I was watching the developer update for the first experimental card (triple damage), and one big question stood out, was talked about as a main point: “How do we make damage queue times faster?”.
Ive asked this before, its pretty bad.
Only thing I can come up with is a different question: “How do we make non damage roles more enjoyable?” (aka why does playing tank/healer suck?)
What do you all think? How would you fix this problem?
Personally there’s a few problems: You don’t feel rewarded, despite knowing your team would probably lose without you.
You are probably playing Reinheart, or your teammate is playing Reinheart, since the other tanks just don’t tank very well in comparison (aside from you orisa, but lets face it - unless you have a dedicated healer and medium range, you suck currently)
Playing as a healer relies on your team to be enjoyable, and solo queue is not going to be fun. They pick a tracer, and suddenly you cant do anything without your team focusing on you. You cant carry games if you are a good player, best you can do is find the best player on your team and keep them alive since you know the rest of your team is probably high and couldn’t shoot their way out of a wet paper bag.
I don’t know how you can fix the problems without large changes to the game. But you know what I wouldn’t do?
I wouldn’t nerf the least played role, that’s for sure
I can definitely see how you can feel that. Alternatively, role queue DOES make the game much easier to balance (assuming they actually balance the game)
By actually trying to balance it instead of using support/tank balance as a proxy. People might actually play the other role if the characters didn’t get dunked on by nerfs so often.
I don’t agree they suck at all, I think that their gameplay style is so unconventional for an fps that most players have no clue how to play them. And nobody likes playing something their bad at + not being able to comprehend how to play them.
I honestly believe overwatch PVE will help with that a lot.
They can’t do that. Because that makes them better than DPS. DPS don’t want that. That’s why they scream for Zarya nerfs. When she’s gotten no major changes. Other characters have. All that 1-3-2 did, was make lots of tanks simplified. So people don’t have to pay attention much.
For me there are 2 big reasons i really dont like the tank role in its current state and still often miss the times before role queue where i could instantly switch from tank to a different role.
reason 1:
i dont want to play Reinhardt, i find him boring. i also dont want to play Orisa, she is somewhat boring as well. but for the last year or so you pretty much risk getting reported for throwing when you queue tank and refuse to go shield tank.
the tank role feels extremely limited when you have only one or two characters you are “allowed to pick” and its very unrewarding to queue tank when you have people complaining about your choice of character before the game even starts.
reason 2:
there are characters in the game designed to counter tanks, like mei and sombra. the fact that they counter pretty much the entire role without giving you much possibility to counter switch within the role can make the tanking experience very frustrating if your team does not back you up.
in the past if i was playing tank and the enemy sombra kept hacking me i would just switch to mccree or hanzo and take care of her myself. if enemy had mei i would switch to mei myself. but now im stuck on this frustrating role and i just want the game to end as soon as possible so i can queue dps instead.
If you make all of the tanks and supports totally OP, I’m sure you’ll get more people who want easy victories llloooolll.
That’s the only way I can figure you poaching players and even then, it’s just gonna be a bunch of dps only players complaining even harder for nerfs for tanks and supports (I mean… have you seen these forums? Some people want both those roles totally dead!).
Simple answer is stop punishing tanks and supports by nerfing them to the point where they loose any and all enjoyment.
I don’t want to pick a tank if I know my team is going to cry at me if I don’t pick Rein and instead pick ball, and I don’t want to pick a support if all I’m going to hear is, 'you better not be a DPS moira" or “you better be able to aim ana!” from my DPS, while getting yelled at that I didn’t Rez Genji who was spawn camping the enemy on Kings Row rather than pushing the just now active payload… >__>
Why would I bother taking abuse AND play characters I don’t want to play when I can just play DPS and not care?
They really should look into undoing some of the nerfs or at least thinking more about retooling the characters entirely into something else if they don’t want to. As it stands it just feels like you play a characters and get punished for it in Tank or Support. They need to change that, make it feel rewarding to play them again.
Until then, I’ll just DPS, not like any meaningful nerfs get thrown onto most of them anyway. This isn’t to say that they should all be getting nerfs, but when you see Supports and Tanks get slammed by them only to see slap on the wrist nerfs elsewhere it starts to feel a bit unfair, which in turn leads to it feeling defeatist to even start to try to learn a support or tank. If your victories end up tasting as sour as defeat why bother?
Don’t allow any heroes to counter an entire role. Collectively, every role should have access to a viable answer to any threat they might face (ideally 2).
High quality, in-depth tutorials for both roles and individual heroes
Better feedback on success. Audio/visual effects to let player know when they’re doing their job well. Those little rewards matter in games.
priority queue for wins on flex role
More engaging tank/healer mechanics (mechanical requirements and/or smooth/intuitive abilities).
Better statistics. Need more in-depth statistics to assess how we did in a match. Things like sleep dart accuracy or anti-healed enemies on Ana.
(Experiment) Intermittent priority queue for higher endorsement. Normalize endorsement gains per role so lvl 3 is average. Every X games, give message saying the player gets priority queue the next match for their endorsement. Frequency increases with endorsement lvl. (tanks/supports rely on teamwork/synergy for impact, more teamwork makes games way more enjoyable)
You can’t fix DPS queues without a massive change in balance. People like playing powerful Tanks and mechanically challenging DPS. If Blizzard want to address this than they need to buff most tanks, and nerf the DPS they powercrept (McCree, Solider, and more nerfs to Mei). Leave Rein and the off tanks the way they are, but buff Sigma, Orisa, and Winston (only buff Winston slightly). This will give more variety to the tank meta, and will make DPS queues shorter. More people will want to at least try tank, and since their more powerful they might stay. With DPS heroes less powerful than theres a bit less incentive to play them. It’s not a perfect solution but it’s a start to addressing the problem.