Overwatch one-ups Marvel Rivals with change they desperately need
Blizzard EntertainmentOverwatch has gone a step forward and one-upped Marvel Rivals with a popular request that the Netease hero shooter desperately needs.
Overwatch’s massive Spotlight event featured plenty of big announcements, such as the new hero Perks system and the release of Freja, the latest Damage character. But one of the most requested features in the game is coming in Season 16, hero bans, following Marvel Rivals’ inclusion of the mechanic.
However, Overwatch has gone a step further than Marvel Rivals and one-upped them, immediately making the change that MR fans are desperately asking for. While we don’t know the full details of how Overwatch’s hero bans will work, we do know one thing, and it might make Overwatch’s ban system superior.
Hero bans will be available for all ranks in Overwatch
In Marvel Rivals, hero bans are limited to competitive, but only for players who are Diamond and above. This is a decently high rank that takes some time to achieve. Combined with puzzling balance decisions that are even getting Marvel Rivals’ players to scratch their hands, the Marvel community believes that bans should be available for all ranks.
Fortunately for Overwatch players, they won’t have to experience this problem. When hero bans are introduced in Season 16, bans will be available across all ranks, as confirmed by Senior Systems Designer Gavin Winter in a stream with b0gur. The mechanic will still only be in effect in competitive modes, but at least it’ll be accessible to all players.
Marvel Rivals has shown that they can be fast to respond to player feedback with the reversal of midseason rank resets. However, they are firmly against certain requests, like its insistence on no role queue. In other words, it’s hard to know whether or not Marvel will adjust its philosophy on bans as the community requests.
Marvel Rivals’ balance is generally more volatile than Overwatch due to team-ups, season effects, and lack of role queue. Toxic combos such as Hawkeye and Hela dominated Season 0, and bans for characters like Cloak & Dagger, Hulk, and Storm are especially common in Season 1.
We’ll see how Netease decides to handle many popular community requests in the future, as it’s important to note that they have not adjusted the triple support issue or hero ban issue at the moment.