Those that have read my previous posts, or have butted heads with me know by now that I am adamantly in favor of introducing 2-2-2 as soon as possible to competitive environment.
This topic is not about 2-2-2 and why is it good or bad.
This topic is about trying to find a compromise that would still afford us the best of both worlds if such a thing is even possible. It is debatable if compromise is the best solution, but that’s not the point. The goal here is to determine if we can find a compromise that would still offer us improvements to what we have right now that we can all agree on.
I would like to start by listing the more common arguments AGAINST 2-2-2 that people have pointed out, that I will classify as problems 1, 2 and 3.
Problem - “2-2-2 punishes flex players”
Problem - “2-2-2 punishes dps players via queue times”
Problem - “2-2-2 takes away our freedom to run weird comps”
I also submit the following things to be true as arguments for 2-2-2;
Statement: - "Most support and tank players don’t find solo tanking or healing enjoyable.
Statement: -“Role based SR will improve matchmaking experience on average, because the teams should be more balanced”
Possible solutions:
Introduce a “flex” role in addition to dps, support and tank roles.
I submit that 1-1-1 - 3 (flex) as basis for the matchmaker.
Starting composition, or the “safe comp” should be 2-2-2 and the remaining three free slots should then be distributed on first come - first served basis among flex players. All six players can then vote to unlock additional comps with some rules;
Rule: -Type of compositions that are available (can be unlocked) are directly influenced by the type of flex players on the team (read below for clarification).
Rule: -If a player does not vote in time, it is taken as he or she has given their consent to popular opinion.
Rule: -Votes are final and private
Rule: -Majority wins, but tanks and supports can veto by voting no.
Flex role should be further divided into 4 types of flex players with separate SR for each:
Tank / Dps / Support
Tank / Dps
Dps / Support
Tank / Support
In addition to this, I’d implement a few more rules:
When the system places you at a certain SR as a flex player; system should also automatically award you the exact same SR for all other roles your flex type encompasses.
Rule 1 should also work in reverse. Example; If you achieve 3400 SR as a Tank / Support type flex type player and then proceed to achieve 3400+ SR as a DPS only player, Tank/Dps or Dps/Support player - you should be able to queue up at 3400 SR as type 1 player.
You’ve seen my post, you know my thoughts, I don’t really want to rehash all that again.
This looks pretty good overall, and I don’t think I have any strong objections.
I like this. It (sort of) mitigates the problem of 3 dps players using flex to get faster queues. Kinda. At any rate, it allows comps that play to the strengths of the team members. I also think that separating the different flex types goes a long way towards preventing abuse of the flex system.
Is it fair to take an absence of voting as implied consent? Since we’re starting from a presumably balanced comp, I would think that we’d want to take an absence of voting as an implied vote against. Not a huge issue, but I think it should require active participation to actually change the team comp. But like I said, this isn’t really a huge point of contention for me.
Mixed feelings honestly. Gut reaction was that this would prevent harassment of players who don’t vote with the herd. Second opinion was that it might hinder communication, which is necessary when deciding whether to change comps. Again, not a huge issue for me though.
This is the rule I’m most interested in, and the main reason I started commenting here in the first place.
While I love that this rule protects the disgruntled solo-tank/heal from being outvoted by 4-5 dps mains, I wonder whether we should be giving a veto to any one class over another. Why does the 1 dps main who doesn’t want to play triple tank/support matter less than the 1 healer who doesn’t want to keep 5 dps alive?
That’s why in my proposal I called for a balanced starting comp, and toyed with the idea of requiring a unanimous vote to make changes. I don’t know whether the unanimous vote is a good or even practical idea (in fact I’m fairly certain it isn’t practical), but I still don’t feel great about giving the solo tank or the solo healer more veto power than a solo dps.
Problem - “2-2-2 punishes flex players”
I’m a flex player and I totally disagree with this point. First of all, if someone is dedicated flex, he/she can still change queued role from time to time. Secondly, if someone is a flex player because he/she feels forced to pick a missing role (like me), now they will be able to choose their main role without remorse.
Problem - “2-2-2 punishes dps players via queue times”
This is the real problem and it is up to Blizzard to make Tank and Supp roles more appealing to players.
Problem - “2-2-2 takes away our freedom to run weird comps”
Make 6v6 premade queue without restriction and only force OWL premade teams to play 2-2-2 while on stage. I have never seen a lobby in my comp matches where someone said let’s go 6 DPS and everyone agree and if I get 4 men premade, telling me we need to go with their tactic because they want to, it only makes me want 2-2-2 even more.
Edit: Flex role will actually hurt flex players more than help them. Unless they are up against other flex, they will play against someone who mains that role.
This is literally the same argument I had. Don’t get me wrong. I 100% agree with you here. I am a dedicated flex player that can play over 20 heroes from various roles. I am perfectly fine “flexing” within a role. However, there are many players that don’t feel like I do about flexing. Most of the time they disagree with my definition of flexing. Their definition of flexing is someone who changes roles based on maps, will somehow switch to another role during a match (even though I pointed out that usually leads to tilting). However if they don’t have as large of a hero pool as “true” flex players, and instead have opted to “flex” to toons within other roles - maybe only 1 or 2, I do see how forcing 2-2-2 might affect them adversely. Furthermore, the argument they made (again I agree with you, I am just playing the devils advocate here) is that that’s not the “overwatch they play”.
I think we need more tanks and supports in general, so no argument there. This is about working with what we have now, because it will take a looong time until the number of tanks and support catches up to number of dps toons.
There are several problems with this imo, though I do not disagree with you on principle. Firstly, I believe it causes viewer dissonance with what they 're watching and what they’re playing - something that others have frequently brought up. I believe this makes people less interested in watching OWL in the long run. The weird comps I am referring to are comps other than 2-2-2 like 3-3, 4-2, 3-2-1, 1-4-1 and I should have probably been more clear about it.
I would be inclined to agree with you if they were playing against a main of the role they are flexing to. However, assuming 1-1-1 - 3 setup, they will be put against other 3 flex players. Honestly, I think 2-2-2 would be better option, but this is all about making a compromise solution that satisfies both sides of the table and still makes the game experience better.
edit: if you were referring to the SR fixing I mentioned earlier and how it would affect them adversely, that’s something I came up with to avoid intention “gaming” of the system and putting people closer to their true SR without them having to redo their placement matches. I do not claim it is a perfect solution by any means, but I am hoping it is " good enough ".
This is my definition of flexing, and it does not lead to tilting. I’m not sure what makes you think this way? It could lead to tilting if TELL someone to “GET OFF XXXXX!!!” But if you do so respectfully, it never does. Most people just want to win. If you offer politely, usually people are much more receptive.
I would argue that we already have enough. The thing is, in any other game, the tank and healer is usually ONE per reach slot. That’s how it was traditionally for virtually any game. One sword/board, one healer, and x-amount of DPS.
Instituting a forced 2-2-2 assumes that there are more healers/tanks when in reality, most games never made that mandatory to begin with, so there are naturally less of these types of “complimentary” players. If all the previous games you played all had a 1-1-x setup, going to a 2-2-2 is going to feel like “not enough” for those two roles. You know what I mean?
Fully agree that we can’t have forced 2-2-2 without more healers and tanks.
Don’t agree that we have enough. And I don’t know much about other games, but quite frankly I like that Overwatch does some things differently than most other games.
About viewer dissonance, premade 6v6 won’t be restricted and people still will be able to play the same 2-2-2 that the pros do. I only meant forced 2-2-2 role queue in solo-up to 5 man premade and pro OWL matches. On the other hand, I don’t really care about OWL. There are no teams from my country so even if they started playing other things beside GOATS, I’m still not sure if I give it another chance.
For 1-1-1 and 3 flex, it would need to be less complicated and faster than what you described.
There is one thing that beats all arguments about this whole discussion if we should add forces role queue or allow other comps:
If everyone play 2-2-2, developers will have much easier time to balance the game and adding another way to not play 2-2-2 (like 1-1-1 +3flex) will hinder devs in balancing the game.
Some people tend to be afk just before the game begins. I figured this would be fair(er) to those present. But honestly, what you suggested is not a point of contention for me either.
In retrospect, I am not sure if the private thing would work with 5 stacks and 4 stacks as intended, so it probably should not be private since it then no longer serves the original purpose of preventing the harassment of players that I had in mind when i made the original post. Yes, I think that it would be better if votes weren’t private and weren’t final.
Already replied in previous thread; but will repeat myself here just for sake of consistency. It merely slipped my mind that a dps would vote against extra tanks and supports. However, looking at what type of dps he should be running in 1-3-2, it becomes kinda obvious to me why they might not want to agree with running said comp because they have to run very specific dps.
I have vastly different experience than you do unfortunately. Maybe it’s because I play EU, or maybe because I am usually forced to play tank role as flex, and hmm; maybe it’s better if I give you a very real example of what happens to me personnaly frequently:
I play Orisa on Illios Well because pull is so strong there.
I will switch to Reinhardt on Lighthouse instead of Orisa.
If I want to switch to Widowmaker on ruins because I am a pretty darn good widowmaker and can carry on that map, Team will immediately accuse me of throwing before I can make a case for myself.
I’ve played enough MMOs and RPGS to get where you are coming from. However, I do feel we could use a bit more variety. People sometimes click with certain heroes. I feel like if we had more variety of tank and support heroes, there’d be more people that would “click” with them and play them.
I think we already have that though, no? For example, we have skill-shot supports, we have tanky supports, we have laser-aim supports, and we have hold-click supports. We got tanks that are sword/board, we got tanks that pewpew, we got tanks that land skill shots (hook), etc.
I just think not many people are simply designed for tank/healing. They’re roles with particular “responsibilities.” Some people don’t like taking on a role that requires them to have additional duties.
Just look at real life if you want to experience this. I’ve worked long enough to know that many people simply don’t want the added responsibility of being in management or oversight. They’d rather just do their function and go home for the day. Tanks/healers are the same way. They’re looking out for their team and doing the “dirty” work instead of just clicking heads.
Again, I agree with you. GOATS would be finished, Brig could be balanced around 2-2-2 because her main weakness is being run in only 2 support scenario and role stacking (aoe heal stacking) would be done and over with. Buuut, this is about making a compromise. They feel like this would restrict their options ( and on paper it would), even though you and I might feel different about it.
1-1-1 +3 flex is basically what we have now, with no change or restrictions placed upon anyone, except for those that players agree on themselves during the start of the match. It would hinder them no further (apart from implementing 1-1-1 + 3 and thus possibly taking away resources from the balancing team).
I feel like one of the main problems in the current competitive environment, is that when we queue up we really have no clue what kind of game we will get. It could be a great game, or a game immediately lost on the hero selection screen. Will we get 4-5 dps in one team? Or perhaps multiple supports or tanks that can’t properly flex to dps? Maybe even a disgruntled flex player that is tired of having been forced to play tank for last three games? Everything’s a possibilty which ultimately results in a lot of chaos in the ladder play that negatively impacts our experience and causes us to needlessly tilt and take it out on others. This (imo) would go a long way in tempering peoples’ expectations.
Do you have something in mind? I think it could be designed to be fairly streamlined ,but I am open to alternatives. Again, this is about making a compromise solution that makes the game better for everyone on both sides of the table.
//quoted you so I don’t have to wait for another reply before I can post mine.
I certainly don’t feel like that though!
My two most played heroes are Reinhardt and Widowmaker.
Widowmaker is a selfish pick.
Reinhardt is anything but a selfish pick.
I love playing Rein (who requires no aim and ironically widowmaker who is all about aim).
I would really like a main tank that can click heads and reward my good mechanical skill with aiming. With Orisa you have to lead your shots and it doesn’t feel as nearly as satisfying. It’s also rewarding being the shotcaller, and creating space is pretty intuitive for me because I know what kind of lines are advantageous for hitscans behind me and I am mindful not to LOS my ana.