Is Role Queue still necessary?

General Discussion
201

There is a very clear indicator for it:

Open Queue has longer waiting times than the Tank and Support Role in Role Queue.

Since the Open Queue matchmaker is much less restricted (it doesn’t have to take roles into account and only uses 1 single MMR value per player), it should work much faster even if the player base was split 50:50.

The only logical explanation for this is, that it has a much smaller pool of players from which it can pick to fill a game.

On what exactly do you base the claim that Role Queue isn’t working successfully?

They have experimented on how to improve the queue time in Role Queue.
That is not surprising at all since they said long before Role Queue went live that DPS Queue times would take a hard hit.

The results of the 1/3/2 experiment obviously weren’t satisfying enough and caused way too much collateral damage.

But if I look at the queue times now, it seems like priority passes have done the trick.

They are most certainly still working on improving queue times further, but you certainly can’t say that what they did wouldn’t have worked.

A man can dream :wink:

Though according to Jeff the benefits outweigh the negatives - with which I am in complete agreement.

You need to work on your reading comprehension.
I said that Role Queue isn’t something that would draw new players to the game.
It always was a change aimed at the players who are still playing it.

I don’t see the correlation.
Just because already active players enjoy it more doesn’t mean that there would be any noticeable change in the size of the player base.
Some might have left, some might have come back (I know in fact that some of my friends have).

But like I said above:
It mainly aimed at the existing active player base.
And in fact the rate with which people lost interest in Overwatch slowed down a bit from that point on.

What does LFG even have to do with that?
You said that DPS players play other roles for the priority pass - to which I replied that they seem to prefer Role Queue over Open Queue so much that they are willing to wait longer for a match as well as to play other roles for priority tickets.
How does LFG fit in here?

I’d rather listen to the devs than to some forum randos.

What exactly did you expect them to balance the game for?
4/1/1?

Of course they tried to balance the game for 2/2/2 with Role Queue coming up - anything else would have been kind of lunatic, wouldn’t it?
But that the results where questionable at times is not the fault of Role Queue.
It’s the fault of the devs who (most certainly because they are humans too) made a mistake.

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Yes but arcade is supposed to be a chaotic mess. Competitive is supposed to be a mode where you get placed with people of similar skill at the role they are playing to get the fairest game possible.

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There is a fine line of “dont care” and “throwing”. However a person sees it. It is suggestive to one’s perception to the argument.

  • Im here to work for a company to collect a paycheck.
  • Im here to work for a company because I care.

“I care about the company I work for”. You can lie to your boss all you want about how much you supposedly care about the company. But most people just 1-up their bosses so they can move on.

The local district manager comes out and spends 2 hours giving a team lecture about how much the company is so great and goes on this lecture about giving 110% today. Lets face it. We all know who these people are.

1 . Receiving terrible pay.
2. Terrible work positions.
3. Here to collect the paycheck.
4. Just let a person do their job. As long as they aren’t sitting around on their cell phone all day and “holding up the walls”.

The same thing applies here.

Do you want the positions open to the game where players care about their work. Or the positions that are open to “open up the payment faucet for XP”.

:face_with_monocle:

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For the awful state most of the tanks are in, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t see much play at all if it wasn’t for Role Queue. One needs to look no further than the queue times to see that tank is by far the role that the fewest people even want to play.

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I’ve already repeatedly countered all your arguments about RQ being unneccessary. You actually edited out the part in the post where i countered your point:

  • Tanks needing to be balanced and playable for 1/4/1 AND 3/3.
  • Bad quality solo healer/tank games.
  • People feeling forced to pick tanks/healers when they didnt want to.
  • The old “i can tell we’re gonna lose before we even left spawn” games where 4 people all decided to throw because they couldnt all pick Genji

QPC is VASTLY less popular than RQ. And yes, it is a mode where people go to just mess around when they dont want to play properly, like Mystery Heroes.

I didnt mean “more varied meta compositions” i meant “more endless seasons of 1 locked best meta”

What problems did 222 cause?

Your obsession with OWL is silly - a game developer that likes money wouldnt destroy their game for the sake of a little streaming revenue. They need to be making decades worth of future sales from the game itself. They did it to make the game better, since bad games dont sell.

Please, tell me what LFG fixes in the game? I’ve repeatedly countered your point on “user defined group mixes” in this thread - that doesnt fix any problems, it just moves people around while the same problems exist.

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206

Dear all who saying it must be deleted
honesly i dont want to get back to 5 dps heal or 1 healer hell they are both my main roles
you have your own qu on the side on ranked ! why you want it to be removed RQ ?! i think you want it to get removed so you get games faster as dps since a lot less tanks and healers even qu there ??

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207

role queue isnt very necessary, but getting rid of role queue is equally as unnecessary now that we have it.

role queue is good imo because it adds some consistency for players that only play a certain role. it is quite angering to queue for a game expecting to play a damage hero just to realize that 3 people already locked dps

there is also the argument of, “ur gunna have to wait 10 minutes if you queue for dps.” which is valid. but i would rather wait for 10 minutes knowing that i will be able to play characters i actually enjoy, instead of having the chance of needing to wait out a 30 minute game with 5 dps.

i think that the only way to fix this is to add more healers and tanks. there are just too many dps characters to expect an equal player base for all roles.

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Goats doesn’t seem to work very well in open queue. In fact damage are so strong that 6 damage seems to beat 2-2-2 now.

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209

I’ll take this from another post:

People not caring about their off-roles (not everyone is flexible)
Off-roles not being moved to proper ratings fast enough
Not enough tanks as characters, thus large imbalance in tank players vs damage (besides the fact that fewer people in general play tanks), which leads to tanks being thrown into matches well above and below their current mmr and sr, with wildly varying expectations both ways
Too many damage characters relative to other categories, that unless the very top of ratings, where tanks and supports use priority passes for faster queues, queue is overloaded with damage players, who play noticeably less games and are adjusted very slowly

Question: Would you say that Comp Classic was a good addition to the game?

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210

I personally enjoy open que more, I find it more fun when players can fill whatever role they need in the middle of a match. It sucks when everyone is trying to dps and have a zen for a healer lol.

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211

I am not aware of any points being countered, repeatedly or not

222 is absolutely unnecessary to play the game…thousand upon thousand of players are enjoying playing role-less queue modes – no 222 involved whatsoever – as I type this and as you read this

Given that qpc is not on the main game selection screen, this is an apples to oranges comparison

that said, I know of no valid data that supports the claim made here

I know of no valid data to support this claim either

Nor do I see how any one game mode is more “proper” than another

the most well known one is the excessive dps queue times.

I am surprised you dont know of this one

I have no obsessions when it comes to anything related to OW, including but not limited to OWL

a developer does what they are told by their managers, who ultimately are directed by upper management to maintain and/or increase revenue.

In the case of 222, the revenue related to OWL was in danger, and so 222 was added to help prevent that loss and bring ticket buyers back

at some point, games sell enough copies that they reach a saturation point. I would guess – based on the deep discounts I have seen on this game – that sales of the game are at or close to that point, which in turn means that games sales alone are not enough to pay the expense of keeping devs employed, servers online, and free coffee in the breakroom.

as such new revenue streams need to be found, created, and maintained. OWL is one of those newer streams

When discussing how to fix the OWL ticket sales problem, the point m=ay have been brought up that maybe 222 would make the game better, but given that they knew they were creating some fail (because they had the bribes in place from the outset to try to offset the queuing time problems they knew 222 would add to the game) I seriously doubt it

Frankly, 222 did NOT make the game better

IMO, it was THE worst single change ever made to the game, and I am far from alone in seeing things this way

the statement I replied to was, and I quote “LFG just gets people in to groups, it doesnt do anything else.”

my reply included an example of something LFG does beyond getting players into groups

since even this one thing demonstrates that LFG does indeed do more than “gets people in to groups”, my original reply fully addresses the statement that was made about LFG

I know of no such alleged countering of any of my points.

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212

Again, you cut out of your quote where i countered your point that RQ was unnecessary. I’m starting to think you’re avoiding addressing this:

  • Tanks do not need to be balanced and playable for 1/4/1 AND 3/3 with 222.
  • 222 removed bad quality solo healer/tank games.
  • QPC means people feel forced to pick tanks/healers when they didnt want to and didnt choose to beforehand.
  • 222 removed many of the old “i can tell we’re gonna lose before we even left spawn” games where 4 people all decided to throw because they couldnt all pick Genji.

Comp classic is vastly less popular than proper comp.
222 is the “official” mode, people graduate from QP into it. Of course its more popular. Blizzard’s own statement says in the West (bigger audience), 222 is massively popular and in the east, QPC is slightly more.

Ah, so you have a single reason why you dont like 222? Queue times, which can be countered with tickets or by picking a different role? You play support right? So that problem is moot for you, since 222 will be instant for you. Also… its not a reason to remove RQ, since QPC has faster DPS queues if you dont want to wait :wink: The flip side of your queue times argument is that players now get to pick the role they want to play rather than being forced into one they dont. Any more reasons why 222 is bad?

I was talking about upper management wanting money. Your OWL point does not counter my point that OWL is a tiny fraction of the revenue of keeping a game healthy for decades. Your point on saturation is rather silly - new players wont buy a new game if its bad. New players = new money, old players spend less.

222 made the game better in the ways listed in the bulletpoints above (that you keep ignoring). It also has some cool effects to the design of the game that you’d probably not understand, ask for proof of and then ignore.

You statement on LFG fixing more than getting people in to groups, as it pertains to getting people in to groups. What does it fix outside of getting people in to groups?

Eh, at least i’m addressing your points - you’re just repeating yourself and ignoring mine :wink:

213

This has been addressed a hundred gazillion times before dude, the problem is that you bring subjective things and “feelings” to the table and try to pass them as facts, like they are backed out by some logic but the truth is : They are NOT.

Point by point:

  • Tanks have always been balanced and most “balance” , for the worse, came DUE to the forced 222, so congratulations on destroying your own point. Let me remind you that Buaambulance and Triple DPS comps already existed BEFORE RQ and nobody complained about tank balance.
  • The “quality” is highly subjective and if we are going to talk about FACTS (again, not feelings), the queues are longer for non tanks than before, the SR differences between team mates are bigger and the overall player versatility has gone down. So yeah, bad for your stance buddy.
  • Nobody was ever forced to pick anything. There is no tool, word or “block” inside the game that could FORCE you to pick a hero. That is a FACT. Want another fact? If you play RQ as Support, you are FORCED to only pick support. You cant pick anything else so the only thing that FORCES people here is RQ.
  • That “old thing” is not “older” than people playing 222 , then tilting because they are losing and when some of them switch to DPS, players blaming the loss on “Omg, we lost because we had 4 DPS” … when it was NOT the case.

That is now because Support and Tank mains will mostly play RQ, so the audience, the player sample in each mode is NOT the same as it was before RQ existed. That is a false equivalence. Those 2 instances are NOT the same, those variables or control populations are vastly different.

Thats LITERALLY what RQ does:
Forcing people into a X setting (that being a 222 setting) and allowing them to queue (as a six stack if you use LFG) into the game.

The only difference is that RQ does it with 1 button, makes queues BRUTALLY longer and doesnt have a cap on the 1000SR difference max for players to queue (which is arguably worse).

Get your facts straight and please dont bring subjective stances to the table when trying to classify things as “better” or “worse”, it makes every argument pointless, since everyone can “feel” they are right. :man_facepalming:

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214

When didnt have role queue, games regularly happened where there was 1 tank VS 5 DPS. That meant their shield had to be strong enough to survive 5DPS. That also meant that 3 tanks together with 3 healers were TOO strong. The evidence of this is GOATS. Where is my logic flawed? “oh it didnt always happen” is not a good argument. Bad for your stance, buddy.

Quality is subjective, yes, but so are games. Games are all about feelings (fun) and therefore elements of them can be ranked based on subjective quality of fun-ness. If a solo healer or tank is unable to help the team no matter what they pick, it felt bad, you felt useless and therefore it was bad quality. And before you debate this, i recommend you go read some game design philosophy, since i’ve been a professional game designer for 20 years.

If you joined wanting to play DPS but the team wanted GOATS, you were “forced” into playing a different role if you wanted to win. If you wanted to play tank but had no healers, again, you were forced to play something else. If you had 2 tanks and no healers, if you wanted to win, you pick a heavy healer. Pick anything else and you’re soft throwing. If you join support RQ, you CHOOSE to play support.

So you’re saying supports and tanks prefer RQ? Cool cool.

I didnt ask how RQ is like LFG, i asked what a better LFG would fix? If you’re talking about queue times, LFG just redistributes the queue times to be faster for people who use it and slower for those that dont.

215

It’s around the same numbers for RQ. Because you can’t count T500 of each 1-role, 3 times. They’re in the same matches together. Rough comparison is combined vs. open, which we showed open to win. Either way, using T500 numbers is just vague extrapolation, so it’s a weak argument. And OPEN is doing quite well in ASIA. One theory is they like higher skillcap metas (real-time flex options), which open objectively and unequivocably has.

You’ll have to do better.

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We are not, just taking one roles worth is still enough. WE know there is more, but we don’t care, because we can show it without even having to go near the other roles.

EVEN using just one roles worth, we can show it is massively in roleQ’s favor.

From there, it gets even more so roleQ’s favor. Since we can show roleQ is more popular without even counting a large chunk of roleQ players.

The fact we don’t even HAVE to bring in the other roles is huge.

No it isn’t, it is showing that there is a MASSIVE difference in player numbers.

Than what? showing that roleQ is massively more popular?

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217

I haven’t seen any data that suggest it is. T500 extrapolation? Use combined vs. open.

What we know for sure is quality arguments go out the window. The notion of quality vs. quantity trade-offs are determined by supply/demand. 222 can barely load-balance without bribes - it’s a template that is out of touch with the population.

And it has a MUCH lower skillcap than OPEN.
Lowering the skill ceiling of the game for all people always improves quality? Makes no sense, and the queues/bribes show this.

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218

But we can take just the DPS queue, and boom we are STILL more popular than openQ. It isn’t like anyone is being bribed to play DPS.

It is, AND even then it is still more popular. - oh no, the queue times are bad, and the player base doesn’t match it on the ground, and it is STILL more popular even given that.

Like, those arguments are just in roleQ’s favor. EVEN given all of the bad stuff around it, it is STILL hugely more popular, which should give you an idea of how bad openQ is.

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219

Necessary is a weird way to put it considering rq is the preferred mode of play.

Diamond top 500 shows just how underpopulated the mode is. Comparable to consoles.

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No one was being bribed to play tank/support in open, either.

Queue times don’t show popularity, they show supply/demand mismatch. Process design 101.

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