You can always change your playstyle with a hero to compensate for the missing parts. Plus within the role,there is plenty of ways to help in those situations if you switch. You do not necessarily have to switch roles to make things doable.
It’s more precise actually for a given role, and in fact in theory you might well be a Diamond DPS but only a bronze or silver support or tank… so now we can just all see it more clearly. What’s wrong with that?
Likewise, one could easily derive a “meta” SR by just averaging your three values together weighted by your actual amount of time in minutes spent playing the various roles. If they do that, then they more likely could allow for role swapping during a match it just occured to me…
Yeah right. That is why the matchmaking if QP and the Arcade had to take huge cuts.
They won’t, because it messes up RoleSR. Specifically they can’t.
what? you are only ever playing the role you first choose so your mmr score for that role will be highly accurate so the games will be very balanced.
it solves the problem of long q time and adds more variety to the comps you play in.
it solves the current problems of 1 mmr score for 3 roles and 30 heros. the anarchy of not knowing player intention before the match and the ability to hard counter or throw via comp selection alone.
I dont know about “killing” Overwatch but the months of having people playing other roles and soft throwing matches are going to be “fun”.
Yeah, its a new SR and MMR so its like an effective reset and those months of adjustment are going to be pure hell, specially because nobody plays comp at the same pace.
This makes absolutely zero sense. Flex players are already known to be able to perform at the same level with multiple heroes in different roles. The only difference is that versatility will be worth nothing because you will NOT be able to switch roles in a match.
Cool stuff.
I’d wager the number of actual players world wide is still over 20 million… the difference is they don’t just play OW anymore as they did for about 1.5 years.
I think role queue will make people more intolerant of bad play from any position.
If you have to wait 15-30 minutes to get a game and then your tank doesn’t know how to tank…I can see this ending badly.
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Play time on a role and the SR granted would be an easy way to parse it out if they actually track it (and they clearly can). I suspect allowing role swapping would create enough questions they may preclude it though, but I think in theory it could be done to get “close enough” but you’re right there is no way that SR inflation wouldn’t occur in some cases and deflation in others.
gee. i wounder why is that.
Other games grow bigger, OW is getting smaller.
True - and yet today the same is true already. No difference really, but I believe there will be more pressure to “play your role” which is good ultimately. I get tired of dive Moira’s and literally having Hogs for instance wandering around flanking… instead of tanking for the team. Role queue starts to force people to take the role more seriously and not just “oh, Iz anotherz DPS…”, though some at lower tiers will always do this.
Most games grow smaller over time, but healthy games stabilize. If the problem is open role queue (to stay on topic), then its a good thing ultimately going to 2/2/2 even if it means losing some. OTOH, we will pick up and more importantly retain others.
If you just want to deride the game and be negative that’s okay with me, the reality of what is is… the reality of what it is regardless of what you or I think. The discussion here is how to help the game in the long run.
if as it appears OW 2.0 formally introduces 2/2/2 and slew of other features like Machine Learning-AI to combat smurfs (which is very effective actually), and new lore and PVE features, and Blizz has committed 20% more development staff, I think its fair to say that the bitter end of turning off the servers is more than a few years out.
Role swapping is not an option. We will get SR for each role and switching mid game will screw the MM. This is part of the game then each role has more responsibility and the opponent might find the comp/play-style you can’t play against.
But it prevent player getting mad and switch role because they think the team suck and they need another tank, while the problem might be DPS. Each role just have to concern with there own role and every role has a “buddy” so there is one person you have to ask “can you play DVa?, no me nether, ok team we need a different strategy”
The technical factor: Not like dps which have a huge array of possibilities.
The “fun” factor: Just because you play some heroes i t doesn’t mean you want or think it’s better to be locked in that role for the entire playtime or match. I won’t spend more money to have another account so I can play another hero, when I can actually just swap by pressing “H”.
I have a friend who is a dps main but it’s very good Dva, if he thinks he would be better as dva in a match but the team needs another offtank he would perform horribly. The choice of a hero relies on you, on the map and on the heroes your team picks. You cannot foresee any of that when you queue for comp. Role queue kills that because people will play heroes like an obligation and the frustration will come.
I know it’s for the better of everybody and there is good intention but it takes away the freedom of overwatch. The problem of OW is not the lack of Role Queue, the problem is the selfish players and the view to the ones with bad performance. RQ won’t solve any of that.
The fundamental issue with a 2/2/2 role lock system would be an issue for hybrid heroes, and players who can capitalize on the hybrid value of said heroes. The most obvious example (of which I have the most experience with at least) is Brigitte played as an offtank next to a main support and a flex support. This comp is extremely versatile against most comps (its more obvious counters are Pharmacy with a sniper as the other DPS and snipercomps), as Brigitte’s sustain and utility make up for the lack of a flex tank very well, and I would be lying if I said I don’t enjoy playing it.
Now the other one is using Mei as flextank, I can see the logic behind it, but couldn’t use it for the life of me. Some vague crossovers can also be effective, thinking of Soldier as flex support but it’s very hard making it work, there’s also slambulance (4-2) which is extremely unfun to play against, but it’s still creative, old Torb also had his uses alongside a good Mercy.
These comps might be very niche or might work differently on each level of the ladder, but they are creative nonetheless, to say the least. Forcing a 2/2/2 would surely kill these comps, as it pigeonholes players into a set number of possible combinations, and it would take away the unpredictability factor of any game.
Also, there are people who have no clue what a flex support is, therefore setting the preferred role should be simple and accessible on the interface, and it will happen more often than not that two flex supports should be healing (which might not work in lower level games) or that there would be no main tanks in a game.
I can’t fully express why I feel bad about role lock yet, but I don’t think I will welcome this change if it ever goes live.
Read the rest of my posts, I agreed they likely won’t do that due to the impact on MMR/SR… unless they weight the MMR/SR gains losses on a ratio of time spent in a role. That still leads to questions of inflation/deflation, so I suspect they won’t go that route after all.
Lets be honest, people gona play their role placements in their best heroes for first time from any class just to go around with anything else later on.
The only good thing would be if people would actualy do role placement in heroes they know, and heroes they bad with, to make any info about “role skill” actualy matters
I can be diamond reaper dps
But bronze soldier one.
It still dont help anything if i gona be in diamond and dont play reaper anyway
In a word: No.
Overwatch is killing itself by not having a role queue.
Players want to go into a game and play the role that they enjoy, and it’s zero fun for me to queue into a game wanting to play tank…only to get 5 dps as my teammates.
I’m sure it’s no fun for them either, because they all wanted to play dps, but they’ll just keep dying over and over without any tanks to take the heat, and without healing.
And if everyone was a flex player, then forcing role lock would be harmful to this core ideology of the game, but people aren’t flexing for the most part. This fundamental aspect of the game is naive, and only works in a perfect world. People are for the most part selfish, even more so on the internet with no repercussions.
People lock the role and hero they want, and hope for the best. If you happen to get a good team comp, great, the RNG this game is built on has worked out for you and you’ll probably win.
People rarely switch to fill what the team needs outside of their role.
So say your team needs to get a Brig instead of a second DPS to counter the Tracer destroying your team.
This rarely happens, the dps will think “I’m playing dps. What dps counters Tracer?” and probably go McCree and do a worse job than Brig would. If your dps does switch to Brig, no doubt someone playing support will think “Excellent, I can switch off support now” or even “I’m a support main, but we need 2 dps…I’ll try” and leaves your team with inadequate healing.
Then of course you get the most common form of ‘filling’.
Team lose 1 fight.
Support says “DPS are doing nothing” and ‘flexes’ onto a damage hero.
A tank gets sick of having not enough healing and ‘flexes’ on damage too.
The team comp falls apart as everyone ‘flexes’ onto damage, and you lose.
None of these scenarios are fun to play. Players don’t switch roles in a constructive, team-oriented way “Hey I’m not doing too good on McCree, I’ll go tank or support if someone else wants to have a try”.
Role queue would either: vastly improve the overall quality of matches or make no difference really. So why not try? There’s nothing left to lose with the game in its current state.
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Good post, lets address the questions from my perspective:
The hybrid question - nothing wrong with hybrids except that when 2 or more are together they often utterly preclude certain other characters, 2/2/2 stops this problem and allows more characters to be played. That being said, its clear from what Jeff and common sense says is that most characters will get balancing under 2/2/2.
Niche comps will go away, and this is not bad. I am a bit tired of the “itz aboutz daz creativitiez” statement when most games are Shimadamaker, Sniperwatch, etc. anyhow. You might call it “pigeonholing” but 2/2/2 actually makes it possible to play more combinations of characters today who don’t see the light of day 90% of the time. it’s a trade off no question, but if it makes for better games overall, the loss of creativity is worth it imho.
The question of people not understanding flexing is exactly why allowing for per role queuing makes sense. if you only want to do DPS, then queue DPS. Simple. But don’t whine when you have to wait.
The reason you “feel bad” is its change, and change is scary, and you fear a loss of agency, its actually a biological hard wiring, you can’t help it. I think we can safely say that the current open 6-stack system is not able to be balanced with any real confidence, and given the roster is projected to grow to between 50 and 70 characters, something has to change.
FWIW, people said the exact same things back when the game was basically no-limits style, where you could run two Mercy’s and say four Torbs against 6 Genjis… few want a return to that. In time, people will have overall a more pleasant and better gaming experience with 2/2/2 with some concessions.
Its like driving on public roads: do we just let every person drive what they want how they want, or do we put some rules into place to make it a better more workeable experience for everyone with say speed limits for how slow and fast you can go? Or do we allow farmer brown to go 15 mph in the same lane as the dude with the Ferrari whos foot is stuck to the floor?
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False.
Overwatch is killing itself by not taking a stance.
Competitive should have a proper forced LFG (with options for Flex players), functional Replays AND scoreboards.
Role queue has nothing to do with it. The game doesn’t magically change because you are locked in a role or not.