This was originally going to be a rant about the old map ban system, but it’s been changed in the latest update, arguably making things worse. Or better, depending on your perspective.
The current map ban system in Siege’s ranked and unranked modes is broken. For Unranked I don’t really mind since it’s not meant to be a “competitive” environment. (As competitive as ranked is meant to be) However, as broken and poorly designed as I think the system is, that’s only from a player’s perspective. Players will always try to minimize variability in outcome, also known as luck by the creators of Magic the Gathering. From where Ubisoft stands the latest iteration of the map ban system works wonderfully. So let’s break it down. Why do the map bans suck for players but work great from Ubisoft’s perspective? Are the Jedi really evil?
The way the map ban system works is meant to be a mix of FPL style map bans and the game arbitrarily choosing the map for both teams. The game chooses 5 maps from the ranked map pool and both teams get to ban 1. If both teams ban the same map, the game flips a coin between the remaining 4. In theory it’s a good compromise. FPL map bans go through the entire map pool until 1 map is left but this is too time consuming for a ranked mode with a 10+ map pool. Having the game choose a random map is also subpar, since Siege has a pretty bad track record of horrendous maps being stuck in the ranked (and pro) map pools. No one wanted to be stuck on maps like Plane, Hereford Base, or Tower when elo is on the line. Problem is, this compromise wasn’t executed well.
The first issue is that there are a lot of “bad” maps in Siege. I use quotations because it’s not always a problem of the map itself, but the nature of an ever-evolving game. Sure, some maps just suck. Tower, Fortress, Old Favela, New Hereford, there have certainly been some stinkers. On the other hand, some maps just age poorly. Think of how many map redesigns we’ve had to staples like Border, Bank, Oregon, and Clubhouse. So when the map ban system gets implemented, the well is already poisoned by lots of maps that aren’t necessarily the best.
The second issue is the way the map bans work. As mentioned, players want to reduce the variability in their matches. In their eyes it’s best to avoid maps they think are bad in order to reduce the chances of letting the bad map decide the match more than their own skill. So when the game selects 2-5 “bad” maps for the ban phase, things get rough quickly.
Say both teams hate Maps 1 and 2, but like Map 3, 4, and 5. It seems pretty obvious that they’d both be happy if they were able to play Maps 3-5. If the teams coordinated their bans they probably could. It sounds crazy but there have been times where my stack and the opposing ranked stack communicates which map they’re banning. A nice moment of humanity working together to avoid a disaster on Hereford Base. How touching.
However this is a band aid solution. Ranked is a competition and asking for good faith out of random gamers across the internet is asking to get burned. This isn’t a consistent fix to a much more fundamental problem of bad maps and a broken system.
So what are the outcomes of these two teams wanting Map 3, 4, or 5 but having to ban without coordinating? There’s an inherent 50/50 chance that they get put into a situation where Map 1 or 2 is still potentially played. See, either the teams blindly ban both Maps 1 and 2 without coordinating and get lucky, or they both ban the same map. If Map 1 is banned by both teams then Map 2 is in the running to get selected by the game. Sure, in its latest iteration that chance is 25%, which is better than last season’s 50%. That doesn’t make it any less sucky to have a map neither team wanted potentially being played.
If Map 1 is significantly more despised than Map 2, the chance that both teams ban Map 1 to avoid the worst case scenario increases the chance of Map 2 being played. Floating Map 1 and trusting the opponents will ban it is risky when it’s the map your team hates the most. It only makes sense to remove the worst possible map, which most of the Siege community has reached a general consensus on. As a result, teams looking to limit variability will ban Map 1 no matter what the opponents do. But because this leaves Map 2 as a potential map played, players in ranked are punished for minimizing risk in a competitive environment.
In this hypothetical there are 3 maps that both teams want to play, but the odds of them playing one of the two maps they don’t want is higher than you’d want. To avoid the worst case scenario both teams would have to accept playing a map they don’t want, which is insane. But for Ubisoft this is great! From a developer standpoint variety is good. Variety keeps player retention high. Variety is the spice of life. By creating situations where variability is so high, players have to experience more maps. Don’t like Emerald Plains? Too bad, it’s gonna get played eventually 🙂
This isn’t a bad approach to casual and unranked. Players in these modes want to play everything, as seen by how salty they’ve been about Bartlett University’s removal, even after all this time without a map objectively designed without PvP in mind. (Bartlett ranked matches were bad and don’t let anyone gaslight you into thinking differently) Casual players want to experience what the game has to offer, good and bad, because they aren’t trying to reach a high rank. That isn’t their source of fun in the game. This variety caused by the map ban system is great for these players because that variability in outcome creates unique and interesting situations. The issue is that this system aimed at pleasing casual players with a certain disposition is then used for competitive players, with a completely different sense of good and bad. This is like selling apples to the orange loving man and expecting him to be happy about it. It just isn’t going to work.
What can be done?
So what can be done? There’s a few possible changes that could be made so that the map ban system works with players in ranked rather than against them. A simple option would be to increase the number of bans each team gets. Even if both teams ban Map 1 and 2 they still end up playing on Maps 3, 4, and 5. Maps they are perfectly happy playing on no matter what. This is probably the simplest change that could be made, but it would add extra time to the match before playing because you’d have to ban maps sequentially. However, that’s probably a 15-30 second addition solving huge amounts of frustration.
Another simple option is to let players see what the other team is banning, but prevent them from changing their bans. This way you get the benefits of “coordinating” but there’s no room for last second fake outs. Of course this comes back to having to believe in the good will of the other team, so this change’s impact may vary from game to game and ranked stack to ranked stack. This could also encourage games of chicken, where neither team commits to banning a map until they see what the other does. In that case all 5 maps could be floated for the game to decide on.
The last change I thought of is just changing the map bans to map picks. The game’s already given teams 5 maps to choose from, why not let players choose the maps they’d like to play on, rather than kind of remove the one’s they don’t like? Obviously this is a much more intensive change, and would impact both ranked and unranked, but it seems more effective at empowering players while still creating some variability. The one BIG BIG issue is that because players would be choosing the map they play, introducing new maps would take forever.
Siege players are notorious for being slow to adopt new maps and being able to outright choose to avoid them would only make this worse. Chalet’s rework wasn’t accepted by players until Pro League started seeing the map played. Only then did the player base pick up the map. Now Chalet is one of the most popular ranked maps. If steps were taken to prevent new maps from being completely ignored (that’s a very big if) then changing the map bans to a map pick would be something that a lot of players would enjoy more. I can’t speak for the casual player base, I don’t speak the language of mourning Ash/Jaeger Acog in Year 7, but I can’t imagine they’d particularly hate this.
In the end…
However, the most likely outcome is that Ubisoft does nothing to change the current system. Especially given the recent adjustments, this heavy handed way of increasing variety is probably what they were looking to do in the first place. Map bans were added in an era where Outback and Fortress terrorized ranked stacks. From Ubisoft’s perspective they probably get in the way nowadays. Emerald Plains hasn’t been played much because players had so much ability to avoid it and people refused to learn a new map. So while it’s a nice dream to think of improvements that minimize frustration it’s limited to just that: a pipe dream.