Overwatch developer discusses hero bans with Reinforce

While Jonathan ‘Reinforce’ Larsson was streaming from Blizzard HQ on December 6, he got the chance to talk to Overwatch’s lead designer Geoff Goodman and the conversation eventually led into a discussion about hero bans in the game.

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Hero banning is a popular mechanic in many MOBA’s that allows teams to choose a hero the other team isn’t able to select to play in that match.

There’s been discussion pretty much since the game came out about a map or hero ban system for competitive Overwatch, and it’s something Goodman said the team discussed before the game even came out.

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Goodman explained that at this point, a hero ban wouldn’t work in Overwatch in part because of the small size of the hero pool compared to other MOBAs out there.

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“We’ve had a lot of discussions on this, as early as before we even shipped we talked about this kind of stuff,” Goodman explained to viewers. “There’s still maybe potential for it, but it wouldn’t be for a while if we did it, we would need a much deeper hero pool, otherwise it doesn’t really make sense.”

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“There’s definitely the argument that the meta gets mixed up more, which isn’t necissarily true, especially only having 30 heroes,” Goodman told Reinforce on stream. “If you pick a meta comp that has like one specific counter, and you ban that counter, you’ve basically solidified that meta now.”

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So, it looks like Overwatch fans shouldn’t be holding their breath for hero or map bans anytime soon.