Will additional bans ever be added?
Season 1 worlds: 76 champions. 6 bans accounts for about 8% of the champions, 20% of the champions would either be played or banned in any game.
Season 2 worlds: 106 champions. 6 bans accounts for 5.6% of the champions, 15% of the champions would either be played or banned in any game.
Season 3 worlds: 115 champions. 6 bans accounts for just over 5% of the champions, 14% of the champions played/banned in a game.
Season 4 worlds: 120 champions. 6 bans is exactly 5% of the champions, about 13% of the champions played/banned in a game.
Right now 3 bans do not allow for creativity or strategy, it allows teams to ban out champions that are not balanced correctly. I think we can we all agree that it was a complete joke that alistar was available to play for worlds everyone knew that iteration of him was absurdly strong. Before Alistar you had champions like Kassadin or nidalee were basically mandatory bans for periods of time, not because a player was a threat on them, but because ANY player was a threat on them. Teams were forced to waste a ban on alistar/kassadin/nidalee not for strategy but because the champion itself demanded the ban. This is where the current picks and bans fall through. Bans should not be determined by a champion clearly being better than the competition, they should be determined by strategies teams wish to employ, whether it is a specific team comp or target banning a player.
There are a ton of options for picks and bans that can work. Right now the number of bans simply needs to increase otherwise strategy is going to stagnate (I would argue it already has, and games between even teams are not strategy games as much as rock/paper/scissors matches), with bans going to champions that demand it, followed 2-4 popular meta champions. The end result is through the majority of games a single player will play 3-5 champions. Yes you see a couple players breaking this trend, but even the players that play multiple champions still have a core of 3-5 champions they play.
My thoughts on the matter: 5 bans. For us plebeians in solo queue/normals everyone gets a ban, simple enough.
Competitive play again 5 bans, have them at the start, do it like dota where you break up the bans through out the draft phase (This creates actual draft strategies since you can prevent a specific strategy or force a team onto "weaker" champions.) While I think general dota vs lol comparisons should be avoided, the pick/ban phase for dota is infinitely better for the competitive scene compared to LoL's. It promotes strategy and diversity in champion pools, it doesn't matter if one champion is overwhelmingly strong since using 1/5 bans on it is far less punishing compared to 1/3 bans. It allows teams to actually ban to develop a team strategy or truly force a player outside their comfort zone. It is just all around better.
If Riot is really set on the 3 bans, then for competitive play let the teams blind vote on a weekly/tournament basis on champions they want banned collectively. If there is a majority vote on a champion it is simply removed from the pool for that week. This would effectively remove champions teams agree are not balanced at a give time (like say alistar at worlds). If there is no majority then no champion is banned. This is really only a bandaid fix though, either way it is better than the current set up which punishes teams because a champion is not balanced.
I guess my final thought on this matter. Imagine a worlds where Alistar was simply removed from the pick pool and Yasuo, Maokai, Lucian, Lee Sin, Kha'zix, Ryze, Zed, Corki, Tristana, and Zilean could all be banned at one time. What would the games have been like? What champions would have been played? Would it have improved the quality of the games? Would worlds have been more entertaining?
