5,000,000+ different team comp combinations plus the addition of new maps and new heroes (as well as a new game mode coming soon) before role lock is literally impossible to balance around.
Without it, people would hate the game even more especially as it got new content and mechanics added.
Yes, it wasn’t off to an ideal start with braindead heroes becoming meta (I confidently say that as a Reaper main) and long queue times but format changes like this take time to become more optimal and ideal for the community. Mind you, this was a HUGE move by the dev team and making it optimal wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t released on live servers in the first place.
You can’t dispute that 500,000 comp combinations (or something around there) is much easier to balance around than what we had previously and queue times or not, games are much more enjoyable than they use to be where 4-5 DPS and Goats were crushing the fun of this game to the point where games were fantastic when you were winning but absolutely disheartening when you were losing.
And creativity is lacking in role lock?
Give me a break.
I’m willing to bet my life savings that within the format of 222, not ONE person has been able to even come CLOSE to playing every possible team comp combination and unless you have literally no life to the point where you play this game literally 24/7, no one will ever come close to playing in 500,000 different compositions.
The problem is people expected 222 to solve all the problems.
They forgot that the balance team are very slow to do anything, the players should of known that it would be a very bumpy start.
You act as though even 100 is still Balanceable…I mean just look at the “balanced” game we have now…
Slightly less impossible is still impossible…
The only real thing 222 has added is restrictions to the game…restrictions on who can play, what team comp you can play…and let’s be honest - which heroes you can play as well…(and now they’re even restricting maps)…and I didn’t even bring up the wait times
Note - most of which you could already do with LFG or some minor tweaking to it…
its fantastic if you don’t care about any of that…but many don’t and the game is effectively ruined for them…
It absolutely was. The tips on the team select screen guide people towards 2-2-2. Remember when the messages: only 1 tank or only 1 healer appeared in the yellow banner. It most definitely was people just ignored it.
where you see restrictions I see structure. Imagine if a baseball team could field multiple pitchers, or if racing cars could all have whatever type of motor they wanted. How about a football team with 2 offensive lines protecting the qb? Structure was needed. Honestly I think one of blizzards biggest mistakes with this game was letting the mob rule and not having a team structure in place from day one.
Realistically, before RQ we had ~736,000 combinations, not 5 million.
And now, we only have ~70,000 combinations, far from the 500k you’re saying we’ll never see.
Not to mention, it’s not about playing every single possibility. It’s about having options. And when you literally take 90% of a player’s options away, it’s safe to assume that you’re taking numerous options away that the players were happy to use, and obviously many people are going to be upset by that. Honestly the only people that aren’t are the ones who got it into their heads that 2/2/2 is the only way to play and couldn’t accept that other comps were good as well.
Not the best analogy…but I get what you’re trying to convey…but structure is already inherently part of the game…you CAN run 6 dps if you wanted…but you’ll more than likely lose…a basketball team can field 5 pt guards if they really wanted to…and more than likely lose (think a better sports analogy)…And this is especially true in comp where if you didn’t play with a structured team comp you would almost absolutely lose…
But theres supposed to be flexibility in that structure…it’s kinda the intent behind the game…to be variable…rigidity (which sounds more like what you’re describing) is not good for this game…
This is why I always go back to LFG…A) because it was introduced for the same reason (to add structure to the game) but it had the benefit of still having flexibility…and B) because it never got updated (not like it was perfect)…which I think is one of blizz’s biggest mistakes
What we have now is a rigid structure with like no give whatsoever which is not something many find enjoyable
Note - to that very last point…I’m not going to sit here and claim it’s a majority (cause it’s not) but is 35-50% of your playerbase hating it a good thing? (which I think is actually very realistic)… That is a very large number of people man
In fact it shouldn’t have happened and was one of Blizzard’s bigger mistakes.
Why?
Because the fact of the matter is that they did NOT have anywhere remotely close to 33% of their players preferring each role. It was probably more along the lines of 60% want DPS, 30% healing, 10% tanking. So they went in and hamfistedly tried to make their player base match how they thought the game should be played. The result? Ridiculously long DPS queues and a lot of DPS players giving up and queuing as a healer with no intention of actually healing.
I mean seriously… they had to throw in the “While you wait” system in as a bandage over the terrible DPS queue times.
Most of the straw polls and blizzard devs themselves have suggested that RQ is successful.
The flexibility in the structure is suppose to be the swapping to counter mechanics. As I said in the post above the one you responded to the game has always guided players towards a 222 comp. The fact that those tips existed suggest that 222 was what the devs had in mind when they made the game. But players tend to ignore this mechanic. Even Jeff has spoke on this saying they thought people would swap more and not main heroes. There is only 2 ways to fix this. Either the devs design to accommodate maining/1 tricking heroes or players start counter picking. Given that the mechanic has been ignored by most players for a while I am willing to bet which solution will be needed. Provided it is ever addressed.
LFG was not the system that everyone seems to think it was. And it did not solve the problems of balance changes (what little we get) not accounting for comps the devs data didn’t indicate to them. Only time will tell if the data helps them now more than before as we go forward, but the lfg system was counteracted by the mm system. When it comes to groups in OW the rule from pretty much day 1 has been no more than 3 to a group. Why because the mm tried to compensate for 6 people being together with the idea they were more coordinated. 6 random people in an lfg group was still 6 random people. They were just getting to play the role they wanted too (possibly)
As for people being mad. Not really an indicator in this community seems like people are mad about something all the time. Before RQ was in place you would think that Goats was being ran in every game out there if you looked at the complaints.
They never really intended something like this. Remember, we originally didn’t even have hero limits. They didn’t plan on this, it was the playerbase that evolved and started dictating how the game should be played. Eventually, after years of demanding such a system get put in, they finally gave in and did it. And this is what we ended up with, a system that was never intended for the game to organize a playerbase that isn’t ever going to fit within it.
Because there are other mechanics that push players towards maining heroes even harder. Some examples:
Skill Based SR
Ultimate Charge going poof on hero swap
The staggering amount of characterization each hero has, making it more likely to “fall in love with” a particular hero
Cosmetics for particular heroes
The simple economics of being able to get better and therefore further up the ladder faster by one tricking Genji for 100 hours than spending 10 hours on 10 heroes.
Also… at the end of the day the Dev’s opinion on how the game should be played matters a lot less than you seem to think it does.
There really wasn’t. They could easily have looked into making it less punishing or more rewarding to swap heroes, without taking a sledge hammer to the ability to role swap with your teammates.
These are not mechanics these are player individual taste. Devs can’t design a system mechanic around what someone likes. And as I said Jeff has already admitted this when he said they didn’t count on people ignoring the swap mechanics.
This again varies from player to player. Some get better and climb and some dont. While some have huge hero pools and climb while some have huge hero pools and stay right were they are.
wait what? how did you do the math for role queue combinations, or would it be a permutation since theres an order now? I get 736,000 since that’s just 31C6 but what about now since every role needs exactly 2, not more nor less?