I’ve noticed a significant increase in support teammates (and complaints about support teammates) who are clearly either:
A) a DPS main playing support like it’s “DPS lite”
B) a brand-new F2Player who’s playing it ultra-safe and sticking to a single “senpai” teammate while they’re still figuring out the names and kits of 40+ heroes.
Aside from both types being really frustrating to play with if you’re an experienced player, it’s also an indicator that the “support main” population has undergone a catastrophic collapse.
The number of dedicated support mains playing Overwatch has been in decline for YEARS at this point (long story short, the devs made a lot of decisions at the expense of removing or gutting the game’s OG “alternative” defensive/supportive playstyles), but there was always a stubborn flock of support veterans who stayed the course and stuck with the game no matter what happened.
… Note that these veteran support players are being described in past tense.
Support mains who’ve been hanging on by their fingernails for years are finally running out of copium. They don’t have any more hope that the Overwatch ship will or even can be turned around in Blizz’s current skeletal state - most of them have already cut their losses and quietly left the game.
Now we have to deal with their inexperienced replacements.
Well that’s… strange, the longest queues in my case are always the Support queues, the curious thing is that with the latest changes that the Tanks have received they are the second longest waiting queue in my games.
At least from my perspective, I have noticed that the DPS queues are always below a minute and not only that, the game offers additional points for the pass in this role constantly, so in my case I feel that the role of DPS is the one that is currently being played the least, I suppose that as a result of the previous changes to the tanks (Although with the recent patch they improved some things, for example the armor) it is a role that at the beginning of the season felt decorative in the games.
It’s not about the number of people queueing for support, it’s about how many of them are experienced support mains VS newbies who haven’t figured out how to play the role properly.
Most of them are newbies, due to the majority of veterans losing faith in game & quitting. That’s a REALLY bad sign.
If that were the case, you’d have to explain not only the exodus of veteran support players (which could be understandable on its own) but also the simultaneous influx of new support players, which is a little harder to reconcile.
But all roles go through this constantly, do you have any idea how many times I’ve played with DPS that have no idea where they stand? Or with a tank that goes 1v5 like crazy during the ENTIRE game, they are new players or with very little experience and it is easy to notice, this is something that happens in ALL roles in the game and has been happening for a long time.
It is true that it has increased a little since the game moved to the F2P system, but as I say it is not something new or something to be alarmed about.
Being F2P makes it easy for fresh faces to try out the game, and support is the most accessible role (at least on the surface) for new players. Especially if they’re new to PvP games and are scared of getting “noob-stomped” if they try to fight enemy players.
Gonna depend on your region. When I flex, I’m almost always logging more Support-role games than any other role. More than Tank and definitely more than Damage.
I’m not too sure about that. Based on how many players I see in the Support-role, most have little clue to what to do.
I’d say Damage-role is a lot more straightforward with Soldier being there. The issue, of course, is the mechanical difficulty of playing the Damage-role; especially when the roles within the game are as intentionally unbalanced as they are, and there’s a lot of concepts that really aren’t explained or even understood for new players.
Damage is more straightforward, sure, but it’s also the “scariest” option for new players who haven’t played a PvP shooter before.
Everybody and their mother knows of the shooter genre’s infamous reputation for “noob-stomping.” A lot of people would rather avoid being hazed, so they decide to avoid combat with other players in general until they get the hang of things. Following that logic, picking a support & helping out as a noncombat is the best way to do that.
That’s the point, the vets have had enough, and so new people come in and think “Support is healing i can do that” then they run around for the match not knowing what is going on.
Wow that’s strange, I play on the exact same servers and I swear the DPS queues are the lowest in my case, to the point that they constantly offer me 100-500 additional pass points just for playing that role.
That’s what it is supposed to be, but many players are going in and not doing that.
For old vets like us, sure, but that’s not really the case anymore. Most of the players coming into Overwatch are likely coming in from other games or genres like Call of Duty or some cooperative games like MMOs or otherwise. So, either they understand the game’s main objective or gameplay loop, or they’re coming in with little understanding of… everything else.
The main tutorial doesn’t talk about tanking, or healing. It just puts you in the shoes of Soldier with Tracer running around and guiding you on how to use the controls. So the first impression is shooting, using abilities, and ultimates.
Because the game doesn’t spell out “healer” with any of the Supports, none of them really understand that. They’ll look at some appealing, non-Mercy, hero and jump into the game and press the left-click. If it’s Kiriko, Lifeweaver, or Moira, they’ll heal the target. If it’s Ana, Lucio, Zenyatta, Juno or others… well that weapon doubles as a damaging tool, and not just a healing tool. So the confusion starts there.
Again, it may be intuitive to us, but for brand new players, it isn’t likely. Most healing done through other games (and even Soldier himself) is done by pressing an ability button.
Well, I don’t know if the internal MMR has anything to do with it, although the QP MM is very open, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist at all, I play mostly competitive, Master 4 in the DPS role, that could be one of the factors that generate such different waiting times in the QP DPS queues.