Is this competitive? Sorry." - The Apology That Proves Quick

General Discussion
30

But they shouldn’t. That’s not an issue on the Quick Play mode, that’s an issue with a players incorrect expectation of that mode.

If you can understand that in QP a GM player can group up with one of their friends that is Silver (or even multiple friends and all of various skills/ranks), then you should also understand that you can’t expect there to be any relatively fair experience.

Ranked covers all of these issues. That’s why the two modes exist.
If there was only Ranked mode and this was happening, it would be completely understandable to be upset with how the match making works.
But we have two modes and they are not designed to be exactly the same mode. That wouldn’t make sense.
They cover different needs.

Ranked covers the actual competitiveness of the game. In order for it to be competitive and as fair as possible, the mode groups players up by relative skill levels. It’s not completely perfect as it also has to meet other requirements, but it’s good enough to accomplish it’s goal.

QP has a different goal. It’s to make games as quickly as possible. It also doesn’t keep track of a visible player rank or make adjustments to the player’s actual Competitive rank. It’s casual by design.
It’s where new players learn the core concept of the game.
It’s where some players may try out a character they have never played before and practice on it.
It’s where friends of various skill levels can play the core game together, because they may not be able to play Comp together, due to their difference in rank.
It’s where players can play without worrying, if they just got home from a long day of work and just want to play casually.

Anyone that is trying to force QP into anything that it’s not is just going to have a bad time, because it’s always been this way and it most likely isn’t ever going to change. It has a purpose. Some players just have a misunderstanding of that purpose or they simply don’t like that purpose and want to change it to something else, despite that what they want is basically to play Ranked, which is already an option for them.

The player’s expectation is incorrect. Not the game mode and how it functions.

31

It’s weird how fast people get mad in QP, like its QP you aren’t losing your points or anything, only thing they are mad about is there ego getting hurt from losing a match. It’s sad.

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32

Always said the qp mm is utterly GARBAGE, but people here just say ‘‘is qp go comp if you don’t want that kind of mm mimimimi’’

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33

Since the dawn of OW1.
Up until 2 years ago, it was even the standard, unanimous response of “go get into QP to learn the game” or to learn a new hero or learn whatever.
It’s also how the mode is designed. Brand new players can in fact play in QP. If they weren’t supposed to, they wouldn’t have allowed it over the course of the last 9+ years.

There are no rules stating that this is how it should be done. It might be a fine enough process to go through, but it has very little impact overall for the integrity of QP. The integrity of QP is already greatly compromised by many other things (and they are impacted by other things that are by purposeful design)
The game allows brand new players to play in any mode other than Ranked (and even then, it only requires 50 wins in QP to get into Ranked).

QP is a great mode for new players. Other players expectations of what QP is (or what they simply wish it should be for them) is simply a fault on their end, not the game mode.
It isn’t new. It’s always been like this. The only major change to QP is that they added a leaver penalty, but QP has always had:

  • Bronze-GM being able to be in the same QP lobbies.
    This alone is enough to break any kind of integrity for the mode to be anything but casual.
  • QP Match Making’s priority is low queue time. It makes matches quickly, even at the expense of evenly matched teams. Again further breaking any integrity of anything beyond extremely casual games.
  • Brand new players can play in this mode immediately from starting up the game for the first time. Again, breaking any kind of integrity for anything outside of extremely casual games.

Each of these things by themselves compromise any kind of serious games in this mode.
And these things serve a purpose. They were designed this way.
You can’t design these things on purpose, for specific reasons, that greatly compromise any kind of seriousness and then demand that the games are still played with a certain level of seriousness. It won’t work. You will run into each of those issues, which is what is exactly happening with players that have some kind of expectation of QP being anything but extremely causal.

And lastly… there is already a mode that solves all of these issues if you don’t like how QP is designed. It’s Ranked.
Ranked gives you far closer skill matched games. If you don’t like any skill level being in your game with literally any other skill level, Ranked solves this (besides some players abusing the system, but still far better and the player issue is rare in your games).
If you don’t want brand new players in your games. Ranked solves this (for the most part).
If you don’t like uneven teams because the system tries to balance them out in wonky ways due to mass difference in skill level, Ranked solves this. Since all the players in the lobby are relatively similar skill level, the system isn’t trying to match a Masters with a Silver player on one team to go against 3 Plats to make each side “even” and then continue doing similar balancing for the rest of the teams.

Anyone who doesn’t have these expectations of QP needing to be serious, isn’t upset with QP at all. They use QP as it’s designed and if they want anything more, they simply jump over to Ranked.

34

Then Blizzard should not have advertised on the QP card “Jump into a match against players of your skill level.”

I solo q and my expectation is that the QP matches I jump into are fairly even. If I have to wait 5 mins to get this match, then so be it.

6 Likes
35

You so sure it was a new player? Not like this game never had smurfs. Just saying.

Fast queue times cause back in OW1 DPS complained about “10 minutes queue times for a 2-minute game”.

36

While Competitive is in fact a ranked system, winning and losing are the only outcomes of any match. Competitive ranks your gameplay on a ladder so that you’re always aware of where you are - competitively speaking. Nowhere in the game does it ever say Quick Play is where you get to goof off or play on a controller with your toes. There is no ranking system in QP, so people naturally feel less restricted. Freedom doesn’t always mean you get to do whatever you want. Some people are not going to appreciate the lack of effort from other players who may or may not be in their own rank. Regardless of what game mode it happens to be. That is because Overwatch, among any other PvP or online shooter games in general, is a competitively played video game.

37

This game has way too many smurfs and trolls for me to reliably tag someone as a “new player” unfortunately. I feel for those who are actually new to the game however.

2 Likes
38

After playing a lot of OW1 and OW2 QP, i actually started calling it Stomp Play since OW2 came out.
OW1 QP had much better and enjoyable matches compared to OW2 QP, but the problem with OW1 QP was the “leave culture”. Now, is the rampant imbalance of every match (mixing new fresh players with seasoned/high rank veterans) which translates into “stomp” or “be stomped”, i rarely see now two teams fighting equally for the victory till the last second.

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39

There’s a lot to read here, so I’m just going to throw in my 2 cents.
I probably have typed that exact sentence “Is this ranked? Sorry” before. And there was no sadness in it. Plenty of sarcasm though.
And since your DVA was acting (or was) pretty new they could have easily been on the same boat.
It’s QP, some people take it more serious than others. Don’t expect perfection from your team regardless.

40

And i think you didn’t finish reading my post mate :rofl:

Never said it would take ages to learn just dvas boosters.

Some people might have the time, patience, or take the game seriously enough to sit in practice ranges for long periods of time learning every movement, ability, etc but honestly most people aren’t going to.

Seriously how many people are going to go ok time to play a new game but the first thing I’m doing is to sit in practice range trying out everything on 44 characters. Even if its the 2 minutes you claim that’s still about an hour and a half of just sitting in practice range before getting to play against bots according to your order. Ai isn’t for everybody anyways. It’s super easy to trick the bots by breaking los or kill 1 and they all run back into spawn.

41

I’m with you on that. :sparkling_heart:

That’s why whenever I see that happening, I always recommend them to mute all comms.

They don’t need to listen to abusive chat.

It’s just going to make them quit the game more.

42

Matchmaking is a problem but we also need to hold your teammates accountable for creating a toxic environment in quick play.

It’s ridiculous how cowardly people are when it comes to playing comp to the point they treat quick play so seriously.

I main comp because it’s less sweaty honestly

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43

Again, this is straight up false.
I guess you never had any alt account lol.
When you create a new account and start playing, they literally tell you the Training Room is for testing heroes abilities.

QP is to learn the game, not how to press Shift and run with Soldier mate.

There are. Again, theres logic and the messages the game has.
Also, this is going to blow your mind, the game came, in a physical edition, with instructions that straight up tell you how things work.

Ofc there was no arcade, but they tell you for the basics (again, we are talking about knowing what an ability does), training range / vs bots is the spot.

Back at you buddy, again:

Thats just reality :man_shrugging:

Nah, you are not flipping this one mate.

I was talking ALL the time about that specific thing not being a “Competitive” thing so yeah, you didn’t read the part I quoted, and you acted like I was talking about something else. You literally said “ages” so yeah , no.

Nah.
Again mate thats not flying, sorry.
Like I said, thats just decorum, and respecting other people’s time but just because thats not common, doesn’t mean its ok.

No one is saying “Don’t touch QP untill you achieve 50% accuracy with Soldier vs bots” or anything like that, again, reminder:
We are talking about someone that can’t look at a spot, move the mouse upwards, press shift and fly there. That is not admissible. Nope.

44

Nah mate I’m respecting my time and not wasting those 88 minutes practicing every hero for 2 minutes in a stupid practice range like you expect people to do. I got better things to do than to basically NOT play a game that i want to play :rofl::rofl:

And i never said i didn’t say ages. I’m saying i didn’t say ages on dva alone. But if people want to play seriously and don’t like people learning a game (just like they had to do at 1 point) then i guess go play comp. People have to learn and practice somewhere and you can only learn so much from the practice range you love so much mate :rofl:

45

I learned all basic functions of characters in VS AI. That’s what it’s for.

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46

True but again you can really only learn so much against them before you kind of have to go to qp to learn more. In ai just break los and the bots basically forget you exist. Kill 1 near spawn and they all run back in. Have horrible positioning? Thats ok

Some stuff you can only really learn playing against actual people not in ai or in a practice range

47

Honestly it is to the point where i am plugging my Switch 2 into a KBM and using the text chat to ask if there are any newbies and if they do, i wouldn’t mind grouping with them to help them out a bit.

This annoys me because it means i have to go back behind my pc to access my keyboard.

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48

My dude you keep throwing this like its not absolutely false.
Again, I never said PRACTICE , I said learn. I am talking about literally login in, training, select Dva, use skills “ah ok”. Thats 30 seconds EACH hero.

Some heroes are pretty similar so in 2 mins you can learn 5.
Its ok, we know you don’t care about anyone’s time we get it now, but stop making insane times lol. Nobody believes that.

49

I mean you’re the one that’s been saying 2 minutes to learn stuff on a hero in practice range so I’m just going by your numbers mate :rofl:

But now it’s 30 seconds? Still minimum 22 minutes with all the heroes not counting the time swapping and all. Nah still boring. I could play at least a game or 2 in that time and actually have fun :rofl: