"OverWatch's Biggest Problem in 2020"

General Discussion
1

Honestly, I feel this video lays out a lot of the things that I’ve been saying since Role Q became a thing.

Whether people want to admit it or not our current system (and the problems it brings) are a huge issue. Long DPS Q times/many people Q-ing for that role, affects everyone.

I mean, in the shoes of the DPS player, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to wait an ungody amount of time to play DPS. And, if you do it in Comp, it’s even worse. Especially, if your match gets canceled.

On the Tank and Support side of things, it’s not fun when you get a DPS Q dodger as your partner and you, essentially, have to play for two people.

Then, got mix in the issues with Backfill (lack of Tanks/needing two for a game, let’s to issue where one leaves and you’re 5v6 or 6v5 for a majority of a match. Which is no fun for anyone). Next, you have the matchmaking issue because there isn’t enough people playing each role, so they matchmaker has to pull from all over just to get 2 Tanks/DPS/Supports to make a team of 6 to fight another team of 6.

And, honestly, like the video said, as much as people may not like it, 132 is probably the best solution we have. Things like increasing role incentives, adding more Tanks and Supports, of going 232 (7’s) are either impractical or at best, would be a band aid fix.

Personally, it’s nice to see a video like this. Because I know people like myself (and others on this forum) see all these issues as well. It’s nice to know we’re not alone. And, fact is, the current system just doesn’t work for this game. And we need a change

Thank you for reading, I hope you watch the video, and I look forward to your comments, below

20 Likes
2

A lot of what he says is spot on. I don’t particularly think queue times are the defining problem of Overwatch, but they’re up there as one of the biggest of a set of problems.

He brings up a good point that I’ve not fully considered before - I’ve come close in its reasoning but not all the way there: Blizzard did back themselves into this problem early on. While not unreasonable that they made the choice, Blizzard balanced the game towards 2-2-2 rather than rebalancing the game so people accept 1 tank or 1 healer. They steered the game towards stronger demands for 2 (or more) tanks and healers. In the “correct” environment that’s fine - the game functioned well when 6 man teams cooperated and swapped roles fluidly. But that just isn’t the reality of the matchmaker.

The point about Overwatch 2 being the perfect opportunity to announce massive gameplay and ruleset overhauls is one I’m glad he brought up. I recently posted a thread about the exact same thing highlighting that clearly thousands of players want something from the genre Overwatch brought into the scene moreso than similar titles that predated it. Here it is if you wanna give it a read: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/the-valorant-hype-overwatch-2 - it’s not actually about valorant.

I just worry about it because, like he says, Overwatch 2 is more like an expansion and continuation of the Overwatch experience. If they completely overhaul the experience, a lot of people are still going to be hurt by the decision. Whatever they choose to do - be it making it 7v7, making it 1-3-2, nerfing the living :poop: out of healing and sustain and moving tanks/supports into a more “shooty” archetype, anything’s going to make a lot of people upset. We’ve grown really accustomed to the 2-2-2 format over the years. It’s a lot of fun. It’s just an unreasonable expectation when you consider that almost no popular game has had a healthy distribution of roles when you add things like hard supports or tanks.

I really want to know what their plan is. They’re being really quiet about Overwatch 2. They haven’t released a great deal of details about the PvP aspect of the game other than “it’s shared” - I bet it’s because they’re still working out exactly what they want to do. There are massive design choices they could make. I think the closest we’ll get to hearing about them are glimmers of the concepts as they come through the experimental card or get hinted at in developer posts.

The Overwatch format really does have potential and I think a lot of people still want to enjoy it. I’m hoping 2020 is a big year in terms of news for its future :pensive:

7 Likes
3

The problem is the hard Trinity.

Tanks only tank and they hate it because they don’t want to be punching bags
Support only heal and they hate if because they want to be able to defend themselves

When they change any of these heroes to do more then their core role they take a DPS slot because DPS can only DPS

So they need to force people to play things that are not DPS and it is not working.

Heroes should be more of mix of all 3 roles. So they are not pegged into doing one job that no one wants to do

25 Likes
4

Role queue doesn’t work because genji mains are too stubborn to play anything else, period.

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5

Role queue doesn’t work because there will ALWAYS be more DPS players than anything else and your game designed need to think about that

In WoW, it is 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 dps. If it was 2 tanks, 2 healers and 1 DPS that game would be a mess as well

7 Likes
6

That’s the problem, 3 dps 1 tank and 1 healer just… doesn’t work here. This is not a cs:go type of shooter where you can go anything and it doesn’t matter, it’s a strategic shooter, about counters and switching

Some people just don’t like switching ://

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7

I honestly think they should have kept the Defense category. And just allowed that to be a flexible role between tank, dps and even utility support.

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8

It CAN work but it requires reworks away from pure tank, pure healer, pure DPS.

Or they can just FORCE people to not play what they want…which is how you get people to go find a game that WILL let them

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9

I really like the idea of a “mystery queue” where you get a random role

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10

Yeah, it’s rather difficult to find the balance with all this.

When healing was higher and barriers were bigger, That was also an issue for a lot of people. on the tank and support side of things, they didn’t want to be shield or heal bots, like you said. on the DPS side of things, they want to kill stuff, and are mad if things aren’t dying quickly enough.

One of the solutions to this issue is to try to make the tanks and supports less reliant on those things, which means increasing or changing their offensive output, in some way. The problem with doing that, is it starts to impede on what the damage role is there for, to do damage.

I mean, how exactly do you balance something like that out? When the ability to protect and heal your team is too low, it feels like crap to play Tank and Support. You feel like no matter what you do, You are glorified just spectator or punching bag that gets to play respawn simulator. And it’s just not fun and engaging to play those roles. But, if they’re too high, then as a DPS, you feel like you’re just breaking barriers and (sometimes) shooting people, only for both to be at full health again, in a matter of seconds.

Honestly, this hard trinity thing doesn’t really work in a PVP game. The problem is, you have two sides of a coin conflicting with itself… on one side, you have the tanks and supports that want to protect and heal their team, and on the other side you want the DPS that want to kill things. This, works great for PVE. The reason is, you as a player can feel like you can utilize your role for the common goal of defeating the AI enemy. But, when you’re playing against other players, nobody wants to lose, so depending on what role you’re playing, It can be frustrating for multiple reasons for the reasons I mentioned above.

I’m not sure if there’s really a way where we can make all parts of the community happy, because they all have valid grievances. as someone who plays all three roles, I recognize that more than most people. I hate being the DPS player that just has to shoot shields, but I also understand that when healing and barriers/Damage mitigation is too low, You feel like your team drops like proverbial flies and that’s no fun for those roles trying to protect their team.

It’s a very complicated matter to say at least

5 Likes
11

I had a lot of fun with 1-3-2, I think it just needs some balance tweaking and it would work out.

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12

I agree. I rather liked it, myself. I think once they made changes to the damage and support roster, as well, and further tweaked the tanks, it would be a very fun way to play Overwatch.

The issue was that the experiment we tried out, didn’t have enough changes. I mean, they only tweaked with seven out of 31 heroesAnd we only got to try it out for a week. That’s not really enough time to test if something is good or bad

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13

I think 321 would have had more potential if they had nerfed dps and buffed healers so that mode would be better balanced.

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14

lol Please tell me this isn’t just a drawn out complaint about playing DPS and dealing with Queue times while ignoring what brought about role queue in the first place.

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No, it’s not. DPS Q times and role Q are part of the video but not all that. It touches on a lot of different topics and issues in the game. It’s about 15 minutes, but definitely worth the watch. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have posted it here for discussion.

2 Likes
16

So, after watching this video there’s a lot of issues I have with his reasoning:

  1. His spiel about what it does to streamers/youtubers and their livelihood, like why in the ever living $%$*, should we care about that? These groups of players are a huge part of why Tanks/Supports get witchunted and nerfed into oblivion, if you’re going to advocate to have a paying customer’s experience negatively impacted just because you have a platform, why should they feel bad about you?
    Odd.

  2. DPS Queue times - are also a function of the problem above but no DPS player or streamer wants to admit it, by nerfing what is fun about Tank/Support for those who play it, in order to help out DPS players win more against it, Blizzard also drives players away from the role and away from the game. Worst of all they are driven into DPS queues, I’m one of them.

  3. Since Blizzard and the DPS/Flex/Youtuber players of the community really only care about OWL DPS players and what GM/Masters level DPS are having a good time in the game, since this is so important, why not make a competitive and QP Damage hero only mode and design objective modes to compensate for that? They get what they want and it lowers DPS queue times.

  4. Because of the bad integrity with Streamers and their preferred heroes, 1-3-2 would never work because the balance and nerfs that would have to be reverted to actually make it work would make the community hate each other. Streamers would go back to raging against Supports/Tanks that were previously nerfed and causing their fans to come here and rant. It would just create the same toxic chain and cause the community even more strife.

4 Likes
17

1/3/2 is a band-aid solution that will make the game worse, as it screws up the whole structure of the game, forcing Blizzard to not only change a lot of heroes, but also change a large part of the maps, to make room for the more chaotic open ended playstyle that having three dps heroes introduce. In other words, 1/3/2 has the same problems that introducing 2/3/2 would have.

The only solution is to make more Support and Tank heroes, while also bringing in more new players to play these roles, which is exactly what OW2 will do. If you mess with the games role structure, you risk the whole house of cards falling down, essentially ruining what makes Overwatch unique.

6 Likes
18

That, on its own, won’t fix the issue.

Will it get some people to Q for Tank and Support/come back to those roles? Sure. So will better balence of the role, overall.

But, just adding more tank and support heroes won’t magically make people play that role. Especially, the more DPS/FPS focused crowd. The only way you might be able to get them to pick up tanks and supports more, is if you make them more offensive/damage oriented. But, this community already has an issue with Tanks/Supports being able to kill things, as it is. So amping that up to 11, will cause other issues.

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19

That’s why I wrote you need new players to play the new heroes. You’re not going to make the dps mains play Tank or Support, that’s just not going to happen. That’s what so ironic with players complaining that Echo is a dps hero, like making her a Support would do anything at all to queue times. It wouldn’t have, just like Baptiste didn’t change queue times. Overwatch has been out for four years, 90% of players have chosen their preferred roles a long time ago.

You need new players in the game, that haven’t yet chosen a main role, and then do your best to lure them to become Tank or Support players. Jeff also said they’re trying to make Tank and Support more rewarding to play, by putting up block or healing numbers on the screen in the same respect as damage numbers.

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20

Right. I agree with everything you said, but that’s also the hardest thing for them to do. Adding Heroes is within their control, changing up the team comp is within their control, balence is within their control.

But, adding new players to the game? Not so much. Yes, they are in control of their actions and if they do positive things, more people might play, and if they do negative things, less people might play.

But, it’s not like they can literally just grow players in a field somewhere, to populate their game. “Just get more players” is definitely easier said than done and it’s not fully within their control. So, there needs to be a better solution than “let’s just hope more people play this game/these roles”