Today Blizzard dropped the latest Buffs and Nerfs on the PTR. And it seems as though McCree gets the latest DPS testing patch with more health and a crazy buff to his Ultimate ability Dead EYE.
A new Overwatch patch is in development and now available for
testing! To share your feedback or report any issues, please post in the
PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.
Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently
available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes may also
be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is
PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform. HERO UPDATES
Hanzo Storm Arrows
Damage reduced from 70 to 60
McCree General
Base health increased from 200 to 250
Peacekeeper (Primary Fire)
Recovery time increased from 0.42 to 0.5 seconds
Deadeye
Firing Deadeye no longer locks the player’s aim
Reaper The Reaping (Passive)
Healing amount reduced from 40% to 30% of damage dealt
Orisa Fusion Driver (Primary Fire)
Damage reduced from 11 to 9
Fortify
Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds
Halt!
Snare duration reduced from 1 to 0.65 seconds
Sigma Hyperspheres (Primary Fire)
Range reduced from 22 to 20 meters
Gravitic Flux
Can now be interrupted before targets begin falling
Impact slow duration reduced from 0.9 to 0.6 seconds
I’ve seen a lot of discussion about hero bans the past few days and I just wanted to offer some perspective on the topic. As always, the OW has a wide variety of opinions about the concept. Interestingly, we don’t have many people on the team vehemently arguing for the feature. More of us, including myself, are reluctant to add hero bans to Overwatch. As I’ve said before, we’re not of the mindset that we’re opposed to the idea entirely and will never add them. But overall, there are a number of issues that make us want to proceed carefully.
Coming at this from a game design focus, the number one thing we ask is, “what is the problem that we’re trying to solve?†We’re not fans of just adding ideas that are in other games “just becauseâ€Â. We call this bottom-up design. Sometimes the right design decision for one game, is a terrible decision for another game – even if the two games are very similar. For example, with World of Warcraft we did not impose forced grouping, a slow leveling curve and a punishing death penalty with level loss “just because†the other successful MMO’s had those features at the time. And as a player of those other MMO’s, I thought they were the correct decision for those games. But not for WoW.
When I hear why people want hero bans, the conversation usually revolves around a few reasons (I’m sure there are more):
ï® People do not like that the meta stagnates. They believe with hero bans, they will be able to “ban out†the meta heroes thus moving the meta. In general, the meta not moving is perceived by the player-base as bad ï® People are frustrated with the balance of certain heroes. With hero bans, they feel like they can “ban out†the heroes they are frustrated with ï® People do not like playing against certain heroes. With hero bans, they feel like they can “ban out†a hero they don’t want to play against
As a team, we agree with and understand that players want the meta to be more fluid and move more frequently. Even though the vast majority of players only experience the meta through OWL, feedback from GM’s, streamers and YouTubers, we get that the perception of a stale meta is not good for the game. We absolutely have plans to help move the meta more and we’ll be talking about these in an upcoming developer update. We get it. We agree. Make the meta move faster. Ok.
But just implementing hero bans does not mean the meta will move. Studying other games, the end result is usually a “ban metaâ€Â. The downside of a ban meta, is that players are often at odds with each other when someone on their team bans an “off-ban-meta†hero. The same frustrations that players experience with the meta exist in a ban meta. Hero bans are not a silver bullet solution to making the meta move. If the problem we are trying to solve is that the meta needs to change more, hero bans might actually make the problem worse, not better. We do a have a solution in mind – an actual system – that we’ll talk about (next week’s dev update) but it is not hero bans.
In regards to players wanting to ban for balance reasons, the way we plan to address this is with more frequent balance updates. The upcoming dev update will go in depth into the plan and shed light on how we’re going to accomplish this. So we agree that there are balance issues. We agree balancing needs to happen more frequently. We disagree that hero bans are a good solution to balance problems. To us, removing a hero from play because of balance reasons feels like a sledgehammer.
The other reason I listed was that people do not like playing against certain heroes. To this, I am going to give an answer that is not going to be very popular. Basically, it’s a PvP game. You don’t get to pick what the enemy team does. The challenge is overcoming the enemy team with teamwork, ingenuity and skill. It feels really off to me that the other team dictates how or what I play. So if your reason is that you don’t want to play against certain heroes, I think we’ll agree to disagree on this point. We’ve changed out minds in the past. But that’s where we’re at for now.
I hear a lot of people attack hero bans because they only want to play one hero, or “one trickâ€Â… To this, I think our stance is pretty clear. Overwatch is a game about mastering many heroes. We don’t expect you to master them all, but you should play a few of the characters. Now, we don’t explicitly prevent you from only playing one hero. But we also don’t encourage it. We think the game is more fun for everyone involved if you play at least a handful of the heroes. That’s how the game is designed. So defending “one tricking†does not factor in for us when it comes to our opinion on hero bans. We want the meta to move more and one tricking contributes to meta issues. Again, we’re not against one-tricking but we’re not going to overly enable or encourage it. That’s our stance.
There are a few other reasons, we’re reluctant to pursue hero bans at this time as well. We’ve been really pushing for faster match times (there’s a lot going on under the hood on this one). Our philosophy is the game is better if you have quicker matches. The sting of defeat is much less if the match took less time. We’re constantly talking about ways to speed up rounds of OW to allow you to play more. Introducing a “ban phase†to the start of every OW round would add significant time. Your overall time spent on an average night of OW actually shooting stuff would be less. This concerns us a lot. There is also a huge development cost to adding the feature as well (the time commitment would be significant). This last reason is not the one that’s driving our decision making. If we thought it was right for the game (like with Role Queue) we would absolutely make the investment.
I’m looking forward to sharing next week’s development update with you all… I think it will clarify things a bit. But in the meantime, I wanted to tell you where we’re at with hero bans specifically since so much misinformation is being spread right now. I hope those of you in favor of the system don’t go too “doomsday†over this news without having the full picture. Information will be available next week on the plan to balance faster and keep the meta moving. We agree on the problems. That’s the important thing.
So there you have it no to hero bans what do you think?
Yesterday we got the news that the Overwatch dev team is working on something big. That “something†could be hero bans. And today the internet has spoken.
Basically hero bans in a game like Overwatch could be presented a few different ways (for those of you that have never played games with them before). The idea is that when you play a game certain heroes durrIng that particular game or series of games you play that day are banned or locked out of play and you will not be allowed to play those heroes. It could be just for that game or a day or a whole season it depends on how it’s implemented. Most people refer to the League of Legends way of Champion selection and ban where it only lasts that match and you vote what hero gets banned that game however you get to see who everyone is picking beforehand (it’s a little more involved but that’s the easy explanation).
The people have spoken, some for it and some against and some are just confused.
FROM TWITTER
I've been reading a lot of interesting takes on hero bans in Overwatch. Good arguments to be made for both camps. My thoughts? I personally think that the game would need a good bunch more heroes to reap the benefits and strategic depth such a system brings with it.
Depending on how you can ban/protect heroes we could see a brand new overwatch. Looks like the Devs are trying to get very aggressive with the foundation of the game pre OW2!! 💪👍🏻
Bans should not be a thing if you can see the enemy players before picking. I really hope that's obvious to the devs, unless they know something we don't in regards to that I guess. https://t.co/AXV1NE5iCG
Are hero bans coming to Overwatch? One source says yes, and they could be as soon as next week.
Monday afternoon MetroOW posted this on twitter.
Big update for OW is rumored in a few weeks, it is very likely that hero bans will be added to the game as the dev team has been working on them for a while!
He is the same source that dropped leaks about Overwatch 2 at Blizzcon and although he says his source is different, it could at least be this if not something just as important. If you remember last week Eemongg (a popular Overwatch streamer) tweeted that a “big update†is coming soon.
Hero bans are to state it as basic as possible. You wouldn’t be able to pick X hero for one day in comp. There is a lot more to it than that but to state it simply for those that don’t know what it is. I will make a longer explanation article to explain hero bans if Overwatch changes to this method.
I am not sure if this would go directly to live servers as they would probs put it in the PTR and then drop it live after season 20 is over but that’s just my guess based on how they typically have done these kind of changes.
We shall see… What do you think about hero bans in Overwatch?
