Forced roles are bad and unnecessary

General Discussion
1

forced 222 sucks
forced 321 sucks
forced 232 would suck

implementing each one requires changing how the player base is allowed to play overwatch, and turns balance and matchmaking upside down for devs who are already bad at those things. now what im about to tell you will shock you. yes, so prepare yourselves…

you are prevented from playing significantly more heroes with forced 222 than with a hero ban system. if you q for tank or support, you are only able to play 7-8 heroes out of 31 total for the duration of the game. but with a 2hero ban system you can play 29 out of 31 heroes for that game.

now calm down just a minute. ok, so what if I also told you that there are other ways to stop 4+ dps comps or goats from being a thing again without role q? yes it is true.

this would be possible thru Role Caps, which would restrict the maximum number of heroes for any one role to be capped at 3, but also require that all roles be selected. so a 3-3 goats comp would not be possible. the only possible combination of roles would 222 or variations or 321. Not only would this system have not taken 2 years to develop like role q did, but it requires significantly less work to implement and would utilize a single sr system once again, thus making balanced matchmaking and q times light years easier to accomplish than whatever it is role q is devolving into.

ps I know Jeff doesn’t like hero bans I’m just sharing a system that is better than forced 222 role q

see below for more specifics of the system

3 Likes
2

I personally prefer unlocked queues

4 Likes
3

This is basically 3-2-1. You know all too well that 3 dps will be chosen 100% due to the number of dps players vs other roles. Also it will cause 1 tank or 1 healer to solo, and that’s the thing we where trying to get away from. Also people will go in wanting to play a role but whoops that role is caped. This idea is not good. It will make queues shorter yes, but it will not improve the quality of matches.

11 Likes
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Ending up with a solo healer would make it worse than it is now.

2 Likes
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ah yes I remember every single game i ever played before role q having a minimum of 3 dps. no one ever ran 222 before role q. ever

6

sensing a bit of sarcasm here…hmmm…

1 Like
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It’ll actually be worse than that. 3 DPS is a bad comp that loses games, so the rest of the team will be constantly raging/reporting against those 3 dps. And, unless you cap at 2 tanks, the comp that actually wins game is likely to be 3 tanks 2 sup 1 dps. So you could end up with a renewed version of Goats, with everyone in high rank being stuck playing a comp they hate just to have a chance at winning.

Also, if you are late to load, you get forced into a tank/support slot against your will.

1 Like
8

:roll_eyes:

2 Likes
9

I preffer 3 dps 2 tanks 2 healers to an unlock qeueu.

10

I want to play a specific role.
The role i want to play is all filled up.
Forced to play a role I don’t want to play, I hate, or I’m no good at.
Rather just leave the game TBH.

Role Q Is better in every way.

1 Like
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Although I do like how, as a person with a good SSD and a very fast computer in general, I get to play the role I want every single game. Sucks for the poor saps with spinning platters, though.

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For me, 222 has been the very worst change ever made to the game…the matches are far less fun for me since it was added.

222 added many severe problems to the game

2 Likes
13

What’s so bad about it? Aside from the worse matchmaking, I mean.

14

For me the best change. I would be long gone if they didn’t implement 2-2-2.
I actually tested this out recently with the challenges to get skins in this event.
To get my nine wins every week I played quick play classic. Not saying this is a perfect way to test it but it’s brought back bad memories of when there was no role queue.
8 out of 10 matches were complete utter garbage with five to six DPS picks and every game. And I am a DPS main and I truly hate not having healers and tanks backing me up.

Go play a few games of quick play classic and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
I’m glad that nonsense is gone in competitive.

4 Likes
15

can’t be any worse than the game is now when 2 people q for dps but you actually only have 1 or 0 dps.

good players would swap to second healer. it just takes one more person on the team to make that swap. that’s what they did for the first 3 years of the game. even if the second healer is mostly dpsing, you are right it’s still better than 3 dps 1 support.

3 dps was actually pretty reliable, especially vs certain comps. why on earth would both tanks flame the dps and stay 2 tanks? any decent tank with a brain would swap to second support.

321 goats is actually pretty ez to deal with, and would get shut down anyway by banning either rein, lucio, or brig that game

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No it wasn’t. It was terrible. There was literally never a 3 dps meta.

2 Likes
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Although there are multiple differences between pre222 qp and qp classic, qp classic is my favorite mode, and I have played a lot of qp classic matches

I dont know of anything even remotely close to being nonsensical in qp classic

1 Like
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Slight correction (kinda…). There was a semi-3-DPS meta in the brief period between the end of Triple Tank and the start of Dive, though I say semi because the third DPS slot was a flex spot that sometimes went tank, sometimes went DPS. But, it was short lived and barely anybody remembers it. Also keep in mind we had way fewer tank options then, so I’m not sure that it’s a good argument that 3 DPS is a routinely viable strategy, especially since it’s so long ago.

Anyway, to OP’s point… sorry, but the developers evidently disagree, and I think you’ll find that a lot of players also disagree. I actually thought of something like Role Caps back before RoleQ was announced, but after discussing it on a number of threads with other players who had similar ideas and opposing ideas, I came to the conclusion that this system doesn’t work because people who join into a game wanting to play, for example, DPS only to find that the three DPS slots are already filled are more-motivated to leave. It creates a de facto queue that occurs after the fact, rather than an official queue that players can determine beforehand, thus minimizing issues with leaving. It also elevates the basis for toxicity since there’s opportunity for people to bully others into swaps. Again, RoleQ outright does not allow for this.

As for hero bans… I’m mixed on this one. I see the value, I do, but I also am concerned about how they’ll used. In previous instances where tourneys have introduced hero banning (i.e. Jayne’s tourney), they weren’t used to increase hero variety but to limit it by banning counters to the meta rather than the meta itself. Also, there are plenty of questions about voting proportions, ban limits (i.e. do we allow banning two supports, or only one?), and other structural items that I definitely need answered before I get on board with this kind of system. That said… I don’t think it would be an adequate replacement to RoleQ, but better as a supplement. They address different issues.

Overall, RoleQ has drastically improved my experience in Overwatch. QP beforehand, and QPC now whenever I play it, tends to be the hot mess express (framing it politely), and it’s extremely unfun for me regardless of which role I play–even on DPS, I often find that I’m contending with a lack of healing or tanking (or both) on my team, which makes my life as a DPS harder. RoleQ at least guarantees that minimum value, which is huge when the terrible minimum quality of matches in OW, particularly in QP, was one of the biggest factors driving me away from the game (that, and bad balancing which is still an issue). If you dislike RoleQ, try QPC. Despite some naysaying by the forum polemics, a lot of people who are discontent with RoleQ have tried QPC and found it to be a satisfactory replacement for the old style of QP.

19

One thing I forgot to mention in my experiment which has been going on for a while now.
Is that if you had let’s say one team of six DPS against a team of five DPS and that last slot was a tank or healer, no matter if it was the weakest healer or the weakest tank in the roster, that team had an advantage over the team with six DPS heroes.
This was proven to me multiple times and it goes to show that even having one healer or one tank no matter how weak affects the game a lot vs not having one at all.

1 Like
20

This is just plain wrong though.

No, player skill is irrelevant to hero picks. People refused to fill in the old system, and they’re certainly no more likely to do it now.

There aren’t enough heroes in the tank and supp roles for hero bans to be viable, this has pretty much 0 chance of happening for years.
I don’t understand why people keep making this idiotic suggestion when it’s obvious that it can’t be implemented without adding several more heroes.