Role queue KILLED the game

General Discussion
141

This game has two issues:

  • The game is unplayable without tank or supports.
  • Many players are selfish and if given the choice, they’d pick DPS over tank or support even at the cost of jeopardizing thier own game.

Role queue fixed that. But I wonder if this is just band-aid solution and not addressing the core problem. I hope not, since otherwise it’ll lead to more problems later on.

Also, people forget just how much the map affects gameplay. A well designed map can somewhat circumvent the issue with hero balance. There are quite a lot of maps I’m not too much a fan of in Overwatch and if we get rid of them (from competitive at least), I feel like it would make the overall gameplay much better. We obviously need more maps though to replace the bad ones.

142

I don’t have a problem with flex. With idea team mates, it would be great. I nrarely got ideal team mates. Half time I had trisomics that instalocked 3 flankers and a sniper and expected me to somehow solo heal them and keep myself alive too.
Forced comp fixed this for me. Loosing the ability to counterpick into a different role is a small price to pay for at least feeling that the matches I lose aren’t lost before they started, in hero selection.

Luckily for you free queue isn’t gone. If you value flex more, play that mode. My solo healing days are over

143

You know, all the people who wanted Open Queue could have kept right on playing Open Queue, and a lot of them did.

Their problem was that most people wanted Role Queue, and they all went there.

Role Queue was a great improvement for the game, and the majority of the community recognized it. Frankly, hearing complaints about it after 12 seasons is about as productive and entertaining as the endless complaints about Sym…which is to say, not at all.

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144

I dont think that no one at Blizz knows how to balance the game properly.

I think that since the beginning or close to it there has been a very strong rift between devs and corporate. Its clear that Jeff and his team wanted to make a fun game first and foremost but corporate wanted watchability to try to hit (and fail) some e-sports goldmine.

You cant really balance a game like that.

145

Honestly most post GOATS maps are kinda awful and very hitscan biased. Havana is hell when there is a Widow in that map, since it was intentionally designed to be a Widow map.

146

I’ll remind that we’ve warned the “whingers” that Role Lock would mean long queues for them, but their invariable response was, “I’d rather wait in long queues than have fast ones and be forced to fill on roles/heroes I don’t want to play”.

147

Those are rather a brighter side. Many of them just uninstalled the game. And even then, they are still the absolute majority than tanks. I can’t blame them. Why do you play the game in the first place? To have your fun or to sacrifice your time and fun for the team you never met before? Tank role Blizz imported from RPG simply are not fun to play in FPS for the majority of people. That is the core reason. All the other hassles are there to cover the problem.

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148

Except the fact that half the player base left because of it, lol. Santoro for instance, won’t be back I’m sure.

Personally, I don’t like the format, and I REALLY don’t like the queue times so. Easy for me not to play.

149

Onetricks were always going to be a thing in this game. The fact that they’re a problem isn’t the players’ fault.

150

youre right its the refusal to punish them

151

This is just a straw man talking point. We don’t know how many people quit because of Role Queue specifically, just like we don’t know how many came back to the game because of it, having quit prior to it out of frustration over constantly playing DPS chicken.

152

Nah, it went wrong in the design phase, well before any players got their hands on it.

153

It’s safe to assume a lot did though, lol. Considering that literally EVERY game mode queue became longer, shortly after RQ was introduced.

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154

A lot is not a number; and the whole supposition is based on an assumption. We have no numbers of any kind to support any type of claim of this sort.

155

Anything that restricts the players choice has been bad for the game and game experience, single hero selection, role lock, forced 2-2-2.

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156

Well, just use common sense then. Queue times have all been ridiculously long ever since RQ. Pretty easy to conclude that the reason for that is because the player base left.

Also, I can tell you personally, I quit when RQ came out. I didn’t come back until I saw they re-added open queue. Also, why do you think they would re add open queue if their player base hadn’t dropped significantly?

At any rate, the player base has certainly gone down with the lack of updates and even lack of news towards OW2, so I’m not surprised someone returning (like the OP), immediately quits.

157

Role queue was a slap on fix to the ultimate failure of how they designed overwatch matchmaking.

As I understand it the original intent of competitive was that it would only allow full stacks of six to queue up but due to complaints from the playerbase they opted to let people solo queue for it.

This created a plethora of issues that the game just was not designed to address in anyway.

It quickly became apparent that solo/duo queueing found you games faster and were easier to carry in. Because in solo environments there is inherently less coordination or communications. Allowing you to get away with things you COULD NEVER do in a more team cohesive environment.

The result being almost no organized teams and a far less team centric game overall. Which naturally means the roles were all over the place which would lead to the random all dps issues.

Couple this with the lack of LFG, clan support, and the absence many other (should have been) day one features.

Imagine if competitive on day one only allowed full teams or at least stacks of three? What if solo was not possible? I would predict that meta’s would have shifted far more often and role queue would not have been so high in demand.

Further more, the performance based ranking system that never truly resets and rates your HERO performance encouraged “one tricking” which would have already been a fairly common thing but became all but necessary for most people to climb. With the exception of a few of us (like myself) who were able to flex into roles as needed.

Did role queue kill overwatch? No, but it will forever (at least to me) signify the day that Overwatch declared they had given up on team based play without even trying it.

Would I have done things differently if it were up to me? Yes.

This is a biased conclusion. Because there is certainly another reason it could have increased queue times.

The fact that there are more dps then the other two roles. When you have five dps players for every 2 supports and every 1 tanks the only result would be longer queue times for the vast majority of the player base. Couple that with competitive match making trying to find players within your skill range and it gets even longer.

Especially at the opposing ends of the rank ladder as most of the player base is closer to the middle.

158

nope. the TOS did not make refusing to counterpick bannable nothing to do with design

159

Yes, but this doesn’t explain why ALL game modes had increased queue times.

160

For the ones with role queue it certainly does and seeing as most of the other modes are a novelty and were already fairly sparsely populated it does not surprise me.

You could be correct that the player base has shrunk but I think you overstep your reasoning and look passed all the other factors to make your argument seem more plausible.

That is not an argument in good faith but a fallacy by omission of all the factors.

Additionally, the argument that role queue specifically shrunk the player base does not hold well when ALSO the modes without it have suffered and speaks to it being many factors and not just even primarily role queue.

This would depend on who is leaving and how strict (or not) the dev team have made matchmaking overall. It could be that they have loosened matchmaking to allow for broader ranges of ranks to play with each other. Increasing the pool and keeping the queue’s longer.

That is why, without the appropriate data we can’t know for sure as the factors involved could have any number of consequences. Many shared between a larger, smaller, or steady playerbase.