Fixing DPS queue times

General Discussion
1

Putting openQ next to roleQ (to soak up DPS mains from roleQ).
Should be self explanatory, everyone should be in favor of this.

Being able to queue for both openQ and roleQ at the same time
MoreHeroes came up with this, and it is really good, it gives the matchmaker more flexibility in giving people fast matches AND insures the health of openQ for time to come, which is important for people in smaller regions.

Merging Regions
I don’t like this because ping times, but it would boost population, which speed up queue times, but ultimately t may drive more people away long term.

Running a ‘flat’ matchmaker (to even out queue times across ranks, lowing RMS queue times).
A game with GM dps and Diamond tanks is still a fair one if both sides have it.
It could lead to some pretty weird games though. The idea is make the difference between roles have a higher tolerance, and distance between people in the same role have a smaller tolerance. A classic matchmaker fix for issues like this.

3-1-2 or variants.
But if it makes Tanks or Supporting worse, the people leaving the game or switching roles could make the problem worse long term, so you have to be careful. Would require re-balancing which the DPS may hate.

Making Tanking / Supporting fun.
It isn’t subjective once you have enough people. Still tricky though. How do you do it?

Making DPS unfun
Do I even have to say this is bad?

Put out more Tanks / Supports
It would help, since it may keep the tanks / supports playing more

Move heroes out of DPS and into Tank / Support
Which would take some of their players with them, AND make it so heroes which are not aloud to be good in one role, shine in another.

Put out more DPS games only games in arcade
Soak 'em up boys.

Make games shorter
Reduce spawn time, Spawn people at pt A, Cut down game start timers, make the cart move faster. etc. The faster the game turnover is, the shorter the queues gets.

Force people to play all roles
It is a bad idea, but, it would work, and I’d be amiss to not to at least mention it. running things like roleQ, but you always have to pick 2 roles fit in this.

Tank bots
Talking about bad ideas, because the tech isn’t there yet (especially for Blizzard), but having AI fill for some roles IS possible, other games do it.

Paladins style re-balancing
Kinda make other roles more fun by making them all impactful, and also putting out more heroes, but Paladins does not have the problem to the same degree as Overwatch does, so they are doing something right here. It shows that those changes can work.

Go Free To Play but locked to Tank (and maybe Support)
ƕlĸ suggested it, and I’ve not put enough thought into it to really weight in, but, at first look, it has a lot going for it.

Tokens to queue fast as DPS for playing Tank
This could induce normal tank players to take up DPS, since they would be giving up on a restricted resource. It could EASILY backfire, and it locks out DPS from playing the role they want… it is kinda fair, but I can’t help but think it will backfire.

Don’t fix the queue times
I mean, it is an option… a terrible one, but, it still is one

Myself, I’d go for all of…

  • Putting openQ next to roleQ
  • Being able to queue for openQ and roleQ at the same time
  • Running a ‘flat’ matchmaker
  • Making Tanking / Supporting fun.
  • Moving heroes out of DPS and into Tank / Support
  • Make games shorter
  • Paladins style rebalancing

Since, I think all of these would improve the game (or in the case of flat matchmaker, not make it a lot worse)

Did I miss any options?

4 Likes
2

too much work, development of ow1 is done, there wont be huge changes, and ow2 is just pve, so dont expect much. easiest and fastest solution is to force everybody to select 2 roles (or all roles!) or they cant queue up.

3

Overwatch 2 is not immune to the same problems. Sooner or later they have to face them.

I think OW2 will have the problem worse than OW1 as I suspect the Tank / Support players will prefer PvE more than the DPS will.

I’d put that under force them to play all roles… it leads to throwers, and unhappy DPS mains having to Tank / Support… On the other hand, it MAY generate empathy between roles.

It would have odd side effects of dedicated Tank/ Support players picking DPS as their other option, since, they would more likely get the role they wanted.

Which may lead to the DPS getting EVEN less DPS games a night than they get now… Since they will be competing with Tank / Support for the DPS role.

1 Like
4

yea, like we dont have tons of them now…

5

We don’t want to make things worse now do we? Like a bad problem, doesn’t mean it can’t be made into a worse one.

6

i dont think you understand me, what you wrote is literally 2-3 years of coding, they wont do that, for that amount of work they are better of making another game. You can only hope for small changes, tho its tiny possibility they will change anything at all, so you only need to come up with tiny simple solutions

7

Some of it is, for SURE. The matchmaker change isn’t so bad if their matchmaker is a sane one, but, I kinda doubt it. (I have experience in that area.)

I don’t think that they can implement it all tomorrow, but as a roadmap it isn’t a bad one.

If they have to rework Sombra / Mei / Doom, they may as well move then at the same time.

I am a Dev, I know how long it would take I’d be surprised if they did all of it in 3 years.

It doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be moving towards it.

9

IMO yes put open queue next to 2-2-2, that’s the most practical thing.
I think we should have 2-2-2 as the big icon, then there’s open queue as say 1/6 of the screen and below it is a third mode that changes, like comp deathmatch and 1-3-2. The work for those has already been done so it would be easy to add.
We should be open to DPS leaving the role. Symm says ‘Namaste’, Sombra says ‘Hola’ and Echo says ‘probably’.
TTank bots I love for leavers, should already be a thing. They could respawn immediately to make up for being literal bots.

10

100% yes, this would help a lot.

Robot, whatcha think about this?:

11

Sounds like quitting words…

The DPS are balance to go against the Tanks and Supports as a united front, but breaking that gives you more options to make supporting and tanks way more fun.

So, I think that making the supports more DPS enabling would help a lot.

I think a lot of the problems is that Tanks and Support enable each other, but the DPS are left out of that mostly.

By making the DPS just as enabled by support, they make them just as dependent, which make the tanks less dependent, while giving supports more options in their play style.

That is an option. I’ll add it to the list!!!

Honestly, I never thought of this, but, there is a lot going for it.

It is a better idea that most give for sure.

12

No.

I didnt find SINGLE one of these bad ideas to be good nor way to fix dps q-times.
(Only more tanks/supports would help but do you realize how much time those kinda roles takes to develope? There will be more supports/tanks brought to the game once ow 2 been released, But then again, even if they did release more tanks & supports, dps are still gonna be the most played role regardles, I really dont get what’s wrong about that since this is teambased-SHOOTEr game).

This thread shows why people who dont know anything about balancing/developing such things as a hole, should NOT be taken seriously specially when they make suggestions like these.:

They wont copycat other games balancing, dps will stay as dps, not changed into other roles where they def dont belong NOR make the game f2p for different roles except dps.

Also, priority q-time is coming this year? Cant you plebs have even slight of patience to wait & see till that happens instead of making crappy none thought ideas like these which will make the game even worse & lot more people quit cause of it.

13

This seems like it would take too much time for the Overwatch Devs although it is a really good idea. I believe Jeff had the right idea when he said next month they are going to bring back Comp. where you cannot select a role, so then it will not fill up the general Comp as much, much like how DPS quickplay wait time is <5 minutes because of the any choice in the arcade.

14

This could also be fixed by seperating DPS back into Offense and Defense

15

You note, I had Force People to play all roles, and Tank bots, and Tokens as bad ideas right?

They may copy ideas to fix the hole they have dug for themselves.

For filling, not for anything else., and as such won’t help queue times.

Yeah, “Putting openQ next to roleQ” is going to be a thing.

16

I heard they were going to do that with OW2.

17

And you think f2p for both tank & support is better idea? No. Im sorry but it’s the most dumbest ideas i’ve seen so far.

18

It will happen before that.

19

It would work, which makes it better than most ideas people float.

20

Werent they going to do that in couple of seasons though?

21

That would make queue times worse, not better.