PriQueue is a VERY temporary solution

General Discussion
1

Priqueue was designed to solve the fact that we have way more DPS players than tank or support players.

Now, it has worked, to some degree, but, ultimately, it WILL fail

And it will fail for a very interesting reason, which is, it makes the underlaying problem worse.

While you can solve some of the symptoms, if you make the problem advance quicker, you will end up losing all that ground, and more.

The underlaying problem is, we lose Tank and Support players at a higher percentile rate than we lose DPS.

We know this, because the DPS queue was getting worse, and the tank queue wasn’t.

Now, lets get some things out of the way first, DPS is more popular to play in games - that is true, BUT that just sets the queues starting sizes.

if DPS was twice as popular at the same of the game, and EACH player made a choice to leave or not, at the same rate regardless of role, you would STILL have the same ratios later.

But, we don’t. The DPS queue got longer and longer, and Tank’s didn’t move, and supports was some where inbetween.

If each role was equally as fun in the game, the DPS would leave, until the queue times were roughly equal, but, that isn’t what happened, After all, DPS queue times are not much fun, and Tank / Supports don’t have to face that.

Which means… and this is important, that playing Tank and Support was less fun than DPS, even given the DPS awful queue times.

Which meant that Tanking and Supporting was a lot less fun.

Now we have Priqueue, and the DPS queue times have dropped.

Which means we will retain DPS more than we did before, but we won’t retain Tank or Support at a higher rate, since, Queue times wasn’t their problem.

So, we expect the ratio to get worse, faster than it did before.

So, PriQueue is only going to work for so long, before it fails, and when it fails, it will fail hard.

It has brought Blizzard a small amount of time, but, if they don’t solve the underlaying issues, it will ultimately make the problem worse, not better.

1 Like
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I kinda hope it fails and dies

RQ is unsustainable

Hopefully with OW2, with all the new players, people won’t have the strange idea that they need 2 tanks and 2 supports every game

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WoW first post ever that makes sense of your 32k - idd pri queue/fast pass is utter garbage and promotes nothing but throwing on top of separate roles having separate rankings already promoting throwing on your off roles for luls.

It was a blizzard implemented message so they could sell the community on the RQ thingy they put time and resources in to even thou we all knew GOATS was not an balance issue but a BRIG issue all along. After the seed was planted they just let the shills echo the message and silenced any critiques/ignored them. Usually when they want to sell something they take help of their youtubers/streamers as well that 6 months later come to their “sense” and start actually giving their “honest” or opinion, more or less what the majority knew all along as in RQ would suck and suffocate the game.

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Role Queue was tied to this in a big way. They were losing Tank and Support players, quickly, and it was causing more and more of a problem. RoleQ was an attempt to stop losing them so quickly.

Again, it gave them time to solve the underlaying problems, which, they didn’t take.

PriQueue is now trying to cover the SAME problems, which have gotten worse.

But, eventually, unless they solve the underlaying issues, which I doubt they will do, it will just get worse and worse.

A lot of people don’t like what I have to say, but, like, this is just another in a long line of posts saying something very similar.

Mostly I try to deal with the underlaying problems, but sometimes it is good to talk about the overarching issue.

The problem is, it will take the game with it.

You remove roleQ now, and the game will lose most of the rest of the tank and support players.

2 Likes
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I do wonder whether 222 is ultimately sustainable. Maybe we’ll get news regarding 132 at Blizcon.

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It appears as though Blizzard dont realise this yet. See the latest tank nerfs.

Now, even they truly needed those nerfs they’ve made tanks horrible to play. It’s self defeating.

2 Likes
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Nothing will change until they stop butchering tanks and supports, while giving only slight nerfs to the dps.

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We DO know they want to do it, but, again, that CAN’T be the long term fix.

Also, the DPS players will hate it, long term. They think they will like it, UNTIL the game gets balanced for 3 flanker, or 3 sniper or 3 hitscan comps.

They will be nerfed, super hard, because ultimately they will have to be.

1 Like
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PriQ isnt trying to solve the actual issue…just like RQ wasn’t addressing the actual issue either…

Everything they’ve done with how people queue is just trying to mitigate the effects of the actual problem:

People don’t want to play tank or support or just prefer to play dps (and it’s a SIGNIFICANT gap)…

Until they actually address that they’re not actually “fixing” anything…especially since many of those “fixes” come with additional problems of their own

(In many ways how modern medicine works…address the symptom not the actual problem)

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It wasnt even a temp solution all we get in the Tank role now are throwers just playing tank to get ticket proof that Blizzard dont care about ranks

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Right, but the important part is, the gap is getting bigger, so it isn’t just a “more people want to play DPS” thing. It is that EVEN the players who want to support, are leaving faster than the people who want to DPS.

Yes, it caused other problems. What is also awful about this, is, tanking kinda needs the other tank to know what they are doing.

So, this makes the act of playing tank even worse. On top of all the other problems.

Which means that Blizzard will lose them faster, which means we will get more patches to try and cover the problem… it is going to get REAL ugly really quickly

Yeah.

I think OW2 is going to have some REAL problems there.

You mix the issues now, and then put in PvE, and soak what is left of the support and tank players in to that?

I can’t see the game as it is surviving it.

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It should be banable as it is 100% gameplay sabotage & Blizzard knew this would happen

They need to stop forcing people to play Tank in fact if they keep priority queue they need to punish people more for really underperforming on tanks give them minus SR across all roles

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Then you lose the rest of the tank and support players. That is no good solution.

There isn’t a good way out, EXCEPT make Tank and Support a LOT more fun than they are now, and Blizzard doesn’t know how.

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Maybe have a limit to the level of hours but these players need to punished some how

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I get it, but, Blizzard is painted into a corner.

And you don’t punish people by putting them into easier games, which is what lowering their SR will do.

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I feel like the idea of “maining” a role is what’s damaging players’ experiences. Players decide to restrict themselves to a single role, get upset when it’s not fun, when the whole point of Overwatch was “play heroes not classes”

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Yes, but, people will TEND to cluster around similar heroes. The support players TEND to play Mei / Sym / Sombra when they take up DPSing. Because these have the support nature to them.

But, even if people played heroes rather than roles, if all of the heroes in two of the three roles were not as fun, then you would lose the players of those heroes faster, and you would be back to where we are now anyway.

Blizzard can’t work out a way to make a Tank or Support hero which want to keep playing.

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They already have made tanks people want to play we just want them balanced

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Queue times show they haven’t. They have ALWAYS been losing Tank players more than DPS.

If there was Tanks fun enough to retain the tank players, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

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I think something that could help is an adjustment to armour. For a while now, I’ve felt like I splat as soon as I dare to peek out from behind cover, despite being a tank; maybe if armour did more than take off five whole points of damage off that one hundred plus shot, it wouldn’t feel so rough. As a bonus, it wouldn’t buff Sigma. The downside is that armour on non-tanks like Bastion, Torb and Brig would need tweaking.