QP should be split up

General Discussion
1

Roughly speaking there are two large groups of people that play QP.

The first group is made up of people who are generally trying hard to win. For some QP is the main mode that they play and they care about their experience there. For others QP is a place they go to practice and warm up for comp, and they want to do that in a serious manner. Others would enjoy playing competitive but don’t want to deal with toxicity or SR’s. These people will try to get reasonable comps, they might talk in voice chat, they’ll try to execute strategies, etc.

I’ve heard people claim that this group doesn’t exist or is really rare - this is simply not true. I know many such people, and if you go in voice chat and talk you can meet several new people every day.

The second group of people treat QP as a non serious chill mode. Some just want to goof off, some just want to play a certain hero and don’t really care what anyone else does. These people don’t really want to be told how to play in QP, they just want to do what feels fun in that mode.

The problem is that people in these two groups HATE playing with each other. The people in the first group get frustrated by team mates who aren’t really trying seriously to win. The people in the second group don’t understand why people take QP seriously.

There’s no right or wrong here, both groups have their own legitimate perspectives on what QP is and their perspectives influence how they play which influences the reality of QP.

However, there really is no reason why these two groups should be forced together in one mode when they’re obviously looking for different experiences. The whole experience would be so much more pleasant if QP were better defined, and the only way to do this is to split it into two modes: a silly mode and a serious mode.

The silly mode could continue to be called QP. People would go there and goof off and do whatever they want.

The more serious mode would be unranked. People would go there with the understanding that they’re there to win. It would use comp rules. It wouldn’t, however, use the SR system which should hopefully prevent a lot of the toxicity and the negative experiences that regular competitive generates. Hopefully this mode would also come with a 2/2/2 role queue.

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As someone who mainly QPs in a serious manner, I’d love a distinction between two versions of it. I just don’t see it working though, since you’d likely just have the other folks coming into it anyway for whatever reason. Which is a shame, because I want to play with and against people who are playing it like me.

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It might not 100% solve the problem, but it would help a lot. Most people will stick to the mode that matches their preferred experience.

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I play QP mainly too and I’m definitely one of those players who want to play properly for a win, but that’s all that I’m asking. No need to tryhard or sweat like in comp but if you’re a main tank player picking Torb and constantly try to flank the enemy while making the game effectively 5v6 while feeding into them I think it’s just toxic while some players might just go “it’s just QP lol”. I’d definitely rather play without those players

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I like to think there are some basic rules at play:

  1. Every mode should have an intended purpose/ experience.

  2. If enough people want a certain experience then there should be a mode for it.

  3. People who would be frustrated playing with eachother shouldnt be grouped together. Your torb example fits here.

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This is why it would fail. SR is the only reason people even try in comp. Remove it, and you remove the incentive to play seriously.

I agree there should be 2 modes. But it should be Casual QP and Advanced QP. In Advanced QP, it would basically be forced 2-2-2.

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the problem?
unranked will attract the goofs allot more!
nothing better then having 2 tanks and 2 healers to watch over you while you play double sniper.

and competitive is sorta un-ranked. people who don’t even know the basics demanding victory, at all cost!

competitive is also too long and unrewarding. making an even more unrewarding version of it dosen’t sound right.

theres only 2 groups in the game that matter, dps only, and everyone else.
finding a way to separate them is the only real solution.

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This. Back when we had offseasons it was a disaster. Multiple modes won’t change the fact that people are terrible.

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The truth is that it already was. Arcade was made generally for goofing off along with custom games.

People often forget that there was a time when quickplay was the only way to play seriously and is intended primarily as a means of introducing new players to the structure of overwatch. That is why it is a slightly less restrictive version of comp.

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People are pointing out some reasonable flaws, and I agree that this won’t solve 100% of the problems. But a partial solution shouldn’t be abandoned just because it doesn’t solve everything.

In this case, I think the split is almost necessary and I think that it will help quite a bit. Just the fact that the mode is billed as a serious mode will influence the behavior of most people playing it.

We’ve had this happen before when competitive split from QP. SR isn’t the only thing keeping people serious in comp.

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i think you should split up comp between unranked and ranked… noit qp

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That’s an interesting way of thinking about it. I guess I’m not sure what the distinction is.

A new mode is added to the game called unranked. It’s available on the main screen. It features comp rules and 2-2-2 role lock, but no SR. It has its own mmr, but that’s hidden from the players. The mode is billed as a serious mode that is suitable for people who are trying hard or are practicing for comp.

My question is - did this mode split comp or did it split qp? I don’t know whether or not there’s a good answer for that. I imagine that the player base for this mode will be a mix of comp players and serious qp players.

The only thing I’m sure of is that I would play that mode almost all the time.

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let qp have all the weird comps. if you wanna tryhard but not be ranked you can still play comp.

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I play QP because comp gives me social anxiety. I try to win always but I can’t communicate.

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I don’t think there’s solution to the problem that will be 100% successful, whichever way they choose to go because the one variable they can’t control is also the one that’s the most volatile. Us. The players.

If they split it to ranked and unranked, there’ll still be people who will go into the wrong mode with the wrong attitude, and even if they go for a 2-2-2 mode there’ll still be people who won’t necessarily choose the best combo of heroes or throw games just because.

Fundamentally, people are the problem, and you’re right we shouldn’t abandon the idea because it might not work, I agree it might improve things, and while I still don’t think there’s ever gonna be a full solution to the problem, just stop-gaps, I’m all for it, I’m all for any sort of attempt to have more specific ways to play. Any experimentation really, because it’s only by trying solutions that we’ll find what best fits for most people.

I actually wish Blizzard experimented more with game modes and such. Don’t know why they’re so hesitant to change the very stagnant status quo at this point. Both ideas we’ve talked about should have already been tested, at the very least, in some capacity: limited time game mode, on the PTR, in the arcade, as an event. So many ways to sneak them in and test them out and crunch some numbers. Especially since we’re talking about unranked game modes here. Here’s hoping they realize this soon.

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I think we’re so used to noticing people misbehave that we forget how common good behavior is.

I absolutely agree with you that Blizzard should experiment with these modes. A lot of the problems in the game can be addressed with design. As you say, nothing is perfect. But some amount of design will go a long way.

Right now both qp and comp are a mess. Unranked would address a good deal of issues in both of them (for different reasons).

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The people who like to troll will join the serious one… who wants to troll the non serious people?

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Some will, some won’t. There’s lots of trolls in comp but plenty more in qp. They’re inescapable, but that doesn’t mean that the game shouldn’t be designed to give people reasonable play experiences. It’s not a perfect solution, but it will help.

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They gave us LFG, which gives you a team who is there to play seriously. I’ve been noticing a lot of people using it these past days, and all of them have been playing it “seriously”.

Adding more modes is just a waste of resources when there are other tools to create a serious game experience.

I play QP 99% of my time, and rarely come across people who aren’t at least trying to win. And I definitely have not come across a troll in quite some time. So maybe I’m lucky. Even if our team is 2-2-2, that’s not changing how someone performs.

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That is fair enough, I just expect one will become the preferred one, and the other one will die a death, and we will be back to the beginning place again.

But, it is worth a go.

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