How to scale the supports vs dps vs tanks

This is going to be a very, odd… way to look at things for many people, but, it should be a way people who have developed games will understand.

Balance the 3 roles, so you have roughly the right amount of people playing each role.

I’d remove priQueue so it is obvious what is going on, and so you can get better games coming out of it.

Then balance for player retention for the 3 roles, on a percentile basis. So you don’t have one queue blow out.

It is a VERY practical way of doing this.

After all, if you lose your tank/support players at the current rates, PriQueue can’t save you long term.

You have a game which relies on a healthy mix, so, balance for that mix.

Anything else means you lose the DPS players anyway. - as you have to trade queue times for match quality at increasingly worse ratios.

Either DPS players leave because match quality is garbage, or that the queue times get so bad you can’t sustain it.

OW2 is going to have a PvE mode, and you HAVE to know that the Support / Tank players are more likely to play it than DPS. If they were about fragging other players, they wouldn’t be supporting or tanking.

So, you will lose a bunch there, and if you are already having to sacrifice match quality to make up losing them faster than DPS, PvP will suffer hard, and you won’t have many places to go.

Trying 3 DPS / 1 Tank will work for a while, but like priQueue it will come to it’s limits as well.

PvP is important, please don’t throw it away.

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That is quite hard to do unless Overwatch devs are firm on how strong each role can be. Like if we have stronger tanks which would draw in some players then players of other roles may dislike it say stuff like “tanks are immortal”.

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Right, BUT, you have a very real way to work out how much they dislike it.

Since one group is larger than the other 2, the amount of complains you will get from them will be larger as well.

The more the roles become unbalanced, the more the feedback will also do so.

But, you have real feedback, in the form of role retention rates. Some would say the only way to measure feedback.

Sure, the complaints may have fixes which won’t throw other roles under the bus, in which case, yes, go for it.

But ultimately, the retention rate is important, and retention rate by role will determine future retention rates.

This is a long way to say - yes you are right, Blizzard will have to work out if a piece of feedback is going to be good long term for the game.

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Hard disagree, supports and tanks are enjoyable in pvp content because they have “outplay” factors that draw players to the role. Tank and support gameplay have always been significantly worse in pve vs pvp content, if you think the 1 to 1o ratio is bad in ow pvp content, pve games often have 1 to 40 ratios or higher because ‘outplaying’ bots just doesn’t have the same appeal as it does with players.

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yeah, been saying for ages now that the

Doom and Mei should be reworked so they are tanks. Bringing tanks up to 10 options.

Sym, Torb, and Echo should be reworked so they are support. Bringing support up to 10.

And taking DPS down to 12.

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I would rather leave them where they are and have new tanks and supports.

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Agreed about the pve pvp for role things.

There are always ranks and supports for battlegrounds. They will pay you game or literal irl money to tank or support a raid :joy::joy:

The issue is the PvE games (lets be honest, MMOs) have long favored DPS over the other roles.

Go look at the number of DPS heroes compared to support and tank heroes in typical MMO.

Even worse, they balance most of the PvE so DPS can solo it. If the encounters last until you can kill the enemy, and DPS put out the most damage, it means that DPS can go though content faster.

Hell, in FFXIV, the recommended way to play Tank / Support, is to play DPS and turn in your quests as Tank/Support.

Because even though you don’t get in combat XP toward your class, it is STILL faster, since, DPS can get though content that much quicker.

The reason that Tank / Support are like they are in MMOs is that the MMO’s push people away from Tanking or Supporting with their earlier game.

I am a natural support player, in that I DO run support in almost every game EXCEPT Overwatch, where I am a DPS main.

But like, in games where you can play as one hero, and give a section of XP to another, it is always always always faster to DPS and give a section to support than it is to support.

And that is a problem, which just hasn’t been fixed.

Hell FFXIV has a particularly brain dead thing that one of the support classes can only be gotten BY DPSing it up.

In Overwatch’s case, they have a worse problem in that they can’t RETAIN tanks or supports.

MMOs at least have a good end game for them, which overwatch doesn’t.

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I think that is unlikely to happen if they aren’t adding new heroes because of OW2.

But even if they are going to add new characters, I doubt they are going to add so many that they overcome the massive gap in quantity that they currently have between 9 more DPS than Tanks or 10 more DPS than Support.

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I get that, but ultimately, they should move them, and get new tank / supports.

Yeah, I don’t exactly trust the dev team to do that, I mean, look at where we are now.

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I am not sure why do I see this regularly wanting to move undesirable heroes into other roles. I don’t think that will make the characters all of a sudden be better. Like if Mei becomes a tank would players be suddenly fine with her freezing enemies.

I legit think people are sleeping on how much the current tank situation is actually because of who is currently playing support.

What happened to mercy?

Pc she’s a shadow self and had the most voice but

I play console and mercy used to be SUFFOCATINGLY popular. However… Who is the type of person who used to play her?

People who like to support.

And who did they cater her to appeal to? People who don’t.

I know A LOT of people who play support now who don’t actually like suppor-ting. They like just … winning or being good.

There is a huge difference being on rein with a support and not with a healer.

Anti is fun but it’s useless if I am a quarter health and charge is down. Or people who literally never damage boost because all they think mercy is good for is healing.

I need both heals AND speed lucio.

Support players know that. That’s their interest.

If I have a baby shield and my halt is halved, I NEED my support to play with my plays. I can’t have them sitting on yellow beam and song and then screech about gold healing.

And lucio reddit-ing in the enemy spawn isn’t anymore useful than a dps only baptiste. Or a baptiste who can’t use field for anything other than himself or waits for ultimates only.

Tanks and supports are sooooo linked. And the only reason supports hurt moderately less on pc imo is just socialization and the benefit of a mouse. I think if brig AND Mercy were the meta supports, it would be just as painful on pc as xbox for wait times

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The issue is when in OWL they are used as a proxy for another role, and they get nerfed because of that.

Mei can’t be good, because she is a tank in a DPS slot.

Tanks / Supports are pretty bad in places without crazy co-ord, because most of their strength comes from that.

So the moment you get a tank or support line in the DPS lineup, they become either too good in OWL, or total garbage on ladder.

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Would they allow her to be good in the tank role. Even if she is moved there, I am pretty sure they would still complain about her freeze.

I mean I’m having trouble reading it, but my assumption is that you’re saying they should balance towards

  • “Equal popularity between roles”

And not towards

  • “Equal objective-capture potential”.

Or said another way

  • Stop balancing the roles as if 3-4 Tanks on a team is a possibility.

But she wouldn’t have the OWL problem.

Nope… it is none of the above.

“Stable popularity between roles”

I don’t expect to have the same number of Tank players as DPS ever.

But I don’t think they should balance in a way which makes the ratios get worse.

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What’s the difference between Stable and “Heading towards equal”?

Realistically she will still be in the bottom tier even as a tank and yes I guess it would solve the OWL problem.

I am not in favor of the move unless Mei actually benefits from it like with reverts to freeze.

Or no roles. That’s where I’m at personally. I’m kind of in love with fortnite for the pve and think that the ow2 gameplay should be more like a new structure and not touch ow1 at all.

I guess. Same concept to me, said a different way.

Until we reach whatever that inflection point is, the direction is going to be “towards more equal popularity”.

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