Listening to them talk, I think the Ult change you mention is the play. If Ults got reset every point, maybe Overwatch would make more sense as a whole, since you can switch to counter your opponents/counter the map geometry. Maybe after a point is taken, it goes to a 20 second period where you cannot see enemy hero picks in the tab screen like in the beginning of the map. You could camp the spawn until the hero picks come back, but you'd be losing time and space all the while. Maybe Ults need to be on a STRICT CD and when you switch you take a mathematical percentage of the ult charge, which could be unique to the hero/role/ult, with you. Maybe Pharah gets less ult charge when you switch to her when you switch off a hero with 80% ult in the bank than a Mccree for example. I mean that could be another lever in general they could use in balancing. Maybe certain heroes can straight up transfer ults, like if you go from a Genji full ult charge to a Soldier, he still has full ult charge since they are so different in power levels. Maybe ult charge isn't a CHARACTER thing, but a PLAYER thing, so you COULD theoretically charge ult with one character and switch to another with full ult. I think Ults are the biggest issue with Overwatch BECAUSE they are so impactful and fun to use, so ults should be the main focus on how we balance the game, I'm starting to think.
Dpei did incredibly good on the debate cuz, honestly, he had a lot to lose. He's been criticized a lot by people for Gladiators doing only below average. Even in Season 2 they were a top 5 team.
Re: Hero bans: there are not enough *tank and support* characters in the game for bans. But ban the piss outta damage characters. There's 19 of them, it's ridiculous. Great debate tho. Always happy to hear from Cas especially.
I thought I'd seen every SVB-cast but somehow missed this one and it may be the best of all! Super insightful on a usually opaque topic, with great, articulate guests and ofc the perfect host. I can't believe this stuff is free to listen to sometimes, but I do appreciate it.
My god Dpei hit it so perfectly on the head. Casters talk about the DPS players missing out what's enabling them to even pop off in the first place and the observer crew I doubt any of them are even GM players, let alone understand the game to a high level of play. That really hinders the observing even more so than the casting itself because they don't know or understand what perspective to switch to or when something is going to happen. This year the observers for the Apex nostalgia matches were insane! OWL needs to pick them up honestly.
The casters are lucky enough to have 2 different camera angles at once while casting, so they can see an engage coming and when abilities are used properly... I always hate not seeing something on screen that the casters are talking about just happened. Like, what? where? when? I hope we get a replay.
The worst thing about overwatch is that it's so hard to learn how to get better and climb. If you look at league, there's so much educational content on how to improve.
All the Blizzard competitive games are hard to learn and improve at because the in-game feedback is sometimes very misleading as to whether you are doing the right thing. But this is also what makes Blizzard games attractive to casual players, because you can feel good even while playing poorly.
On the Topic of Hero Bans: Naturally; (like I think most people who watch SVB's videos are) I'm in the camp of doing Hero Bans. Not only are mirror matches droll and boring, but it forces teams into picking compositions they're not even good at (Houston during GOATs in Season 2) just because of the statistics involved with running that "META composition". Having said that; I fail to understand Dpei's point about banning a star-player's best Hero: Because typically during a meta, that player might not be able to play their best Hero anyway - as SVB said and he then later said it would be a bad thing to have happened. Striker literally didn't play at all during GOATs for 3/4s of Season 2 and Pine more-or-less retired because hitscan wasn't a thing for that entire duration. As for the arguments Hayes and Casorees put towards it: The idea of the bans themselves is to prevent certain compositions from being ran for a massive duration of time. Imagine if a Universal Hero Ban System existed during Season 2's GOATs Meta; where each team could ban 1 Hero and that Hero would be banned for BOTH teams. Banning both Zarya and Lucio would've IMMEDIATELY killed GOATs; no questions asked. Not even Sombra-GOATs would've been a viable option and instead; you would've probably seen the rise of Triple-DPS compositions much faster; which quite honestly, was fun as hell to watch (especially with Shanghai and when Valiant finally gave Vancouver their first loss of that season). That being the case; why would you want another Lucio in the game to be able to do that? You'd do nothing more than replace the banned Lucio and Zarya with their similar Hero counterparts and you'd still more-or-less have GOATs and the mirror matches continue anyway. The argument as well about having the specifc strategy with Super (for example) being completely banned-out as well doesn't really work. For Hero-Pools, coaches had to show adaptability in trying to quickly find out what was the meta for those one-to-two weeks and trying to build some composition that should be the most viable for that duration. The same thing would be achieved with Hero Bans but in a much less chaotic way - where like Dpei said; Striker has like, 5 Heroes he's elite at: Super definitely has other Heroes in his pool. Are they as elite as his Reinhardt? Probably not, but he's not going to be god-awful at it. And then on top of that; it makes having players who're more flexible and diverse in their Hero Pool to be far more valuable -- which Casores still said was a good thing. You wouldn't be picking up any player just for 1 specifc Hero at all (which was honestly silly anyway because as mentioned before; a META more-or-less soft-banned them anyhow; so why have them? It's just a spot on your bench wasting room). You then can provide some structure where you build a proper playbook involving 2 or 3 different compositions that can be ran (which is what I've heard Philadelphia did a lot of last season) for the sake of any possible Bans that happen. You then use your scrims to trial those different compositions (which is what they're intended to be used for anyway) and split the time across the week running those compositions in scrims instead of just the one composition all the time (which was one of the things Hero Pools was designed to break up anyway). The argumeent is further debunked too when you consider that Super literally grinded Roadhog just to see some playtime coming onto the end of the season because Reinhardt wasn't meta anyway -- not to mention Genji during the Summer Showdown Tournament and the Genji Meta. That would tell you that any seriously competitive players who want to play that are "specialists"; will hands-down put in the time and effort to grind other Heroes to a high-level so they can be not only more flexible and useful for their teams; but to also just be able to play. And let's be honest - Super's Roadhog in the grand-finals against Seoul was just outright brutal. Gesture wasn't even close to matching him on that and Super was never known for having a nasty Roadhog, and as a result, you saw irrefutable proof that Super is actually talented and not just a shit-talker, Reinhardt one-trick. Another thing they all seemingly forgot is the agency that having a Ban System would grant teams. Once again; Houston was literally a non-factor for the entirety of Season 2 just because of how bad they were at GOATs and they could do very little about that. Giving teams a Hero Ban System at least gives them some means / way to try and improve their odds of winning games; which would go doubly-so with "Loser's Map Pick" or if they do "Loser Picks Ban" like SVB said. Otherwise; certain teams simply have no way at all to win certain games when going into some matches and as a result; it's a far more boring match altogether anyway. I dreaded watching matches involving Houston, Boston, Washington, and Toronto all season long because of this exact thing.
Just want to highlight a glossed-over point under this mega-comment... I absolutely hate the "not enough heroes" counter to Hero Bans because you either have all unique heroes (which Blizzard wants) or you have overlapping abilities (which dilutes every ban). Like, one of the coaches really said "we don't have a second D.va" as if having duplicates of all 31 heroes to make 62 would make Bans more viable. At that point, bans would be useless... Because the heroes are very unique in their skillsets, banning 1 changes everything. The time for a Hero Ban system is BEFORE ability dilution, not after.
@@Shzl47 I'm not sure that argument totally plays out, because otherwise hero bans wouldn't be a dominant strategy in other games like League of Legends. I don't disapprove of the idea of hero bans in overwatch to be clear, but I don't think it solves the problem people think it will per se. And from the point of view of the professionals, it would rightly be a nightmare to have to coach; how would you prep, how many strats would you have to know how to run, and the abusability of it. It's the abusability that is the reason why the coaches are saying not enough heroes; in certain iterations of hero bans, it would be totally possible to say, ban out all shields, or any hitscan strong enough to take down a pharah with pocket, or say you ban out the survivable healers leaving the enemy team to only run a squishy backline against your star flankers. It would be hard on them, both coaches and players. I'm not surprised none of them were as on-board with it. Streamers love the idea, and people think it will help with the ladder, but the pro's are not obligated to agree with the meanderings of people who mostly aren't immersed in the actual realities of the game and what it would mean for people whose livelihood and career is paid by it.
@@shioramenrabbit the problem people want to solve is lack of hero diversity in games. You say you don't disapprove of hero bans, but you sure as hell listed alot of reasons for it to not be a thing... My point was that if every hero had a duplicate, bans are pointless. You'd have to ban both versions of a hero (if you can even ban more than 1). I'm sure LoL has multiple banned heroes at a given time... Anyway, maybe a better solution would be auto-ban by pick. If I pick Tracer, the other team has Tracer banned for them until I swap.
@@Shzl47 You're putting words in my mouth :). I was explaining why from a coaches standpoint, a lack of heroes is a serious concern, and specifically because it complicates their jobs and their players lives a whole lot. If you look closely, I was talking from the pro standpoint; pro's are not the whole overwatch community, and sometimes what is good for one part of it is not necessarily good for another. So Blizzard has to decide on whether they cater to the casual ladder experience, or what is reasonable for the pro's, or what is good for content creators. Not all interested parties can be satisfied by the same thing. If they do hero bans, it will certainly be for more than one hero to be effective, which is why the number of hero's in overwatch, and specifically how few do certain jobs, would seem dangerous. You can hate that argument, but it is a valid one to be honest.
@@shioramenrabbit What words did I put in your mouth? ...I know you were talking from a pro/coach perspective, but either way, they are reasons against implementing Hero Bans.
On the topic of hero bans, I think there are multiple ways it could work as a meta breaking element, without being something that just bans players that specialize in select heroes or comps. The main way I could see it work, is when teams have a set amount of matches, lets say a best of 7. The first team who reaches 3 match wins will trigger the hero ban system, so each team has the option of banning 1 hero (so 2 total bans combined) for every following match. Key here is that you can not ban the same hero twice, so consecutive rounds with hero bans will not see the same bans, thus players can't be locked out of their main hero for more than 1 match. What this does is it gives a kind of x factor, a set of special round(s) where the hope of a reverse sweep can come into play by changing up the pace of the game. At the same time, it means that the first 3 rounds always assure you that your main practiced team comp can get you 75% of the way to victory, and only the last 25% has to be fought in an alternative manner. That combines concistency, with an element of unpredictability at the end where "anything can happen", which I think would be great for viewers as well as players, potentially allowing them to go for non-meta and more individual styles to show off their skills outside of the hard-practiced meta comps they are used to.
Ey, loved the show. In football they added a new rule where now you can sub 5 players during a game and it's quite something big. So, they dont have patches etc in physical sports per se but they do sometimes have big changes. ( Max contracts in nba / Trade restriction in football etc )
On ults: Ultimate charge happens in 2 ways, via a passive slow charge rate, and then via points when you land damage/abilities. Different ultimates require a different number of points to charge. So given that, i see no reason why they can't normalize the passive charge rate between all heroes, and then have ultimate points acrue to the player. This would allow you to switch heroes and retain ultimate points. There may need a few other balance measures put in place to level this out but i think a system like this could work well with some trials. The advantage of this is seeing more hero swapping in maps and less mirror matches, where teams dont feel locked in to playing 1 best comp across the map as the coaches have stated. You could even have it asymetric between attackers and defenders as both teams get a turn at each. (For example, you can't gain any more points than what is required to use your current heroes ultimate, extra ult points required in teh first 30 secs of a hero switch, so you can't just jump on a hero and use an ult, you would still need to play some and charge an ult up somewhat. etc)
Interesting that the coaches all disliked the idea of hero bans. I guess it makes sense since that’s one more thing they have to strategize about. I’m sure there’s a way to implement it that’s fair to teams and spectators. It would be interesting to see if hero bans were introduced the sequence on when the opposing team knew, which players were subbed in, what map is picked, and the hero ban phase. I feel like that would matter because, if the map was the first in the sequence then the team’s can sub in the “specialists” for that map, but then the opposing team can just band the hero they specialize in. Guess that would be solved with a protect phase. Then there’s the problem of the broadcast possibly being too long. Seems like every time there’s a solution to a problem 5 other problems pop up. Personally, from a spectator perspective, I would love to see hero bans.
I think Hero bans could have worked if they just determined who got banned ahead of time and have them happen way less often. Maybe every stage there was a new pool or something rather than every other week
Something that was quickly discussed was how to get into coaching, obviously there is no "path to coach" and most of the time it comes to whether you can spend time in it and have the dedication / you were a good player that ended that way for x reason. Overall i loved this debate, bringing interesting point of view on certain topic like bans and ults in OW, map design,etc... Lot of love and respect for all the cast and every person mentionned!
I wonder if the observer/caster synch issues are caused in large part because there are’t really dedicated observers for each casting duos. It seems like the league went with observing teams with independent schedules from the casters but also gave them the freedom to independently try to locate where the action was instead of following caster cues. I feel like this issue will get better with time if the observing team doesn’t have too much turnover, but you could get more consistent synchronization if the observers were assigned to the casting duos. That would allow them to build the synergy needed to make independent observer/caster combinations truly shine. Of course that would require a larger observer team than what they probably have.
I think the question of hero bans boils down to one question: Is Overwatch a strategic game about reading metas and picking the right comp or is it about individual mechanical skill and pop-off moments?
16:46,27:43, Casores :( Is no one gonna talk about how good of a host not only for the podcast but of the discussion as well that SVB is? He only really talks whenever he feels like a new topic needs to be swapped or when things are running dry, which really lets the guests speak their mind. And when he does talk, he suggests really good topics
OMG Thankyou SVB the mirror matches are HORRID like it's twice as fun for me to watch different comps... I love watching Starcraft II but skip mirror matches regardless of whether it's Maru Vs Inno or Serral Vs Rogue... it's just visually not appealing.
Yeah generally don't like mirror matches myself in Starcraft II apart from the really top tier players (I do like me some Maru v TY etc.)! I used to like PvP because of how much of a clownfiesta it is but these days when it gets to mass blink stalkers v blink stalkers I have less fun 😂
Talking about maps: Wouldn't it be interesting, if all the maps would be played like the experimental they did with 2cp? like every point is played separately. It could diversify the played heroes, cause ultimates would only come to use if you can't capture point, after that it resets everything. A small benefit of this would be also that there would be more downtime so perfect time for the casters to explain what happened
On the point of hero bans, i think the main reason on why it could possibly be detrimental is that it essentially just creates a second tier of meta. For example, if a comp is already established as a must play, the core heroes will just get perma-banned in all matches, and the teams will just find the second best comp and practice that. Lets say the meta comp/heroes do not get banned, the secondary use of banning heroes would just be to ban the mains of star players (ex. strikers tracer, amengs hammond, funnyastros/fdgods lucio, etc), which would just make the matches less exciting overall.
It takes some time for teams and coaches to figure out and test what the ideal comp is for every patch. If the balance patches are frequent enough the nothing is ever 100% this is what we play. Mirror matches will still happen, and it prob won't be far from majority but it will be drastically less. Don't give everyone time to realize 'this is 3% better than blank' or whatever example you want. You'll see different metas in different regions much more commonly, like we did in owl season 3, but most likely even more various. And in addition to this, you may see teams lean towards specializing in one comp, though this would definitely be the large minority.
Just following up with Hayes' point about OWL looking cool, I genuinely did enjoy watching overwatch enough to want to play it. The only other game that did this is Smash Bros which is incredibly easy to watch.
I think casting took a hit because of Covid this year. Jake is the best caster for sure and is keeping up the quality. UberX, Bren/Sideshow, and Hex all probably would have done better with homestands. Bren in particular was amazing during the early homestands, but has a lot of bad days when he’s just cooped up in his apartment.
How about creating OWL players/coaches association that gives monthly feedbacks to Blizzard devs about the balance changes that they want to see or generally just give feedback about which heroes are really strong and that would help Blizzard devs into making decisions related to balance changes
Just started the podcasts so this question may get answered. But I’ve always wondered, how do owl coaches get their knowledge. With sports it makes sense because of how many years of experience the community would have as a collective with much literature to read about.
I think a great point that they made is that it's hard for the average overwatch player to watch owl because gold game doesn't resemble and owl match in any way.
Garbage. Jk, great as always SVB. You have a way of making content that I think I won't love as much as your other content way more interesting than I thought possible. Excited for the next one
Esports like traditional sports will become more about man management than X and O's of the sport/game. So i think any great coach will be able to swap games
What if say I played mcree on first point, I have 72% to ult on him. 2nd point I switch to tracer, switch back to mcree on 3rd point and I still have my 72% charge. Ult charge could be locked to heroes, you would see switching more commonly, but ult economy would be borderline impossible. There's probably issues that I don't understand about it because I'm plat but it might be worth testing
Could that be taken advantage of? You could farm ult as tracer and then switch to sombra to get emp extremely fast and that could be badly abused. But something like that could be good if it could be balanced
Casores saying lol is easy to watch for new players makes no sense. He used to play lol thts why he thinks its easy to understand. They can both be colorful messes
