo.
Anyways, not a lot of people would read this far for my comment so...congrats haha. That's my idea.
Don't think this is realistic idea or even a good idea. It sounds great when you compare it to games like Dota2 or something else where hero bans are a thing....but then you remember that those games have a hero roster of like 100+ to choose from. In comparison, right now, supports have like 8 heroes they can play. Some people off-role support so they only are proficient really at one or two heroes. Now you're talking about removing one of those heroes? Some heroes are good only because they directly counter another hero. Imagine what happens when one of them gets banned? What about people who 1 trick? Is blizz gonna change their stance on that? They have been pretty supportive of people playing the hero they want to play and mastering that hero. What do sym mains do when their hero gets banned in that game? Throw by picking something else because they aren't nearly as good on anything else? This will end up ruining more games than helping. It sounds incredibly disgenuine when people who play the game only at the highest level try to decide what is best for the game as a whole - what they are really saying is "this is what is best for me and the level that I play the game, the style in which i play and how i determine if the game is fun." People who are learning the game at lower elos and trying to progress through ranks of bronze and silver do not need a hero banned from their already decidedly small roster of characters they feel competent on.
At the VERY least, Blizz needs to add a lot more heroes before they even attempt to do something like this.
just got this in my head. OWL could try a Lockout Elimination system if they aren't hero Swapping or it locks the hero you hade the most time on that map.
I was listening to this and was like “it’s been like an hour it should be almost over” then DAYUM 3 HOURS???
For maps its a simple fix, rainbow six does a really good system where 5 maps are put up (new ones are protected and it would have to be mode based) each team BANS one map, and the game randomly selects out of 3 possibilities (4 if teams ban the same map) easy fix push needs more maps for this to work though exactly this way, but it can still work, great data for the devs to see what map the players hatr
Here's how this would go in 1/4+ of my games. Enemy is tearing us apart we need to ban their carry but instead my team bans my sym to force a swap on our own team while the enemy continues to run rough shot over everything possibly letting the pressure off dive characters that were previously being countered. I think the team would be given incentive to target their own.
Maybe a stack only gets one vote. Or maybe every vote is always worth a 20% chance of selection every time, so collaboration between 3 people let's say results in a 60% chance of ban on that hero.
Hero bans are a even worse band aid solution then role que where we just remove the need for balance. Also we have so few heros the games with bans are oftentimes ones with hero rosters in the 100s
there are often things i disagree with on this podcast but i still definitely appreciate SVB hosting and actually doing the podcast and discussing important issues. thanks man
I disagree with hero ban. Imagine dva gets banned and you're playing tank. Your team bans Sojourn because she's busted then. The enemy team plays pharmacy and your team is unable to deal with the pharmacy. Given that dva was the hero that was banned, you now have very little agency in that game.
Tanks already have little agency against flyers, removing dva surely doesn’t help but it doesn’t hurt that much
After watching this, I'm convinced blizzard of today won't implement it because it creates one more place of player friction that could result in player toxicity. It's the same reason why we can't see teammates SR now, why we only get rank updates every 5 games, Blizzard is softening the experience to be less toxic no matter what, so I'm just not convinced even if it provided good value 90%+ of the time. As long as there's a worst case, I don't think they would take the chance. Despite any toxicity created from a Soljurn running wild with insane buffs.
Surely a "golden protect" would be called a "Bobby Block".
Would love to mention, paladins had pick and ban periods. Paladins is significantly more complex than OW and the ban phase was a wonderful aspect of the game
This debate was VERY OWL focused. Could you do it again now that it's not a factor and we can just focus on the game?
Idk if devs watch these but God do i hope they do. Its si nice to hear real intellectual conversation about his topic, id live to actually hear the devs full opinion on this
I think the issue with not enough collaboration in ranked bans could be solved with threat of denial of a ban. If the whole team can't agree to ban something it means the players can't agree to one hero that's broken and should be banned. Jake talks about this at 2:40:11 and so it's mainly an upside to have people be afraid to lose their team ban and instead work together to have a guaranteed ban.
I know down in gold I would spend half my time just banning symmetra. You won't believe how often people just ignore her or her turrets. The teleporter sentry bomb gets so old as a support. Banning her as often as possible would just save my mental.
play ashe and burn her turrets behind walls before your 0 iq teammates rush in, ez clap
@@brianq2558 did you miss the part where they said they play supp?
@@LeSobaMask oh my b, then go dps moira or ana if youre good w nade
@@brianq2558 I hit diamond just last night playing mainly Ana. If sym dares to go for any melt play then she is naded and pinged immediately for me. People tend to kill her before the pockets kick in.
Freedo needs to not site psychological studies he loosely remembers reading at some point. He doesn't know what he's talking about and the study he sited is bunk to begin with.
Bans are fine in owl, bans in ranked are bad cause there's no smooth implementation until we have 100+ heroes.
1. You can't have each person ban a character cause we don't have the roster.
2. If you have a vote system and it ends in a draw who gets to decide? If its random you will have a ton of toxicity towards someone for picking the "wrong" ban.
3. OTPs shouldn't be locked out of their characters, even with a private profile you have well known OTPs who will get targeted by bans.
4. Bans are slow, even the fastest system adds on a lot of time to actually playing the game and I wait in qs long enough as is.
Keep that system to owl imo.
Goodness, I'm only a little ways in and there are a lot of good thoughts.
what a great episode! great discussion. I really want Hero ban to be tested out in some way
I think hero bans or something like it is mandatory if for no other reason than to distinguish ranked from qp a little bit
However it would be awful to put in owl (or what’s left of it) because those players get paid to play a specific character or set of characters so say you have a really good dva specialist then boom you can ban their best player off the best characters which kinda defeats the point of having a competitive match
SVB has heard about the game Paladins that has all of the things he wants. Right?
This is quality content fr
For ranked, let each player choose a ban and let the game randomly choose a character from that list. On the choose character, right click to ban and left click to select. Banning wouldn’t be mandatory.
Not a fan of any ban or pick system in ranked as is. If a Tourney mode or a Team queue mode came out, I’d be all for it. But as is, let players choose their heroes for themselves
If all 5 players choose to ban 5 different heroes, just don't ban anything. Two or more votes to ban anything.
To minimise the potential of removing the 'special thing' about maps in ranked, just make people ban before the map is revealed.
I drop watching OW League usually when the game is one sided. So ads are ok if I know the next map can make a difference. Just like with football, each quarter can make a difference.
For ranked, let each player choose a ban and let the game randomly choose a character from that list. On the choose character, right click to ban and left click to select. Banning wouldn’t be mandatory.
You might be able to copy Siege’s ban system, 3 maps are shown and each team bans one and if they both ban the same it’s a 50/50 of the remaining 2 and then each team bans 1 attacker and 1 defender by majority vote or random if there is a tie. That would mean you ban 1 character each in OW so two total for the game. Then deva can see the maps players don’t want to play and heroes who players find the most frustrating
Seeing custa realizing he went retro got me good
The think hero bans should only be a last resort, because it wastes time for teams to vote on who to ban each match. If the devs do a good hotfix fast enough to fix glaring balance issues, I think there would be no point whatsoever in having hero bans.
I really hope they don't add hero bans, I think it would make the game so much less fun to play.
15:00 i dont agree with what custa is saying because tgere is a massive difference between pools and bans, pools fully removes stuff u have no choice but with bans its a game to game scenario
Team picks a primary and secondary ban. Team picks a hero to protect. If the other team protects your primary ban, the secondary one is used.
Banning mercy anywhere from bronze to diamond would be op, so many players would literally have nothing to play - and trust me, there's a lot of people here that only play mercy. (Almost every game is and always has been ana mercy)
Good. Learn to play another character. Enough with your one trick pony ass
They’ll literally just play moira who is easier and people can’t deal with her in lower ranks
@@-NoNo. fair, honestly still Moira I'd different from mercy and while it is easy value there's also a skill curve the higher you go with the amounts of things you gotta do to actually get value, good apm, resource management, ability usage. Of course, Mercy has her skill as well, if not more, but once a player has devoted so much time to one hero and only that hero and reached a somewhat top rank they're used to that hero's mechanics and Playstyle, it's not that easy to just flex. But in ranks of gold and below, yeah it probably would still work.
@@darksplash873 yes yes I completely agree, the higher up you go, the more moira has to do to make up for the fact that she only heals, damages, and survives but those in and of themselves are pretty decent. We’ll have to see if they rework her so that she has utility in the future
@@-NoNo. yeah it would be nice if she had something more, but I think having good starting point heroes like Moira is nice, as long as they aren't op. There should always be a way to just unlock another tier of skill play as a hero to climb, not just because you get easy value. I like that she's easy to pick up, but it would be nice if she had a higher skill ceiling too
If Blizz did hero bans I think (this is for ranked not OWL) that it should be one ban per team. I also think it should be like the McRib. Let us have it then after a bit it goes away. Then it returns. Do that off and on and at random. A lot of people love hero bans but a lot also don't so I think this would appease everyone to a degree. As far as OWL is concerned I liked what Jake said where it's one hero ban for each team that is submitted before the first map and that's what they get through the whole match. I think that's fair and fun.
I oddly enough love how paladins handles bans for its comp system. If I remember right each team gets 2 bans that they do one at a time. It typically means one hero is banned based on map strength and the other on just overall annoyance. Tanks and damage are the ones who got banned the most because the supports were never really the focus for bans. If a support was banned then it was because it was the best support for a certain tank line up.
hero bans help devs find player pain points. More often than not people will ban the one hero that is most trouble most often.
thats true, but often times (at least for the overwatch team) hero stats help inform them on what to nerf and how much to nerf it. i know that it doesn't always feel efficient, but the data is how they come to their conclusions. if a hero is being constantly banned then there won't be any decent stats for them to look at on where their power level is strongest in the current meta. this is especially true for new heroes because oftentimes, players just dont know how to counter it yet so they will ban it to avoid the broken thing, and the devs will have old stats from when the hero was very strong, but not necessarily contested in a way that's not only possible but fair. it's a fair point to bring up but the overwatch team will have to fundamentally change how they balance the game in order for it to be a pro and not a con.
For some reason listening to the ranked part of the debate, I really think there's a massive lack of perspective from a non T500 point of view. Everyone is hyper focused on the 0.001% of the playerbase and little to no consideration has been given to the other 99.999%.