Wrong about what? You could possibly say that balancing queue times or balancing the player base of roles is balance, but usually what is referred to by balance is the gameplay itself.
If nobody wanted to play Zerg in Starcraft you wouldn’t start by buffing Zerg as people not wanting to play it is likely a separate issue than its balance in gameplay. People don’t due things entirely based on its likeliness to be successful. There is probably some overlap though.
You fix Q times, by nerfing the overpowered character which everyone wants to pick,
or an overpowered set of characters everyone gravitates to pick leaving others in dust or in less fortunate spot,
or overpowered (set of) character(s), which are locked/tied within a specific role, making that role more popular by default, not just ranked, some people like winning and will play any character or don’t mind abusing the most powerful character in casual play.
Because we remember they were garbage.
It is hard to convince people that the queue times were good, to people who experienced in person how bad they were.
What people decide to pick is only partially influenced by how likely people believe they will succeed. Balance is not the first thing to look at when trying to solve queue times.
Unfortunately the problem with the tank role is probably a lot more fundamental than its balance. The whole design would probably need rethinking.
Still, I don’t thinking messing up game balance is worth it for better queue times for some people.
then you remember wrong
people like me, so, yeah, I played the game, I can prove to you that I played OG OW, even if it was just the 2018 and not the OG OG 2016 version
yes and no,
for example, it shouldn’t lead to removing a whole tank member from each team, but here we are…
the HP change did that, the only sad part about it is lowkey making 200HP characters 500HP and 1000HP into 2000HP, with all the damage and healing lowkey similar increase but not as much, but then you’re slowly walking into FPS League of Legends territory
it’s just hard with one tank, the game started with two, so simply buffing the tank since it’s lonely isn’t the fix that’ll completely make the problem go away
Funnily enough I guess the forums remember wrong, because people were posting about it.
And you know what you don’t see in those posts? people saying “no this isn’t happening”
Now there is no one in those threads saying “your wrong they are not 20 minutes?”
Why?
Because they had 20 minute queue times.
Technically the game started with no limits. Games tended to have only 2 tanks, but it was quickly discovered that picking 4-5 tanks was optimal.
The funny thing about that is that everyone knew that picking 4-5 tanks nearly guaranteed winning yet people still didn’t want to actually do it. They just wanted to play DPS primarily anyway.
So we have more evidence here that suggests the balance is not the motivating factor in decided what people want to play. It also suggests that no amount of buffing tanks is going to convince people to do it. There was a time when you knew for certain that all you had to do was pick tank and your chance of winning was increased dramatically yet they would not.
They should have gone back to the drawing board and figured this out back in 2017, but instead they introduced the role limits. I would have really loved to play the alternative game that was intended by its original designer where any combination of any hero was viable. Even if the solution ended up being converging all heroes to being a DPS with various quirks.
The meta fell into 2 winstons, 2 tracers, 2 lucios at that time if you wanted to win.
In OW2 when they had tanks as “raid bosses” we has excess tank players.
When DPS were crazy strong, we had a massive excess in DPS players.
When Supports were really strong, we had supports being the longest queue.
100% you can balance to solved queue times.
And then they prevented you from picking 2 of the same hero.
But it wasn’t a 3+ tank mix.
The more I read that metaphor the more I realize you only eat at restaurants. You don’t work them. Most restaurant change their entire menu based on the seasons because seasonal ingredients are more important than anything. Recipes are constantly fluctuating in successful restaurants. Some can keep their menu the same and it works. But most change their menus constantly.
oh yeah, you mean those barely old threads (you linked) where the OW population might have already stagnated if not severely? who would have thunk?
to pick 4-5 tanks, you’d have to pick the entire Tank roaster (or almost) 
yet people spam/mmed Magua (or any brand new hero) probably even in QP, go figure
role lock was fine, it’s just the people that made it difficult, it’s not like there’s a button that Qs you as all roles to have a various chance of which role you play, or the option to queue another role after every game for variety,
people just complain for the sake of complaining, the 222 turned out okay even though I was one of the people who complained when it hit live servers…
you right
you right, the Support Q in early OW2?
never justified their decision, I want 6v6
last time I was at restaurant was probably more than a year ago
It was the highest chance of winning. It not being meta is because tanks aren’t as fun. People didn’t want to do it regardless.
The ones where it isn’t down to population, because they talk about how the other queue times are still short?
It was just DPS which blew the hell out.
If DPS have to wait 2 times a match length to get a game? it means there are 3 times as many DPS players as there are other players.
It was that imbalance which caused it.
2-2-2 made most matches actually playable because every single time it was a struggle to convince anyone to play a tank or 2. Matches having 4-5 dps were extremely common and then if the other team picked 2 tanks and 2 healers you lost most of the time before the match even started.
I’m not sure really, remember when Sojourn and Kiriko released,
I remember Sojourn well, everyone kept saying how she’s balanced, almost everyone,
“She’s balanced” they said,
she got nerfed like several time, and she’s still doing okay if not well,
“she’s balanced” they said,
that’s not how it works pal,
yes, not 6v6’s fault though, just like 1000 mistakes, and then another 1000 more from Blizzard, which turned into this literal mistake of itself called OW2
not really but it was very annoying,
because lot of the times, even if you were severely losing, they either didn’t switch, or they switched too late and the enemy basically got a headstart
dependable, sometimes when the skill diff was right and it was something like 2CP attack, at least the first objective was doable by simply wiping the enemy team with the sheer power of the 4-5-6DPS had
If DPS have to wait 2 times a match length to get a game? it means there are 3 times as many DPS players as there are other players.
That is how the maths work, and if you spent a moment thinking about it, you would understand why.
If it was that the game didn’t have the population to run, then the other 2 roles would have ALSO had 20 minute queue times.
But they did not. The matchmaker wasn’t struggling to find games.
It just had to wait for enough tank and support players to come out of their games to be able to place a DPS player in.
hear me out, it was completely fine that DPS had to wait 2x as much as tank or support,
I can elaborate, but it will blow your mind
your math is wrong, I can elaborate that too
Not two times as long, but two match lengths.
I can’t wait to hear thing.
But I’ve give you a way you can work it out yourself.
Say you had a game, it had 2 roles, and you needed 1 of one role, and 1 of another role to play it.
so you have red and blue.
and say you have twice as many red players, as blue players… say you have 2 red players, and 1 blue player.
they decide to game all afternoon and the matches take 10 minutes.
the blue player sits down, and players red player 1, red player 2 waits ONE MATCH LENGTH, for their turn. The amount of time they wait is based on the match length and ratio.
the blue player sits down, and then plays red players 2, red player 1 waits ONE MATCH LENGTH, for their turn - because all the blue players are in games. The amount of time they wait is based on the match length and ratio.
You can scale up the number of red and blue players, but as long as there is twice as many red players to blue players, the red players will wait a match length for a game, while blue players get their games almost instantly.
If you have 4 red players, and 2 blue players, red player 3 and 4 waits a game length… then next game red player 1 and 2 waits a game length… scaling players doesn’t fix imbalanced roles… The amount of time they wait is based on the match length and ratio.
if the ratio is 3:1, the red players are waiting… that is right… 2 game lengths.
But lets see how your maths works out.
Let me fix this for you