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Active: 1672 users

The Case for More Bans

Blogs > aboxcar
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aboxcar
Profile Blog Joined May 2013
United States447 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-09-12 07:00:34
September 12 2015 06:59 GMT
#1
Proponents of fewer bans typically argue that this increases hero diversity. If there are more bans, they say, too many heroes will never be seen. But what this really means is too many imbalanced heroes will not be seen. What about the lesser powered heroes? Why don't people advocate for them? Few bans means a small pool of overly powerful heroes will always be ban-picked, and drafting strategy will necessarily revolve around them.

More bans will actually increase hero diversity and allow more strategies to be played.

- With more bans to remove overpowered heroes, there is more flexibility to play other strategies. Teams can develop their own style.

- More bans will give more leeway for respect bans. While this may be unpopular with the fans to see a player's heroes banned out, this actually forces a larger strategy pool and thus more diversity.

- If a strong strategy shows up in a tournament, instead of other teams struggling to adapt to the meta of the tournament, they can use targeted bans. Again, this means more varied preparation is required, not just preparing strong heroes.

Icefrog, please consider bringing back the six bans at the start!
everything that rises must converge
TechSc2
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
Netherlands554 Posts
September 12 2015 09:39 GMT
#2
More bans means a lesser team can ban out the strong meta hero's and win with a cheesy strategy. More bans doesn't equal better games, it usually means less quality games because you can never practise all hero's equally, so you have to focus on 3-4 hero's max per role to be able to stay competative.

With more bans there is also no strategy in your pick/bans, since your opponent doesn't have to choose between a good ban against the picks, or respect bans, he can just do both.

NO, pick/bans are good as they are now.
Twitch.tv/TechGTV / Twitter.com/TechGTV
TRAP[yoo]
Profile Joined December 2009
Hungary6026 Posts
September 12 2015 09:55 GMT
#3
On September 12 2015 18:39 TechSc2 wrote:
More bans means a lesser team can ban out the strong meta hero's and win with a cheesy strategy. More bans doesn't equal better games, it usually means less quality games because you can never practise all hero's equally, so you have to focus on 3-4 hero's max per role to be able to stay competative.

With more bans there is also no strategy in your pick/bans, since your opponent doesn't have to choose between a good ban against the picks, or respect bans, he can just do both.

NO, pick/bans are good as they are now.

you make it sound like every team has 20 bans and can do whatever they want...
i wouldnt mind 1 or 2 additional bans for every team to see a more diverse heropool
FTD
LennX
Profile Joined October 2010
4565 Posts
September 12 2015 10:45 GMT
#4
I don't mind seeing an additional ban in the first phase. Overall we will have 6 bans, 5 picks which is still ok
Mute user function on TL; http://www.liquiddota.com/blogs/491245-mute-annoying-users-in-lr-threads
Mafe
Profile Joined February 2011
Germany5966 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-09-12 11:51:39
September 12 2015 11:51 GMT
#5
The number of bans is just one factor. The order of picks/bans also matters.
On September 12 2015 15:59 aboxcar wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +
Proponents of fewer bans typically argue that this increases hero diversity. If there are more bans, they say, too many heroes will never be seen. But what this really means is too many imbalanced heroes will not be seen. What about the lesser powered heroes? Why don't people advocate for them? Few bans means a small pool of overly powerful heroes will always be ban-picked, and drafting strategy will necessarily revolve around them.

More bans will actually increase hero diversity and allow more strategies to be played.

- With more bans to remove overpowered heroes, there is more flexibility to play other strategies. Teams can develop their own style.

- More bans will give more leeway for respect bans. While this may be unpopular with the fans to see a player's heroes banned out, this actually forces a larger strategy pool and thus more diversity.

- If a strong strategy shows up in a tournament, instead of other teams struggling to adapt to the meta of the tournament, they can use targeted bans. Again, this means more varied preparation is required, not just preparing strong heroes.

+ Show Spoiler +
Icefrog, please consider bringing back the six bans at the start!

This point is just as much right as it is wrong: It would devalue the strategic aspects of dota, but value the ability to play different heroes higher. Preparation should be more than just preparing to play certain heroes. I would argue that pro teams should be able to play 80%+ of all heroes reasonably well so that they can pick then even without much preparation. What's the point of finding new (pocket) strategies if they can be counted by something as simple as 2-3 bans, which would still be available after the "imba" heroes are banned?
In my opinion, if a team analyzes dota better than others and finds good strategies which (all) the other teams dont see, then this team deserves to have a big, and not just a small, advantage.
Reson
Profile Joined July 2014
530 Posts
September 12 2015 18:36 GMT
#6
On September 12 2015 18:39 TechSc2 wrote:
More bans means a lesser team can ban out the strong meta hero's and win with a cheesy strategy. More bans doesn't equal better games, it usually means less quality games because you can never practise all hero's equally, so you have to focus on 3-4 hero's max per role to be able to stay competative.

With more bans there is also no strategy in your pick/bans, since your opponent doesn't have to choose between a good ban against the picks, or respect bans, he can just do both.

NO, pick/bans are good as they are now.


There will always be strategy even if we go back to 3 bans first phase (still 5 bans total) but it won't be as single strategy dominant. Alliance may have still won TI3 (first year the after the ban change), but if we had 3 bans first phase we would have gotten to see More Stuff out of them. They won't have won more than one time against a team with that "cheese" strat if the team had 3 bans.

The current pick/ban order opens up the top heroes and favours using bans to respond to picks.

The previous pick/ban order sets the stage for what can be picked and each team has to respond to opponents picks with picks.

Post TI2, Dota became a lot more strategy dominant and play/execution made the difference mainly when teams were able to break even strategically. Pre-pick/ban change, play/execution was the critical factor while strategy was what gave teams that were even with each other a slight edge.

TI4 VG is another example of a team riding one strategy to success. Again, they may have had other things prepared but by the time they were forced to show it by a team that understood their strategy well, they were already heavily outmatched by Newbee.


The 2 ban first phase (among other things) may have led to more heroes being picked overall but it reduced the incentive for hero diversity within a team. The same applies to strategy. This dilutes the strategic depth of the game. Strategic creativity is more evident when there is an established norm to go outside the box on.
synapse
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
China13814 Posts
September 12 2015 19:36 GMT
#7
are we adding the extra bans to the first ban phase or third phase?
:)
makmeatt
Profile Blog Joined June 2011
2024 Posts
September 12 2015 19:55 GMT
#8
On September 13 2015 04:36 synapse wrote:
are we adding the extra bans to the first ban phase or third phase?

I think from box's case it should be the first one, so that some heroes can get sort of an auto ban.
"Silver Edge can't break my hope" - Kryptt 2016 || "Chrono is not a debuff, you just get rekt" - Guru 2016
TheYango
Profile Joined September 2008
United States47024 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-09-13 08:55:54
September 13 2015 08:54 GMT
#9
On September 13 2015 04:55 makmeatt wrote:
I think from box's case it should be the first one, so that some heroes can get sort of an auto ban.

Strategically, first-phase bans are the least interesting. Since they don't interact with any picks already made by the opposing team, they can only really be used to ban powerful meta heroes, and don't really directly interact with the opponent's draft.

If bans were to be added, I don't think first phase is where they should go. "Too many OP heroes to ban" is a balance problem that can be corrected through better hero balance. Ban phase design should be focused around adding strategic depth to drafting, not around being a safety net for poor balance.
Moderator
aboxcar
Profile Blog Joined May 2013
United States447 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-09-13 17:02:47
September 13 2015 16:58 GMT
#10
On September 13 2015 17:54 TheYango wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 13 2015 04:55 makmeatt wrote:
I think from box's case it should be the first one, so that some heroes can get sort of an auto ban.

Strategically, first-phase bans are the least interesting. Since they don't interact with any picks already made by the opposing team, they can only really be used to ban powerful meta heroes, and don't really directly interact with the opponent's draft.

If bans were to be added, I don't think first phase is where they should go. "Too many OP heroes to ban" is a balance problem that can be corrected through better hero balance. Ban phase design should be focused around adding strategic depth to drafting, not around being a safety net for poor balance.


1) First phase non-interaction is only superficially true, but actually the opening of a dota game is much more the first bans than the first picks.

In the most familiar and simple case where the opening is banning heroes everyone considers overpowered, this directly dictates the first picks. What to let through and what to steal; what not to pick, what to bait.

Consider old metas where there were few viable offlanes. In today's game, this might be banning Clockwerk and Darkseer and stealing Earthshaker, leaving nothing good for the opponent.

The notion that first phase bans are not strategically interesting is quite callow. Mostly likely we are only under this illusion because of the current sorry state of first-phase banning (and first phase picking). First phase bans have the power to open and close the rest of the game to a far greater extent than the first picks. Consider the extreme case of Captain's Draft mode.

2) While in an ideal world, balance is more even and also quickly applied, this is not realistic or practical. There are many, many heroes in Dota and the distribution of power is naturally fickle and untameable. This is exacerbated by Icefrog's tendency towards hard counters instead of soft ones (the merits of which are a separate topic). Furthermore, due to the frequent nature of tournaments, it's not easy to haphazardly push balance patches.

Pragmatically, more bans is the elegant solution.
everything that rises must converge
BluemoonSC
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
SoCal8910 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-09-13 18:49:07
September 13 2015 18:45 GMT
#11
On September 13 2015 17:54 TheYango wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 13 2015 04:55 makmeatt wrote:
I think from box's case it should be the first one, so that some heroes can get sort of an auto ban.

Strategically, first-phase bans are the least interesting. Since they don't interact with any picks already made by the opposing team, they can only really be used to ban powerful meta heroes, and don't really directly interact with the opponent's draft.

If bans were to be added, I don't think first phase is where they should go. "Too many OP heroes to ban" is a balance problem that can be corrected through better hero balance. Ban phase design should be focused around adding strategic depth to drafting, not around being a safety net for poor balance.


where do you think they should go, then? i def don't think they should go in the first ban phase. maybe if the 2nd pick/ban phase was spaced out into 2?

so first phase: 2 bans, 2 picks.

2nd phase: 1/2 ban, 1 pick

3rd phase: 1/2 ban, 1 pick

4th phase: 1 ban, 1 pick
LiquidDota Staff@BluemoonGG_
Buckyman
Profile Joined May 2014
1364 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-09-14 05:43:31
September 14 2015 05:37 GMT
#12
Would the extra bans even be worth the extra few minutes they'd add to the pregame? I don't think so.
Elyvilon
Profile Joined August 2008
United States13143 Posts
September 15 2015 20:31 GMT
#13
On September 13 2015 17:54 TheYango wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 13 2015 04:55 makmeatt wrote:
I think from box's case it should be the first one, so that some heroes can get sort of an auto ban.

Strategically, first-phase bans are the least interesting. Since they don't interact with any picks already made by the opposing team, they can only really be used to ban powerful meta heroes, and don't really directly interact with the opponent's draft.

If bans were to be added, I don't think first phase is where they should go. "Too many OP heroes to ban" is a balance problem that can be corrected through better hero balance. Ban phase design should be focused around adding strategic depth to drafting, not around being a safety net for poor balance.

There is no way to balance a game with over 100 characters and not have some be significantly better than others.
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