Overwatch will have a mechanism to ban heroes, but not for players to decide

The pick and ban mechanism in games like Rainbow Six Siege and Heroes of the Storm allows a player or team to ban characters early in the game, preventing opponents from picking characters that are strong in the map or the meta in general. Overwatch fans have long called for a similar system to be adopted in their games, but Blizzard has staunchly opposed.

This will soon change in Overwatch Season 21. Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan said in the Developer Update video that they will be implementing the “Hero Pool” system, a mechanism similar to pick bans, and that it will launch in Competitive Play. The biggest change is that instead of characters being banned in each game, Blizzard will now ban characters on a weekly basis, in order to “reduce the situation of players stagnation in a meta for too long”.

“Each Hero Pool will last a week, and then there will be a new Hero Pool,” Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan explains in the video. “There will be some heroes that are not in the Hero Pool. For example, in the first week of Hero Pool, when Season 21 has just begun, it is possible that Orisa, Sigma, Mei and Moira are not in Hero Pool. Players have to come up with a new strategy without these heroes, and it will last a week, and then the Hero Pool changes again.”

Kaplan emphasized that Hero Pool will only be available in Competitive Play, while Quickplay or Arcade will not. Depending on the situation, Blizzard may change the system, such as lengthening or shortening the duration of each Hero Pool, or sometimes banning each match. Kaplan also confirmed that the Overwatch League will adopt “a version of Hero Pool,” with details to be announced in another post.

Another interesting change is the appearance of an “Experimental Card” in the Overwatch menu. Kaplan says in the video that the team was criticized for being slow to respond to complaints regarding balance issues. Blizzard often relies on the PTR for testing, but it’s not a responsive system, and new and updated content in the PTR usually doesn’t change much before it goes live. The Experimental Card will allow for more frequent changes by creating an environment similar to PTR, but currently only available to PC players.

“Experimental Cards will bring a lot of changes – they can be hero balance, or related to other things, we can test the changes in one of the modes of the game, like Control mode and how it works in Competitive. It has nothing to do with balance – but the Experimental Card will be used every time the team wants to test something. It allows all Overwatch players, not just those on the PTR side (not including console gamers), to use the Experimental Card to try out the changes.”

A big benefit to players is that since the Experimental Card is included in the official game, any achievements you get, levels, special events, count. Kaplan says that while PTR usually focuses on bugs and stability, Experimental Card will experiment with gameplay changes and players’ reactions to them. The first Experimental Card is expected to launch in the next few weeks.

And yet, Kaplan also warned that Blizzard could change its “philosophy” about Overwatch balance. In the past, balance changes focused on the “stability” of the game with all players, now the game will balance “more often, more proactively, and not afraid to try new things, and if necessary can be withdrawn.”

“We’re going to try some proactive changes,” said Kaplan. “We’re going to be more proactive, target the meta, and push you out of the meta as often as possible.”

Kaplan also mentioned some small changes coming to Overwatch, including the ability to pin and share replays, and new parameters in the profile – a “major change” coming in Overwatch 2. And yet, Blizzard also plan to be more anti-hacking in update 1.45 released in early February.