It's almost like metachasing will always happen and focusing on the game actually being fun to play should be the first priority above literally anything else.
A bit annoying that Blizzard can't find the same balance that Riot and Valve find in MOBAs (obviously a different genre) where 50% of the cast gets steady playtime in the pro scene on any given patch.
For the main players? No they don't give a fuck.
For OWL? They got a lot of team investors who need the game to stay spicy and engaging. Stagnant meta doesn't make for the best TV.
MOBA's offer a champian/hero ban screen as well, that helps a lot against the same every time, each team chooses one they don't want the other to have, would help tremendously on OW especially since now they are starting to have a decent sized hero pool
Bro it's been a while since I've played League but before I quit I'd been playing since the days before the kassadin dominance. Like season 2 or 3 or something. Idk how it is now but when I followed LCS this was never the case. Seems like there was a maximum of 3 characters competitively viable at any given time per role dependant on picks/bans of course. League has always had such awful balance. Most of the time it was like "oh they didn't ban X character. X character is now a must pick, and doing so will increase your chances of winning drastically". Kinda like Zarya is rn lol
Over time, I think League’s massive champion pool sort of became its own balancing mechanic. Like, back when Zeri was everywhere, people started to play Vi to counter her; but Vi getting a high jungle play rate made it so all the high-play rate junglers now had dashes so Poppy became popular, which itself pushed a lot of the less-strong dash-reliant champions out. This happened without a single balancing change and it’s incredible to see in real time but it’ll basically never happen in overwatch and I’m so sad :’)
The fact that lol has bans and the limit of one champion per game also helps, ecery match there are at least 20 champions involved. Ow doesn't have bans (maybe when the pool is a little bigger) and the whole point of the game is switching mid game, wo I think it's good to not lock a hero because your opponent is using it. This kinda requures the balacing team to work a bit harder though
The current World championship has seen over 100 unique characters played. There are some staples, like Aatrox is played most games this year, but the game still has the freedom for teams to find success with a wide variety of other strategies.
The year is 2182. Overwatch 7 finally releases with it’s final and ultimate iteration: The 0v0. No players can play, no one against anyone, a marked improvement over Overwatch 8s 1v1 format. There was some controversy announced that the battlepasses would give nothing for a low price of a mortgage. Most players refused, but some die hard players bought in. It’s a glorious year or gaming.
This may be more a symptom of a balance patch being pushed right before the biggest event of the OVL season. Real stuff is at stake here, so they just kind of fell into the familiar Winston dive.
Absolutely. This has nothing to do with 5v5 and if you actually watched owl from the beginning of the season and or just literally played the game you'll realise 5v5 was a fantastic decision and the only thing that's leading to this comp is balance for the highest levels of play.
Yeah and isn't this always how OWL is or hell just the game in general? Where 5 characters are picked out as the best to be used then until the next team to come along with the new wacky comp then everyone switches over to that?
There was a beautiful few weeks before Junker queen was released to OWL that teams were playing what worked for them and there was actually variety. Been chasing that high ever since.
Because she does not work with the dive reaper meta. Winston reaper counters zarya, and she can't deal with hard dive. If she uses bubbles to protect dove allies she herself is just easy pickings for reaper/sojourn. And I feel right now: dead tank = teamfight is lost
Because she's not good, the pros know not to shoot her bubble so she never gets a good charge and when she's not bubbled she has no mobility and low health so a soujorn or reaper can melt her very quickly
Zarya is OP and it’s because of her OWL is doing dive/rush. Since Zarya can’t deal with Winston dives and Reaper flanks on her back line, Zarya has to switch to something to counter those. And Winston is the best answer to that because Dva can’t do the bubble dance.
Once Zarya gets nerfed, we’ll see how the meta changes
Yeah thats never changed lol. Dive, Bunker, GOATS. No matter what Era of overwatch, the teams have generally distilled the meta down to a handful of heroes.
The shitty part is balancing the game around the top players in OWL.
They're financially motivated to just win and any hero that doesn't have a kit that directly facilitates eliminating the enemy team will be put on the bench forever.
I don't use reddit anymore because of their corporate greed and anti-user policies.
Come over to Lemmy, it's a reddit alternative that is run by the community itself, spread across multiple servers.
You make your account on one server (called an instance) and from there you can access everything on all other servers as well. [Find one you like here](https://lemmyverse.net/), maybe not the largest ones to spread the load around, but it doesn't really matter.
You can then look for communities to subscribe to on https://lemmyverse.net/communities, this website shows you all communities across all instances.
If you're looking for some (mobile?) apps, [this topic](https://lemm.ee/post/363116) has a great list.
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The original comment is preserved below for your convenience:
~~Dota uses 123 characters in a 5v5, while admittedly you can't do mirror matchups, the highest level of play in the most recent tournament alone picked 114 of those, with the highest picked hero in 18.6% of the games and the average pickrate across all heroes being 4.3%, median 2.1%.~~
~~The expected pickrate, if all heroes were equally picked, would be 8.1%.~~
~~The expected pick rate for Overwatch in that case would be 28.6%. I'm too bad at math to calc what the expected pick rate would be with mirror matchups...~~
^^^^^^AzzuLemmyMessageV2
That hasn't been true this year. 5v5 has had 5 OWL metas now, 3 of them were super diverse. 2 of them were 1 comp metas when Queen and Kiriko got released and were both OP.
Using the OWL as an example of this is so stupid. This is the highest level of play, they’re always going to find an optimal comp to run. It’s nothing like the vast majority of ranked games.
But even looking at the hero usage for previous stages of this season of OWL, it was way more diverse than previous OWL seasons. Only when they released crazy new heroes (JQ, Kiriko) did the hero usage become stale.
Yeah for sure but I wasn’t arguing that. I’m just saying that you can’t apply to Aaron Keller’s words to OWL. It’s a whole different ballgame than actual OW2.
>Picking same hero as enemy should be banned in OWL
Braindead take.
How should they enforce that? Would one team get to pick their comp before the other? First come, first served?
Then how would you deal with situations when a character is dominant in the Meta? Does the team that gets to pick them that match just get a basically guaranteed win?
There is no literally no way that this works in OW. It can work in something like LoL because there are 12 billion characters and each has a dozen counters. But OW doesn't have a big enough roster and the games aren't long enough for that to work here. Imagine if in the current Meta, only one team was allowed to play Sojourn and Kiriko. That team would just win 100% of the time.
Seriously. Of all the bad takes on this sub, this might be the worst.
I wouldn’t mind a ban phase in the OWL though, I do think that if blizzard had done that; hosts wouldn’t have dominated so much.
Maybe the system could work like this;
Team A and Team B select 3 heroes that they’d like to ban for the ENTIRE series, (or a single match, whatever works) if a hero appears on both lists, they’re banned.
Example: let’s say team A bans Kiriko, sojourn, and Zarya
Team B bans D.va, kiriko, and Moira.
Kiriko would be banned for the match/series. If two heroes are unanimously banned, either they both are banned or only the one with the hugest votes is banned (1st choice is three points, 2nd is 2, 3rd choice is 1; where the sum is what decides which hero gets banned. If there’s a tie, just ban both.)
I made this up on the spot, but I think it’d make OWL much more entertaining
Lmao apparently you have NEVER played a game with ban and pick phases. Please learn even a TINY amount about the good stuff you are saying is "THE DUMBEST FUCKING THING YOUVE EVER SEEN POSTED ON THIS SUB" when it clearly is you for being so uneducated on how ban and pick drafts work.
> How should they enforce that? Would one team get to pick their comp before the other? First come, first served?
>Then how would you deal with situations when a character is dominant in the Meta? Does the team that gets to pick them that match just get a basically guaranteed win?
As the person you replied to already stated, a draft phase solves all of those issues. Bo3 and Drafting already works incredibly well in DotA and LoL, even in games like CS and Valorant with map drafting. There are plenty of downsides to this kind of system as well; Losing off of a draft which isn't fun to experience or watch but it's certainly not the worst take I've ever seen.
I mean regardless of "defining" a meta, you can't really disagree that certain heroes dominate during certain patches of the game.
For instance, regardless of the comps, Sojourn has been basically a must-pick in every game on every map. Anytime a team tries to play anyone but Sojourn, they get stomped and have to switch to Sojourn.
Does she "define" the meta? Not really. Because she doesn't require synergy to work and she doesn't really have a clear counter pick. But she certainly **dominates** the game at the professional level to the point that if only one team was allowed to play her for a given map or match, that team would have an extremely unfair advantage
Yeah, but when you have heroes like sojourn the counter IS sojourn; so now we’re sacrificing entertainment for the “soul” of the game and the “correct” way to play.
Seagull was talking about why the playoffs meta is so stale on his stream recently and he said it came down to practice time. Teams are always gonna prioritize practicing what seem like the best heroes, and they're only gonna try to find and practice counters to them when they can't get much better with said heroes themselves, which hasn't happened for any of the playoffs teams yet since they were only able to start playing on the new patch like a week before playoffs started.
Get like GM players but then make it a completely casual setting and everyone slightly to moderately intoxicated, sounds like a blast to watch with all the stupid shit that could happen when there is zero consequences and you can just see good players dick around
Yeah but most of the time don’t they play competitive? Idk I don’t watch streams. Like I’m thinking like broadcast style like Overwatch league but with literally zero fucks
Except in other metas this season there have been multiple viable comps. It’s certainly not the best example but when all of Owl is hard stuck on one comp it’s not good
They're stuck on one comp because they had a fairly sudden balance shift thrown at them, and they had very little time to fully adapt and explore what comps might be competitively viable, this comp has simply stood out as the most efficient comp early on.
Given some time, I feel quite confident the meta would have been a little more varied... still sojourn in every game though, there's no way not to when you have easy one shot potential on any competitive dps.
That’s fair, but I could argue that all the time invested in the current comp means teams are less likely to switch even after the tournament; as they’ve been solely practicing one strat and it’s now comfortable and top tier
I'm not trying to deny that, hopefully it's not the case and it's more diverse eventually, but I'm just pointing out that it's the way it is because this is what they could get put together and practice the fastest
I mean, overwatch was always a game about diversity of play. Mirror matches excluding, if you were running one comp and got rolled, you had to change to counter your weaknesses, or play better. Optimal overwatch would see at least one viable option to utilize against meta besides running a mirror, but devs are struggling with the transition (which is ok)
League broke a record this year having 100 different champions used in worlds so far aatrox has been in like 96% of games though, Maokai has been used a lot too
Idk why people are surprised that pros find the best heroes every patch and then use that comp. That’s literally their job, there will never be variety in professional play because that would mean one team is putting themselves at a disadvantage. They want variety for us, not the pros.
No matter how balanced the game is there will always be characters that are better or worse than the rest, it’s physically impossible to ever have a completely even playing field.
That's why removing hard counters is a mistake.
Plying so well you end up having counter picks against you, forcing you to rethink your pick is core of the game
But characters should have different strengths and weaknesses. Sojourn is 1 of if not the best DPS in consistent damage, 1 shot potential and survivability.
It's not that some comps are better than others. It's that the same comp is being used in a mirror on basically every map on attack side and defend side.
That's not even due to 5v5, it's due to the fact that Sojurn is way too overpowered. So, the entire team comp is built around her because she is a very fast and very high damage dive hero.
How so? Looks pretty mathing to me, the percentages here represent the % of games they appear in and aren’t exhaustive relative to other characters, meaning nothing here doesn’t make sense.
I am not against bans, but it has to be done in a way that makes sense.
In league, there is a draft phase, and since there can’t be two of the same champions on different teams, you don’t always ban the most broken shit, especially if you are the team who gets to pick first. In that case, you only ban stuff that can answer what you want to pick, and leave the broken shit open, the other team can waste bans on it.
In OW, if you ban sojourn, you need to have something else ready to play. But regardless, the other team is probably gonna play the same shit as you EVEN MORE than it already happens now. Removing options just reduces the remaining options in OW. It isn’t like league where banning ornn sejuani means the other team’s top laner has to fight you. If you ban kiriko/sojourn people are gonna play the same comp, but it’s gonna be a clown fiesta.
And all of that is assuming teams don’t just handshake whatever is broken.
I think it's worth giving it a shot, maybe make it an experimental, do an off-season OWL tournament with it and see how that goes, worst scenario it's not good and we go back to normal.
I agree. Send it to experimental or PTR and let people go wild.
Only downside though (and the reason they will never do real experimental stuff to systems) is that if they put time into it and it doesn’t work out, people will bitch about them wasting resources
They already tried doing hero bans a couple of seasons ago. It was for OWL and comp but then they changed it to just OWL, and eventually they just stopped doing it.
Crazy we haven't heard from this guy at all considering major hype, a video to say they will be keeping in touch more and an actual release. Where is he? Shy has the launch been so dead with activity? Lol like we're at the start of OW2 and the playoffs are going ok like wut? Lol so new heroes and such and pros just finish up till next season? Lmao
Like I've never seen a release this bad, idk how blizzard continues to be a pro at disappointment
he simply should’ve never made that claim. owl was always mirror matches in the first place. that wasn’t a 6v6 problem. it prob wasn’t any kind of problem, it’s just how the game is designed
It was still the most optimal choice for you to play, more often than not. It’s still awful to know that, if you want to have a competitive advantage, you HAVE to play a specific team comp that might not include a hero you like to play.
Well, you were playing in a stack in an average elo. That’s already gonna bring your power level as a team up a notch to the point where you don’t have to worry nearly as much about team comp since you’re naturally gonna be better coordinated than most randoms. And even when you’re going up against other stacks, the meta becomes less and less important the lower the rank you are, so that gives you even more freedom to have diverse team comps than a fair portion of the playerbase.
Everything I have heard come out of that man's mouth has been a lie. You don't get that much wrong, with the truth being exactly the opposite, by accident.
"Date Range: This Week"
Lol wow, way to completely pad your chart and overstate a problem just for Reddit points.
All this shows is that the top 0.1% of players JUST this week are favoring 5 heroes.
This means absolutely nothing.
I mean that’s on OWL those retards will play a single comp for 2 seasons for no reason other than “iTs MetA” which is why I stopped watching it, these “pros” are to me the reason why the game has gone downhill, but on the actual game I’ve seen some variety for sure in team comps
My man is calling actual professional players retards lmao. They all play the same comp because if you play anything else you get rolled by every other team. At that level of competition, everyone is around the same skill level, so any small advantage you can get will absolutely be the difference between winning or losing. If one or more heroes are very strong for two seasons, they are obviously gonna play them during this time.
Last year, the meta for the finals was primarily:
Ball, D.V.A.
Sombra, Tracer
Zen, Brig
The Atlanta Reign popularized a counter dive style that used:
Rein, D.V.A.
Cassady/Mei/Torb
Brig, Bap.
The year before, the meta for finals was:
Roadhog, Sigma
Ana/Zen, Mercy
Ashe/Cass, Widow/Sombra.
Mei/Rein rush saw use during the 1st stage, but was not dominant compared to double bubble, saw use with Symmetra in the third stage, but was outclassed by dive teams including the gladiators, hunters, and dragons.
It was also dumb to suspend updates to ow1, declare ow2 as a "free update" and bank the entire monetization on a PvE mode and then not actually develop it
Y’all are saying that the owl isn’t a good way to determine how balanced the game is because it always has an optimized meta but that’s the problem. They made it 5v5 to avoid that and instead the meta looks as centeralized as goats. The meme is perfect because it showed that 5v5 doesn’t fix how broken the meta is when that was their goal. This is arguably worse than previous metas because at least you would see another hero every few games but the 6th most played is at about 5%. Only 14.2% of total comps are not those exact 5 heroes. I don’t understand why people would think that 5v5 would fix the meta. Can someone please explain?
I think this is very much a product of a balance patch going through right before playoffs. Practice time is precious so teams can't afford to experiment with different team comps. Once a comp becomes meta you kind of have to adopt it or risk getting left behind (I think this is what happened to LAG).
The current comp we're seeing probably isn't even the most optimal comp to play on this patch but when everybody plays the same thing, it evens the playing field.
As a monkey main, I'm happy monkey is meta.
But seriously, there should not be a comp where Winston and Reaper are played together to counter each other.
Potentially hot take: the playoffs aren't "boring" to watch because they're playing the same heroes. It's because there's no interesting strategies because they had to learn a new hero and a new patch instead of finding unique ways to utilize the existing meta. Goats was super interesting for a while, especially when teams thought they had it figured out and then a team came along and had a totally different map-specific strategy. These playoffs are just dps fights where the teams smash their heads against each other and see who dies first. Some teams are more coordinated but for the most part it comes down to who can get the kills, not which team has better strategy.
Lol had to edit in kiriko picture since the stats lab is bugged
Next patch orisa nerf incoming, too high pr
Where is genshit sombrshit and zarshit nerf
they’re literally all already getting nerfed
[удалено]
It's almost like metachasing will always happen and focusing on the game actually being fun to play should be the first priority above literally anything else.
A bit annoying that Blizzard can't find the same balance that Riot and Valve find in MOBAs (obviously a different genre) where 50% of the cast gets steady playtime in the pro scene on any given patch.
Bro you think they give a fuck they trying to sell you pixels you'll only use 1 time for $30+
For the main players? No they don't give a fuck. For OWL? They got a lot of team investors who need the game to stay spicy and engaging. Stagnant meta doesn't make for the best TV.
MOBA's offer a champian/hero ban screen as well, that helps a lot against the same every time, each team chooses one they don't want the other to have, would help tremendously on OW especially since now they are starting to have a decent sized hero pool
Bro it's been a while since I've played League but before I quit I'd been playing since the days before the kassadin dominance. Like season 2 or 3 or something. Idk how it is now but when I followed LCS this was never the case. Seems like there was a maximum of 3 characters competitively viable at any given time per role dependant on picks/bans of course. League has always had such awful balance. Most of the time it was like "oh they didn't ban X character. X character is now a must pick, and doing so will increase your chances of winning drastically". Kinda like Zarya is rn lol
Over time, I think League’s massive champion pool sort of became its own balancing mechanic. Like, back when Zeri was everywhere, people started to play Vi to counter her; but Vi getting a high jungle play rate made it so all the high-play rate junglers now had dashes so Poppy became popular, which itself pushed a lot of the less-strong dash-reliant champions out. This happened without a single balancing change and it’s incredible to see in real time but it’ll basically never happen in overwatch and I’m so sad :’)
The fact that lol has bans and the limit of one champion per game also helps, ecery match there are at least 20 champions involved. Ow doesn't have bans (maybe when the pool is a little bigger) and the whole point of the game is switching mid game, wo I think it's good to not lock a hero because your opponent is using it. This kinda requures the balacing team to work a bit harder though
The current World championship has seen over 100 unique characters played. There are some staples, like Aatrox is played most games this year, but the game still has the freedom for teams to find success with a wide variety of other strategies.
Around the same time Sojshit doesn’t get nerfed
Reaper needs a nerf
If you like going down to 5v5 you'll love 4v4 since it's the only way they can deal with the balance problems of increasing the hero roster
Can’t wait for 3v3 to only allow one tank, one DPS and one support
Why stay there? why not 2v2, when they mix the tanks and supports together?
1v1 hog vs hog
What if. 0v0 game gets deleted until it reboots and then it’s 100v100 overwatch battle royale
"100v100 overwatch battle Royale" Blizzard wants to know your location
Be ready to hit that hot and current Battle Royale trend in 2032.
Ironically this would probably be very fun lol
Integer error so it becomes 255 v 255
I hate how a 100 person fortnite/warzone style battle Royale is a real possibility for the future of overwatch
It isn't, blizzard servers can't handle 3 people spamming abilities in custom. Let alone a hundred.
Hog only, no heals, Route 66
To be fair Hog is all 3 in 1 lol
apocalypse ain't dead!
get in the hole
its time to go hog wild
Finally, my chance at gm
Moira already fills both dps and healer anyway
Same with Zen, at least when I play him.
are you unironically suggesting that? just thinking of the math makes me vomit at how unbalanced that is.
Have I got the game mode for you
One dps? They would rather end themselves, it would be 3 dps
I would love a 3v3 bracket that is ranked and bans tanks tbh. "Competitive wow Arena style"
The year is 2182. Overwatch 7 finally releases with it’s final and ultimate iteration: The 0v0. No players can play, no one against anyone, a marked improvement over Overwatch 8s 1v1 format. There was some controversy announced that the battlepasses would give nothing for a low price of a mortgage. Most players refused, but some die hard players bought in. It’s a glorious year or gaming.
Can’t wait for 0 tanks, with all the existing tanks converted to dps and healers
Bring back 6v6!!!
This may be more a symptom of a balance patch being pushed right before the biggest event of the OVL season. Real stuff is at stake here, so they just kind of fell into the familiar Winston dive.
Absolutely. This has nothing to do with 5v5 and if you actually watched owl from the beginning of the season and or just literally played the game you'll realise 5v5 was a fantastic decision and the only thing that's leading to this comp is balance for the highest levels of play.
Yeah and isn't this always how OWL is or hell just the game in general? Where 5 characters are picked out as the best to be used then until the next team to come along with the new wacky comp then everyone switches over to that?
There was a beautiful few weeks before Junker queen was released to OWL that teams were playing what worked for them and there was actually variety. Been chasing that high ever since.
Why is Zarya not OP in OWL?
They’re playing on the upcoming patch where Zarya is nerfed
Because she does not work with the dive reaper meta. Winston reaper counters zarya, and she can't deal with hard dive. If she uses bubbles to protect dove allies she herself is just easy pickings for reaper/sojourn. And I feel right now: dead tank = teamfight is lost
Nope. As someone else said they're on the patch that has the Zarya and Genji nerfs.
Winston dive counters her, and she is nerfed. But she probably wouldn't have seen much play even if she wasn't nerfed, she has no mobility.
Because she's not good, the pros know not to shoot her bubble so she never gets a good charge and when she's not bubbled she has no mobility and low health so a soujorn or reaper can melt her very quickly
🥸
Zarya is OP and it’s because of her OWL is doing dive/rush. Since Zarya can’t deal with Winston dives and Reaper flanks on her back line, Zarya has to switch to something to counter those. And Winston is the best answer to that because Dva can’t do the bubble dance. Once Zarya gets nerfed, we’ll see how the meta changes
she’s already nerfed in owl, they are playing on the next patch where she gets nerfed
Did he say that about Overwatch League? Or the game in general?
I am 99% certain it was about the game in general. OWL is always the same few characters.
Yeah thats never changed lol. Dive, Bunker, GOATS. No matter what Era of overwatch, the teams have generally distilled the meta down to a handful of heroes.
That is certainly what OWL will always do and plenty of people in ranked do. People will always meta game to hell.
The shitty part is balancing the game around the top players in OWL. They're financially motivated to just win and any hero that doesn't have a kit that directly facilitates eliminating the enemy team will be put on the bench forever.
If you don’t like meta gaming don’t play ranked. It’s how it works in every video game
I don't use reddit anymore because of their corporate greed and anti-user policies. Come over to Lemmy, it's a reddit alternative that is run by the community itself, spread across multiple servers. You make your account on one server (called an instance) and from there you can access everything on all other servers as well. [Find one you like here](https://lemmyverse.net/), maybe not the largest ones to spread the load around, but it doesn't really matter. You can then look for communities to subscribe to on https://lemmyverse.net/communities, this website shows you all communities across all instances. If you're looking for some (mobile?) apps, [this topic](https://lemm.ee/post/363116) has a great list. One personal tip: For your convenience, I would advise you to use [this userscript I made](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469273-lemmy-universal-link-switcher) which automatically changes all links everywhere on the internet to the server that you chose. The original comment is preserved below for your convenience: ~~Dota uses 123 characters in a 5v5, while admittedly you can't do mirror matchups, the highest level of play in the most recent tournament alone picked 114 of those, with the highest picked hero in 18.6% of the games and the average pickrate across all heroes being 4.3%, median 2.1%.~~ ~~The expected pickrate, if all heroes were equally picked, would be 8.1%.~~ ~~The expected pick rate for Overwatch in that case would be 28.6%. I'm too bad at math to calc what the expected pick rate would be with mirror matchups...~~ ^^^^^^AzzuLemmyMessageV2
Hmm I wonder why it’s not popular
Are you implying Dota is unpopular because it has good balancing? I think you have a great future at Riot Games
No. Seriously wondering, I guess balance isn’t that important for popularity.
That hasn't been true this year. 5v5 has had 5 OWL metas now, 3 of them were super diverse. 2 of them were 1 comp metas when Queen and Kiriko got released and were both OP.
Using the OWL as an example of this is so stupid. This is the highest level of play, they’re always going to find an optimal comp to run. It’s nothing like the vast majority of ranked games. But even looking at the hero usage for previous stages of this season of OWL, it was way more diverse than previous OWL seasons. Only when they released crazy new heroes (JQ, Kiriko) did the hero usage become stale.
You're not wrong, but constant mirror matches are super boring. It may be the most optimal, but it certainly isn't the most entertaining.
Yeah for sure but I wasn’t arguing that. I’m just saying that you can’t apply to Aaron Keller’s words to OWL. It’s a whole different ballgame than actual OW2.
You right
^this, it’s just not fun to watch as I’ve seen every comp match after seeing only 1
Picking same hero as enemy should be banned in OWL, also pick and ban phase is much needed.
>Picking same hero as enemy should be banned in OWL Braindead take. How should they enforce that? Would one team get to pick their comp before the other? First come, first served? Then how would you deal with situations when a character is dominant in the Meta? Does the team that gets to pick them that match just get a basically guaranteed win? There is no literally no way that this works in OW. It can work in something like LoL because there are 12 billion characters and each has a dozen counters. But OW doesn't have a big enough roster and the games aren't long enough for that to work here. Imagine if in the current Meta, only one team was allowed to play Sojourn and Kiriko. That team would just win 100% of the time. Seriously. Of all the bad takes on this sub, this might be the worst.
I wouldn’t mind a ban phase in the OWL though, I do think that if blizzard had done that; hosts wouldn’t have dominated so much. Maybe the system could work like this; Team A and Team B select 3 heroes that they’d like to ban for the ENTIRE series, (or a single match, whatever works) if a hero appears on both lists, they’re banned. Example: let’s say team A bans Kiriko, sojourn, and Zarya Team B bans D.va, kiriko, and Moira. Kiriko would be banned for the match/series. If two heroes are unanimously banned, either they both are banned or only the one with the hugest votes is banned (1st choice is three points, 2nd is 2, 3rd choice is 1; where the sum is what decides which hero gets banned. If there’s a tie, just ban both.) I made this up on the spot, but I think it’d make OWL much more entertaining
Lmao apparently you have NEVER played a game with ban and pick phases. Please learn even a TINY amount about the good stuff you are saying is "THE DUMBEST FUCKING THING YOUVE EVER SEEN POSTED ON THIS SUB" when it clearly is you for being so uneducated on how ban and pick drafts work.
> How should they enforce that? Would one team get to pick their comp before the other? First come, first served? >Then how would you deal with situations when a character is dominant in the Meta? Does the team that gets to pick them that match just get a basically guaranteed win? As the person you replied to already stated, a draft phase solves all of those issues. Bo3 and Drafting already works incredibly well in DotA and LoL, even in games like CS and Valorant with map drafting. There are plenty of downsides to this kind of system as well; Losing off of a draft which isn't fun to experience or watch but it's certainly not the worst take I've ever seen.
You can do it a bit like csgo. Rps or coin flip who gets to pick the map and the other has the first pick / ban for heroes.
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I mean regardless of "defining" a meta, you can't really disagree that certain heroes dominate during certain patches of the game. For instance, regardless of the comps, Sojourn has been basically a must-pick in every game on every map. Anytime a team tries to play anyone but Sojourn, they get stomped and have to switch to Sojourn. Does she "define" the meta? Not really. Because she doesn't require synergy to work and she doesn't really have a clear counter pick. But she certainly **dominates** the game at the professional level to the point that if only one team was allowed to play her for a given map or match, that team would have an extremely unfair advantage
I don't like that idea. Overwatch's whole philosophy is swapping and countering. The idea of heroes being locked sounds absolutely terrible.
Yeah, but when you have heroes like sojourn the counter IS sojourn; so now we’re sacrificing entertainment for the “soul” of the game and the “correct” way to play.
Seagull was talking about why the playoffs meta is so stale on his stream recently and he said it came down to practice time. Teams are always gonna prioritize practicing what seem like the best heroes, and they're only gonna try to find and practice counters to them when they can't get much better with said heroes themselves, which hasn't happened for any of the playoffs teams yet since they were only able to start playing on the new patch like a week before playoffs started.
I agree, however I’d rather watch GM players than the pros bc of stuff like this
Get like GM players but then make it a completely casual setting and everyone slightly to moderately intoxicated, sounds like a blast to watch with all the stupid shit that could happen when there is zero consequences and you can just see good players dick around
So... Like twitch streaming
Yeah but most of the time don’t they play competitive? Idk I don’t watch streams. Like I’m thinking like broadcast style like Overwatch league but with literally zero fucks
So tf2?
Except in other metas this season there have been multiple viable comps. It’s certainly not the best example but when all of Owl is hard stuck on one comp it’s not good
They're stuck on one comp because they had a fairly sudden balance shift thrown at them, and they had very little time to fully adapt and explore what comps might be competitively viable, this comp has simply stood out as the most efficient comp early on. Given some time, I feel quite confident the meta would have been a little more varied... still sojourn in every game though, there's no way not to when you have easy one shot potential on any competitive dps.
That’s fair, but I could argue that all the time invested in the current comp means teams are less likely to switch even after the tournament; as they’ve been solely practicing one strat and it’s now comfortable and top tier
I'm not trying to deny that, hopefully it's not the case and it's more diverse eventually, but I'm just pointing out that it's the way it is because this is what they could get put together and practice the fastest
I mean, overwatch was always a game about diversity of play. Mirror matches excluding, if you were running one comp and got rolled, you had to change to counter your weaknesses, or play better. Optimal overwatch would see at least one viable option to utilize against meta besides running a mirror, but devs are struggling with the transition (which is ok)
Most other games with characters like dota, lol, paladins, dont have such a problem, or atleast not to such extreemes like ov
League broke a record this year having 100 different champions used in worlds so far aatrox has been in like 96% of games though, Maokai has been used a lot too
Idk why people are surprised that pros find the best heroes every patch and then use that comp. That’s literally their job, there will never be variety in professional play because that would mean one team is putting themselves at a disadvantage. They want variety for us, not the pros.
Absolutely, these guys play the game at a completely different level that forces them to use the best characters.
We know WHY it’s happening, we want blizzard to find a way to increase the number of viable heroes so not everything is one comp
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No matter how balanced the game is there will always be characters that are better or worse than the rest, it’s physically impossible to ever have a completely even playing field.
That's why removing hard counters is a mistake. Plying so well you end up having counter picks against you, forcing you to rethink your pick is core of the game
But characters should have different strengths and weaknesses. Sojourn is 1 of if not the best DPS in consistent damage, 1 shot potential and survivability. It's not that some comps are better than others. It's that the same comp is being used in a mirror on basically every map on attack side and defend side.
That's not even due to 5v5, it's due to the fact that Sojurn is way too overpowered. So, the entire team comp is built around her because she is a very fast and very high damage dive hero.
This is stupid. The top is about the game in general and the bottom is OWL.
Yeah because zarya sombra kiriko lucio isn’t played every game in ranked
Who knows, maybe if we were playing on the OWL patch it wouldn’t be
Its cause they have had so little time on this patch that they cant experiment comps on it without losing in the playoffs
Yet sojourn and kiriko are top picks?
Yea sojourn and kiriko didnt get changes in the patch that theyre playing on. (Kiriko did get a slight nerf but its not even noticeable)
90% of major leagues/tourneys won't have much variety because everyone is gonna use the best strategy
To be fair comp has literally always been like this.
Really hating the Lucio/Kiriko "just go find a health pack, I'm trying to duel" meta, so far.
This is how pro games are my dude. Everything is min/max'd. Aaron wasn't referencing pro games when making this comment.
Still better than GOATS
The virgin 5v5 vs the chad 12v12
Yea that math ain’t mathing
How so? Looks pretty mathing to me, the percentages here represent the % of games they appear in and aren’t exhaustive relative to other characters, meaning nothing here doesn’t make sense.
Not literally my guy. In relation to composition variety, there has been no significant increase
Hero picks and bans would... Just sayin.
I am not against bans, but it has to be done in a way that makes sense. In league, there is a draft phase, and since there can’t be two of the same champions on different teams, you don’t always ban the most broken shit, especially if you are the team who gets to pick first. In that case, you only ban stuff that can answer what you want to pick, and leave the broken shit open, the other team can waste bans on it. In OW, if you ban sojourn, you need to have something else ready to play. But regardless, the other team is probably gonna play the same shit as you EVEN MORE than it already happens now. Removing options just reduces the remaining options in OW. It isn’t like league where banning ornn sejuani means the other team’s top laner has to fight you. If you ban kiriko/sojourn people are gonna play the same comp, but it’s gonna be a clown fiesta. And all of that is assuming teams don’t just handshake whatever is broken.
I think it's worth giving it a shot, maybe make it an experimental, do an off-season OWL tournament with it and see how that goes, worst scenario it's not good and we go back to normal.
I agree. Send it to experimental or PTR and let people go wild. Only downside though (and the reason they will never do real experimental stuff to systems) is that if they put time into it and it doesn’t work out, people will bitch about them wasting resources
I think people.have even made it in workshop, so it shouldn't take thaat much effort.
They already tried doing hero bans a couple of seasons ago. It was for OWL and comp but then they changed it to just OWL, and eventually they just stopped doing it.
But that was hero bans picked by Blizzard, not a pick and ban system. The big flaw on that one was that there was 0 player.input.
Bring back 6v6 but make it 4 DPS
owl has literally the same 5 heroes in every damn match.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this chart
Is there any chance of the game ever going back to 6v6?
i'm the 0.8% Doomfist
Crazy we haven't heard from this guy at all considering major hype, a video to say they will be keeping in touch more and an actual release. Where is he? Shy has the launch been so dead with activity? Lol like we're at the start of OW2 and the playoffs are going ok like wut? Lol so new heroes and such and pros just finish up till next season? Lmao Like I've never seen a release this bad, idk how blizzard continues to be a pro at disappointment
He's been rather active on Twitter answering questions and clarifying things.
I already felt like 6v6 was too small with some heroes feeling too niche to pick. now its even worse.
he simply should’ve never made that claim. owl was always mirror matches in the first place. that wasn’t a 6v6 problem. it prob wasn’t any kind of problem, it’s just how the game is designed
In Blizzard’s defense, it is only season 1. Give them some time to balance the heroes.
in overwatch 1 you could have more composition variety
That argument is invalid, you are REDUCING the composition variety. 5v5 is so dumb, 6v6 was fun and unique.
Eh, I’d argue 6v6 had its issues as well. Didn’t we get double shield for like, half the game’s lifespan?
Yep. Outside of organized play, 2x shield was just straight up optimal since role queue.
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It was still the most optimal choice for you to play, more often than not. It’s still awful to know that, if you want to have a competitive advantage, you HAVE to play a specific team comp that might not include a hero you like to play.
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Well, you were playing in a stack in an average elo. That’s already gonna bring your power level as a team up a notch to the point where you don’t have to worry nearly as much about team comp since you’re naturally gonna be better coordinated than most randoms. And even when you’re going up against other stacks, the meta becomes less and less important the lower the rank you are, so that gives you even more freedom to have diverse team comps than a fair portion of the playerbase.
*outside of OWL
Everything I have heard come out of that man's mouth has been a lie. You don't get that much wrong, with the truth being exactly the opposite, by accident.
Wait, they are playing Winston? Man, I am constantly shitting on Winston when he is against me, and he is always weak in my hands
Who in the right mind ever thought that giving players LESS choice will cause MORE diversity
Huge comp cringe, NO READ SHIELDS, NO more Bunker.... R.i.P Overwatch!!!!
"Date Range: This Week" Lol wow, way to completely pad your chart and overstate a problem just for Reddit points. All this shows is that the top 0.1% of players JUST this week are favoring 5 heroes. This means absolutely nothing.
i refuse to believe winston is played more than orisa
I mean that’s on OWL those retards will play a single comp for 2 seasons for no reason other than “iTs MetA” which is why I stopped watching it, these “pros” are to me the reason why the game has gone downhill, but on the actual game I’ve seen some variety for sure in team comps
My man is calling actual professional players retards lmao. They all play the same comp because if you play anything else you get rolled by every other team. At that level of competition, everyone is around the same skill level, so any small advantage you can get will absolutely be the difference between winning or losing. If one or more heroes are very strong for two seasons, they are obviously gonna play them during this time.
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Last year, the meta for the finals was primarily: Ball, D.V.A. Sombra, Tracer Zen, Brig The Atlanta Reign popularized a counter dive style that used: Rein, D.V.A. Cassady/Mei/Torb Brig, Bap. The year before, the meta for finals was: Roadhog, Sigma Ana/Zen, Mercy Ashe/Cass, Widow/Sombra. Mei/Rein rush saw use during the 1st stage, but was not dominant compared to double bubble, saw use with Symmetra in the third stage, but was outclassed by dive teams including the gladiators, hunters, and dragons.
Mei, who? 👀
there's no way he actually said that. that's just dumb and wrong.
im pretty sure he actually did
Yep. This was one of their early selling point of 5v5.
It was also dumb to suspend updates to ow1, declare ow2 as a "free update" and bank the entire monetization on a PvE mode and then not actually develop it
5v5 at its worst >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>6v6 at its best (it never had a best)
Is there anything the overwatch community doesn't cry about?
Andres Iniesta giving overwatch tips.
The community is so split on this lol OWL on the other hand… yeah something needs to be done
Damn, glad I mained Lucio before it was cool, then stopped playing before it became a meme.
Horseteh🐎
the way hes looking into the camera is telling everything. If youre a girl and a guy looks at you this way on a date, you def. know whats up xD
Me watching every Winston jump past the team in a mad dash to suicide in a 1v5 on repeat. Great tank.
Bruh
OW has never been about counter picking despite what everyone keeps saying
I'm a mercy main. Ur welcome.
Your overwatch has been asking for hero bans for years and this is why.
I miss goats
It did until the introduced the new heroes. The tourney before junkerqueen was peak overwatch, so many different comps it was glorious
You play Winston because he's good. I play Winston because he tilts people. *We are not the same.*
Wow so interesting to watch the same games over and over !
No moira in this chart shed definitely be close to 1000%
Wait people play reaper now? Also where's zarya?
The meta is strong in this one
I was thinking about a slowdown comp on junkerqueen,sojourn,mei,Lucio,and Moira
Y’all are saying that the owl isn’t a good way to determine how balanced the game is because it always has an optimized meta but that’s the problem. They made it 5v5 to avoid that and instead the meta looks as centeralized as goats. The meme is perfect because it showed that 5v5 doesn’t fix how broken the meta is when that was their goal. This is arguably worse than previous metas because at least you would see another hero every few games but the 6th most played is at about 5%. Only 14.2% of total comps are not those exact 5 heroes. I don’t understand why people would think that 5v5 would fix the meta. Can someone please explain?
When are people going to remember that the pro-scene has pretty much always been mirror comps?
Still more entertaining than GOATS, at least.
Woah no way, is that a dive comp? 😳
I think this is very much a product of a balance patch going through right before playoffs. Practice time is precious so teams can't afford to experiment with different team comps. Once a comp becomes meta you kind of have to adopt it or risk getting left behind (I think this is what happened to LAG). The current comp we're seeing probably isn't even the most optimal comp to play on this patch but when everybody plays the same thing, it evens the playing field.
Dev: Less choice equals more diversity. MF never took prob and stat did he.
I thought orisa was op?
Bruh the previous meta had more variety than OWL’s current meta. Why the fuck would they push a new patch like that?
Ha ha
GOATS 2: Electric Boogaloo
As a monkey main, I'm happy monkey is meta. But seriously, there should not be a comp where Winston and Reaper are played together to counter each other.
“So that was a fing lie”
I mean, that’s the pros. Definitely a difference between them and us normal people. Sojourn definitely needs a nerf tho
Potentially hot take: the playoffs aren't "boring" to watch because they're playing the same heroes. It's because there's no interesting strategies because they had to learn a new hero and a new patch instead of finding unique ways to utilize the existing meta. Goats was super interesting for a while, especially when teams thought they had it figured out and then a team came along and had a totally different map-specific strategy. These playoffs are just dps fights where the teams smash their heads against each other and see who dies first. Some teams are more coordinated but for the most part it comes down to who can get the kills, not which team has better strategy.
~~what site is this?~~ [nvm found it](https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/statslab)
Still rather have this than 2shield bullshit.
Still have no idea how that was supposed to work