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50% of the game’s roster is DPS, which has been the case for 3+ years. Blizzard designed that.
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DPS heroes have the most gameplay variety and flavor compared to other roles, which became clear from release day (beta in fact). DPS has always been statistically the most played role by a mile, vastly outnumbering tank+support combined. Blizzard knew that from the very beginning.
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Despite both the above facts, the game paradoxically revolves around enforcing 4 non-DPS slots and 2 DPS slots, which directly punishes DPS players with insane queue times. Blizzard designed that.
It’s entirely Blizzard’s design for 3+ years that resulted in DPS players being called “selfish” for playing a role they enjoyed, and flex tanks/supports receiving praise for playing roles (often reluctantly) which failed to appeal to the majority of the playerbase. Blizzard designed that.
Don’t let anyone spread the nonsensical notion that “people weren’t playing how the game was designed to be played” whenever teams ended up with 3-5 DPS players. People were playing exactly how Blizzard had designed the game to be played.
Don’t let anyone spread the nonsensical notion that it’s somehow the fault of DPS players that they are spending so much time sitting in queues, and that they should just give up the DPS role if they want to see gameplay in their…game. Trying to shift the blame for bad game design onto millions of players has never worked for any game company (ever), and this excuse especially falls flat for a veteran company like Blizzard.
Dear devs, please reconsider whether it was really a good idea to design this game around having only 2 DPS per team, when you have intentionally made 50% of the roster to be DPS heroes and also made those heroes statistically the most enjoyable/preferred. This conflict of design philosophy has always existed, but forced role-lock has made it VERY blatant.
Sidenote: it was a pretty genius move for Blizzard to somehow convince a community of millions of players that the community itself was the problem. Almost nobody seemed to realize that all these behaviors/trends were directly a result of game design.
62 Likes
Also like… half the dps characters are garbage.
7 Likes
So, you want to hide the problems again?
Shift the problem back on the people who used to fill?
We don’t want it.
If you are talking about 7s, then I’m in agreement.
4 Likes
And still there are people one tricking them.
2 Likes
There could be as many or more supports / tanks and dps line would still be longer.
You’ll always have more DPS players.
It’s not just a lack of variety.
It’s a lack of desire to play that role in the first place.
This has been the “problem” for any game that’s had similar classes/roles.
Players like to kill things in pvp games
Always have, always will.
Would class competition help? Sure. But it’ll always be dps heavy.
14 Likes
But most of the time dps queues are clogged with genji mains
Ain’t he in the garbage category this season?
3 Likes
Of course I’m not suggesting that. Hiding the problem has never worked.
Blizzard at least need to acknowledge their game design conflict for a start. They aren’t even doing that, instead insisting on either ignoring problems or hiding them behind queue times.
7 Likes
He is but people still play him. I mean I still play Roadhog even if he’s garbage this season because he is my best hero
Yeah, I think they are just out of ideas in how to fix it.
1 Like
Then design the game around that.
For example, WoW has 5-6 tank/heal specs and 24 DPS specs. WoW devs had the sensibility to design raids around 2 tanks, 4-5 healers and 15-16 dps. It all roughly aligns with what people actually want to play.
4 Likes
So it’s the same, I guess?
It’s only a problem for masters and beyond because their que’s do get too long. For everyone else, which is like 90% of players or more the que’s are not that long, if you want to play the most desired role in the game you are going to have to wait a bit for it. The average que’s are 4 to 5 minutes, which is acceptable, and if you don’t want to wait you can always go to QPC and play DPS without waiting in que.
3 Likes
Gold and plat players are saying it’s 8-10mins+ for them. Are they lying?
Also this is completely ignoring the leaver issue. You can be sitting in queue for 10 mins, join the match with someone who is AFK, which means all the DPS players get to wait another 10 mins (i.e. 20 mins of doing absolutely nothing). Instead of getting higher priority for the next queue, everyone gets thrown to the back of a brand new queue due to no fault of their own.
The AFK problem is compounding itself due to how long queues have become. People often get distracted being alt-tabbed doing something else because the queues are so long.
3 Likes
You could also fix the problems.
Why do people feel the need to fill?
Because the Tanks/Supports are stronger and have more synergy than the DPS they’d like to pick.
As a result, they feel forced to pick something they don’t want to play so their team doesn’t lose.
Design more of the DPS to have some level of utility for the team. That way if you have a stack of them it’s less awkward to solo heal/tank for them as they can help make your life easier beyond just killing.
Balance the Tanks and Supports so that the Tanks/Supports aren’t so much superior that they become mandatory beyond their supply and ensure the design isn’t making them too much into a specific hero’s accessory.
Depends on the region and time of day.
Quick play is a mess! They are mixing Gold,Plat,Diamond, Masters, Grandmasters together in QP! I have even seen Silver players!
4 Likes
None of this would have happened if DPS players didn’t selfishly play DPS when another DPS wasn’t needed.
2 Likes
Yeah I’m guessing the devs’ initial idea of a typical team comp would be 3 DPS and either 2 off tanks + 1 main healer or 1 main tank + 2 off healers, but solo healing or tanking turned out to be impractical.
2 Likes
By making the Supports / Tanks fun to play.
Nerfing the very heroes which they are having trouble getting people to play doesn’t fix the problem. It is just turning the game into quake champions.
If they were superior people would be playing them rather than DPS. But, DPS are the only ones which carry.
This was sarcastic right? Sorry it’s hard to tell these days 