The simple reason is that pre-222 you had as much control over your game as you could. And post-222 you have very little control over your game.
All team games regardless of designer intention generally has to account for socially 2 types of player. Jonny I want to win. And Timmy I want to have fun. Overwatch, like very first version of overwatch had a enough room for both players to exist in an uneasy alliance. As long as neither player notices the other, or can effectively mute the other, everyone continued playing.
As the game progressed, people got good, people remained bad, but some of the friction started to show. The assumption that QP is for Timmy and Competitive was for Johnny was an uneasy at best definition of how the actual player base functioned. See a game like overwatch can generate different ideas of what âfun isâ and what âtrying to winâ looks like. How players compensated for that was flexing.
Having players who are willing to flex saves games, which makes Timmy and Johnny happy without neither types of player bumping into each other, or worse bumping into different versions of themselves. Because there is nothing worse in a ranked game than a player who thinks theyâre trying to win, but because limited game knowledge, or pigheadedness, or actually just being a Timmy at heart ends up throwing. Or vice versa, nothing worse than having a Timmy who thinks âhaving funâ is trying to force strangers into playing heroes no one wants to play.
A game community always works when it channels people into things they already like doing without them thinking about it. What helps that is players having choice and freedom. Once you remove that players are exposed for a variety of reasons. It is why LFG failed ultimately. No amount of waiting 15 minutes for a game you will most likely lose because your a bunch of strangers with no communication and bare minimum map awareness is going to change that.
See now players are stuck with their lot in life. Attention is brought to what people are actually doing in game now that the crutch of âwell there is more than 2dps in this game so it wasnât winnableâ is stripped away. 1 DPS slot not playing the right hero or playing poorly? Well GG you wasted 5 peoples time, one of which has waited 7-10 minutes for a game. Tank main wants to play something not barrier. Iâll sit in spawn till you switch, who cares weâre losing anyway.
The system wasnât perfect, but people had coping mechanisms. Ways in which they started to feel less trapped with players they donât want to play with. The first week I played role que ranked and it broke me. I never felt to urge to report players before. Now I report and block every game. Before it was simply a matter of changing roles, trying something different, maybe dig a little deeper in the hero pool. Now itâs an inconvenience to even bother correcting a bad situation. I play tanked and the next game takes me 2 minutes. You 8 minutes if your lucky widow one trick.
Ultimately not everyone who feels this way will go to the forum or spam some twitch players stream. The game was âdeadâ because everyone was playing GOATS. They streamers moved on to battle royals for a month or two, realize their hyperbole and eventually went back. Well except ragtagg but he was over the game because eventually the community does wear on you. And sometimes you got the gaming experience to mute them or deal with them heads on. And sometimes you donât. What we will see is que times get longer as people avoid roles that they feel gives them no control over the game. And players eventually deciding to not log on to overwatch save maybe an invite from a friend.
