Open queue feels like the “real game” to me because:
I have more fun because if I have a team that actually wants to win, we have a better chance of winning. The amount of people who want to win is about the same.
There’s less team comp/counterpick bottlenecking issues.
Goats is far less annoying now ever since the various brig nerfs, can be easily countered by a pharah/pharmercy
Comps are more varied and fun, still centers around 2/2/2, but far more flexibility to make sure everyone is at least on their 1-2nd best characters
this is true, the fun factor is a lot higher, and goats requires such a good understanding to actually function its useless for scrubs like me to play it
But open queue is not serious competitive experience. Its failed comp mode which was replaced by much better version - Role Q. Players take open queue as fun game mode often. Its like better quickplay with comp rules for me. Distribution if ranks is pretry bad there too.
These all are good points, honestly when I’m thinking about it, the counter pick situation shouldn’t be that bad as long as people play the role they want to play, because if they are playing in that role, they should be able to play at least one of the characters in all of the subroles that go into that role. Every role has a hero that can at least somewhat counter any other single hero from any role. RQ is necessary for future game balance and general maintenance of civility.
Maybe if role queue was implemented from the start, this would be the case, more players would have a deeper mastery on their individual role, and more players would fill out each role and make queue times for dps slightly better. But because this isn’t the case:
Most players, 4-5 out of 6 of the playerbase myself included, are best at dps and have low emotional energy playing tank and support.
As a result, queue times for dps are bad. This makes dps players who want quick queue times pick roles they don’t want to play to get games faster, because 10-15 minute queue times for a game that might only last 10-15 minutes is bad. While you can say the same thing about picking these roles in open queue, at least there, the three to four would-be dps players who are picking tank and support reluctantly have a better chance of getting a subrole they are least reluctant towards.
As a result of OQ being the only option for years and very few new players hopping on, most players have grounded habits in swapping roles entirely to counter heroes and not swapping within the subroles of their role. This applies to dps as well, as a lot of dps players who can’t deal with charchters like genji might pick moira or brig, or maybe a player who goes pharah and gets hitscanned out might gravitate to winston, etc.
So in these points, the issue comes down to promoting role mastery, and so the issue comes down to “flexing” and the priority pass system.
Why are priority passes only granted to a flex queue? Why can’t players pick the roles that are under-filled, play those roles, and get priority passes? Maybe you could be picking tank queue and if you get a game during a “tank drought” you get priority passes. Same with support. Flex queue ends up being a worse OQ, it feels like its against the spirit of both RQ and standard flexing, since most people flex between dps/tank and dps/support. Instead, why not encourage players to build within their “flex role” and award passes for that, instead of always flipping a coin on whether they will be in the flex role they play best in? Flex queue can still exist for people who like that, maybe still rewarded more priority pass tickets, but I think players queuing for support and tank individually should get priority passes too.
Why not reward ppl who play tank and support only with flex passes, so they could play tank and support more thus making DPS Q shorter, thus preventing DPS players having to play roles they do not know and prevent them from throwing on those roles?
So when a support and tank gets all their priority passes they can Q DPS and then play a “not hitting at all, but it is kinda fun” Widow. What’s wrong with that?
Agree. Real-time flex agency is higher skillcap and more inticing for people to have fun with. For the bulk of the ladder, winning is a byproduct of fun. Make things scripted, handcuffed, and more time in queue than in game, and stuff gets unfun everyone just goes next.
Agree it is more creativie and more self-balancing. The combinatorics of a larger meta space lead to all kinds of non-transitivity and multiple equilibria. Nerd language for it’s better.
Goats is played by a few desperates, approximately the same ratio as brawl/rush 222 comps are played. It’s situational or clutch but not a defacto goto comp anymore. People developed counters for it long ago (during the goats era, stuff like bunker or 132 disrupt hammond/sombra/pharah comps).
Similar to (2). It’s always been better.
We tried to warn everyone years ago. Forced-222 for everyone everywhere always was terrible for the game and the esport. OWL could have had it’s own ruleset; “too much xyz” could have been soft-locked at hero select; LFG 2.0 could have been done.
Meanwhile back to OPEN, 300+ matches of open per season since it launched.
It really is both the past and future of OW
Even better, since every support and tank player started playing this game just to get lootboxes and better yet it gives them even more incentive to play support and tank with this new priority pass, since they can exchange it for lootboxes on their plat border accounts where they already have everything.
I mean I get it man, this game was definitely made so that people like you could have quality matches while someone else is playing something you rly do not want to play while giving you something you want to have on your team, or desire to have on your team, or if you are “one of those” demand to have on their team.
I mean, wanting to play Genji 24/7 while having an Ana every single game plus having tanks, especially shield tanks is a dream come true, isn’t it?
Except it is for a majority of OQ players. If people continue to treat it like QP, then I’ll just treat RQ like a warm up QP match for OQ. It’s a competitive mode, treat it like one.
Ok, final idea for role queue. You can bank a max of 1(one) priority queue ticket. What if you got one priority queue ticket for strictly winning a match as any role, and you only lose your priority queue ticket if you lose your match, otherwise you keep it for next match if you win? This priority queue applies to all roles.
So which is it then? Both statement cannot be true. Make up your mind.
Oh, someone smashed your toy so you will go destroy someone else toy as a revenge. Doesnt matter who it will be.
OQ was main comp mode which eventualy failed and was replaced, because OQ had serious issues which were making comp mode hell to play. Why do you talk about how I should treat it? I didnt say anything about not caring to win there.
I played it, tried like 30 games and its even worse than it used to be because ranks are over the place there now. Its just mess, people are toxic, blaming, demaning to play certain roles from team mates. Again, same BS as it used to be. Not saying normal comp doesnt have similar issues but its like twice as bad in OQ.
Only reason why it is staying now is because players have main comp mode, Role Q, so player base is splitted, it would be distaster as only comp game mode again.
Because people were desperate. If all the people that wanted role queue/needed a specific set of roles on their team actually swapped to fill like they always claimed to (instead of just being the first one of 5 people to lock damage) or used lfgs to find their team, we wouldn’t need role queue. But no people only wanted to play their precious damage role. It wasn’t a failure of the mode it was a failure of the damage one tricks.
Put role queue in arcade like open queue was when it came back and just watch people take less seriously as much as they do/did with open queue.
If there were more/better tools for people to curate a team of people they wanted to play with multiple times (like clans and a better lfg) then open queue would be just fine. But no, a lot of people are lazy and don’t want to put in the effort of building a team to coordinate on any level, they just want to coordination done for them and for their entire team to play around what they pick and do.
I agree that it wasnt failure the mode itself, it was failure because player were unable to play as blizzard wanted them to play. So they had to make more strict rules, limit the number of roles per team. When you give too much freedom to people, it will usualy end up badly
Open Q is great comp game mode in theory, but horrible in reality.
