One Hero Limit Coming to Competitive Play, Sudden Death to be Removed
by JR Cook - 8 years ago show comments
With the reveal of the new hero Ana, we got some interesting news coming from GameSpot who interviewed Blizzard’s Principal Designer Scott Mercer about Overwatch.
It appears that beginning in season 2 of competitive play, a one hero limit will now be applied and Sudden Death will be removed in favor of ending the game in a tie.
There have been a lot of rumblings in the competitive scene that a one hero limit was needed, and it appears that Blizzard ultimately agreed with this. Sudden Death was also a problem and a bit of a coin flip for who would win and while a tie may not be the best way to decide an outcome, it’s still better than the system currently in place.
The One Hero Limit will not carry over to quick play mode. This change will only be on for competitive.
Jeff Kaplan later provided some details on this upcoming change, and it sounds like it could be coming sooner than Season 2:
If you’ve already looked over the PTR patch notes, you probably noticed that we’re experimenting with hero limits in Competitive Play. That’s obviously a big change, and one that’s bound to spark a lot of conversation, so we wanted to take a moment to give you some background and explain why we’re considering it.
Why Add a Hero Limit?
We’ve been discussing the idea of hero limits for almost as long as Overwatch has been in development. It’s been somewhat of a controversial topic, but we’ve always liked giving players the freedom to select any hero, regardless of the team’s composition, because it opened up the possibility for tons of crazy strategies and match-ups.
In Quick Play, where things are intended to be more relaxed, this is fine. But in Competitive Play, we feel that hero stacking is becoming detrimental and leading to some not-so-great player experiences. For example, we’ve seen organized teams on Assault and Hybrid maps use hero stacking to overtake the first point before the defense has a chance to counter. We’ve also seen players use specific stacked compositions just to frustrate their opponents or cause indefinite delays in overtime (among other strategies). While this kind of thing is certainly possible in any mode, the higher stakes of Competitive Play means these kinds of tactics were popping up more often than anyone would like.
Ultimately, we found that we agreed with a lot of the community’s feedback and believe that hero stacking is making the game less fun for competitive players.
So, What Next?
Once we decide that a system isn’t working, we try to fix it as soon as possible. Luckily, this was a relatively simple change for us to make, so today’s PTR includes a mechanic that limits the number of each hero in a Competitive Play match to one per team. If the change addresses the problems like we’re hoping it does, we’ll roll it into the upcoming PC, PS4, and XB1 patches once our public testing is complete. If not, we’ll hold off and explore other possible solutions.
If you have a chance to check out the PTR and the new hero limit in Competitive Play, we hope you’ll discuss your experience with us. To find out how you can access the PTR and/or read the latest patch notes, click here. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think!
What do you think about these upcoming changes to competitive mode? Are you for the One Hero Limit? Let us know in the comments.
