Listening to Jeff discuss role queue and Brigitte changed my opinion of him. For some time now I’ve felt that Jeff doesn’t have what it takes to lead this community or manage this game. His time talking with Emongg and Fran drastically changed how I view him. He seemed genuinely frustrated by how the community perceives the game and balance.
Brigitte and perception
Jeff seemed frustrated with how the community views Brigitte. It’s clear to me that he laments the communities poor ability to adapt and grow. I think he’s right but encouraging those things in the community is on Blizzard. We need in game systems/mechanics to teach and encourage things like teamwork and game sense.
I’m glad that the Dev team aren’t taking what the vocal community says too seriously. They need to trust their data and take a slow approach. We need Blizzard to set an example. We need them to draw a line with how they want the game to played, and more importantly to set boundaries with the community.
Role Queue and player growth
It seems like the Developer team is leaning towards implementing a role queue in the future. They’re being cautious and I couldn’t agree more with that approach. Adding a role queue could effectively make the community worse. I could easily see players getting more toxic and rigid.
The Dev team needs to understand that the community’s refusal to be flexible and adapt cannot be encouraged. A role Q might justify players rigidity and push even more toxicity into a game built around flexibility and teamwork. Role Q could easily be a positive but I’m worried that the negatives outweigh the positives here.
Blizzard needs to abandon bad systems like performance based SR in favor of some kind of rotation system. something like rotating to a different role other than the one you played the previous game to get better EXP or SR gains. This would promote player flexibility and hopefully teamwork as well. This is this kind of mechanic that could really help players grow.
Guilds
We need more social ways to find like minded players and groups. I have no problem with guilds coming to Overwatch but something Jeff said does bother me. It sounded to me like Jeff and the team want to integrate it through the battle launcher. I think this is a bad idea. Just give us an in game system. Using and integrated one seems unnecessary.
Closing
These are just some of my opinions around topics Jeff discussed while on stream.
I watched a video about someone’s take on the potential cross-game guild system and how its unnecessary and stuff, but honestly I think its a good idea with a lot of future potential and can’t wait to see it.
We already have that. The battle launcher shows all your friends across all your games. Maybe they could convert it into a social hub? That seems pretty extensive and could conflict with in game social features.
If that’s what they want to do I wouldn’t expect it for quite some time. I think it would be easier to make something more gear towards Overwatch myself.
It probably would, and I think a social hub would be pretty good.
My take on it is because its not just OW involved in this guild thing, I’m hoping that means that they’ll have more hands on creating it, which means production time of it would be a lot shorter than if it was just the overwatch crew.
This is all speculation of course, but if they did this big 9000 iq play i’d be pretty happy about it.
An official battle hub would be really cool. If that’s the plan my guess is it wouldn’t be ready until the end of summer 2019 at best. They’d need to coordinate every Dev team and the Activision teams on it too.
I also worry that it would be too generic. Good social features are built with detail and anything cross game would have to be painfully generic. If a hub is the end goal that’s fine but please give us something now. A huge Blizzard hub would take at least another year.
Eh, I wouldn’t really want cross game, I don’t need my OW friends to bother me when I’m playing Diablo, etc.
That’s just my only complaint.
As for role queue, still think its a bad idea, you can’t force meta’s so what do they do? Some people would just queue as flex and always pick DPS to piss people off.
I agree with that. Role queue seems like a bad idea no matter how you look at it. LFG should really be the near max we should be hitting in that aspect for this game.
Role Q would either be too rigid and hurt game play or be easy to exploit. The only way it might work is if they added a whole new report system for it and we all know how bad the current report system is.
They talked about it like a very real possibility and that scares me. I wonder how well they’ve thought it through.
I can think of two big problems off the bat: long Q times for DPS and abuse of flex (or other role) Q. The diminishing percentage of the player base willing to play tank could singe handily kill role Q as well.
This is one of the best suggestions I’ve ever seen for this game.
Reward flexing with real incentives using SR or XP, and the game’s community will become much more well-rounded. That could even be taken a step further with a system like Destiny 2’s bounties, which require things like using a specific weapon while completing a given activity. Maybe someone never plays healer? Give them a quest-like task to heal allies for 5000 or more hp in a game that they win. Give them XP for completing the task.
Giving people tangible personal incentives for completing teamwork-oriented but still individual goals could greatly improve the community.
I couldn’t disagree with you more on this entire topic. We need a role/intent queue system that gives people a chance to agree to what kind of match they are jumping into without having to be subjected to elitist and unrealistic standards of some person who thinks they are above everyone else.
Unless you give a way to enforce it, the community will never adopt it. Blizzard obviously finally pulled the wool from their eyes on this topic after giving us two years of, “the community will make the right choice to win games” – but the current implementation is crap and has died quickly.
Also, a role rotation system would be absolutely terrible. You want people to play what they are good at, and the match making system to help people play what they are good at and have a balanced team. Giving people incentive to play things they aren’t good at for EXP or SR gains would be a disaster in my mind.
Heroes of the storm has quests for certain roles that you get daily. Play a few games as tank, support or assassin and get gold. Something like that could really help the player base grow. I really like your suggestion around healing a certain mount. You could even add blocking so much damage for tanks. Add certain skill ones too for critical shots, solo kills or so on for a category as DPS.
Except no one’s playing tank. Sure, 3-3 comps were everywhere during the world cup but on ladder they’re not very common.
You’re going into a team based match with 5 other people. If you’ve already decided who you’re going to play regardless of how the game plays out, then a role Q doesn’t even matter.
You shouldn’t play heroes you’re not good at in competitive. This kind of system works best for QP but could see use in comp as well. If you’re not playing a hero you’re good at then you would be more inclined to play as a team. This system teaches players to widen their hero pools and encourages them how to work together. Both of these things improve the player base.
Are these supposed to be like those “I’m 13 and this is deep” posts on Reddit or Tumblr?
A meta can be unlikable in any game that has regularly added content and balance updates. Take a chill pill. The meta will undoubtedly change again. Probably very soon with both Torb being in comp now and Ashe on the way.
I’m not so sure about that one. While in concept it’s nice, and the effort is in the right place, you’d need to be super careful with it so that it’s not abused.
I 100% agree. I think gains would be okay so long as it’s not too much. The real issue would be if it effected SR losses. That would encourage exploitation and not growth.
