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:
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:
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:
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:
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.