Insightful commentary on ranked by Jeff

[Berserk-11339]

Have you been in lfg six stacks? They often devolve into toxicity the moment the team is struggling and usually disband after a single loss. Forcing everyone to six stack would just give players who actually know and play together the right to stomp every disorganized lfg style six stack out there. I guarantee toxicity wouldn’t substantially change and based on my experience with random lfg the teams won’t be much more coordinated either.

If you want good teams with good players you can find them and play with them. It’s an option available to everyone that’s wouldn’t get any better if six stacking was mandatory. On the other hand you’d no longer be able to solo. No value gained

[predat0r-2569]

To say a statement is self-evident, is to say that it is axiomatic, is to say that it is a first principle, is to say that it is difficult to argue about, because you either accept it or you don’t. It is not an argument or a conclusion, but a premise.

That’s an opinion not a fact I’m afraid, at least in the way that you used it above. It makes you sound condescending, surely that is self evident?

I understand that you probably think you are stating a fact but I disagree. You have no evidence to back up your argument and it was clear from your post that you completely misunderstood mine. If this isn’t clear feel free to re-read my response above.

If you say that everything you are writing is self-evident, and I disagree, then we really have nothing else to talk about. At this point, you can either rewrite your last comment, or we are done here.

I was pointing out I disagree with your initial premise, yet you aren’t willing to engage in open discussion?

So if someone disagrees with you:

1. You don’t attempt to address their opposing points
2. You attempt to shut them down because you don’t like your initial ‘assumptions’ being challenged?

This is what your ‘behavior’ indicates, if you don’t think this is the case, please feel free to address my points.

I do honestly want to improve the Overwatch competitive experience overall, because I think it is one of the main reasons players are being driven from the game. (The evidence I have to back this up is the reduction in streamers and all the negative posts on these forums, but do feel free to correct me)

[predat0r-2569]

The team must believe. If that was done. Than team only mode would fall apart. The Q times would be so high. People would abandon it and just go solo.

This is a good point.

It would be nice though if there was a league of somesort.

Lets follow my beach volleyball analogy.

So imagine in your local city there was a beach volleyball organisation.

• In that organisation they have a tournament which is run on a 6 monthly basis.
• They have this concept of divisions (which I will map in Overwatch terms):
  • Division A: GM
  • Division B: Masters
  • Division C: Diamond
  • Division D: Platinum
  • Division E: Gold
  • Division F: Silver
  • Division G: Bronze
• To enter the tournament you need to enter with a valid team lets say it is 6 people. Some weeks not all your players will be available, so you can get someone to fill in.
• Teams from each division are matched against each other, and based on their performance they can go up or down a division
• At the end of the tournament season, the teams are rewarded based on where they placed overall within their division.
• The very top teams qualify to go into the regional tournament…

Now don’t get me wrong such a system isn’t a perfect analogy for what could be done in game. Perhaps Blizz just needs to find the right incentive for participating. For many just having a global leaderboard would be sufficient.

Those who don’t want to participate don’t have to. They would have all the other modes to play in, and meanwhile you’d have people from the competitive mode playing casually as well keeping their eye on high performers from the QP and Arcade modes.

Similarly, if those people really wanted to, they could put themselves in the ring to be a ‘sub’ in the competitive mode. But there would need to be some transparency over their stats so competitive teams missing someone could work out if they really wanted to take this person on etc.

As mentioned above, the system isn’t perfect. But there are some great real-world sports and tournaments which follow a somewhat similar model which seem to be quite successful.

I guess what I don’t understand is, why such a system isn’t a possible candidate to solving the competitive problems we have at the moment.

Personally my only investment in this really is I’d like to see the game succeed. I visit the forums daily and yet for the most part I hardly see any worthwhile content. All I get to really see is:

• Complaints about toxicity
• Complaints about the MM
• Complaints about balance
• Complaints about team-mates

I don’t really have much of an issue with any of the above. I know I’m placed pretty near where I am meant to be placed. I mute voice etc if I’m solo queuing and I think the game is doing pretty well for balance, though I would like to see some doomfist improved a little.

I do know lots of people seem to have issues with the current system. The evidence is visible by simply reading the titles of most of the forum posts. I’d like to try and change that and I guess I just need to understand why the example I posted above isn’t a viable option as it really would seem to address the issues I mention above.

I understand there is no perfect system, but sometimes you need to do what you can to set people up for success when it comes to using your application or playing your game. I am just not seeing that success at the moment.

[predat0r-2569]

Have you been in lfg six stacks? They often devolve into toxicity the moment the team is struggling and usually disband after a single loss. Forcing everyone to six stack would just give players who actually know and play together the right to stomp every disorganized lfg style six stack out there. I guarantee toxicity wouldn’t substantially change and based on my experience with random lfg the teams won’t be much more coordinated either.

LFG in its current iteration is a band-aid solution. I believe this is clear simply for what you point out above, general comments in the forum and the lack of LFG groups I see when I view the feature on occasion.

Jeff’s comments seem to indicate he (or his team) believes people should use it more, but, to me, it appears to be clearly flawed.

If you want good teams with good players you can find them and play with them.

That’s true, but it isn’t easy to do it. I think my reference to the ‘pit of success’ isn’t as clear as perhaps it should be.

Here is the blog post (it refers to API programming, but I believe it transfers pretty well to application and game development): https://blog.codinghorror.com/falling-into-the-pit-of-success/

The Pit of Success: in stark contrast to a summit, a peak, or a journey across a desert to find victory through many trials and surprises, we want our customers to simply fall into winning practices by using our platform and frameworks. To the extent that we make it easy to get into trouble we fail.

To make the analogy clearer:
The Overwatch game does a terrible job at protecting its players from themselves. (replace the C++ references with the Overwatch game)

That’s the problem with C++. It does a terrible job of protecting you from your own worst enemy – yourself. When you write code in C++, you’re always circling the pit of despair, just one misstep away from plunging to your doom.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Overwatch was designed to keep players from tilting at their team-mates, thinking the match maker is unfair and wanting to stop playing the game?

Wouldn’t it be nice to use a language designed to keep you from falling into the pit of despair? But avoiding horrific, trainwreck failure modes isn’t a particularly laudable goal. Wouldn’t it be even better if you used a language that let you effortlessly fall into The Pit of Success?

Overwatch really appears to be not like this judging from player’s comments.

I would like to think the dev team realize this from Jeff’s comments. But it appears they may be despairing themselves simply for the fact they appear to be smart enough people but have fallen into the trap of insisting people use the tools they have provided which appear, to me, to be clearly not working.

I’m certainly not a computer game design expert, but do have some background in designing systems and applications and have found that I am met with the most success when I make those systems and applications accessible and easy to use such that the users simply end up doing the right thing by default, rather than having the system or application fighting them every step of the way. (Anecdotal)

Regardless, those are my thoughts. I have no problem with disagreement and am more than open to discussion. I understand the argument that some people may not want to compete in such a system.

But perhaps we could do a SWOT analysis or simple list of the positives and negatives. From what I see there are far more positives than negatives so I can only assume it is the ‘perceived’ weight of the negatives which drives people against the suggestion.

If I have missed anything feel free to respond. I think moving forward I may just present my arguments as a list of positives and negatives and try to elicit feedback as to people’s suggested weightings for those points.

Thoughts?

[Berserk-11339]

Everyone knows the game is meant to be 2-2-2 and that four dps is going to reduce their chances of winning. Doesn’t mean they’ll stop playing suboptimally.

I don’t agree that forcing everyone into random stacks (which is virtually identical to forcing everyone into role queue except now they fight organized six stacks some games) has a lot of net benefits. It’ll result in less balanced games and no decrease in toxicity. Like a role queue with worse match making

[predat0r-2569]

I don’t agree that forcing everyone into random stacks (which is virtually identical to forcing everyone into role queue except now they fight organized six stacks some games) has a lot of net benefits. It’ll result in less balanced games and no decrease in toxicity. Like a role queue with worse match making

I agree, not random. It is just you are unable to queue for comp without a 6 stack.

How you make that is up to you, the principle can evolve from there: clans, leagues who knows?