So, we have come to this point where Overwatch is the next on Blizzard’s cutting block, just as it happened with most of their other games.
- World of Warcraft simply faded out of relevancy over the years, largely due to the numerous big and small changes which only caused one clearly visible thing: Mass exodus of players, especially during the Warlords of Draenor expansion which concluded with the stop of subscriber number reports, since the numbers were not something to be proud of. Veteran WoW players know that right now that game is just a shadow of it’s former self. Activison-Blizzard has quietly turned their attention towards their more profitable games since then.
- Diablo …eh…Diablo is on a MEME level right now.
- Heroes of the Storm was a nice MOBA game for those who wanted to play one with characters from all of Blizzard’s games. I don’t think it was ever planned as a competitor to the two most popular MOBA’s out there, but the developers clearly show less support to that game, since it’s esport scene was simply shut down out of the blue.
- Hearthstone has lost much of it’s luster over the years also.
Overwatch , the latest success of Blizzard Entertainment, might have a place on this list with the addition of it’s newest feature: Role Queue.
The game is roughly 3 years old, has been on the gaming scene for quite a long time by now. At this point a game should have a solid framework around it’s systems to have a stable and clear picture about what and how it provides it to the players. This is good for both returning players, who can easily get back into the game, because it wasn’t turned upside down by changes, and it’s also good for new players, who can be sure that it’s safe to devote time to the game, again, due to the reason that it is not likely to see a massive and controversial change.
Originally the game shipped with no hero limit . What this meant is that you could have more than one of a character in your team, like 6 Tracers. The people who are saying that if the change to have a hero limit did not damage the game, then the Role Queue change won’t either are forgetting very important facts.
- The game was still brand new, a huge succes and it garnered the attention of many people for quite a long time. For every player that quit the game over that change, 3 new players came in it’s place…
- The change to hero limit was done before the first actual ingame competitive season! Not after seventeen…
- The gameplay was still in a moldable form and large scale adjustments were expected in the first months of it’s release.
For a game that is at Overwatch’s age and doesn’t soak up players like sponge anymore, the goal is to retain it’s players. In other words: To not give them a reason to quit.
Yet, despite all of the above, Blizzard wants to reinvent the wheel, without weighing the consequences.
Let’s talk about the developement team, with a focus on Jeff Kaplan’s way of communication.
As with many other game’s devs in the past, it seems like that they don’t hold a firm grip over their game’s design structure and rather make assumptions and changes based on the feedback of a vocal but small group of people. In no way the Battlenet forums, Reddit or the esport scene makes up the majority of the playerbase.
People who are content with the game usually keep to themselves and enjoy their day-to-day life within it. I dare to say that the majority consists of them and these are also the people whose number declines after ill-conceived changes. To reiterate: This is the group that the game must avoid to give a reason for quitting.
Player proposed changes are in the majority of situations rooted in one’s lack of succes ingame, therefore the game is the culprit for the negative experience, so it must change in order to fit “their way”. Usually the points given why the proposed change would benefit the game are rather vague, and as such, the majority of these “fixes” should be dismisssed right away.
The problem really only arises in situations when even the lead designer can’t make solid reasons why a change is for the better of the game.
Allow me to quote Jeff from the official US forum on the first of March 2019.
" if we did role queue, we would do separate SR’s. this is one of the things i think would be really fun (plus make the game way more balanced and improve matchmaking) "
This whole sentence makes one worried about the future of the game. You can check, this is totally legit said by the lead design dev. Part of the worry is the lack of professionalism in the way this was communicated. “Really fun” is a super vague statement and there is simply no elaboration on why it would make the game more balanced or how it would even improve matchmaking in the whole thread! He only answered one question regarding whether somebody mains Symmetra in the Overwatch team, reducing the conversation to a joke level.
To my knowledge, he hasn’t elaborated on anything regarding why Role Queue would improve the game, not even in the livestream during the accouncement not so long ago. Again just vague terms, like “fun” “fair games” and the like.
So i ask the burning question: Is this how the Lead Designer should talk about the change, which he calls as the biggest change the game has ever seen? Is there anybody else on the OW team who has a say in these changes, or should i say, dares to challange Kaplan’s views?
The precursor changes and warning signs.
One particular change, i think it was made alongside of the Symmetra rework about 1 year ago has always stood out as odd. Namely the complete removal of the Defense hero role distinction, effectively homogenizing the entire DPS roster on the outside. Harmless at first, but homogenization is almost always a bad sign down the line.
For players who started the game before this change, Defense heroes will always remain the way they were like before, since their design is fundamentally different at the core. The fact that they can also be used as offensive heroes was clear even without the role removal.
The other little, but telling sign was the change to the notifications shown during hero selection. Like “team damage too low”," too many snipers". Several of them was removed in favor of promoting the 2-2-2 lineup. This was a major mistake since many players, especially new ones read this as two is the coveted magical number and anything deviating from it is at best not ideal or at the worst meaning that someone is throwing.
The original notifications essentially said that it’s good to have at least one from every role and didn’t shoehorn players into a rigid sctructure. I consider them superior because they were simple guide lines and as the player went through the natural game progression he or she would have discovered that Defense heroes can indeed be used when you are on Attack and that there is a 2-2-2 team composition, but in no way it was encouraged by the game to use it. It was just an option for you.
Personal discovery. The best thing you could have in this game as a new player. Going through the game in your own pace, playing the modes and heroes you want to play and improve as a player by actually playing the game and formulate your own tactics with the heroes you play, essentially having a unique and very own playstyle.
Not by reading articles written by “pros” or reading about the “meta”, not even by watching them play on Twitch. These things do not enhance your progress, but rather impair it, making you try tactics and heroes you are not ready to utilize yet, or make you believe that certain heroes can only be played only one particular way or that one hero is superior so just forget the other one, all because the “pros” said it, and what they say must be true since they are the ones at the top level. All this would cause is a negative experience stemming from the failure of replicating their tactics and having a manipulated view on the game.
This was just a side note. Let’s talk about the other implemented feature: Looking for Group
It’s an okay feature, which is there as an option for you, so you can use it or just forget that it even exists. However, many players had an unreal expectation from it which persists through even today. What i mean by that is many saw this as the “fix” to their ladder climbing woe.
“If i team up with like-minded people who can communicate and have the intention to win, then we will win.”
The problem with this statement is, that many other teams have the same mindset… So, at the end, you aren’t any better with your climbing than just solo queuing. Expecting to have a stable winrate with a group of strangers is a bit too optimistic.
There’s one more thing to mention about this tool, called: Enforce Roles
It didn’t take long to figure out that by enabling this, we basically severely reduce our team’s flexibility and just simply gimp ourselves to oblivion. Not having the opportunity to change roles between a round was, and still is, a giant problem. This directly ties into the forced 2-2-2 case, which will be discussed extensively at the end.
The issue of Smurfing and Boosting.
These things have to be clarified in order to understand and see the big picture.
Smurfing by definition: In gaming culture, smurfing is defined as logging into a secret account separate from a main account as to allow the user to play a game without being detected by his or her peers.
Generally the purpose of smurfing is to improve oneself without compromising the statistics of a main account. It allows gamers to try new strategies, or simply play without worrying about a “record”.(Urban Dictionary)
Overwatch has no shortage of smurf accounts and their existence is one among the numerous things that undermine the notion of having a competitive ladder that is fair, and represents true player skill. It’s important to make a distinction among them, by acknowledging that some players do this because they are hoping to get a better rank after playing their placement matches than what they have on their main account, and there are the malicious evil smurfs who intentionally lose their placements just to destroy players in Bronze or Silver.
These two sit at either end of the spectrum, while most of the Smurfs are located in the middle, playing the game according to the second part of the definition, which is very much relevant to the Role Queue.
The general perception of Smurfs and Smurfing is rather negative, by the community at least. Jeff Kaplan himself doesn’t think it is a problem. Just Google “Blizzard’s stance on smurfing”.
With the Role Queue change, the developers essentially allow you to Smurf on your main account by having three separate SR’s. Call it as “Soft Smurfing”. This allows you to play a role other than your main role without the worry of losing your SR on the main one, not to mention the fact that it opens way to trolling and toxicity, since you only lose rating on the role you threw the game as. This will also be elaborated later on at the end.
Now on to the big bad in this story: Boosting
The archenemy of Blizzard, the major obstacle in the way of a competitive ladder representing true skill levels… and also the thing that is a godsend to a player after a huge SR drop…
In competitive online gaming boosting is a very big deal and Overwatch’s ladder from Bronze even up to Top 500 is infested with boosters.
This isn’t really talked about all that much, and Role Queue advocates doesn’t seem to be aware of it’s existence based on their comments or they just deny it’s relevancy. When talking about a game system that is promoted as bringing more “fair” and “balanced” matches and generally being hyped as some kind of saviour, all the while not realizing the fact that rampant boosting undermines it all right from the start, just speaks for itself.
A little demystification about boosting and demonstrating how big and accessible it is.
It’s really not done on secret websites with shady people, but rather on sites that are literally just a Google search away. Structured solely to provide boosting services not necessarily only for Overwatch, but for any popular online game, alongside with an actual customer support and usually with reviews that are public to see.
From this point on it’s very simple: You choose what you want, be it regular competitive, or any Arcade comp mode like Lucioball and specify your desired rating. You can have the booster log on with your account or you can also play alongside them. Then you pay, and get what you paid for.
The demand for boosting is high and gets higher every day, of course no player would ever admit it, but rest assured, a lot more people do it than you would think. You are simply bound to get matched up against boosters and maybe you do get matched up regularly against them, but there is no way to prove that a particular player is indeed a booster and this ties into the question of…
What can Blizzard do against boosters? Nothing. Plain and simple. Even if they could crack down the sites one by one, more would just emerge in their place, and as i said, there is no reliable way to prove that someone is a booster ingame.
Armed with all this knowledge, now we’re ready to see the whole picture.
The benefits of Role Queue and why they don’t exist.
I will go through numerous points made in favor of the feature or other observations regarding it, gathered from comments, the livestream, news and forums.
"Forced 2-2-2 lock, with a separate role queue - for Quick Play too (some Arcade modes too, unspecified)"
Implementing this into Quick Play is simply a disaster bound to happen. The fact that Arcade will have a Quick Play Classic is not going to make frequent users of this mode all the more happy, since they will be relegated to a place where all the non-serious game modes are, lightly suggesting that further balance changes won’t really take this mode into account.
As for the Arcade modes that would receive the role queue change, i can see it happening for Capture the Flag, maybe 6v6 Elimination or even Team Deathmatch and 3v3 Elimination can receive some form of role queue… As you can see, it’s not true to say that only Competitive and QP is affected. This even more exacerbates the problems it causes.
“Separate MMR for each role, as well as SR in the case of competitive”
Several issues are embedded into this change . A similar system was added to League of Legends, ( Spoiler alert: It got taken out after 2 months.) so that all 5 roles had a different rating, sprinkled with the same empty promises of “fun, and fair games”, but all it did was that playing other roles than your main one was useless, due to the fact that it felt like grinding more than one account. Plus it became apparent that the majority of people like to switch between roles rather than being pigeonholed into one.
This is not much different here with 3 roles. Other than some basement dwellers who has time to make reasonable progress on even 2 of them, let alone 3? It is not stated, but if you want to earn your desired rating on one of them, then you are very much forced to play that role forever. Isn’t it ironic that Blizzard made this under the premise to not “force” anyone into anything in particular?
What about the rating disparity between players when playing in a group or with friends? Let’s say you and your buddy both prefer to be DPS and currently stand at about 3200. Your friend wants to play support now to change things up, but his or her SR is only at 2100. Either you get placed in a gold match as a diamond player or the more likely outcome would be that you can’t queue together when your ratings are this far apart. Same thing when you are in a group and maybe you would like to change roles between a match, but everyone’s SR is all over the place. Flexibility doesn’t get eliminated only during gameplay, but rather across the board.
Separate SR dilutes the importance of your ratings on the ladder and makes the ranks less impactful. Say you like to play both support and tank heroes equally and like to change between matches which role you’ll play as. You can still do that with role queue, but then you’ll be grinding another ladder without one unified indicator of where you stand as a player, like we have it now. Victories won’t feel as satisfactory when playing an off role, because it only contributes to that one role and doesn’t really get you any further as a whole. All this points to the glaring problem of making a clear-cut role distinction based ladder in a game, where roles have many overlaps and aren’t all that distinct from one another.
Make a little comparison between heroes who are in a different role.
Look at McCree and Zenyatta. A good Zen has to score those headshots to make his place in the team worthwhile, with the added challange of putting his orbs on the right people at the right time and very quickly. Same with McCree, you have to be a good shot, but without the healing. One integral part greatly overlaps between the heroes, even though they are in an entirely different role.
But now you are saying that Zen is not a true healer, so let’s look at Mercy. The thing with her is that if you want to be a really good Mercy, then you have to make use of the pistol she has. Go on and finish off that low hp player instead of just keeping the beam on that already full health Roadhog or it’s better to shoot that Pharah who just started her ultimate, instead of healing her primary target who probably dies anyway and die along with him, and with Valkyrie you can kill almost anyone. Of course, before this, it is crucial to make sure that nobody from your team is low on health.
What’s the quickest way to eliminate other players with your pistol? Headshots, as you’ve guessed it, and for that you have to aim very well. So here we are, even the Queen of healers benefits a lot by knowing how to land your shots. Not to mention Ana and Baptise, who need it even for healing.
Are Tank heroes any different? Not at all! Wrecking Ball’s swing and piledrive only accounts for half of his damage, the other half needs precise aiming.
It’s one thing to hit someone close-up with Roadhog but aiming right with alt-fire is no easy thing, same with the hook. What about Reinhardt’s firestrike? Missing with that really makes itself apparent. Orisa? Your shield doesn’t mean much when you can’t hit the enemy consistently.
If roles were really distinct and different, then this is how they would look: Support heroes would have no weapon or one that can only be used to heal and all their abilities and ultimates would just do healing and nothing else. Tanks would have a shield…and more shields…as abilities. DPS would only focus on damage and damage only. Maybe throw in some utilities for someone in every role. This works in an MMORPG, but not in an FPS like Overwatch, but this is how the real role distinction case looks with zero overlaps, so no weapons for support and tanks that has to be aimed in the traditional way. Unfortunately, the separation of roles inadvertedly pulls the game closer a bit to this.
Now let’s see how separate SR’s lend itself to trolling and toxicity.
As i’ve mentioned, League of Legends had this kind of system and compounded with the Autofill feature, trolling and generally not caring about the match’s outcome when playing an off-role drastically increased. Here, you would also lose some rating from your main role as well, when losing an off-role game, but even this could not thwart the trolls and throwers since the loss was not punishing enough.
As we know right now with this change in Overwatch, throwing a game on your off role or just simply trolling there has no effect on your main role so this behavior will simply have no punishment whatsoever. I highly doubt the SR loss on the off role bothers the offender much. At least in the current system, the one SR rating makes some people to not go as far to throw the game. Of course, we will never know when this is successful, since the “Number of throws averted” metric cannot be measured.
Not caring about whether the match is a loss or win will increase in this system when someone plays an off role , since those matches become less important for them. This is by the very design of this feature and it’s simply inevitable. Now even less people will try to give as much as they can to secure a victory. At least the current system has some deterrence factor.
What about the actual SR rating you’ll receive after placements?
“They have been tracking role MMR for months, Jeff counts on initial per-role MMR already being mostly accurate, only problem may be a soft MMR reset for people who haven’t played in a very long while”
What we can derive from this is that the role you play currently the most would have a very similar rating to what you have now. It’s all sunshine and happiness until we get to the calculation of roles that you barely played or not played at all…
“If a player hasn’t played recently, or has not played a specific role, things are more difficult (and Jeff didn’t say exactly what they would do).”
Obviously, if there’s no data for the system to work with then it has no idea where to put you rank wise. There is probably a baseline SR or normalization in this case. Maybe it takes your most played role’s SR and tries to put you somewhere in that range, but then that would mean a lot of people’s off role SR happens to be at a rank they don’t fit into under the new system.
We also don’t know how long they have been tracking the internal MMR for roles, but i want to put emphasis on recently in the above statement. So it’s not like your whole career is taken into account.
Imagine this scenario: Say you were a DPS main from season 7 to season 12 and you got to Diamond, but then you’ve found yourself playing more and more Tank heroes, so today you consider yourself a tank main instead. You were close to get into Master, so when you do your placements as a tank, your SR will be about the same as before. Now you start doing to placements for the DPS role, but Blizzard didn’t track your MMR back then when you were a DPS main plus you only won 2 of your placements and the system barely puts you into Gold. Would you be happy about this? It’s not like you lost all your DPS skillz while playing Tank heroes…
All in all, this is 1 year’s worth of developement resources wasted on an inherently flawed, complicated and toxicity promoting system. Don’t worry though, this won’t be the last useless thing you’ll do in your life.
“Jeff Kaplan is a bit concerned about queue times, especially DPS role.”
Yes, this is a hard fact. DPS will have an absolute horrible queue time that exceeds 10 minutes. Just Google it. No normal player will accept this, especially after getting used to very short queue times.
Over the years, i’ve played a lot of competitive and the most time i have waited when solo queuing was about 3 minutes. The only time when this shot up to 5 to 10 minutes happened when i was in a 5 or 6 man group. The usual wait time though is less then 1 minute and many times it’s just instant. I queue up and the game starts immediately. Same with Quick Play or almost any Arcade mode…in the majority of cases, the queue is instant or close to it.
That’s why i always liked the game. No useless waiting time to get in the actual gameplay. No time wasted. 1 minute from booting up the game and you can have a competitive experience without any time-consuming preparation.
“To help incentivize a more even distribution of players across all roles, players who queue for roles that are currently in high demand may get a reward.”
This is from the official announcement, where there is a picture attached to this statement. The incentive they want to give is lootboxes. Apart from that it’s interesting to see the queue times for each role. They are probably derived from testing and it represents what they expect. A greater than 10 minute queue for DPS, a less than 10 minute queue for Tanks, probably between 5 and 10, less than 5 minute queue for Support. In the light of the reality of the current queue times that i shared, these are simply absurd.
Back to the incentive, lootboxes. To cut short, this won’t do anything to get more players into the less played roles. Absolutely nothing. So, if this doesn’t work, what’s next? Bonus SR?? That would be just pouring oil to an already half-burnt to the ground house.
“Jeff is scared about reception because humans fundamentally dislike change, even though it’s for the better”
This was just said to justify something, that has no concrete achievements to show, but has plenty of examples of why it is bad. See valid points made against it here plus League of Legends’s faliure to implement a similar system.
“This is the biggest change the game has ever seen, he thinks this is quite beneficial for the game, doesn’t believe will impact comp diversity since creativity shines best when working within constraints.”
So, you want to tell me that a closed system has more creative and diverse outlets than a system that encompasses the whole of it and enables even more possibilities? Better luck next time with this statement.
“They aren’t doing this to force meta changes, it’s not their goal.”
If we want to be rude, then we can call this as straight up lying. Not the first time developers do this, and not the last either.
“There will be four leader boards, one for each role, and a combined one. To qualify for a leader board, a player must play 25 games per role (for a total of 75 if they wish to qualify for the combined leaderboard)”
This isn’t aimed at the majority of players, but still just a needless complication of a simple system. Again, same with 3 separate SR’s cluttering the statictics and stats tab.
" When the season concludes, players also receive CP based on the highest Skill Tier they obtained during the season per role. Instead of granting a single pool of Competitive Points, we’re separating the total across three pools earned by completing placement matches in each role."
So, players who want to collect gold weapons, are essentially “forced” to complete placements on all roles, or else they won’t get the maximum amount of CP they can get. That’s 15 placement matches contrasted with only 10, and you also get less CP, unless you earn at least the same or higher rank in every role. Players who only do placements for one role, had their CP gain cut by half at minimum.
Some common “improvements” of the Role queue, commenters like throwing around.
By far, they were the most stubborn and retard “going straight into the concrete wall” mentality type observations made regarding the feature, next to the news by gaming sites portraying it as some kind of messiah. Some of them even failed to copy-paste the starting date for it properly. Heh, that’s about gaming journalism as a whole.
“It will make the game balanced.”
Balance is based upon pure observation after getting the numbers in place. How do you even measure or test balance? Is there a golden standard for it somewhere to compare your game to?
The thing is, having perfect balance is not achievable, and even if it was somehow achieved, it only takes 1 idiot on the forums to say that a hero is not balanced, so there’s that…pure observation and perspectives. A losing player is much more likely to blame the balance of the game, until he or she gets victories and all of a sudden there are no balance problems whatsoever…
There are a few games which aim to have a truly balanced competitive environment, but their playerbases are very very low and for good reason. The reality is that people rather play in a flashy casino than in a strict tournament.
“Now all roles will have a competent player in matches.”
Cant be any more further from the truth.
See the following example: Let’s say you are a tank main and trying very hard to get into Master, so you give it all you’ve got in every match. But then let’s say that 1 of the support players and 1 of the DPS players are in fact, playing their off role. Your main role SR might be at 3450, but that SR range for someone else may only be their off role SR, so they are not that serious about winning the game, and they just go through the match with a “meh, whatever” outlook. The off role healer is Moira and she prefers chasing low hp enemy players more than healing teammates who are low. The off role DPS is Doomfist and he is trying to be decent, but damn…he misses a lot of rocket punches. Long story short: It’s a loss, and the team never even had a chance, since role swapping is not a thing anymore.
Salty Role Queue fanatics will continue to blame those 2 “retard” tank players or 2 “incompetent” healers regardless of whether they are playing their main role or not, instead of the “5 DPS mains ruined my game” reason they like to put the blame on, all the while forgetting the countless lost games they played in a 2-2-2 team format under the current system. Player toxicity knows no bounds.
As i’ve said before, i had played a lot competitive matches over the years, and in the overwhelming majority, the matches start out with the 2-2-2 lineup without any outside enforcement, and roles are changed or swapped as the game progresses.
The truth is that almost any team composition can win, since player skill with a particular hero beats out rigid role locking or even communication. Yes, 5 DPS who know what they are doing can destroy a 2-2-2 team easily.
It is important to mention that role selection based upon the map is entirely thrown out of the window! Due to the fact that you select roles before you even see what map you are going to play on, a basic thing that the Role Queue can’t even give any alternative for. Maybe somone foregoes to play tanks on payload maps because he or she knows that it’s a weakpoint for him or her and rather play a support role. Now you are just simply stuck with what you are given.
“Now everyone can play the hero he or she wants to play”
Not even close.
The thing is that even right now in LFG, people want to dictate what hero you should play. This won’t be any different in Role queue, and not “meta” heroes won’t be accepted kindly, along with some hero combinations, like Hanzo-Widowmaker, Symmetra-Torbjörn, hybrid support pairs or tank duos without a shield. Hehe, and some people dare to say that the “meta” will be more diverse!
What if the teams need a counter for an enemy hero, like Pharah, but neither of the DPS can play hitscan heroes decently? Or what’s more simple…they just refuse to change. There is no wiggle room or any flexibility for someone to swap roles or heroes.
There is the talk about not “forcing” anyone into anything, but under this system, you can be forced to play a hero you might be not comfortable with or else lose the match, or get mean comments, or both. The responsibility is put on you, because only one other player can choose that hero, and the team might need the hero he or she is currently playing, so the only one who must change is you.
Yes, with Role Queue, now we can talk about games that are already lost in the spawn room.
Finishing words about the Overwatch League and a troubling revelation.
“The Overwatch League reported in their Stage 4 Preview Special that they consulted with all teams and players for their thoughts on enforced 2-2-2 team comps. Ultimately, the decision was left to a vote with the majority of teams voting for the change.”
So, did Blizzard introduce Role Queue because the 0.00001% of all players voted yes for it???
Or Blizzard was the one forcing it on everyone?
No surprise these players hardly say anything against it, lest Blizzard say something along the lines of “Well, our contract is over”, so that’s about them.
doesn’t affect them in the grand scheme of things but hey I’d rather not waste what I got