Role queue has benefits. It enforces well rounded team composition.
On the professional scene, it keeps matches exciting to viewers by preventing pros from running 3 tank 3 healer GOATs meta.
However this limits the meta. There is less room for players to introduce team creativity. The previous finals between San Francisco Shock and Shanghai Dragons featured the prior use 3 tank, 2 healer, and 1 damage while the latter used 1 tank, 3 damage, 2 healer.
This experimentation is now impossible under role queue. The number of possible permutations of team composition under the new system is far lower.
Flex players are essentially removed from the game. Overwatch Senior product designer Jon Spector says this helps players find their speciality. He’s right, but it also kills off a portion of the player base. Gone is the ability for a player to switch from healer to Tracer at the last second to stall out the objective a little longer.
There are twice as many damage characters as there healers or tanks. Some characters are flexible by nature, i.e. Mei can play more like a medium tank than damage. Damage characters are fun to play, so queue times are longer.
Sometimes Blizzard knows what’s best for the game, and they shouldn’t listen to the playerbase.
Will damage players always have long queues? Will they always have more hero options than Tank and Support? Will we ever have flex roles? Will we always have 2-2-2?
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I don’t think it caused more problems in terms of quantity.
I just think it completely messed over hero balance and now it’s laughable and gross. I’ve actually stopped playing because of how terrible the balance it and how slow balancing changes come.
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Why is it that Role Q complainers are always the ones that want to switch to a DPS the split second the first team fight is lost?
It’s always a tank or support that wants to switch to DPS whenever they please.
Instead of complaining why don’t you just queue up as DPS from the get-go instead of trying to cripple the team, leaving them without a healer or tank.
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It literally did though. It solved role SR and solo tanking/healing. It caused longer queue times, splitting the playerbase, stagnation (I know, I know, five DPS “creativity” is the rebuttal) and… Well, I am hesitant to put poor balance, but 222 literally forced double shield. So… Idk.
Either way, even if it was not in sheer quantity, the scope of the issues created is far more detrimental. So whatever, honestly. It was objectively a bad change even if the games are more consistent.
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222 has been a great change imo
The problem lays with the introduction of A high damage shield tank, lack of decent balancing and no decent attempt to alleviate que times. All of which are just laziness and bad decision making on blizzards part but I still believe 222 was a necessary change that I still personally enjoy (but it would just benefit much more from better balancing and more fun/engaging tanks/supports with carry potential so more people will play them)
from my prespective role que was made in order to make sure no ones is solo healing or solo tanking, two extremely stressful jobs online
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RQ is in place because
- Streamers complained about losing due to the matchmaker putting multiple Support 1 tricks and Main tank players on the same team
- DPS OWL players are getting hired and fired based on the current meta or forced into learning roles they don’t want to play
- Goats
It had very little to do with people being forced to solo tank or heal or 6 dps in QP games. Especially since the vast bulk of games played were already in a 222 format.
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Well said overall, however t his…
… is where I disagree most. Honestly, OWL is boring as hell, anyway. It’s still all mirror matches. You get maybe one hero differing per side in a given match, and often, they’re all just running the same thing. It’s a snoozefest, but even if it wasn’t mirror matches, Overwatch just doesn’t make that great an esport to watch. Every game’s the exact same and the map design has no variation, further leading to the samey feel. “Chokepointwatch” is much more fun to play than watch.
Oh, but they foisted the blame onto us to try to cover up for the complete embarrassment that OWL had become. They want Overwatch to be this world stage esport but couldn’t balance it well enough to be anything but a mirror match joke. So they finally gave up and killed GOATS via role lock and then tried to shuffle the blame onto the community to avoid the scrutiny being leveled at them.
It fooled no one, of course. This game is widely held right now as an example of how to do everything wrong when balancing a game.