There have been talks going around the gaming domain about Hero Pools in Overwatch after it banned Echo soon right after she was introduced in the game. The players all around the world think that there are some issues with the algorithm of the title. This led Blizzard to finally address the issues and gamers can hope for some big changes to Hero Pools very soon.
Scott Mercer has clarified about the upcoming changes in the game briefly in a forum. He has mentioned Overwatch makes massive changes to Hero Pools and removes restrictions from most ranks including that the game will not be available for any ranks below Master in future.
As the Overwatch team wanted to employ the system in the stalest metas, the purpose of these bans was primarily to boost the diversity of characters being played. The post has explained that a diverse range of heroes had already been part of the lower ranks. So the lower rank bans will seemingly not be controlled only by data at the highest level of play.
The developing team is currently in the process of fixing the issues with the algorithm for the Hero Pools. Though the banning had been purely random earlier, now the banning depends on the playtime data from both the Overwatch League (OWL) and top-tier ranked competitive play. The now refined algorithm will only focus on playtime in OWL matches.
As the meta in OWL vs. the ranked ladder is distinctly diverse from each other, this has proved to be a clever step from the Overwatch team. The well-coordinated complete team of six members in the OWL games performs better with heroes requiring good communication and teamwork than in ranked. The new algorithm will temporarily alter to working off of ranked playtime data as soon as the current OWL season comes to a close and come back to life when the new League season begins.
With this particular change, the team will not be a part of the impending 1.48 update to the title. They will resume working on these alterations for a larger client patch in the near future. Hence Hero Pool has shut down for the time being starting from May 4th and will be available only to those in Master and Grandmaster ranks shortly after the patch is finished.
Mercer also included that the Overwatch team still has faith in the objective and vision of the Hero Pools. With the system proving to produce positive outcomes, the team wishes to continue their work at perfecting this feature in the future.
