I’m going to try and put forward arguments against 2-2-2 in the strongest, most convincing way I can and then attempt to offer my rebuttal to them or agree with valid concerns. Hopefully this is a productive post where everyone can respectfully air their opinions and maybe some minds might be changed…hopefully in favor of forcing 2-2-2
Case #1:Forcing 2-2-2 will remove the ability to form unique comps like 3 supports-3 tanks. This creativity is what keeps Overwatch from being stale.
Rebuttal: “Meta” comps are rarely used by the vast majority of the player base but only really relevent for GM/top 500 and the OWL. Even when these comps are used in lower ranks they are never used properly. Jeff summed it up in his interview with Fran where he explains that even though people pick the “meta” heroes they don’t play the comp properly at all. Skip to 10:10 mark for the relevant bit.
In most ranks 2-2-2 is already the most common comp that is formed so for the majority of the player base forcing 2-2-2 won’t change much. As far as the game becoming stale for OWL (where these comps are used almost exclusively) we already don’t really see diverse comps. We usually see one comp becoming supreme like Dive was and Goats currently is. Under a 2-2-2 system the devs will more easily be able to balance certain heroes and direct meta shifts for higher tiers because there is already a controlled restriction on player choice.
Case #2:A forced 2-2-2 role queue will drastically increase queue times for DPS players. In Jeffs interview with Stylosa, he mentions the queue times will be 26 minutes. At the 9:36 mark he mentions the queue times for DPS players.
Some players might be willing to wait this long for a more balanced experience but the casual player base certainly will not and many players will leave the game.
Agreement: This is obviously a major problem with implementing a role system. I have no idea how this can be improved other than just improving the matchmaking. I’m no developer so I have no idea how such a thing will be improved. If this is a problem that can’t be solved I’ve suggested simply putting a limit on the number of roles than can be selected in the pre-game hero selection. The big issue many have with this is that it may cause toxicity toward those who will insta-lock their hero of choice.
If someone picks DPS and admits they are not doing well and wishes to swap and a healer is okay at DPS and is willing to change with him…
How do they do this?
Rebuttal: This is a reasonable concern but one that I don’t think will take effect too often. I have had this happen before but rarely. Were there games where the matches quality was greatly improved by a switch of roles between rounds or even in the middle of one? Sure. But more often my matches have suffered from people insta-locking whatever role they want regardless of whether or not it will result in a positive experience for all. Will a 2-2-2 system be perfect? No. But under the current system (which is basically rule free) certain players have free rein to completely ruin the balance of a match simply based on hero choice.
These are some of the most common arguments I see against forced 2-2-2. If you have any others please share them. I doubt I got everything.
Regarding Case #1: Most rebuttals against anti-222 involves “people in lower ranks don’t play meta”. Sure, then keep your forced 2-2-2 below masters/gm and don’t ruin the base of this game for higher ranked players.
Forcing 2-2-2 will be like forcing one hero limit, at first a lot of people will be angry and rage. But years from now we’ll all be happy that it was enabled.
Forcing 2-2-2 would stifle creativity, on the fly swaps, and innovation. It would primarily punish true flex and DPS players, and only “solves” annoying 4+ DPS comps in low ranks.
An implemented Protect/Ban system would increase strategy, promote counter-metas and mind games, increase hero variance in games, and deincentivize one-tricking.
I’d much rather get protect/ban for OWL and Comp, QP stays the same as now; then forced 2-2-2.
Okay. But I am not sure you completely addressed the last point so much as you stated it was rare. It is not, however. Flex players that play both tank and support with a few niche DPS are very valuable to the team. It requires them to know circumstances ahead of time, though. A role queue prevents that forcing flex players to just randomly queue and in the event another flex player with a different pool is in the game, they cannot swap.
The solution is obviously a role trade system and potentially allowing them to queue as flex so that the game itself matches you faster into teams that need either a tank or a support that are not already filled.
The opposite problem is also noteworthy as this system encourages a one trick mindset.
Another issue is the prominence of double off tank and off healer compositions. But most people brush that off as better than DPS stacks regardless. So idk.
beating a dead horse in another thread about whining for 222 …
its simple : not gonna happen.
in order for 222 to work, there will need to be a total reworking of the MMR system, rebalancing of the heroes and possible reworking some heroes to create/remove abilities… none of which will bring the company money, which really is the #1 priority of any company… not to mention that most of the time, whenever “they” touch a hero to change abilities, that hero is either OP thru the roof or nerfed into the ground and it now a troll pick. it took them an entire year to rework CTF So, using that analogy, if it took them an entire year to rework a game mdoe that has been in FPS games since the early 90s … how long do you think it will take them to successfully rework the entire MMR system ??
Something worth considering is that right now, flexing is punished and not rewarded. If you’re in the mood to play and you’re a dps player, you can’t just drop in and play as tank or support without potentially feeding. Under a role queue system with individual ranks for each role, this wouldn’t be the case. If you really just want to play overwatch, you will no longer be at a disadvantage. I think the mindset shift Jeff talks about would vastly reduce the number of people trying to play dps because suddenly the playing ground is level regardless of what role you are best at.
It’s really hard to know how many people are deadset on just instalocking DPS and would flat out refuse to queue as another role, even after the brief period it would take for people to adjust.
That was the hardest point to address as I can only really go by my own experience on the subject since I couldn’t find anything from the devs addressing this specifically. That’s why I do admit that this would be one downside to a forced 2-2-2 undoubtedly. But my point is that it would be a net positive since I face far more situations where a few individuals will make certain picks that throw the composition out of whack. I’ve seen some recommend a 2flex-2support-2tank but I haven’t thought about that enough to see if there are any glaring issues with this.
The concern of having 2 off tanks or two off healers is not really a legitimate one to me. For one, that can already happen now so worst case scenario is that this continues to happen. But when I look at most picked heroes I see that Rein is by far the most picked tank and has pretty much always been. Ana has been the most picked support for a while and before that it was mercy. The system won’t eliminate that issue but I think it will fix far more composition issues than it creates.
As far as the one-trick thing goes that’s a whole other topic that can go on forever…
Creating a divide between how high skill players and lower skiller players interact with the game is not healthy. You cannot learn how to get better at the game by watching pro players if the pro players are playing by an entirely different rule set.
Furthermore, I’m pretty sure it’s those in Masters and GM that are most asking for the forced 2-2-2. It’s there where the meta gets stagnant because most everyone knows what the most effective comps and strategies are. This has also lead to situations where players well regarded for their skills in one role are completely irrelevant because that role doesn’t matter. In the OWL, there’s tons of DPS players that are not playing the heroes they’re known for, because it isn’t worthwhile to roll those heroes out. Forced 2-2-2 keeps the role distribution balanced, ensuring elongated careers for the pro players and thus increasing Overwatch’s lifespan. It’s overall much healthier for the highest ranks of play especially, much more than it would be a hindrance.
This is false. Revitalizing the game with a change like this would very likely bring in a lot of old fans, especially those that have dropped off recently due to stagnant metas. Since this also means balancing the game would be easier, even if it would require a lot of upfront work, this would lead to a healthier game where more people can participate since there’d be a wider pool of viable heroes. It also ensures that pro players can have a steady and stable career, and won’t have to worry about a meta shift that completely erases their skills from relevancy. This means a better OWL experience, which is where Blizzard is really investing their money anyway.
This also isn’t true. Most of the changes that happen in the game have been for the best, fixing critical imbalances or improving the flow of the game. Where Blizzard does mess up in balancing is usually an issue that stems from the varied metas we see between ranks. Frankly, players in gold and below are playing a very different game from those in the top 500. It’s hard to balance a game where half the playerbase can’t get past Reaper or Junkrat, but the other half can’t ever play those heroes because they’re so bad.
Funny enough, forced 2-2-2 addresses this problem, because the game would be much easier to balance with 2-2-2 as a constant. Engagements would be much more predictable and thus adjustments could be added much more finely. So if you want to see better balancing, then you should be on board for forced 2-2-2.
It isn’t going to be an easy transition going from no role limits to 2-2-2, there’s going to be a lot of work, but it leads to a much better future for Overwatch than the path we’re headed down now. Forced 2-2-2 isn’t perfect, but it’s a much better system than we’ve got currently and it hits the biggest issues players have with the game very directly.
I’ll respond to this in order of what’s most important:
Case #2: First the 26min wait for DPS is way out of context, Jeff said it would likely be a 13-26min wait and that’s not even a fair number because it assumes no behavioural change. Judging by other games such as LoL, players will gravitate to trying out other core roles to reduce Queue time both for them and ultimately others. After all there’s many tank/support characters that DPS characters can find mechanics they like, for example close fits include: Roadhog: Reaper, McCree; Zayra: Symettra, Sombra; Zen: Hanzo; Ana: Ashe, Widowmaker; Lucio: Genji; Baptiste: McCree, Soldier, Pharah. Further players would be able to select multiple roles at the same time and the great news is if you choose DPS alone you are guaranteed to play DPS in the next game instead of having to fight over it. Realistically with behavioural changes I’d speculate the wait for DPS alone would turn to 5-10 minutes max and you can shorten that by selecting another role at the same time.
Case #3: This is a non issue really, you’ve queued into a game with your role specific SR. That means everyone is playing at their skill level so there is no need to change roles. This prevents the seesaw results that feel out of your control when someone fills to character they hardly play. Sure players will be countered sometimes, but it’s on everyone to have at least 3 heroes in that role to overcome that issue. Sure it wont eventuate perfectly all the time but since when did you see players in ranked coordinate with each other by swapping roles to stop a counter while maintaining synergies? The issues created are actually bigger problem in ranked today that what it would be in locked 2/2/2.
Case #1: You seem to be agreeing here that locked 2/2/2 results in better balance and doesn’t force less creativity but more. It helps prevent niche catch-all comps dominating over everything else and the strengths and weaknesses of comps will be more clearly defined meaning more counter picking. Plus let’s face it, there isn’t a level of coordination existing in current Ranked that facilitates playing so many different comps to there fullest potential. Players either choose heroes with no synergies in mind or fill to 2/2/2 anyway. They relish a simpler system to launch the ground work for their schemes with randoms.
My rebuttal against this argument is that they aren’t even creative to begin with. Especially tank and support heavy comps naturally evolve if you let randomness do its thing (e.g. Mystery Heroes), only underlining that their synergy is too great relative to their synergy with DPS heroes.
If people really think that it’s done with GOATS after the changes now… just wait until they implement another tank or support that glues GOATS back together, likely even stronger than before.
Without any form of forced role distribution, new iterations of GOATS will keep coming back as the meta. Factor in the ongoing power creep and it will only get harder and harder to get rid of it.
Gladly I think they are already trying to do this. When Brig first came out she felt more like a DPS-Support hybrid and Baptiste currently feels like that as well. If they continue to make supprt/tank-DPS hybrids that could lower the wait time. But I think he excluded the change in player attitude because it’s just speculation. We don’t know for sure what would happen.
no, its not. jeff stated himself that the MMR system would need to be reworked in order to keep dps queue lines less than 30 minutes … and the #1 priority of ANY company is profit, whether you think that is true or not. Not one company is out there making products to the better of man … they all want paid.
but what is funny is that you claim is false, and then acknowledge what i say to be true …
As someone pointed out earlier, that 30 minute queue time threat is only if there are no behavioral changes and if everyone approached the game the same as they currently do. Realistically, a large part of that DPS queue time would drop as a lot of players would rather be playing the game than just waiting. Any significant drop in the DPS population would be mitigated by the return of other players.
This also assumes that forced 2-2-2 is just a simple role queue and doesn’t come with any other changes. I, for one, feel that if Overwatch had a better practice mode, there’d be less DPS players trying to find a place to practice, and thus queue times wouldn’t be so extreme. Right now, a lot of the fat in the DPS queue comes from Widows and Genjis and Doomfists just looking to get better at those heroes, and what other place can they reasonably get a learning experience from then just jumping straight into competitive?
Not to mention that losing DPS players doesn’t really cost Blizzard much. These players already paid for the game, so their continued interaction with the game only concerns profits in that it keeps the game enjoyable if there’s more people to fill in queues. Which is why I pointed out the effects 2-2-2 would have on OWL, which is the real moneymaker for Overwatch. Fans will watch events more if there’s greater diversity in the meta and viable hero pool, and the pros themselves will have longer, better careers if they aren’t facing the possibility that their role becomes irrelevant through a meta shift.
I know you really want to stick to this edgy opinion that makes you sound grim and real, but the actual reality is that 2-2-2 would only be more profitable for Overwatch. So if you’re really that concerned for how much money Blizzard is making, which is weird, then you have no reason to be. 2-2-2 would, at worst, keep the game on the same pace it’s currently on. But I would recommend, uh, just dropping this concern altogether. There’s no reason for any of us consumers to be concerned with how much money Blizzard makes, we should just be demanding the product we want and then expecting Blizzard to deliver that. It didn’t make Blizzard more money to remove hero limits, so it’s not like money is even the end-all matter for them anyway.
false. the 30 minute queue time is also part of the fact that there are more DPS players over tanks and supports PLUS there are more DPS heroes over tank and support. YEs, if DPS mains switch off to play tank/support, the queue times would go down but now youre forcing someone to play something they dont want or are not good at … good luck with that …
whereas i agree that OWL is the $$$ for OW right now … i highly doubt they will start forcing people who are better at the game than most if not all the devs, and paid $50million to play the game, into a 222 comp. Thats like me telling Barry Bonds to go play 1st base over left field, or Mario Lemieux how to play hockey … that just doesnt make sense. IF they do that, and it wouldnt surprise me if they did TBH, would be one of the dumbest things they do.
i already stated that in order for them to do that, it would require a rework of the MMR system … did you miss that part of my post ?? if they dont rework the MMR system as well as rebalance heroes for this new role queue … then they would be killing the game. no one is going to wait 30 minutes to play a game. sure, youre gonna have the few DPS players switch over to tank or support… but realistically, theyre not going to be a tonne of players to do that enough to change queue times
