What a hero ban feature could mean for Overwatch

How an idea from the world of MOBAs may be the key to making Overwatch better

The Rumour

Jeff Kaplan has now confirmed that the dev team are not planning on adding hero bans at this time, so this article will remain theoretical for the foreseeable future

A few days ago popular Overwatch streamer Emongg made some cryptic remarks on his stream, suggesting that a major change was coming to Overwatch in the next few weeks. Following that known Overwatch leaker Metro (who leaked Overwatch 2 news before the official announcement) suggested that the change may be hero bans, a feature common in MOBA games but that has never been tried in Overwatch.

We also know that there will be a developer update coming next week, confirmed by game director Jeff Kaplan in a forum post. The coincidence of a new developer update coming soon after the leaks, led to suspicions that hero bans were coming for Overwatch.

Although this has now been denied. It is interesting to think about how a hero ban system could work in Overwatch, and the effect that could have on the game.

What would hero bans even look like

To understand how bans could work in Overwatch, it would be useful to see how they function in a similar competitive multiplayer game. Let’s take League of Legends as an example, Overwatch is often considered a hybrid of a MOBA (such as LOL) and an FPS game.

In Draft Pick in LOL champions are banned in the lobby, prior to champion selection. Each player individually chooses a champion to ban for the entire lobby. Each team’s bans are hidden from the other, and both teams can ban the same champion (reducing the number of banned champions).

Additionally in the LCS esports league bans are done alternately, in a complicated order explained here.

However there are some possible changes to how this works in LOL that could make hero bans fit better in Overwatch.

How many bans?

There is a vast difference between the number of playable characters in Overwatch compared to League of Legends, 31 to 148 at time of writing. This means an individual hero ban would be much more impactful in Overwatch, as each hero represents a greater percentage of the total number of options.

LOL’s 10 hero bans lock off around 7% of the possible playable champions, the equivalent to this in Overwatch would be 2 bans, one per team.

Who chooses which hero to ban?

This is not an issue for LOL, as each player gets to choose on hero to ban. With the reduced number of bans another approach would be needed.

Many different solutions have been proposed in the last few days. The possibility of team’s voting has been raised, but this is not a very viable option. It would take too long, needing some kind of ranked choice system to prevent ties, and would disrupt the flow of preparing for the game. Given that reducing wait times in the game, the devs are unlikely to implement a feature that adds more waiting.

Other ideas include letting the team member with the highest level, SR, or endorsement rank choose, or even a randomly assigned player.

None of these represent an ideal solution, and it is probably impossible to find a method of deciding who to ban that satisfied everyone.

A special problem for popular players

Another concern which only affects popular players and streamers, is players using the ban system to prevent individual players from playing the hero that they are best at.

If a ban system were implemented, and in that system it is possible to see the enemies battletags before each team votes to ban, then it would be possible to identify popular player’s and streamers, preventing them from playing the game how the would like to.

As unfortunate as it is for the individuals in questions, Blizzard can’t cater to the needs of a small, albeit vocal, part of their community. This would not be an issue for the overwhelming majority of the millions who play Overwatch, so I definitely wouldn’t see it as a reason not to implement a feature like this.

This would also be present in organised competitions, including Overwatch League, where players and teams are known in advance. However in this case preparing for opposing team’s preferred heroes and trying to force them out of their comfort zone through bans would be part of team strategy, and not something to be avoided.

N.B. The following only apply to organised competitive matches

Cumulative bans

Another question to consider is whether, when multiple matches are played successively, a different hero is banned in each match, or one additional hero is banned per match.

Having this rule would allow teams to progressively execute a strategy to upset their opponent’s plans,

The problem is how many heroes can be banned for each role before the game becomes unplayable. If each team were able to ban one extra hero each match, then by the end of a full 5 match Overwatch League match then 10 heroes would be banned, nearly a third of the full roster.

Overwatch was released with 21 original heroes, and was playable with that many, so in theory ten heroes could be removed without breaking the game, however which heroes are banned could have a huge impact.

There may need to be limits on how many heroes per role to prevent, for instance, a team banning five of the seven support heroes, and leaving the opposition with no choice for that role.

It may turn out that focusing all your bans on one role is a sub optimal strategy that allows the enemy team to gain an advantage with better targeted bans however.

The addition of new viable heroes, particularly in the tank and support roles, will go a long way to mitigating these concerns. Although we may end up waiting till the release of Overwatch 2 for that to happen.

When will bans be set?

Team’s often have players who specialise on one or two heroes. The decision on whether to field these players is dependent on whether they will be allowed to play the heroes that they specialise in.

If information on planned hero bans was not given in advance, at least before selecting players for the match/given the opportunity to substitute, then it would be a huge risk to field those players. Specialist players who are not able to adapt may not be able to continue to play in the League under those conditions.

The Effect

The intention of a ban system, would be to prevent one composition or strategy from becoming dominant. This has been a longstanding problem for Overwatch, with the game transitioning from dive dominance, to GOATs, to the double shield meta with only brief periods of flux in between. These comps are built around one or two linchpin heroes, Brigitte for GOATs, Sigma/Orisa for double shield, that are crucial to the strategy.

For example, a team facing a team that prefers double shield compositions could disrupt that by banning Orisa, forcing them to either try a sub-optimal variant of double shield (Reinhardt +Sigma anyone?) or alternatively switch strategies entirely.

Once a compositions starts to emerge as dominant, teams would react by banning the key heroes, leading to either a constantly changing meta or multiple viable options determined by what your opponents bans.

This sounds very much like the meta state that the game developers are aiming for.

The Verdict

There remain many unanswered questions about how hero bans would actually work in Overwatch. Crafting a rule set that meets the differing needs of casual, serious amateur, and professional players would be no easy feat.

That being said, a well thought out and well executed hero ban system could go a long way to improving the gameplay experience for all Overwatch players.