Role Que has it’s amazing advantages, and it’s serious and glaring disadvantages, but I would like to raise one serious concern, and offer a hopeful solution.
Que times for DPS players actually punishes those players in a less spoken about way, they are getting almost HALF the time in the game that supports and tanks get, so over time DPS players will grow less and it could result in the quality of DPS decreasing.
Que times do not only discourage DPS player from playing the game, it enhances their tilt because each game has more inherent value, in addition to this, as a tank I can play 2 games in the time it takes one DPS que to fire and finish. This means that climbing ranks on DPS will be significantly harder and larger time investment.
So how do we solve these issues?
Firstly regarding game time, a seemingly obvious solution would be to replace “SKIRMISH” with a “FFA”, this way at least DPS players have the option of working on their mechanical skill whilst they wait for a game, rather than playing other games. (This is especially important on stream, because in general DPS streams are the more popular ones, and when half of your OW streamers are playing Minecraft it doesn’t encourage new players or old players to return).
Secondly regarding climbing as a DPS player, I propose that there be a system that gives extra SR for wins that players have qued longer for, ie if a que takes longer than 10 minutes giving a bonus to SR gains on wins (but not changing the losses) could be a way to balance this issue. (I know this is not an ideal solution, but there needs to be a meaningful way reward DPS players)
Overwatch competitive isn’t always reliable, in the sense that, some days you lose 5 games in a row, some days you win 5. It’s the nature of a game that relies on you and 5 other players to communicate and work together. The way it balances it out is by having the player spend more time in games so that over the course of 20-30 hours you get a real indication of your trajectory as a player. But if we look at a tank player right now who ques in 1 minute, and a DPS player who ques in 10 minutes. Over 12 games, a tank player spends 4 hours and 12 minutes playing and waiting in que, even over that few games, a DPS player would spend 6 hours. This is a problem that will only get worse and worse over time unless DPS players stop playing the game, which we do not want. (Or they flex, which is what will likely happen)
There isn’t a fix that needs to happen. Everyone has a fair shot to play each role. its supply and demand, if everyone want to dps then naturally tanks and supports will be instant due to there being less of them queuing. We have the power to balance that out but WE are being stubborn about it.
But what you’re saying is that people should be punished for doing what they enjoy most? Like, yes DPS ques probably can’t be fixed, and if people wanna wait they can. There ARE ways to mitigate that issue and help those players who are actually not really enjoying overwatch right now.
That IS the issue. It is not a simple problem to fix. As long as you need to find 2 tanks for a game to start and there are only 2 slots reserved for DPS, the wait times will be horrendous. Once they are acceptable, that more or less means the game is dead because the number of DPS will be on par with tanks. There is no solving that besides admitting their mistake and walking it back.
You offered some… Mitigating factors, I guess. But they do not solve anything. And that is not your fault. There is no freaking solution which is why so many people were against them implementing this mechanic in the first place.
Anyway, queue times are only an issue in the sense that certain heroes are more popular than others. It has a fix, but that fix is in a wider pool of heroes or reworks that make people want to play certain tanks and healers more.
For the short-term, the problems don’t out-weigh the benefits in my eyes. I do think pre-game modes is interesting as an idea.
The extra-SR thing is a really bad idea though. It just makes DPS MORE common as people will want the extra SR. It will actually enhance the problem you are having. DPS is already the easiest role to climb with.
Yes, its called learning other roles. If they aren’t having fun its because they are restricting themselves. That’s not an issue the devs need to solve. This is how the real world works.
If people want to go out to dinner and there’s a burger and a pizza place next to each other and everyone want to go to the burger place obviously they are going to have to wait but you can just walk into the pizza place. You don’t cry and demand another burger place be built, you either be mature and wait in line or you find somewhere to eat if you can’t wait.
It doesn’t matter if some random stranger playing tank climbs the ladder faster than me or not. I’m on my own ladder.
And it isn’t an issue for friends since they can just queue together to stay around the same SR.
I don’t think playing less games in the same time frame as other roles warrants increased SR for wins. If it does, then it also warrants an increase in the decrease of SR for losses, since you know, a tank or support would lose more SR for multiple games lost in the time it takes for DPS to wait in line to lose one game
Your analogy is a bit misleading because in this circumstance, I already paid for dinner, but my pizza is being delivered to me one piece at a time with 10 minute delays in between, and my friends pizza was delivered whole on demand? We both paid the same amount, but have gotten different service even though we were originally promised the same.
However, I don’t think the supply/demand issue is going away and there’s no real meaningful way to solve that issue, because in essence you are right.
There are ways to make the wait less have less impact overall, that’s what I am saying.
So whilst I wait for my piece by piece pizza, I get to eat some garlic bread in between rather than just waiting?
Reverting role que is the only solution known to some people, for some reason. They’re not looking for the most logical solution. They’re looking for what they want, which is no role que in the first place.
I don’t like reverting because role que is perfect for me playing tank and support. Like, I’m so happy, I just feel like there’s a growing issue here where DPS players are going to just go play a game that they don’t have to wait for and it’ll spark a decline in the player base.
