Tell me if any of these sound familiar:

He was useless. Never hit anything it anything, and never swapped off Widow the entire match.

Sombra's awful. Swap to a better DPS or I'll report you for throwing.

We needed a healer, but I couldn't swap cause I was the main tank.

Pharah, their hitscan is obliterating you. You need to swap to a different hero.

Do you know how annoying it is that I want to play Tracer but have to swap because Brig simply exists?

Have you noticed a pattern yet?

Yes, I am bringing this up on account of the whole Seagull thing, and before anyone says anything about switching being a core ideal: Do you remember when Blizzard said that Hero Stacking was a core part of the game? And how nowadays, No Limits is basically restricted to custom games?

Part of the reason that the whole issue with Brig and Doom has lasted as long as it has is partly due to the continued ideology of "Being taken out? Just switch!" The entire reason the one-trick issue is as big as it is, is because people know that they have the capability to swap off their hero. Simply removing the option to do this and half of the issues that end up muddling discussions about team comps and hero balance, immediately vanish.

Having locked heroes in the same way a regular MOBA does also allows a few more things. For one it helps accurately ascertain a heroes power level on account of preventing things like Symmetra Syndrome from occurring, as well as being able to better say things like “Hero X has a 67% winrate against heroes D, Y and Z.” It completely obliviates the fear of Ultimate loss, which is something that a lot of people say makes them less likely to want to switch heroes even when they should. And it also makes the ideas of LFG and proposed ideas like pick/ban lists significantly more effective and easier to use because you don’t have to worry about things like changing heroes.

Now what some people might say in response to this is “Removing Hero Swapping means that games will be won or lost before the spawn doors open.” My response to this is a) isn’t that what 90% of people are saying is already happening? That the levels of Hard counters is so massive that comps decide games over skill? And 2) what do you think happens when this occurs in actual MOBA’s? There are plenty of times in things like League where professionals can say that based on the drafts, it’s much more likely that one team is going to win. However, it’s still possible to win against the odds because locked heroes forces you to take the ‘adapt or die’ mentality to full use. As opposed to the current Overwatch mentality of ‘adapt, die, or swap’. And nobody like having to take the third option.

(Extra: Since I brought up Mobas, I suddenly realised that Heroes of the Storm actually has a few things coming up that might help some of the other problems people have. With regards to playing Competitive, at Blizzcon they announced that they while they were going to allow solo players and teams to queue into the same mode, they are giving solo-queuers a selectable option that means they will only be placed in a match with other solo-queuers. If they don’t take this they run the chance of being placed both with and against premades, so this is the option for people that want to say “Just give me two teams of completely random strangers, and we’ll work it out from there.

The other change is to the Quick Match matchmaking system. (For those that don’t know this, Quick Match is a mode in Hots where you select the specific hero you wish to play, and then the system groups you up with other people while trying to make the match as fair as possible regarding the picks.) Along with the classification rework that separates heroes into one of 6 classifications that better explain their role than the 3½ groups they had before: The new match making system will guarantee that 1 tank, 1 healer and 1 ranged dps hero will be on every team, and then they pair up the other slots on a case by case basis depending on what people are playing. While this is different form the actual ranked play where you draft your team one-by-one and things get brought out that way, maybe just having it be that you have two slots in competitive locked for a tank and a healer might help sort out the team comp issue there.

There’s whole bunch of other stuff happening as well, so for anyone interested heres a link that goes into more detail: http://heroesofthestorm.blizzpro.com/2018/11/04/heroes-storm/)

Tl;dr The existence of hero swapping at this point seems to be bringing out more issues with the game and community than it gives back. Simplifying the game down to a lock-and-play system helps remove a lot of the inconsistencies that can wreak havoc on game balance, and Blizzard should seriously think about removing it like they did with Hero stacking for the future of the game.