Dota 2 introduced priority queuing in response to queue times

General Discussion
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tl;dr - dota’s introduction of ranked roles increased queue times too much, not enough people queued as hard support. A little over a week ago Valve released a ‘credit system’ for priority matchmaking for those who fill.

I thought this was interesting because it’s closely related to what Overwatch is going through right now, and a credit based priority matchmaking system is something suggested a lot. It will be interesting to see if this blows up in their faces, or if it ends up working wonders for their game. Hopefully it proves successful and we see something similar added to Overwatch soon.

Some of the feedback so far is negative from supports, but that’s to be expected - they were the most in demand role so naturally they had unusually low times, and the negativity comes from growing too accustomed to it.

The original announcement, nov 2: https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791433224455/announcements/detail/1619534614701667085

To address role imbalance more generally, today’s update introduces Fast Queue for Ranked matchmaking. Players in the Fast Queue are given priority by the matchmaker, and will find matches much more quickly. In order to earn games for Fast Queue, you must elect to play with all roles selected. Playing with all roles selected will also automatically place you in Fast Queue for free.

When playing solo with all roles selected, you will earn four more games for future use in the Fast Queue. When grouped as a party, players can also earn Fast Queue games if the party fulfills all roles between its players. Two-player parties earn 2 games each, three-player parties earn 1 game each. You can earn and store up to 60 Fast Queue games.
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Our data clearly showed that players choosing roles without any additional constraints simply doesn’t result in enough role diversity for the matchmaking population to be healthy, negatively affecting both queue times and match quality. The motivation of the Fast Queue is to solve the “roll for mid” problem in a structured way that prevents in-game conflicts, while also providing enough role diversity to enable reasonable queue times.

Going forward, our immediate focus will be validating that Fast Queue is doing enough to improve health of the matchmaking pool, and tweaking as necessary.

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So 4 priority matches for 1 flex, regardless of outcome? I’d expect that to be abused, at least if implemented in OW. I don’t play Dota 2, but it seems like an extremely low time investment to queue as flex, quickly throw that game, then rejoin your queue for 4 nice games.

If put in OW, I think it should be contingent on getting a win at the very least, so they can be assured the flex players are actually trying.

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Matches in dota are often a large time investment, it’s not uncommon for them to hit the 45 minute or 1 hour mark. Obviously if someone’s throwing it will be over much faster, but it’s still a decent deterrent. Overwatch would have it a bit rougher with its 5-10minute games.

However I’m not worried about people abusing it so much as I’m worried about the matchmaker being able to properly rate people while they’re using it. For example, if I queue as tank, lock rein and charge off cooldown… I should very quickly end up at an elo representing that behavior. Right now, I probably won’t. In fact, I’ll probably end up at the exact same sr.

That’s another major complaint with the system. Incentivizing people to offrole and play something they’re bad at gives people a very cheap avenue of attack - “I’m matched with bad players, and they’re bad players because they’re flexing.” You see it right now in Overwatch even without the system. It’s not necessarily a problem with incentivizing people to flex as it is rating people while they’re flexing, imo.

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Maybe it should be time based not game based. Get one fast queue token for every 15 minutes of tank or 20 minutes of support.

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How, exactly would you abuse that?

Stack 60 priority queues and then never use them? That’ll show 'em!

Or do you mean by way of throwing? So queue for a game, pull tank or support, and then play like a dps?

Restrict it to wins and you close that gap as well. Win one game with all roles selected and you get 4 priority games as any role of your choice. You lose? Too bad. At least you know that you just got a fast game.

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guys , dont necro, make new post

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I mean, it’s just two months, that’s not a very bad necro.

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With the power of necromance!

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I’d say give a fast token for WINNING a round on Tank, or queuing for DPS+Tank, Support+Tank, or all three.

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I don’t know that I want to drive people to be even more tryhard, particularly in QP and arcade.

With a time based system you could even reward people for tanking/supporting in QPC.

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I think it’s a better option than having someone go Tank, then practically AFK, or possibly even full on throw the game to get it over quicker.

To an extent, they are “being paid for a service”.
And people want barrier tanks, and complimentary offtanks, not “LOL I’M JUST A FAT DPS NOW GIMME THAT TOKEN” tanks

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Well, with a time based system, there is no incentive for them to play badly. And literal throwing will get you banned, even in QP.

Also a lot of DPS only players are going to at least start out as really bad tanks/sups.

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But then you just get Tanks that stall that the chokepoint forever, or just play as a fat DPS the whole time.

And once the 15 minute mark hits, it’s full on throw time.

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this idea is dumb. overwatch should not copy this. what we need is a “flex” option that selects all 3 with one button, and a 3:1 priority queue that rewards both that option and whichever specific role or roles is/are needed right now. so say you have not enough tanks today, instead of “get this many credits” you get “guaranteed priority queue after three matches” if you queue either for tank or for flex today. a currency is a very bad idea, it’s a middle man that’s completely unnecessary.

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I mean, tank queue is pretty fast. I don’t know why you’d mess with games to drag them out. Your teammates might report you and in any case it barely would save time.

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Because that’s the easiest way to farm tokens.

Especially if someone farmed tokens during offhours, but spent then during peak hours.

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You could have endorsement affect tokens. Maybe endorsement level gives you a chance at more tokens?
0-1: no chance.
2: 10% chance of 2.
3. 20% chance of 2.
4. 30% chance of 2.
5. 40% chance of 2.

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I figure the benefit with a win, is that it’s roughly 50/50 winrate, which means on average people will need 2 games to get one token.

Also I don’t see much downside to pushing Quickplay to be more like “Unranked”, with Quickplay Classic being the “Lol it’s just Quickplay”.

1 Like
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If people have to win games on roles they don’t want to play they could end up extremely toxic to the perceived worst teammate in losses. Like “everyone report the Sym now I have to play another stupid game on tank”.

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Or devs just get more aggressive with placing tanks lower, but making it easier to climb.