Quality of Life changes for the Game Client I wish to see (Images included)

TL:DR

  • I want to see some simple changes to help players with certain technical problems they counter when playing Overwatch.
  • I want to see “Competitive Penalty Warning Messages”
  • I want to see a Cooldown sequence when you cancel a Competitive Match Queue
  • I want to see the Competitive Search queue get canceled if a player leaves a group.
  • I wish to see a Competitive confirmation and backfill sequence that does not incentivize queue dodging

Hello everyone, I am reviving an old topic from the old forums I made that expresses “quality of life” changes I wish to see in terms of the game client since I can post images to help give demonstrative examples. These are not hero balance changes, how Competitive works, or anything like that but simple ideas to help players with technical problems they may encounter when playing and to avoid getting leaver penalties.

IDEA 1: Warning messages when you are penalized

I have brought up this idea before in past topics discussed here. It has been my observation there are many players who don’t understand that they are penalized if they disconnect from competitive play, nor do they know what to do about it.

The idea here is when you start a Competitive Game, you are “logged into that game”. And until you complete the match you are not “logged out”. So if a player disconnects or has a game crash and they log back in they will be penalized (unless they quickly return to the same match in a timely manner). So for those who do disconnect or crash in a competitive match (and were penalized), I would like to see the following message to appear when they first log back into the game.

Here is a sample that I created of what a post-leaver warning message would look like:
Sample Warning Message 1

The displayed link would be clickable and would open the player’s web browser to immediately go to the Battle.net support site. Now regardless if they took time to fix their problems or not or if they deliberately left, if a player tries to start a new Competitive Match after they served a suspension from leaving one, another warning message would appear when they click on the Competitive Play button.

Here is a sample that I created of what a reminder warning message would look like:
Sample Warning Message 2

The goal is to educate players the importance of not leaving matches and to correct any technical issues before attempting to play Competitive Play again. Neither warning message will appear again if the player completes their next competitive match and remains that way unless they leave/disconnect/crash again in a future match.

IDEA 2: Cancel Competitive Queue Cooldown

I have seen many posts in all of the forums (Competitive, Technical Support, Bug Report) about players complaining that they cancel the search queue for a competitive match, and immediately exit the game, but then come back and discovered they were penalized for leaving a competitive match. This is happening because within the milliseconds of them canceling the queue, they were paired into a competitive match but were too fast to exit the game, not realizing they were paired into a match. To resolve this, I propose a 10-second cooldown that locks out the interface from the time they press to cancel the queue. Once they click to cancel, a pop-up message should appear to graphically show they are being canceled out of queue but until they matchmaking server returns a signal saying they are no longer in the queue that they still could be paired for a match.

Here is a sample that I created of what a cancel queue cooldown would look like:
Cancelling Competitive Queue Prompt

IDEA 3: Cancel competitive queue trigger if a player leaves a group

Another problem commonly reported is that a player gets a penalty if they try to leave a group when there is an active competitive search queue active. So, I propose that if a player in a group (even if they are not the group leader) clicks to exit the group, the queue is automatically canceled (and goes into “cooldown” as I described in the idea above). Once the cooldown is complete, then that player is removed from the group, after which the group leader may attempt to queue for competitive again.

IDEA 4: Competitive Pairing Confirmation and pre-game Backfill protocol

One of the biggest problems I am seeing players struggle with is getting disconnected in the pre-game sequence of a Competitive Match. Now players are supposed to be committed to a competitive match once they are paired into that match. However, many disconnections will result in a “Failed to connect to Server” error, while the technical reasons about this are often outside of the hands of either the player or Blizzard to correct (its typically due to a problem somewhere in-between the connection). How the match goes about handling it is a bit unbalanced. Here is my solution.

When a player is paired for a match, they should be taken to the loading screen however the loading screen hides the names of all players, their tiers, the map name, and the teams’ average skill ratings. There is then a confirmation button on the screen that each player must press within 30 seconds to confirm they are ready for the match. Once the game receives confirmation of all 12 players, the match stats mentioned above is revealed for about 5 seconds and the match moves to the Hero Selection Screen as normal. If after 30 seconds a player fails to confirm, they are dropped from the match and be given their appropriate Suspension but NOT a match loss or loss of skill rating, and the match will then backfill appropriate players from the queue until the match is confirmed by 12 players. At this point, the competitive leaver protocols that currently exist take over.

Here is a sample that I created of what a confirmation screen would look like:
Sample Competitive Confirmation Screen

The details in this idea help resolve all of the common problems with pre-match leavers while hopefully making it a little fair for all parties involved. I still believe a player should be suspended if they fail to make the initial connection to a competitive match (as they need to stop playing and resolve their connection issues), but I believe it is not fair for their skill rating to be affected when they fail to load into the match. Of course, once all players confirm and see the pairing details, they are subjected to full penalty as we don’t want a situation where queue dodging becomes a problem (this is the whole reason why players are penalized before a match starts). Finally during the confirmation sequence, the matchmaker should work to find the appropriate substitutes in advance for each player slot, until all 12 players are confirmed for that match. This, of course, would be the ONLY time where there is any form of a backfill protocol in Competitive. This idea is radical from a development standpoint, but it would be beneficial to every player trying to play Competitive Overwatch.

Conclusion

As you can see these proposed ideas is not about making the gameplay content better but to help others stay informed when they are dealing with technical issues and keep Competitive matches more consistent. I would love to hear other players thoughts about this too! Thanks for reading everyone.

32 Likes

Amazing job. These are very needed for the game

7 Likes

Wow this is a great thread, I like all the effort you put into this, great ideas, sadly it’ll be buried in all the “buff torb/buff sym/nerf sombra/revert mercy” threads

It’s threads like these that should be noticed by the devs but they’re not

6 Likes

True, but the second half of my goal here is to get us to brainstorm and find ways to further improve the experience for everyone! If you have ideas, feel free to add on.

A confirm you want to play comp option would be nice. That way you won’t even have to start the que. That would make 2 conformations. Not sure if that is too much. But better save then sorry I guess.

So you want a solid confirm-to-queue for all players? I see the point, but eventually players would just confirm click by instinct after a while.

Would actually love to see this, I’ve once been in a 5 stack and had a friend leave the split second we got a game. Luckily they didn’t receive a ban or a suspension.

Oddly enough 2 people in our party were actually unable to queue together due to being too far apart but the guy who was our 5th member was in placements and that somehow enabled us all to queue together.
The guy in placements was the guy who disconnected right as we got a game which somehow allowed us to bypass the sr limitations and have a mid silver and high plat playing together.

Really well done, no one at blizzard gave a prophanaty about this post.

why?

WHYYYYYYYYYY?

ill be keeping an eye on this thread ill bump if need be

Most impressive. I’d really like to see all of these in game. Great post, +1 like

no, they wouldnt. cs:go has it, i never do it by instict, i know im locked in a game.

Thank you all for your comments, albeit a little bit of a necrobump. The Overwatch Development team and the Overwatch Community team does take time to sort through many of these posts, and I am sure they have seen either this thread or my older one from the older forums. They don’t always reply because if they do, we will see it as them promising that they would build such a feature.

Now that being said, if you want the thread to stay healthy. Feel free to add new ideas to the discussion, or share the thread with your own friends who also enjoys Overwatch. Just bumping will only get a thread like this locked. I much rather build on the discussion.

Maybe I am just speaking from my own personal experience. I used to play dance games such as DanceDanceRevolution in the arcades and their more “hardcore game modes” had “confirmation screens” for certain key steps. I often skipped over them without a second thought.

it’s np this is great :smiley:

Thank you for your input on my thread man. Giving you a bump. Didn’t know that all this was going on in regards to the game itself. Dope stuff, d00d.

Thanks!

Yet many people are asking for a matchmaking system able to make more equitable matches by coupling people who mains different roles with each other.
It could be done by analysing their most played heroes, but might not be relevant for everyone (maybe you main dps but you’d like to play a tank).
Why not adding a feature that would ask the player which role he is probably going to play ?

What role do you want to play ?

  • DPS
  • Tank
  • Support
  • I’ll fill

And the system tries to make teams having at least one of each role.
What do you think ?

I did not put this in my list because I don’t believe a Role Queue system would be ultimately beneficial. The problem with that system is that once a player plays a specific hero or role or if they start to flex, they will eventually become stuck in a situation where they are always playing that hero or role. Even with a system that allows certain role choices, you have to remember that Overwatch is about changing heroes and even classes mid battle to counter the opponents. I won’t object to a role queue of any sorts should one be introduced into the game, but I am not sure how effective it would actually be to improve the matchmaking experience or promote teamwork in Overwatch.

I have another idea about teamwork in Overwatch, but that is more toward how the Competitive Matchmaker works and not so much about how technical features of the game client. I have that idea in a seperate topic in the Competitive Discussion forum here:

1 Like

just adding more to this discussion.

What is faster? The scenatrio after a game is found:

      A) click on a button and if the other 11 people dont click it one just keeps waiting till another button appears.

       B)get in a match, select a hero, talk to your team, wait 30 secs. Someone is afk. leave. Start a queue for a game. wait for a game to start.

       A')get in a match, select a hero, talk to your team, wait 30 secs. Prepare your defenses. Someone leaves.Game ends. Start a queue for a game. wait for a game to start.

       B')get in a match, select a hero, talk to your team, wait 30 secs. Prepare your defenses. Someone leaves.Game ends. Start a queue for a game. wait for a game to start.

In A we have an accpet button, in B we dont. What is faster?

I really don’t understand what you are asking for.

The reason why I have specified there has to be a confirmation before players and the map are revealed and before you get to the hero selection screen is to avoid queue dodging.

amazing bloody job hope blizzard comes across this thread

the game is found
A) the accpet button this post is about
B) the method we have now

everyone has clicked on the accept button
A’) someone click the accept button but leaves and we can still cancel the match
B’)the method we have now

i asked what is faster? the A or B since A’=B’