Just saw it due to your post. Oh my god – now they are counting beta SR to the upcoming season when they indicated beta would not count and that was the general understanding.
It’s like Blizzard is TRYING to see how far they can insert their foot into their own mouth and just won’t give up.
French people playing in US server here.
Hard to say that in english, you did it for me. thanks a lot.
I’m picking and choosing bits to respond to because, holy hell, that’s a big slab of text. Next time don’t use bold text for both section headings and text emphasis.
There’s a difference between “can’t” and “won’t, because it’ll cause too much controversy”. Part of the problem with trying to appeal to everyone is that basically everything you say or do is going to annoy someone.
The old categories were meaningless, at best. Especially within/across the defense/offense categories. Combining these was a good decision.
What? All of your roles are on the same account. If you get suspended for trolling and throwing on your off role, that’s definitely going to affect your main role.
“Balance” is how closely the real-world game experience aligns with the developer’s vision. Good balance is when they align closely. Bad balance is when there’s a lot of disparity. That’s all.
I’m pro 222, but I have to say this was incredibly well written. You’ve made some points that are making me reconsider a few aspects of 222.
I sincerely appreciate the time you’ve put into this. I hope this is met with the same sincerity and energy you’ve offered here.
Do you rececntly know how many players returned for season 18 ? They are pouring love back into the game, and I personally always have about 10+ consistantly playing friends.
Classic WoW, need I say else ?
That is still recieving updates as frequently as it was before, if not even more so.
Highly subjective honestly, I know a lot of people still find the RNG and interactions still fun to engage with.
Wrong. Season 1 allowed stacking, i believe meta was 2 tracers 2 lucios and 2 winstons?
They didn’t spin any narrative at all, most people like role queue - simple as that.
The reason why people don’t post praises as much is because they’re too busy enjoying the game, and for very obvious reason, those who don’t state their reason why in the forums.
Furthermore, if you actually read a few more lines after the average queue times, they explained why it was only 3-6mins and the reason why is common knowledge at this point.
Wow. Thats uh… that’s a big post. Like, really big. I have no doubts that it’s well thought out, but after I skimmed through the first bit, I figured we’d strongly disagree.
In other words… They just assume most people like it? You just said it yourself, less people are singing the praises of role queue because they are enjoying the game. Where are we pulling this “mostly positive” from?
I am not going back to read that. The queue time for most DPS is not 3 to 6. That is just a blatant lie and framing it that way is disengenuous.
If people truly didn’t like 2-2-2, queue times would be twice as long and match quality will absolutely be horrendous which has not been the case since beta season. People have been vocal about how 2-2-2 is an improvement but people screams complaints louder.
You didn’t even take the time to read the post about the queue times so your opinion is invalid because of your misinformation.
Queue times are twice as long. I am getting 6 to 12 as opposed to that magical 3 to 6.
Match quality is hit or miss. I mean, did you see all the people salty that their thrown matches will count as MMR data? I am not going to lie, it does seem better as a whole. But sunshine and rainbows? Eh.
And the screams will get louder and louder because the reception is not “mostly positive.”
I did read it, but unless you want to refute what I said, I am not going to rely on YOUR reading comprehension. I am tired of doing that here. I refuse. But if I am wrong, by all means.
I am not one to spoonfeed especially since the relevant information is readily made available but okay, because it seems apparent to me that you don’t understand the implication of the paragraphed involved and could not think beyond the context.
In average, across all ranks the queue time is 3-6mins, so that means that’s the average queue time in Platinum as it is the average rank of every player of the player base. For very obvious reasons, the higher your rank is the higher the queue times are primarily because the player count thins out the higher the rank.
This is noticeable but not by a large margin for Diamond because the last time I saw, player count is at 10% on it and only goes down even more.
This has many factors such as: the player’s location, whether it was during peak hours, the player’s rank and if the matchmaker is able to find people who satisfy this factors within the reasonable timeframe, probably lots of other factors as well.
Mind you, this was already common knowledge way back when we were still in the old forums, there were a bunch of orange posts there on how the matchmaker works too.
The fact that you were so ready to incite misinformation and blatantly refusing to read the material is so borderline trolling.
People will scream and complain even louder because that’s the easiest thing to do.
If an account that is not new, mainly 4 or 5 star bronze border and up is doing insanely well for their current rank, then it is most likely a booster. I’m talking about a doomfist/tracer/widow/hanzo in gold or plat just annihilating the other team, having movement and subtle aiming techniques that Master or GM players would have.
If you know how people play in each rank (bronze, silver, gold, etc), then you can spot a smurf/booster. Go watch a GM tracer vod and then watch a normal Plat or Diamond tracer vod. It’s very easy to tell the difference in movement and aim.
Doesn’t have to be just account sharing either, it could be a duo boost.
I’ll give you a Like for the elaborate and well written post, even if I don’t agree with most of it. DPS queuetimes are a pain, but I like the split SR and I also feel match quality is better than before.
Each time I’ve jumped into the queue for DPS, it’s been maybe 5 minutes at worst. Never had it stretch as long as 10+. Not even once. The queue time issue seems confined to the highest ranks, where there are fewer overall players.
I made a much much shorter version (still long) of this thread a couple of weeks ago that got burried in sigma talk…but I can give a much shorter version now:
This was a very misguided change made worse by the fact that it is a very restrictive change…as you pointed out back when they removed no limits it was still very early in the game…the community at that point was still picking up the game and building and could absorb/learn/adapt to the change…
We are now 3+ years into this game and play patterns have been loooong established…there are reasons why people play the game the way do at this point: why they do not take qp seriously…why they play specific characters…why comp is treated how it is (however that may be)…why there’s so many more dps than tanks/heals…etc etc (remember those behavioral changes Jeff said needed to happen?)
You don’t simply change all that by saying “ok you must now play it this way” (and by extension “your way is no longer wanted”) and just expect things to just “happen”…the queue times alone will reflect this over time (wait til the honeymoon period is over - you can see this even in the beta)…just apply this to anything else in life…tell a group of people they can no longer enjoy something and see how they react
Plus it’s made worse by the fact that it emboldens those that have for those 3 years claimed that people SHOULD play the game in very particular ways…for example the amount of people blaming DPS players now for causing the queue times because they would like to do what they like doing (and as OP pointed out has only encouraged even more vitriol towards players selecting “less than ideal” heroes)…play the meta/like this or gtfo (essentially) is basically going to lead to the latter which is not exactly a good solution
Again restrictions and exclusions are what was really just added to the game when this game was meant to be a variable shooter with MANY ways to play it…all in a misguided effort to introduce some sort of group cohesiveness…which hopefully I don’t need to explain why that doesn’t work…you need only look at this forum to see all the complaints of people still not playing the game “properly”…that doesn’t just happen artificially
Note - frankly in comp you were already typically rewarded for doing that stuff on your own…there is more communication, more adapting as you go up the skill ladder…it’s not just mechanical skill…(“5 dps” is so greatly exaggerated)…it was already a part of the game
Was the previous system perfect?..no…could it use improvement?..yes
But was this 222 role queue system the solution to it?..hell no…and that’s not to say there is NOTHING good about it: I think role based SR is a good thing to have…I think being able to pick the role you want to play is also a good thing…but the system itself doesn’t actually solve the chief issue it was trying to solve (get people to play as a team)…it just restricts what you can do while also introducing a wait time to do it…
There were many more options available that they could’ve gone with that still “encouraged” people to play as a team IF they really wanted that from their game whilst still allowing for flexibility…not the least of which is LFG…they could’ve improved the heck out of that system as it still allows for people to do what they wish whilst still addressing the actual issue
And don’t even get me started on QP…the place where people go to when they either want to just practice or not play the game in a super serious “comp” way…why in gods name they felt the need to do this is simply beyond explanation (whilst also emboldening the “its not just QP” crowd)…the really laughable part is that they felt the need to also include classic qp…never in the history of this game (outside of the aforementioned no limits change) have they ever made a change and also kept the old version of the change as well…why is there a need for this? To have a serious version of qp? I believe that’s called comp…
By the way - sitting in a 10min+ queue for a game “quick”play…allow me to chuckle at this
TLDR (of my short version lol): right idea…woefully bad execution…will only restrict enjoyment of game and more than likely lead to people leaving the game
Oh, sorry, missed this. That is exactly the issue I take, that is not the average, that is the median.
The reason for having locked 2/2/2 and then QP Classic is the hero balancing they’ll do in the future. In other words QP as we know it would end up being worse than it is now simply because of heroes being balanced for role lock, thus making everyone either play Role QP or quit (kinda like how they don’t balance the game around no limits).
Also I’d like to point out what Jeff said in the role queue announcement video: “balancing won’t be easier just different”, since I’ve read so many comments stating otherwise.
I’d love to see the 25, 50, 75, 90, and 95 percentile.
Read your entire post, and you are absolutely right, especially about having 3 separate SRs, this is the number one issue with this system, since essentially everyone is a smurf/thrower now (and this is why I think they won’t really punish most people for it, how would they know if you are soft throwing or just bad at that other role). Having one SR meant it’s far more accurate than now and if you decided to throw or play heroes you are not good at meant you will just keep dropping, but now you can do all that on 2 other roles without it affecting your main role SR.
It’s also true that if people didn’t care about losing before, now they’ll care even less, it’s harder to get an accurate placement in 3 roles than having 1 SR for everything (as we have witnessed by now) yet this is called having a balanced experience, yet you have no idea if your dps, healers or tanks are playing on their main role or off role (when you are on your main/off role). I don’t think people realize just how many matches will it take just to make this system barely even work properly (and no it will never work since the core issue is it having 3 SRs). I just want to stress out that having two teams that have the same amount of heroes per role doesn’t equal balance. What wins games is teamwork and picking heroes that work for you as well as the situation at hand.
I think it’s obvious that Overwatch wasn’t made with 2/2/2 in mind otherwise it would have been implemented in the game since the early beginnings and a ton of heroes were designed without it in mind, and now some of them are pretty weak (and to be honest I don’t think they can balance them out without maybe reworking them). And no, 2/2/2 is not the other viable comp you can play (at least not right now). What we needed instead of any form of role lock was punish leavers, throwers and toxic people. Just because your team didn’t pick 2/2/2 (or any other comp you deemed to be the only viable option) before the role lock was put in place didn’t mean it’s an instant loss, but having that train of thought meant it would end up that way, since the person thinking this would most likely end up throwing or be toxic to others.