I’ve detailed the scope of the issue in this thread.
I’m making a new thread because I can’t make another post in that thread until another person does (a stupid forum mechanic which is probably intended to stop people bumping threads, but in turn just creates duplicate threads, fragmenting discussion).
Scope of the issue
It doesn’t just affect my region (Australia)–it also affects players who play during non-peak times and those in higher ranks, and I’m sure other regions are affected. Switch players just don’t hang out on these forums much–it’s a real pain to get to the place where you can actually post. So I’ll represent them. Some examples of other players talking about this:
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https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchSwitch/comments/g3dn9p/please_start_playing_competitive_possible_fix_for/ -
https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchSwitch/comments/g5crap/trouble_finding_competitive_matches_on_switch/
These backend changes that significantly impact our experience of competitive mode or whether we can play competitive mode at all continue to be made on the back-end, with no mention in patch notes, no reasons given for why they’re being made, and thus, no opportunity for players to give input on the process (if we don’t know what you’re doing, it’s hard to give feedback about it).
None of these issues are mentioned in the “known issues” thread, which is pretty much a joke at this point since it’s incomplete.
The idea of introducing Competitive Open Queue mode along side of competitive mode is pretty surprising–especially with no design changes to facilitate matches, such as what I suggested here. Even if it’s popular, putting a new mode beside the existing competitive mode is an uncreative way to implement a mode that will further fragment the competitive community and confuse players about which mode is the “real” competitive mode. (Not everyone is a PC veteran that’s been playing since launch.) Blizzard have a strong bias for making changes that benefit regions, platforms, and times of days that have large player populations. It’s very inequitable.
Examples of how bad it is
This thread has plenty, along with detailed stats.
Some new examples:
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The day I made this post I was searching for a ranked match for support (I’m ranked Gold) and damage (haven’t completed qualifying matches) at 6 PM (peak time), and it took over 30 minutes to find a match. When I did (as Support), 4 players were the same rank, 2 players were unranked and below level 100 and they played as expected. That’s after 30 minutes of waiting in queue. I can hardly rank up because for every few games I win, I lose a game because I’m paired with players nowhere near my skill level, or sometimes even my rank. I can carry pretty well, but that only goes so far.
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Another game had platinum tank (me), 3 gold, 2 unranked that are also below level 100. The team doesn’t even understand the idea of grouping up before engaging. We lose. This isn’t an outlier–the game before (Gold support) had silver and bronzes in it. This is at 7 PM my local time. Stuff like this sucks all the joy out of the game. “Well, just play quickplay.” It’s even worse. While it doesn’t tank my rank, it’s filled with less skilled players. The game after that started down a player, 2 platinums, 2 golds, and 1 unranked. This is in peak time. That match cancelled due to not enough players. Next match, cancelled because someone left (their team sucked).
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The day after, during peak time (6pm to 11pm), I was waiting in competitive queue for 20+ minutes for support (gold) and tank (platinum), and when I joined games, team mates where nowhere near my rank. One game had 4 people who hadn’t done their placement matches. You can guess how well that went.
Tank is the role I enjoy the most, but I hesitate to play it in competitive now since I don’t want to drop from platinum to gold and be stuck in the hell of gold players. I’d be happy to play it if I got matched with mostly other platinum players (and I have played when that was happening), but that rarely happens.
If we avoid the bad benchmarks of “how long do you wait in queue?” (a really low standard to set) and instead use the good benchmark of “how many satisfying matches do you have?” (where both your team and the enemy team are around your skill level), I’ve had one of those matches in weeks of playing. Most matches are unsatisfying, with my team having no clue and being nowhere near my skill level, or the enemy team being like that, or both. So either my team gets rolled over because they suck, or we roll over the enemy team. Rarely is there a skilled give and take where I can say at the end, “both teams played well.”
Fixing the issue
Suggestions are in this thread and this thread.
The time when the game was healthiest was when Asian players were matching with Oceania players, as I detailed in the first linked thread. Reimplementing that, or some version of it, would be great.
People will stop playing if this isn’t fixed (they already have)
I have a lot of players on my friends list that used to play Overwatch on Switch. Many of them have stopped playing, play much less, or don’t play competitive mode. I play less and stop playing more often due to not finding a game or being matched with players nowhere near my skill level or rank.
There are serious players on Switch–I’ve played with them. Rank often doesn’t reflect that, since the matchmaking is bad due to low player populations. I suspect most high rank players are there because they group up with other skilled players, which would make beating the mostly bad players a piece of cake. Many of the skilled players I played with either don’t play, or play the game much less these days. I know for sure a few of them do this because they’re tired of the bad ranked experience (long queues; terrible matchmaking).
I’m really tired of buying competitive games that in order to be able to play competitively, the player base needs to advocate for themselves to the developer, or basically become unpaid community builders to attract people to play. Other games with this issue, like Overwatch, are designed as if they’ll always have lots of players, rather than the more realistic scenario of people having trouble finding matches (which is bound to happen at some point, for certain regions, times of day, and higher ranks). The design decisions needed to help that are useful even if you do have loads of players. I detailed them in the threads I linked to previously.
I like Overwatch, but if Overwatch 2 doesn’t have design decisions that address issues like this, I have little in paying for more of the same. When I first started playing, the idea of shopping around for another competitive game had no interest to me. Now, I’m increasingly likely to switch over to a game I can actually play competitively without long wait times or being stuck with players nowhere near my skill level.
It shouldn’t be such hard work to have fun. Overwatch is a fun game, but the user experience design (UX; I’m not talking about user interface) sucks.
I don’t say any of this to be spiteful–this is an accurate account of the issues and how they impact me (and other people) as a player.