[Archive] Hero Bans - What needs to happen
I'll be posting some of these types of blogs randomly. An "Archive" post is a post where I started an idea and never got around to finishing it OR in this case Blizzard has removed hero pools and this article has no bearing on the current game. To make sure everyone knows that the ideas are not completely finished and not up to the "quality" of my normal posts i'll label it as an archive.
More rumors are coming up about large scale changes. The primary talking point is around hero bans. I believe there are arguments for and against it, ill focus on the points that have me worried the most. I'm going to try to avoid discussion on how the voting will happen, that discussion talks about UI and other time consuming topics.
I find banning heroes in OW more comparable to banning items in MOBAs rather than heroes. This is because Blizzard removed multiple balance points with the design of OW. In a MOBA you can pick almost any hero and depending on what you're going up against you can itemize against it. This allow for a high degree of customization for each game, it allows each game to feel more a bit more unique. More importantly it allows for one hero to be able to deal with a multitude of situations, which is necessary because there is no swapping. Blizzard look at the top layer of picking heroes and said, why pick a hero and then need to pick items and talents/perks per game? Why not allow players to change their hero and skip the complicated steps that require more balancing? This is one of the big changes Blizzard did to make the game accessible to new players. Junkrat is junkrat, he doesn't change based on perks or items. Its the same hero in every game. You don't need an extra UI to pick items nor talents. You also don't need extra indicators of what the enemy has. OW is currently very visual and requires little UI work. If blizzard stayed with this design then you can imagine that every item/perk would have its own visuals, making the game even more cluttered.
Another topic on being stuck with your heroes is that it allows pick/bans to happen to disrupt the enemies strategy before the game starts. For example, lets say a team picks mei to run it with bastion for some secret pocket strat. When swapping is enabled you would ban out the entire strat by banning mei. It wouldn't inconvenience that team much at all. While in a MOBA you would ban after they picked a hero and are then they are stuck with it. This forces a teams strategy to change completely but they're required to use their previously picked tools! This opens up a window for your team to take advantage of. With swapping, a team would simply abandon that idea and run a new composition. Its a very slight change in usage but makes a large difference. There's an immense amount of knowledge and skill players require to use a tool improperly while in OW's case you simply throw the tool away and do something else. So why enable bans in a game where you cannot punish someone's choice?
This idea is a big reason why I hated Diablo 3, a choice without consequence isn't a choice.
Another issue with hero pools is that banning heroes in OW is banning entire ways to play, not just a hero but also its synergies. A hero such as phara wont see any screen time if mercy is banned. Further causing the game to drift to one specific meta as less and less heroes now are viable because their synergies are reduced. While this could be remedied with a larger hero pool that has role overlap but OW looks to be going for little role overlap.
Allowing pick/bans is a definitive way to remove map based specialists and lock in a meta.
The idea of banning heroes also defeats the purpose of some heroes being strong on certain maps. Back when Overwatch has more specialists and more of a "counter" based system the idea of a ban system was insane. Why would you ever have a map where a hero would always be banned on? For example a lot of players hate going against a Junkrat on Anubis. This is one of the few times he's playable on a map at the highest level but with a ban system he would be banned every time. This brings the entire idea of specialists into question.
What is the target audience, OWL, GM on ladder, all competitive?
Do hero pools help OWL, GM or diamond players? Jeff said it himself that the lower SRs didn't have a concept of meta, specifically in regards to when players were complaining about GOATs. So hero pools aren't a huge deal for lower levels, but what of GM? There are very specific METAs and strategies in high SR games. Would a ban system really address the issue of one dominate META? At best we'll have two METAs at that point and we'll keep swapping them as the game goes on.
How do we pick what heroes are banned? Blizzard or player bans?
If blizzard bans the heroes, how are they picked? If by pick rate it could only hurt the heroes that are fun to play or those that are too strong. If the fun or strong heroes are constantly banned, how does that effect the player base? Blizzard was worried about making specific heroes weak because "players like to play a specific hero" well what happens when multiple heroes are banned, do we start seeing a mass drop of overwatch play time?
We need to look at the opposite of above as well, if heroes that arent played really that weak? If its because they're unfun heroes would we start getting buffs to them? Then we have unfun strong heroes, players often call this a "jail" such as brig jail since they have to play it.
Do we instead allow players to vote?
Do players ban unfun heroes or heroes that are actually strong. If METAs exist will they seek to protect or destroy them, in either case wouldn't that just mean you play a second meta and the issue of playing META simply get pushed down road a little bit.
Do we force anonymous voting as well as who you're playing against? Targeted bans will happen if player names are shown. Some may like this as it disincentives one tricking but how many players will stop playing if they want to play a specific hero?
What are we looking to address and is this realistically going to fix it? The biggest echo chamber in OW says that this allows players to directly make the game more balanced because we can ban out overpowered heroes. Which is true... but if we already know who's over powered and who we need to ban, why enable this entire ban process? Couldn't we just balance the game and remove this complexity? I know we can't wait on blizzard but if the answer is that obvious why inst it addressed.
The only good point to hero bans in OW that i can see is to immediately deal with an issue with a hero that wasn't known before and cannot be patched fast enough. In MOBAs sometimes a strategy will be hidden until a tournament and when its found its abused constantly until the players ban it. Obviously devs cannot patch a game mid-event and the ban system allows for players to briefly cover the issue up. Even this extreme case has me 50/50 for the ban system, if a team finds an abuse able strat then why not reap the rewards of it. In OW both teams can pick the same pieces, so both teams have it available to them. The only difference would be skill and comfortableness with the strat.
All other issues ideally could be fixed with a balanced game.
More rumors are coming up about large scale changes. The primary talking point is around hero bans. I believe there are arguments for and against it, ill focus on the points that have me worried the most. I'm going to try to avoid discussion on how the voting will happen, that discussion talks about UI and other time consuming topics.
I find banning heroes in OW more comparable to banning items in MOBAs rather than heroes. This is because Blizzard removed multiple balance points with the design of OW. In a MOBA you can pick almost any hero and depending on what you're going up against you can itemize against it. This allow for a high degree of customization for each game, it allows each game to feel more a bit more unique. More importantly it allows for one hero to be able to deal with a multitude of situations, which is necessary because there is no swapping. Blizzard look at the top layer of picking heroes and said, why pick a hero and then need to pick items and talents/perks per game? Why not allow players to change their hero and skip the complicated steps that require more balancing? This is one of the big changes Blizzard did to make the game accessible to new players. Junkrat is junkrat, he doesn't change based on perks or items. Its the same hero in every game. You don't need an extra UI to pick items nor talents. You also don't need extra indicators of what the enemy has. OW is currently very visual and requires little UI work. If blizzard stayed with this design then you can imagine that every item/perk would have its own visuals, making the game even more cluttered.
Another topic on being stuck with your heroes is that it allows pick/bans to happen to disrupt the enemies strategy before the game starts. For example, lets say a team picks mei to run it with bastion for some secret pocket strat. When swapping is enabled you would ban out the entire strat by banning mei. It wouldn't inconvenience that team much at all. While in a MOBA you would ban after they picked a hero and are then they are stuck with it. This forces a teams strategy to change completely but they're required to use their previously picked tools! This opens up a window for your team to take advantage of. With swapping, a team would simply abandon that idea and run a new composition. Its a very slight change in usage but makes a large difference. There's an immense amount of knowledge and skill players require to use a tool improperly while in OW's case you simply throw the tool away and do something else. So why enable bans in a game where you cannot punish someone's choice?
This idea is a big reason why I hated Diablo 3, a choice without consequence isn't a choice.
Another issue with hero pools is that banning heroes in OW is banning entire ways to play, not just a hero but also its synergies. A hero such as phara wont see any screen time if mercy is banned. Further causing the game to drift to one specific meta as less and less heroes now are viable because their synergies are reduced. While this could be remedied with a larger hero pool that has role overlap but OW looks to be going for little role overlap.
Allowing pick/bans is a definitive way to remove map based specialists and lock in a meta.
The idea of banning heroes also defeats the purpose of some heroes being strong on certain maps. Back when Overwatch has more specialists and more of a "counter" based system the idea of a ban system was insane. Why would you ever have a map where a hero would always be banned on? For example a lot of players hate going against a Junkrat on Anubis. This is one of the few times he's playable on a map at the highest level but with a ban system he would be banned every time. This brings the entire idea of specialists into question.
What is the target audience, OWL, GM on ladder, all competitive?
Do hero pools help OWL, GM or diamond players? Jeff said it himself that the lower SRs didn't have a concept of meta, specifically in regards to when players were complaining about GOATs. So hero pools aren't a huge deal for lower levels, but what of GM? There are very specific METAs and strategies in high SR games. Would a ban system really address the issue of one dominate META? At best we'll have two METAs at that point and we'll keep swapping them as the game goes on.
How do we pick what heroes are banned? Blizzard or player bans?
If blizzard bans the heroes, how are they picked? If by pick rate it could only hurt the heroes that are fun to play or those that are too strong. If the fun or strong heroes are constantly banned, how does that effect the player base? Blizzard was worried about making specific heroes weak because "players like to play a specific hero" well what happens when multiple heroes are banned, do we start seeing a mass drop of overwatch play time?
We need to look at the opposite of above as well, if heroes that arent played really that weak? If its because they're unfun heroes would we start getting buffs to them? Then we have unfun strong heroes, players often call this a "jail" such as brig jail since they have to play it.
Do we instead allow players to vote?
Do players ban unfun heroes or heroes that are actually strong. If METAs exist will they seek to protect or destroy them, in either case wouldn't that just mean you play a second meta and the issue of playing META simply get pushed down road a little bit.
Do we force anonymous voting as well as who you're playing against? Targeted bans will happen if player names are shown. Some may like this as it disincentives one tricking but how many players will stop playing if they want to play a specific hero?
What are we looking to address and is this realistically going to fix it? The biggest echo chamber in OW says that this allows players to directly make the game more balanced because we can ban out overpowered heroes. Which is true... but if we already know who's over powered and who we need to ban, why enable this entire ban process? Couldn't we just balance the game and remove this complexity? I know we can't wait on blizzard but if the answer is that obvious why inst it addressed.
The only good point to hero bans in OW that i can see is to immediately deal with an issue with a hero that wasn't known before and cannot be patched fast enough. In MOBAs sometimes a strategy will be hidden until a tournament and when its found its abused constantly until the players ban it. Obviously devs cannot patch a game mid-event and the ban system allows for players to briefly cover the issue up. Even this extreme case has me 50/50 for the ban system, if a team finds an abuse able strat then why not reap the rewards of it. In OW both teams can pick the same pieces, so both teams have it available to them. The only difference would be skill and comfortableness with the strat.
All other issues ideally could be fixed with a balanced game.