Starting in Season 16, Overwatch 2 is giving players the ability to ban heroes from Competitive matches. Any time that an online game introduces this kind of system, there is always a little learning curve. That might be in play two-fold for Overwatch, which in the past, has pushed back against the idea of limiting what heroes can be played in a match. At least on the ranked side, that is no longer the case. Here is how bans work in Overwatch 2.
Overwatch 2 bans – Preferred heroes
In the blog describing the process behind developing bans in Overwatch, Senior Systems Designer Gavin Winter said they want teams to ban heroes that are either very strong or annoying to play against and not take out heroes just because the opposition plays them. With that in mind, during this entire process, you will not be able to see the choices the other team is making. Match text chat is also disabled, so the only people who can see what you type are teammates. Team voice chat is also available.
When a Competitive match starts in Overwatch 2 with bans, you will first see a screen that allows you to choose a preferred hero. This does not act to protect them from being banned from that match. Instead, that is just a way to let your teammates know that you want to play them, and in theory, maybe stop them from voting to ban that hero. Any hero that has a heart icon near them is one that a teammate has said they would like to play in that match.
Voting on heroes to ban
When the voting stage begins, everyone in the match will vote for three heroes they wouldn’t mind seeing banned that game. In total, four total heroes will be banned each match, two coming from each team. There is a scenario where less than four can be banned if enough people select to skip or everyone chooses the same heroes, but that will be extremely rare. Up to two heroes in a particular role can be banned, with one role potentially not having any banned.
The order that you vote in will put more weight on that hero. Here is how that plays out:
- First hero voted – seven votes counted
- Second hero – five
- Third hero – three
So, if you select Mercy, Widowmaker, and Roadhog in that order, you are putting more votes towards Mercy being unavailable than Widow or Hog. If you select Ready without making a choice, you will be passing on your chance to vote to ban.
Once the voting session ends, the banned heroes are revealed.
How the game decides who is banned
- Once the votes for Overwatch 2 bans are in place, the game will first look at which team put the most votes towards a singular hero to be banned. That top vote getter is the first axed.
- If the other team’s top two vote-getters are different from that first ban, those two will then be banned. If one of those two are the same, then the third-highest voted will be banned.
- With the first three bans in place, the game goes back to the first team, and finds the next most-voted hero who hasn’t been banned yet.
- In the case of tiebreakers, the hero who had the most votes for them in the entire lobby will be banned. If that is still tied, the banned hero will be chosen randomly between those options. At any point in this process, if there are already two heroes from a particular role banned, then other heroes who were voted for will automatically be passed over.
On paper, the Overwatch 2 bans system might look a little more complicated than it is.We like the way this system looks so far. The blog did mention that Blizzard are watching to see what heroes are banned the most in games, and that could play into how they are balanced in the future.
