Overwatch 2 devs look to introduce hero bans and other game-changing additions

Overwatch 2’s devs announced they are looking at bringing back hero bans, introducing map voting, and in-game tournaments as they discuss further experimentation.

Overwatch 2 devs have previously announced that they’re looking to bring some experiments to the game to provide players with the “best experience possible.” Aside from a new 5v5 format, apparently, the team is considering bringing back hero bans with the addition of map voting and tournaments.

Veteran Overwatch players are no strangers to hero bans. Back in Overwatch 1, there was a period where some of the heroes in the roster were banned for a week, which at one point led to Pharah being so strong that many hit-scan heroes were banned.

While players are aware something like this could happen, that has not stopped the community from wanting the feature back, especially after seeing it in pro play. 

According to Overwatch 2 devs in a recent developer interview with Overwatch 2 streamers Flats and SVB, this is just one of the features the teams are now looking at bringing into OW2.

We could see some big changes to #Overwatch2 in future 👀

Alec Dawson confirmed that the team is now discussing Hero Bans, Map Voting, and Tournaments more seriously and that they eventually want to build towards these features. pic.twitter.com/p0buHTtEmv

— Overwatch Cavalry (@OWCavalry) August 2, 2024

When discussing the future of Overwatch, Game Director Aaron Keller mentioned that some “really exciting things are happening right now internally.”

He said: “How do you introduce people to this magic of Overwatch? I think we have some ideas on some things that we could release to do that.”

“You start looking at it like, what are the things we could do to the core game? To start either improving it from a competitive standpoint or adding strategic depth or player agency to it—in or out of the game, that could be something like a map voting system.”

Lead Hero Designer Alec Dawson also added that the team has been talking about some things “in more seriousness” than “maybe” they did previously. These include “more serious conversations” about hero bans, in-game tournaments, and map voting.

A feature like map voting is something that’s been briefly discussed before, which would be beneficial in offering insights regarding maps preferred and disliked by the community.

All in all, it’s clear that players have a lot to look forward to as new experiments and changes gradually get introduced to the game.