Require players to certify that they possess a simulation proven understanding of the abilities and mechanics of a hero before allowing them to play that hero in Competitive. Also require role certification prior to queuing for a role.
Details:
Every character would need some sort of repeatable obstacle course where each of their abilities could be utilized to help them escape death or quickly and efficiently kill enemies. Only once a player could execute the obstacle course for a character to a certain proficiency could they use that character in a competitive match.
Before being allowed to queue for a particular role, they would need at least 3 characters certified in that role.
This wouldn’t satisfy their need to understand the teamplay aspects of the game, so we should have core scenarios could teach that to players before they’re allowed in competitive as well. These role specific scenarios could teach them about what their role is, and how they use the tools of their role to make their team successful.
These processes of certification and teaching could be used instead of the level 25 requirements as a gatekeeper into competitive.
Or you could just say f#@% it… our MMR and matchmaker is pure garbage. Let’s just rely on the law of averages and chuck every new account into mid-gold. Which would be the right answer 60% of the time. And it makes it seem like our MMR system isn’t the hot garbage that it is.
Well, the proposal is definitely for mandatory requirements. I think this should be a replacement for the level 25 requirement to enter Competitive.
People wouldn’t have to certify themselves on every hero, just 3 in the role they want to queue for.
Also, if the game has significant changes, like when Role Queue was introduced, the certification process should be updated, and people should be required to re-certify I think. That way they fully understand the changes to the game.
For anyone above silver, the recertification process would be absolutely trivial. They could demonstrate their abilities within about 2-3 minutes, and be on their way.
I could see it as mandatory to “certify” on a couple heroes before getting into comp. Just to check for effort if nothing else. But locking individual heroes behind hours of time and unlocking tests doesn’t work in a game like this. It could work in a game like league where you can only play one hero per game as it is, but in OW? It’d only create problem. Imagine the countless times you’d see “OMG WE NEED A HITSCAN OR A SHIELD OR A MAIN SUPPORT” yet both damage/tank/support players don’t have one of those unlocked, so they tell their team that only to hear. “LIAR! YOURE JUST THROWING!” or “THE GAME JUST WANTS ME TO LOSE SO IT PUT TWO PEOPLE WITHOUT THAT UNLOCKED ON MY TEAM!”
The whole point of the game is to be able to play whoever you want whenever you want. Yeah they could require you to “certify” in at least one of each subcategory like main/off support and main/off tank and hitscan/projectile, but all that does is over complicate it and force people to “certify” on heroes they may have no intention of ever touching. Of course don’t pick up a hero for the first time ever in comp but the idea of locking individual heroes behind a test is unnecessary and just overdoing it.
Like I said, some sort of requirement to “certify” on a couple heroes or a general test for each role in order to get into comp could work but anything more specific than that or locking individual heroes just creates problems without really solving any. Bad and troll players will just “certify” and continue to play with their bad habits, I think everyone had one test in school that they took because they had to and just forgot most of not all of the information after it was done because they didn’t care.
Not to mention that this would only reinforce players who want to be inflexible and pseudo one trick. Oh my team wants me to swap off my hero that’s the only one I want to actually play? Well I don’t have any other better ones unlocked so too bad team.
A general test/tutorial for each role would be better and especially if it can encourage flexibility, if not in hero choice then in play style (perhaps something where they get one shot by a sniper when going down the path they were initially told to go down so they are pointed to off routes to take them out). The game is a too dynamic to each given match in terms of what the “best choice” is in order for specific tests or guides to be that helpful, that’s why a lot of guides from even pro players can condradict each other, because there isn’t always a “right” choice, instead there are often 3 or more plays that can work well and the player is up to find which one works best for them.
You’ve been like-stalking me for a while. Glad to have the opportunity to say hi, and thanks for the feedback on my posts
Remember, the intention is only to demonstrate competency with the mechanics of a hero. For anyone that already knows how to play a hero, this intended to take 2-3 minutes to certify.
I agree that this should be the spirit of Overwatch overall, but I disagree that this should be the approach that people are encouraged to take in Competitive. Honestly bronze and silver people should be encouraged to play fewer heroes, not more. Climbing with an effectively smaller hero pool should be encouraged.
Maybe, instead of just requiring people to certify in 3 random heroes for a role, they are required to certify in 2 heroes for each of two major sub-roles. So, for tank, maybe split it into Main Tank and Off-Tank? For Damage, split it into Hitscan / Projectile? Maybe Damage should be Short range / Long range? Damage is hard to split into two main categories. For Support, Main / off support might work. That would require Blizzard to pick those sub-role names and assign them to each hero. They seem resistant to that.
So, even if sub-roles were defined well, I think we should actually be intentionally encouraging players to focus on fewer heroes, especially sub-gold competitive. None of this should be interpreted as something that is important for Gold or above. This is intended to teach people the basics of competitive play, since just going into QP doesn’t actually teach people things.
Maybe the certification requirements could be higher before you’re awarded a tier medal… If you want to go from Gold to Plat, you need to certify all the heroes in that role. This is just brainstorming. I do not intend this to impact plat or higher. Maybe once you make Plat, they just auto-unlock. Maybe if you place above 0 MMR (above 2350 SR), you auto-unlock everything, and the locks are only present during placement games, or if you place Silver / Bronze?
People who hate on one-tricks in gold and below are just looking for excuses to be toxic. There is no meta in gold and below. Any hero can be used to contribute, and any team can counter someone who belongs in gold or below.
I agree with you. Everything in my proposal should be seen as something that only impacts truly new players, and only for the better.
In fact, maybe the number of certifications in a role also would influence the starting place for placements? If you are completely brand new to shooters, you are encouraged only to unlock a few heroes and placements start between Bronze and Silver instead of completely average. If you have played shooters before, they encourage you to certify more heroes, and if you want to start placements at the top of gold, bottom of plat, you can certify all the heroes in a role.
Still just brainstorming here. I know it’s not a thing that would be trivial to implement, as there would be quite a bit of development effort required to even create a hero certification. Then there’s also the unintended consequences, that would have to be worked through and studied.
It’s entirely possible that this would make the smurfing problem worse, not better. Though, at this point, showing people level borders in competitive can only be a distraction. I’ve never seen it cause people to treat others with more respect or less toxicity. I’m not sure that account level communicates anything beneficial in competitive. Having it available for all the other game modes might be fine, but this is getting into a whole other area. How it relates to this proposal is the requirement of getting to level 25 to start doing competitive. The level 25 requirement does not sufficiently prevent smurfing, nor does it sufficiently prepare truly new players for competitive.
For what benefit? It’s time spent that doesn’t make them and is a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist.
If people are actually bad at their heros, they’ll fall to the rank they belong and if you’re at the same rank as them, you’re not as good at your heros as you think you are. Or at the very least, your mechanics are worse. People are at their rank because a combination of mechanics, game sense, and positioning. People with great aim can win games even if they’re completely lacking in game sense and positioning so if you observe a teammate with these bad traits, their aim is probably a lot better than yours or they wouldn’t be at the same rank.
It really can’t and should not be tied to ranks and what tier a player is able to play in. Yeah it sounds nice in a perfect world but forcing players to do stuff, anything at all even, to “unlock” heroes they have no intention of playing is a bad idea. Not to mention that it would effectively enable smurfing for those who really wanted to and give them a legitimate excuse. Player who should be in diamond placed in gold and staying there? “Sorry I don’t want to unlock any other heroes.”
It’s not a bad idea in a perfect world but the reality is if we have to choose between enabling/pseudo encouraging one tricks and encouraging people to try heroes they aren’t as familiar with, I have to go with the latter.
Yeah they could do a better job of teaching the game to people who want to learn but putting in “tests” for each hero and locking each one behind it until completed just makes it over complicated for very little gain. One general test for each roll and/or pass a couple heroes individual tests before broad access to comp is enough, especially with a more detailed tutorial/teaching tool, they could probably even get someone like Jayne to help design it.
Same question could be asked about the level 25 requirement for Competitive. So Blizzard does think that there should be some prerequisite to Competitive, this is just a discussion about whether having more training available and a certification process would be an improvement over the current setup.
For new players, this would be much more instructive and targeted. They could be encouraged to focus on learning a smaller number of heroes.
This is not intended as a strategy to eliminate bad players from MY games. It’s intended as something that could help new players and give them focus. I think so many new players get to competitive completely aimless and not understanding anything about what they should be trying to get good at. These certifications could make it so that they know mechanically what they are expected to do with a hero.
Teaching new Mei players that the ice wall can be used to divide up the enemy team would be really beneficial. Teaching Rein players about shield hopping would be beneficial. It wouldn’t instantly make these players platinum, but it would make it so that people know more about how their hero works before they take it into comp.
The locking aspect is only for new players, and is intended to help these new players realize that abilities and mechanics for each hero are super important. You can’t just jump into games and expect to get the same value out of all heroes by running around left clicking and right clicking on people.
Just teaching people about what range a hero is strong with, or what abilities are best at short or long range is a benefit people would get.
People can basically make zero progress in their understanding of the game for 25 levels of arcade and quick play. Having these tutorials and certification processes would provide structure for people and let them focus on the core mechanics.
For people that are not new to shooters, the certification process shouldn’t take very long. In fact, for people that actually understand the mechanics of a hero, I would expect it to take 2-3 minutes per hero. It would take a “test first” approach to evaluation. Here, repeat this that I’m about to show you. If they succeed, move on to the next technique. If they fail, then it explains more about it. If they keep failing, it introduces an easier version to try, etc.
It’s all just brainstorming. It’s a proposal. It’s OK if there are some changes to what I’ve suggested because I have only just thought about it for a relatively short amount of time. There may be things I’ve communicated poorly, or there may be ideas that I have that just wouldn’t do what I hope.
Edit to add more responses:
Since this is a proposal, and a brainstorming activity, I would request an open mind and for you to consider things from different angles. Maybe something I said was misleading, or maybe something you said was a thing I didn’t understand. Since this doesn’t exist, neither of us can be certain which parts of it would be effective. It is also a complicated proposal, so I’m certain that there are parts that are more complete in my mind than I have been able to convey with text.
I meant they couldn’t queue any more. Not that they could arbitrarily keep playing in a rank that’s too low. Also, see the auto-unlock brainstorm.
Maybe you’re thinking of the tier you’re in more than bronze / silver.
In bronze and silver, I’m not really certain there’s any actual harm in one tricks. Honestly, I think it’s one of the best ways to climb out. There is no meta, and no one who belongs there should be so good at a hero that it needs to have someone switch to a hard counter.
There are effectively one-trick players in OWL as well. So, I’m not certain that preventing one-tricks is a worthy aim.
Blizzard can and does force people to do things if they want to participate in things. There is an existing level 25 requirement to enter competitive. Consider this a change in the requirements to enter competitive. One which will be much more targeted and focused on teaching new players.
I don’t think it is completely without merit to require people to unlock heroes they don’t want to play in comp. I think even in gold there’s a great deal of benefit in understanding the mechanics of heroes you will face.
I agree very much that it would be cool to get input from the community of content creators to make something that actually teaches the right things and tests the right things. It may have been lost that this is a proposal for both hero specific certification, and general role certification. Where the general role certification would talk and test in more general terms about the duties of each role, not the specific mechanics of a hero.
I’m not certain that all this teaching / testing is for little gain. It’s not a fun experience for someone who belongs in bronze to start playing in gold. This type of a certification process could be used to seed where people start in placements. If someone truly belongs in Bronze, the experience right now is usually one of a few variations…
One category is the “Only do placements” set. They do placements, maybe they go 1-4 and they’re discouraged, so they don’t play comp. Next season they come along and maybe they go 1-4 again, and their SR drops by a couple hundred. Repeat until they either get better somewhere else, or they finally buckle in and play post-placement matches. If they belong in bronze, it’ll be a fairly disappointing experience, falling over 500 SR… Maybe over 1000 SR if they belong in low bronze.
Then there’s those that decide they need to get someone to help them… A well meaning friend who might belong in Gold pairs up with them. Maybe this slows his descent, but it will likely drag the friend down too, because his skill is not high enough to overcome the lack of skill in the bronze friend. Maybe they turn to LFG, “because the game is more fun with other people”. Now more people are dragged down by this person’s decline, but it’s probably lengthened by the people who are trying very hard to help.
I suppose there’s the “quit competitive forever” category, which is good for the competitive environment in the short term, but bad in the long run. Good in that it eliminates the games that are negatively impacted by that player’s losses, but bad in that the overall population shrinks.
But if this certification process could detect how quickly the person was able to certify heroes and used a combination of asking the player about their game playing history and the performance of the tests in order to figure out where to start their placement matches, this could have a huge positive impact. It could make people get into games where they belonged more quickly and without the potential damage to the existing ranks.
Having a testing process that was a really rough measurement of what tier a person might belong in could completely destroy a whole category of smurf blaming.
There’s a pretty major difference there. Playing non comp modes to get to 25 is still mostly playing the same game modes (escort, hybrid, control and payload) overall and being able to play heroes who they want to at all times. Not requiring them to play something or some hero they don’t want to at all which is what you’re proposing.
It actually is completely without merit to have it be a MANDATORY REQUIREMENT. Of course it helps and I myself try to familiarize myself with as many heroes as deeply as possible. It should be encouraged as should many other things, but making blatant requirements is overkill and unnecessary. Very little gain while over complicating the system to an extreme degree.
Also it would do absolutely nothing to help with smurfs. Know why? Smurfs already throw placements or buy pre leveled/thrown accounts in order to play in a low rank. They’d just swap to “throwing” their certification or buying accounts from people who have dropped to bronze for them.
I’m not saying nothing can be done, what I am saying is your proposal faded more into over correction than anything else.
What rank are you in? I’ve been mostly playing destiny lately but I wouldn’t be opposed to jumping into some games together.
I’m still convinced that 90% of the things you’ve listed really aren’t the responsibility of Blizzard. They create the game and the heroes based around a set of rules. What you choose to do with the hero is how you define a “player’s” creativity.
Think of the people who created the Doomfist rollouts that everyone tries to mimic these days… I guarantee the dev’s did not expect/intend for Doom players to come up with so much of these plays and yet…
Based around the available rules of the game, players have developed their own way of playing the hero. And its magnificent…
I’m solidly 1900. I’m also a software developer, so that may help when thinking about how I’m thinking through this problem. Not sure if there’s a way to privately message you, or facilitate a friend request. Also, though, I absolutely never group for Comp. So, if we played together, my SR wouldn’t matter, because it wouldn’t be for Comp.
I know I’ve said a ton of things in this thread, so it may be tedious to read it all , but welcome to the thread and thank you for contributing.
I agree that the creativity of playing a hero is one of the amazing things about this game. I don’t see bronze - gold games being a source of that creativity. My proposal is only intended to impact bronze - gold games, and really mostly bronze and silver players.
If you see something I’m suggesting and your objection is primarily something to the effect of “Yeah, but plat+ players would be hindered by this”, then we just need to clear up that as a misunderstanding. I don’t intend for this to have any impact at all on plat+ skill level players, other than possibly getting them into placements sooner.
When talking about smurfs, or people who just get fresh accounts, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, especially if they get to the right SR quickly. Getting new accounts or playing multiple accounts isn’t inherently something that should be prevented. My proposal is actually intended to work in such a way that it is easier to do the certification process than it is for someone to level from 1-25. People honestly creating new accounts for the purpose of separating their play history or working on different heroes without impacting their main account doesn’t damage the game.
Yes, but in the other thread you’ve talked about the amount that the game has progressed, and I would think it would be cool if amazing advanced techniques had a structure to practice them and know about them wouldn’t it? Blizzard could add new techniques to the training (maybe not make them required skills) as players learned cool new things.
Also, I think if they invested more in the existing heroes instead of just trying to roll out new ones, maybe it would be easier to balance the game
But it doesn’t have to be. Someone can level to 25 on Lucioball, or team deathmatch. (anything in the arcade).
This type of tutorial / mechanics training / certification as a requirement would be far better than just an arbitrary level requirement.
I’m only proposing that we “require” that they know more than one hero. There’s a little bit of fuzziness on whether sub-roles should be bridged (knowing two major types of heroes) or whether just having a certain number is enough. I think knowing 2 heroes is a definite minimum, in case you only know one hero and the other person insta-locks the one you know. I also don’t have any intention of requiring specific heroes. If they want to certify and place with only Bastion and Torb, then they could.
Since this is a brainstorming thread, I’m very interested in knowing what types of scenarios you are imagining that this is too burdensome. Is it the development requirement that is too burdensome? Is it too burdensome on highly skilled players? Is it too burdensome on low skill players? Help me understand.
I think it’s important to note that I don’t see smurfs and throwers as the same thing.
People who are genuinely new players and possibly truly belong in Bronze are blamed for ruining gold games because they are “throwing”. This is just a new player problem, and if we could tie the tutorial / certification process to initial placement location, I think this would help.
Throwers suck, and I mentioned a whole different thread above on one thing I think we should do to combat that.
The other category of problem is just the people who are new accounts that belong in very high ranks but aren’t doing anything other than playing their best. I think those people already impact very few games, because the most skilled people rise very quickly.
So, when evaluating this idea, we must compare it only with the current restrictions on competitive when it comes to how much it would change any certain player behavior. When it comes to throwers, this change in requirement as a precursor to getting into Competitive games is fully neutral. In other words, throwers will still get in at basically the same rate.
However it is very worthwhile to try to evaluate the question of whether allowing these certifications to control initial placement location. So, would this make the thrower problem better or worse? If a person who wanted to place lower was able to perform a series of steps to place in bronze intentionally through this system, would that be better or worse for the game as a whole?
From the standpoint of how many games are damaged as the thrower attempts to lower their rank, this might be better, because the thrower does not have to do something to intentionally lose / sabotage games in gold, silver, and high bronze (if the desired destination is low bronze).
From the standpoint of the certifications and their evaluation of a person’s performance, it is possible that this would assist in detecting discrepancies between a person’s certification / placement performance and their actual mechanical skills demonstrated in competitive games. If a person had significantly different aim between certification and a game in bronze for instance, this could be used to detect aim bot cheating or abusive throwing. If a person was thoroughly killing people in bronze games for their jollies, then maybe that could flag them as needing to re-certify… Then, they could have another point of reference for mechanics during certifications and mechanics during comp. The existence of mechanic certification could actually benefit the whole system.
If throwers needed to have consistent mechanics with other bronze players, they probably wouldn’t be interested in doing it any more. They couldn’t “have fun” with people at their expense without exposing themselves as cheaters.
It’s already against the EULA to let others play your account, and this could be another way of detecting letting multiple people play the same account.
Sorry, I’ve once again produced a wall of text, so I’ll stop there.
, but welcome to the thread and thank you for contributing.