‘Chiu on This’ is a short and regular opinion blast

All of the discussion around Overwatch recently has been around the idea of a potential hero ban. The reason this idea holds so much attention whether you agree with it or not is because it hits a core issue that I think everyone wants to see. Namely the increase in potential expression for teams and players across the board.

The comment that most expressed this was Gunba, Assistant Coach of the Boston Uprising. He started a reddit thread with his comment about Hero bans being a bandaid solution.

Hero bans are a bandaid to the fact that ultimates are way too strong and discourage swapping. There's a good reason first points have the most hero diversity, and why every meta comp is the one that allows for the most counters with the least swaps. — Gunba (@GunbaOW) December 29, 2018

In the reddit thread, he posted, “Moreover, the argument isn’t that ultimates and how they are used shouldn’t be a core philosophy of the game – just that one core philosophy shouldn’t completely dominate others. It says a lot about the state of the game that swapping heroes is not currently a core philosophy.”

For me that hits the core of the issue. Currently, it is hard for a team or a player to be able to properly express their highest potential in a game. Imagine for a moment that the Boston Uprising of Season 1 was still a team in the GOATs meta. I’d say as a team, they were one of the absolute best dive teams in the world had ever seen and that was their identity, their personal expression of who they were in the game. However in the current meta, they’d be forced away from that style because no matter how excellent they were at that style, it just wasn’t viable.

Personally speaking, I think that esports games are at their absolute best when the game developer doesn’t dictate the meta so much as gives players as many potential tools possible to show what they are excellent at. That is what has made games like Brood War or Dota stand the test of time. Both games demand an incredibly high amount of skill or understanding, but in return they also give every player the chance to showcase their unique identity through the game. In Brood War, I’ve seen players become the best at that game through: Micro, Macro, Positioning, Tactics, Strategy, Build Orders, Psychology, Multitasking, Mechanics, Refinement, and a combination of those factors above. In Dota2, the game is notorious for having 90-100% of all heroes picked at every International and throughout the tournament circuit. While there is an overarching meta, it constantly evolves and changes as each team and player uses their own particular individualism to come up with their own best answer of how to win the game.

That is what I think all esports should aspire to on some level, to try to allow players the ability to showcase the best of themselves. While I think Hero bans could be a part of that, it’s not the only answer. Currently Overwatch has three functional tools they can use to change the game. The first one is the typical Hero balance. They can either change the values of heroes or completely rework them. The second is map design. Map design probably deserves an entire thesis regarding how intricate it can be, but for now I think Blizzard needs to figure out a few things in regards to Overwatch. Namely how many game modes do they want in competitive, how many maps per game mode do the want, and if they are willing to design maps with competitive balance in mind. The third is the most important to me as I think map design is currently a compromise between balance and casual play. The final tool to look at (which is related to the first) is ult economy. Ultimates are the biggest factors in teamfights and work as the economy of this game.

Thus I think it’s worth thinking about it as its own separate toolkit as it can have profound effects that can drastically change the game. For instance, if the support ult charges of Zenyatta, Lucio, and Brigette were halved by their current charge amount (as in they got half the charge they normally do from their actions), would GOATS be nearly as viable as it is now? At the same time though, ults are the most fun thing to do in the game as a casual.

Thus we get to the same problem we always do when considering game design and balance. How will Blizzard compromise between trying to appeal to casuals as opposed to appealing to the hardcore players. That will always be the first factor we must always think about.

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