[2020] Hero pools is a brave and holistic change

Thanks for the feedback!

Oddly, we’re not viewing this change as dramatic, scary or impactful as the decision to pursue Hero Limits or our decision to implement Role Queue. Hero Pools will be introduced for Season 21 of Competitive Play only. Unlike Role Queue or Hero Limits, Quick Play and the Arcade will be completely the same as they are today with Hero Pools. This alone already means the number of affected matches is FAR less than those two prior systems.

Also, we’re super open to change with Hero Pools. If we (the dev team and the community) don’t feel like it’s a positive change during Season 21, then we won’t bring it back in Season 22. We get a lot of feedback asking for Competitive seasons to feel “different” from one another. Season 20 and Season 21 will certainly feel different!

Also, something we talk about a lot in game design is the that there is often no one, correct answer. Design is all about tradeoffs. If the thing that the community decides is “the most egregious” is a “static meta” and they “want the dev team to do something about it”… we’re going to take steps towards change. We can’t force the meta to move and not make the game work differently. Last year was great proof that player creativity and balance changes alone weren’t enough to move people off of 3/3 fast enough for the community to feel satisfied. The meta would have moved on it’s own… just slowly.

We’ve decided to help you move it along. If there are things we don’t like about Hero Pools, we can change it. Maybe they don’t come back for Season 22? Maybe they rotate faster? Maybe more or less heroes should be in the pool? We’ll all find out in Season 21.

But really this should be viewed as a fun an exciting change to Season 21 (we wanted Seasons to feel different, right?). And time will tell what happens after…

Either way, hearing your thoughts and feedback is really helpful to us.

For the first 5 weeks, we will be trying a range to see what feel right. We’ve architected this system so that we can update the hero pools without the need to patch. So we’ll be monitoring feedback very closely, experimenting a bit with the pool and adapting our strategy as time goes on.

The card won’t be ready until end of Feb.

For now, you can test it by not playing Torb for the week.

Next week, don’t play Symmetra.

=]

only playing with ya…

Yes. We’ve definitely considered it. Let’s try a week and see how it feels and if we need to make adjustments we will. But yeah… we’ve talked about rotating every day. We’ve also talked about rotating every match. We don’t like going longer than a week because we want more heroes played… but open to feedback.

The discussion is open for OW2.

no [i have to type twenty characters even though i work here]

regardless of if we do a different scoreboard for OW2, we definitely want to do more with stats and provide more statistics to players

we talked about a season rotation but taking a hero out of play for 2 months makes us a bit nervous. never say never but it’s not our first instinct…

you can limit heroes in Custom Game. give it try!

workshop creators will really love some of the changes Zach and Dan made to the feature. they listened to their feedback very closely and all of it is in response to what creators wanted. really proud of them for their work!

Historically, even when we have done consistent and dramatic balance changes, it takes the meta a long time to shift. We’d love it if balance or player creativity alone would shift the meta fast enough to meet player’s demands.

we want this too. more likely for OW2 at this point…

we work closely with OWL on all decisions. we’d just chat with them.

we’re curating the list ourselves. we have some philosophies and guidelines we’ll be following (and evolving as we hear your feedback). we will do our best to be judicious and make sure no hero is getting the “horizon” treatment, as with our map pools…

we would never limit the pool to just one tank. you’ll never be forced to play a single tank, such as D.va as described above… if you love playing all the other tanks, you’ll be fine.

Jeff, with the implementation of hero pools, I fear this may have some amplified effect toward disruptive behavior where players may leave Competitive matches deliberately especially if they feel they can’t pick the heroes they want that they think gives them the best chance to win. So I have two questions:

1. Will the hero pool be displayed upfront each week (like how there is a pop-up detailing the season when a new Competitive Season starts) and players can check it before they queue?

2. Will there be any further plans to help deter bad leaver behavior in Overwatch?

For example, there was a game I played last night where it was very likely one of my opponents left due to rage quitting leaving an easy and unsatisfactory win for my team. I feel there still can be some stronger deterrents to bad leaver behavior (from all game modes) and discourage players from playing Competitive with technical issues.

As one of the forum MVPs, I know the delicate balancing for leaver penalties in both Quick Play and Competitive, and understanding minor one-time technical issues which can happen to anyone versus those who deliberately leave games. Yet, I feel there could be a pinch bit more firm enforcement to stop players from deliberately leaving a game unnecessarily or attempting to queue without fixing a technical problem.

it’s curated by us. so it will be a combination of targeting metas that players are being vocally negative about (recent examples: double barrier, goats) and slightly encouraging other playstyles (i.e. “more mobile” comps might be fun for a week…)

but i am sure we’ll refine our approach over time.

ooooh sounds like fun… we should let you all try, huh?

you know that i can’t ><

not in this version. interesting idea though.

we’ll still use the PTR for major patches and major changes. for example, if we were testing a new hero or map, that would be on the PTR and not in the Experimental Card.

the experimental card uses a different data set and was engineered by people far smarter than i am. it’s going to work and be magic and nothing could possibly go wrong… right? =]

this is a very hard problem to solve but we have some ideas. any solution is more long term, though. possibly OW2 or later. sorry i know that’s not the answer you wanted but it’s actually very complicated with the way consoles work and the rules regarding account creation.

1. hammond
2. mei
3. tracer

By the ways, to make it look like you typed less than 20 characters follow this format (note the HTML comment tag just below the word), but technically you still have to type 20 characters if you think about it:

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totally. we’re so excited for this. we’ve wanted this for so long. it was a ton of work but it’s going to be really cool. plus i am super excited to get console players involved with testing changes (right now they cannot play the PTR)

we’ve considered having the system only apply to players above a certain rank (diamond? masters?). it’s definitely on our minds.

i’m not sure we can make a hero great than teemu selanne?

these are separate things that will not affect each other.

your feedback…

going to go get some tea now. thanks for all of the great thoughts and thoughtful questions.

we’ll make changes as needed.

thanks again! <3

Boba milk tea. It is his favorite.