Role queue won't help this game but bans and guild ladders might

Competitive Discussion
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Topic #1 -The problems I have with role queue
Arguments for role queue seem to be more prevalent than ever with the unknown update blizzard is working on for next year with Jeff even saying, “when we come out with this update you’ll say, so that’s why they’ve been taking so long” something along those lines.

Here are reasons I think people would want role queue:

  1. people want to be able to enter a game knowing that they won’t be rolling the dice and getting several teammates who can only play a popular role/the same role i.e 3 rein mains and 2 brig mains.

  2. people want to be able to play the roles they want to get good at without having to compete with teammates at the loading screen for who gets a hero they want (practicing a hero without any flak from teammates)

  3. People want to be able to play their best roles/heroes despite the fact that some people on their team may not be proficient at the role they chose so logically if I play my best role and a few others on my team do the same then we can make it work.

Issue #1
If there are any possible reasons I missed feel free to mention them. However, I believe these 3 issues can’t be truly solved with role queue. Role queue could do well addressing the first issue - avoiding games with several people proficient with the same hero but I think the current matchmaker could do this by looking at the time played for a few heroes for every person before the lobby is determined.

If too many brig mains are on the same team, kick one out and select another person who mains other supports. This selection process would happen when the competitive search timer is still counting up, not when you are already in a lobby. But if both supports have the same amount of time on brig there is no need to kick any of them out when they also have a sufficient percentage of time on other supports.

What if you play several roles quite well and not just one role. Then you get put in a “flex” slot. Ok, what if you wanted to play one particular role out of the two roles you play well and someone chose your hero i.e choosing to play off-tank even though you usually play off-tank and flex support. Ideally, LFG would have solved this since you could join a flex slot and tell the group what you played. Two possible outcomes of doing this are

a. you get kicked because it just doesn’t work according to the team
b. they accomodate you by doing some trading of the roles between themselves (the benevolent gods that they are)
c. they say its totally fine

…so if you get kicked you just try again. If the team wins usually you queue until you lose. Then the group disbands, that’s how it usually goes for me most of the time. Let me know if it’s different for you. So LFG already addresses the first issue of role queue listed above.

Issue #2
I start my game wanting to practice with a specific hero in mind. You won’t be able to practice well if the team comp is a mess so it’s best to have role queue, right? I don’t think so.

The community of overwatch is a community that loves to whine. Everyone starts this game as trash. If you think you won’t be blamed for bad plays when everyone expects you to perform your role to a T then arguing for role queue might actually make it easier to complain about someone in a specific role because regardles of your reason for choosing your role, teammates expect you to be good at it and they think that is why you chose the role.

An obvious example of this is playing widowmaker in silver, my current rank. I played with someone on a public profile who had a lot of time on widow. The team went forward when he got a pick and we won our fights, even if he didn’t get a pick immediately we still sought to make our best plays no matter the situation, unsurprisingly we won.

In the next game, the same widow was on my team but this time someone started complaining about the widow we had on our team the moment we loaded into spawn. That lasted throughout the entire game, they never tried to cooperate with widow, heal widow, herd the enemy team into widow line of sight then 4 out of 6 teammates raged about the widow that had a positive winrate. I stuck up for the guy and called them out for their defeatist attitude that started from spawn but they wouldn’t hear anything widow and I had to say.

Having played widow this season with a 45% scoped accuracy and 18% critical accuracy I have experienced the same things. At some point I even left voice chat because surprise, complaining about the widow on your team regardless of how well they do, or the moment they didn’t one-shot pharah is distracting when playing a hero that requires intense levels of concentration.

Lesson: Role queue won’t fix uncooperative attitudes toward other players if LFG can’t. In my experience LFG just allows people to get the hero they want more consistently and they stick together a bit longer if they win then disband the moment they lose and that’s if they use LFG. We all know that its use has declined over time yet I can always find a group throwing to bronze smh -_-

Issue #3 - I wanna play my best role so that i have a good chance of winning
This idea lives off the speculation that if most people in a team can cooperate then you should win. What if overlooks is that team matchups over a large sample size are usually quite close. If you use role queue for the 3 reasons i listed above other on the opposing team will usually use it for these exact reasons.

Once again we can look at LFG as a fledgling version of role queue that is optional to use while role queue wouldn’t be. But when we compare win rates of LFG against solo queue with LFG having the greatest possibility for cooperation where everyone sorts out their roles before getting in a game I am reminded of the statistics of LFG that came out a few months ago. Solo queuers had a winrate of 49.5% while LFG six stacks had a winrate of 52.88%. Barely any difference at all.

Read the link the below since it’s where i got this winrate information

These issues are something LFG was supposed to address but had little to no impact, partially because of the community and a lack of flexibility and a non problem solving mindset. Screaming your head off for 2-2-2 wont fix the game.

Making plans and discussing what you can do with teammates will. If everyone is running 2-2-2 most of the time ask yourself why am i losing so many game then, isn’t the playing field supposed to be even, And yes i’m talking about those who only use voice chat to complain about something wrong with the team the moment it strays from the 2-2-2 or any other forced comp.

Think of why something wont work, don’t assume it will fail with no clear reason because if you expect to climb through sheer trial and error without learning anything then… -_-

They say the bad games stick in your mind the most but the game i will never forget was on gibraltar, my team didn’t even mak it past first point no matter what we did. Then came our turn to defend and voice chat just came alive with possible ways to hold. We settled on cheese comps. Orisa, hog, mei, mercy, brigitte, moira. It was “so much cheese it would make the French proud” that was what I said and I was brig. Then someone asked “so what would counter our comp” and I said “a good dragonstrike would kill us all” so we watched ou for hanzo.

We camped on the turn into first point so we could see the enemy team on highground with me watching the flank route and stunning anyone stupid enough to come through. Mei would wall off anyone in main so bastion could gun them down, Orisa and hog would pull or hook anyone on high ground and we won. This was the most fun I have ever had in overwatch and I can never get it out of my mind because that felt like how the game should be. Advocates of role queue want this kind of cooperation but I listed above reasons why I believe role queue won’t work for this.

Topic #2 - Bans can diversify comp games
Metas, they tend to be so strong with this game that not running a specific abusable comp can be seen as throwing or at least, ackknowledged as being at a disadvantage. If each team was allowed to ban 1 hero for a total of 2 bans per game this could force diversity in the game rather than forcing metas which people believe role queue might do.

Bans could be a useful mechanism for preventing too many games throughout the ladder to revolve around 1 specific comp and particularly one specific hero. It could also help zone out problematic and unbalanced heroes like birgitte especially when she was new to comp. At this point in the game she has:
Shield bash (7 seconds)
Shield bash cone (60 degrees)
rally max armor (100)

but upon release she used to have
Shield bash (5s)
Shield bash cone(90 degrees)
Rally armor (150)
so the initial brigitte was more of a nightmare than what we have now
and if a team chose her they had a notable advantage because with an 11.82% pickrate and a winrate of 56.38% over the past 6 months she is quite strong on the ladder. The support with the next best winrate is zen with a winrate of 52.47 and a pick rate of 13.53% check overbuff cuz I can’t post links

If teams could ban heroes then I doubt they would have let brigitte get played in most games when she initially released in her op state. Overtime her win rate has gradually declined and as much as some would like to say it’s because they have gotten better, but we must realize she is far less of a duelist than she initially was.

Two counter arguments to bans is that there are too few heroes to ban and someone might ban something essential so I will try to address these.

  1. Too few heroes:
    I dont actually agree with this argument because out of 29 heroes only six will be played and with a distribution of 7-16-6 for tanks, dps, and supports respectively selecting a 2-2-2 comp which seems to be the most prevalent comp regardless of metas means 5 tanks, 14 dps, and 4 supports aren’t chosen.

In theory there would still be enough diversity to form a structured comp favoring different ranges of play ie. brawling/goats, flanking/diving, sniper meta. The bans wouldn’t make the game impossible to play but it would allow for the acceptance of different comps not constrained to combos like doomfist and sombra in higher ranks or pharmercy in the lower ranks. “But if doomfist gets banned we can’t counter goats” then play at range with pharmercy and ban lucio, a slow goat is a dead goat. Jayne hosted PUGs a few weeks ago with some GMs and if you watch some of the video you can see how players selected their heroes when brig and lucio, or brig and DVa were banned.

No Dva? Then play ana for nades. No brig? Then play some kind of dive-oriented comp. Can’t defend face dive without brig? Then disengage with speed boost while running goats and focus the monkey. Can’t run goats without brig? Oh wait we can, brawl comps have existed without her so pick roadhog. If you want to watch the video here’s the link: Pro Experimental PUGs ft. Emongg, Kabaji, OGE, uNKOE, and more! - YouTube

It shows how interesting things can get when you aren’t only focused on the best meta because once a crucial part of the in-season meta is gone winning becomes more about what you can bring to the team and not “is my hero meta atm”

  1. What if something essential is banned?
    “They just banned rein, gg”. This was an objection someone raised on youtube when I mentioned it before and my answer to that is that it becomes a game of what team has better positioning without reliance on a german warmachine, or play orisa and go for a differnt comp altogether (pirate ship?) or use a mobility favoring comp like tracer/genji/dva or get those mad flanks. If moira is banned mercy or ana can be played for main heals. You don’t even have to panic that dps gets banned because there are 16 of them.

Between lucio and zen you can have good defensive ults and if everyone groups together mercy heals/dmg boosts everyone - just get creative and try to cooperate. That’s the big one, cooperation. But if someone argues that people don’t cooperate in ranked then my argument is if they don’t cooperate now without bans why should we try bans anyway. The worst case scenario is they still don’t cooperate and the best case scenario is that they do so there’s nothing to lose.

Topic #3 Guild Ladders - Tournaments within ranks

I really want this one. I’m desperate for it. LFG isn’t what I thought it would be and my friend’s list. Ha, first I have to find what times these guys are on and we have to agree on a time to play together and since we usually don’t play together ur ranks are pretty different.

I have some friends in bronze, some in gold, and others in plat. I used to be so focused on ranking up no matter what and I would group with 5 friends in bronze a lot, never climbed until I duoed with a friend who doesnt play anymore and we got out by simply focusing on the easiest heroes to kill on the opposing team, that’s all it took to get out of bronze. Won 9 out of 10 placement matches lost 1 beacuse of a leaver and that was several seasons ago. Been silver ever since though I touched gold yesterday and lost it for several reasons.

  1. I got nervous (at least i’m honest)

  2. A brig didn’t even give armor until we were halfway through the fight when i was tracer and I kept asking for rally. and brig had the armor ult since last fight. Not the first time I cam across a brig main who don’t know that armor lasts until you take damage to knck it off. Of course, the brig died when giving rally to the team so she was totally useless

  3. Getting matched with a low leveled player not even past level 50, the guy played orisa on defence blizzard world and said “I wish you could get on the high ground up there.” while shooting at the highground past first choke close to the statue.

I feel as though these 3 reasons are preventable if we had a guild system that players of the same rank could join and play together, communicate in their lobbies/servers whatever, while learning about heroes and maps in a better environment. Then guilds could play tournament against other guilds of the same rank and get promoted in standing based on win-loss percentage. I remember learning about pressing ‘e’ and being able to break down a wall you already put up as Mei (jardio dropped that bomb) and realising that pressing right click after using orisa pull triggered it early several hours (hate him as much as you like but xQc is a beast) after playing these heroes.

I felt like such a noob, I was also mildly pissed that this never showed up when pressing f1 to see how the heroes worked. You cant even tell the cooldowns of hero abilities unless you try them out. Documentation for this game is horrible and god forbid you leave the game for a few months like I did suddenly it’s “this hero does what now?” after the year of reworks.

A guild that allows players of the same ranks to trade knowledge about the game, play custom games within their guild and against others would go a long way to enhancing the gaming experience because I don’t want to have to hunt down friends all over the ladder before playing a game despite some of them saying I think you should be a higher rank. I have 0 faith in ladder. LFG is dead. The only reason I can play it no matter what is that people at least try, rather than the joke QP is. I would like to play at my best without having to worry that someone might not know something fundamental about their hero. Which isn’t their fault, the devs give so little info on what ablities do. A bit off topic but I would also like to see popular streamers partnered with overwatch make videos or written guides to how to play maps and heroes and comps in client since we already have overwatch world cup viewer in the works. This coud bring tons of players back and teach people how to play the game. Coupled with a proper guild system of 12 to insert a decently high number of players here, we could have real competitive games while the people that care about numbers for sr can play the current ranked ladder.

Dilute things to a digestible level to allow players to understand some concepts like shield break - no I don’t go for shield break against an orisa because she can lay another one down almost immediately I know cause I play her, break briggite shield so she cant shield bash since she has the lowest shield in the game and stop complaining that she is op, don’t fight alone because your death cost us at least 20 seconds without you being effective.
I’m not overextending I’m a flanker ffs, punish this person who is overextending to stagger them, staying way back there as a healer isn’t working because you are isolating yourself to the flanker, get to high ground instead and drop down for an easy escape, stand over there as soldier I can bait rein to chrge me or shatter while you ult from high ground. These are things I say quite frequently as a shot caller …sigh.

This game could be so much better

PS: I commend you for reading this far if you reached the end. Here’s a smiley :grin:

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note that with role que, there’s gonna be trolls, its still a complete role of the die of the teammates you get, an objectively the system seems design to make people even more made when it objectively fails. and i actually like LFG, its not great but its certainly helped me to play some real overwatch instead of QP+.

i think that guild rank should be set up so people of all or a wider range of ranks can play together, but the games will still be based on the highest tier person in their comp. like if you make a team of diamond an invite a gold, there gonna have to carry their weight in these diamond matches, an still gain the same sr tho.

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Okay. First of all, I don’t just want a role queue. I want the game to be restricted to 2-2-2 the same way duplicate heroes are restricted. From QP to pro play, we’d just have have more structure in the game. The role queue follows naturally with that, and wouldn’t make sense without it.

Yes, the three reasons you offer are a factor, but first, I think there are more.

  1. It improves the meta. A ton of people dislike goats and other tank-heavy comps, and it’s for good reason. It’s not that fun to play, it’s not fun to watch, and it tends to be far too dominant unless something else is nuts. When no dps is top of the meta, you have a problem. But I don’t think it’s possible to fix the issues that make goats and quad tank so absurd without making tanks even less fun to play.

  2. It’ll make balance easier. Forcing 2-2-2 prevents lopsided comps that can wildly throw off balance. Brigitte is a ton more powerful when used in place of a dps instead of as the second support. She’d be much easier to balance if she was only competing with supports. The opportunity costs become cleaner. It means future heroes aren’t as restricted. For example, they can release more shield heavy main tanks without worry that it’ll become Barrierwatch with people running 4 barrier tanks. Additional powerful healers can be added without worrying about empowering 3-3 even more.

  3. You can play the role you want and specialize in it while knowing you’ll have the basic essentials covered. This encompasses the three things you pointed out. You don’t have to worry about too many people specialized in one role on your team, and you agree that this issue is solved by role queue.

You can also focus on a particular hero without needing to fill. Sure, people will still scapegoat Widowmaker and Symmetra, but at least you won’t have to spend half your time on other roles you’re not specializing in or with a really dysfunctional composition.

And no, it won’t increase anyone’s win rate, but it does improve the experience. It means the game is more about winning due to skill, team work, and so on, rather than just which team has people willing to fill the necessary roles.

Overall, this means less games are won or lost at the hero selection screen. The conflict between one tricks and flex players becomes a little easier, too, since you don’t have to fill roles with less people than normal. I’m under no delusions that all scapegoating will go away, but it’ll get a bit better.

  1. Matchmaking and pro play will look and feel more similar. The extra structure removes many of the random elements that kill the quality of matchmaking games. Many of these are related to #3, but even if you’re 100% flex, you still benefit greatly from this extra structure. More flexible players can get faster queue times, too, which is nice.

  2. You can have a separate MMR and rank for each role. This is something that’s been a great success in League of Legends. I think it would be fantastic in Overwatch, too. It allows you to play other roles without ruining the experience for your team and even play with friends who are at different ranks on their main role. Sure, you still have some issues when moving around between heroes in the same role, but it’s still better than it is now. It also means that people’s ranks will be more accurate overall.

  3. “No role restrictions” can be an arcade mode like no limits and be available as a setting in custom games. Crazy stuff like goats can live on there instead of messing up the main game’s meta.

  4. You could still have a system for swapping roles with someone for cases where that makes sense. You wouldn’t allow this in matchmaking if you did set up separate MMRs for each role. I personally think a separate MMR would probably be worth the loss of some flexibility in matchmaking. However, the ability to swap roles with someone would be required for pro play and an important option in custom games.

  5. It actually seems in line for what Blizzard is considering. They’ve specifically used the word “restricting the meta” when talking about a role queue. They’ve also said it would be a huge paradigm shift similar to when hero limits were introduced. I don’t think a role queue without a role restriction across the board is a thing they’d ever consider.

So, for these reasons, I’d suggest a more restrictive rule set for Overwatch that requires all teams to play 2-2-2 outside special lobbies and arcade. The main objection is that it gets rid of many comps, but to be quite frank, GOOD RIDDENCE! I can’t wait to see this trend of ditching all your damage heroes go away. And I don’t think triple DPS is much of a loss either. Balanced teams all around would make for a better game overall.

Now, on the subject of bans.

You don’t cover the single biggest problem with hero bans in Overwatch: they’d be abused way, way, way more often than they’d improve the game. In this game, people have an extremely unhealthy obsession with policing their team’s hero choice. I guarantee you that most bans we’ll go like this:

  1. Players stalk their own team looking for heroes they don’t like playing with and ban them just to keep from having to play with Symmetra, Torbjorn, and such.
  2. Players stalk their opponents’ profile for anyone who specializes too much, and ban their heroes.
  3. Players will ban whatever hero counters their main the worst, whether it makes sense based on the meta or not. (I’d really struggle to ever vote to ban anyone but Pharah TBH. I hate that hero so much.)

And only then, in very rare cases, will people make bans based on the meta or heroes the whole team doesn’t want to work around. None of those three common scenarios are healthy for the game. The few times when it might be interesting just aren’t worth the massive issues it would cause.

And no, I don’t want to see bans done in pro play if they’re never going to be part of matchmaking. I don’t need even more reasons to not care about pro play. I’d rather see it be more relevant to me, which would be better achieved through having more structure in the game.

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promoting 2-2-2 isnt rly gonna make comp more like pro play. now this is still considering soloque here, this actually enforces people to fill, makes comp even more disfunctional than it already is. its like if u have several people who want to play dps, but 2 people already locked it, now their either gonna throw or fill on a hero they aren’t good at. I dont like limiting the meta cuz people think that 2-2-2 is the only way to play, becuz its been shown that its rly not. when you form a team you can dictate if u want to do 2-2-2, but just because u want 2-2-2 doesnt mean your enemies should have to do it 2. Keep the flexibility cuz overtime, a lot of people will regret enforcing 2-2-2.

bans in soloque, yah that will not work, its gonna be abuse to the point that people will just outright quit the game. but in a 6v6 i think it could rly work out well. Jayne already experimenting with it, and from what i seen it rly diverse’s the meta. instead of mirror comp for days everyone time someone go goats, they ban dva or brig, or whatever important person makes the comp work, so now people have to learn more characters than just the one at the top of the meta. this rly help get rid of one tricks or hard to counter heros for you.

also, getting 5 dps is frankly jut how soloque works, its wasnt meant to be competitive, it was meant to make casuals feel good about themselves. its strives off solo carrying a team rather then teamwork most of the time an stuff like medals, potg, an these bad stats in career profile all try to make u feel like the golden star on your team. you dont have these problems when you group up with a regular group of people. in 6v6 when you lose its just becuase your team rly wasnt cordinated enough to beat them. soloque is rolling to die an if u get good teammates u win hands down, get bad ones you lose, an other times u actually have to prove yourself

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Just build a team. It’s easier to build a team than to get Blizz to force players how to play a game with coding.

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I really like the OP gave a lot of thoughtful reasons why Role Q won’t work. However, they left out one important reason.

Maps are randomized. People like to play different heroes/roles on different maps. If you pick a hero/role before you queue… then get a map you are bad at… that isn’t good.

Then there is the skills that jump from one hero to the next within a role. Someone good a flick aiming for widow or mccree, is not going to be able to play Symm, hanzo, or Mei as well. However, a widow player could translate over to Ana really well because the same kind of skills and positioning are closer.

The heroes are designed for people to swap roles in the game and still retain the same kind of mechanics. Zarya, Symm, Moira all have similar weapons… Same as Moira, Mei, and Winston.

However, don’t have that same transition within roles. A good mercy player isn’t necessarily going to be able to swap quick to zen, or lucio and be as good as say a genji or tracer player that is uses to the fast blinking movement and projectile weapons. The Mercy player might be better off playing Winston, Dva, or Symm.

#2 Hero Bans. Sorry, this shouldn’t be a thing. For one, having a hero ban will not help bliz figure out WHY a character is overpowered so they can fix it. Two, the playerbase is lazy and will just ban new heroes instead of learning how to deal with them. Three, it really won’t solve the main problem of people being unwilling, or lack the desire to, try a new strategy. Meta’s get stale not because there isn’t a way to beat a comp… it is because people just are copy cats and don’t use critical thinking as to how to work as a team and eliminate threats. There is no place for hero bans on ladder, cause no team on ladder is good enough to not be countered by using a diff strat.

As for pros, pros play whatever their coaches have deemed a good strat. Everyone just copies them without understanding why. Goats was dominant in WC because of vanilla strat and lack of practice to prepare, not because it is uncounterable. Jayne has said that a million times that Zarya/Lucio which is the backbone of deathball/goats comps are easily counterable. Brig was added in to prevent the dive… prob is… the meta hasn’t shifted back to bunker/sniper comps yet that eats away at deathball because well… the bunker-area denial heroes aren’t popular. They are deemed too “boring” and “low skill” to play. The elitists snub their nose at them.

#3 Guilds - Ok this is jumping way too far ahead… like putting the cart before the horse. You have to ask yourself. What will guilds accomplish, How will they work, and Why are they needed?

Like the OP stated they will get groups together so they can join tournaments and such in a in-game client.

But wait… the problem is the OW playerbase doesn’t even want to stay as a group past one loss. Heck, over half the playerbase doesn’t even see a benefit in using LFG to FORM a PUG for ranked.

If you can’t even get people to use their friends list and LFG to form groups to play in ranked, how are you going to get them to form a guild, when the stats show that most groups don’t even stay together past a singular play session.

The other thing to look at, is the pervasive use of 3rd party clients that are available now to form clans and guilds and their popularity in forming games in ranked. Or well, the lack there of.

Discord is probably the most popular. It is certainly possible for these large OW communities like Unit Lost or Jayne’s to form these groups… but… they don’t. To play ranked. Stylosa doesn’t do it at all really… and Jayne uses his resources to circumvent the ranked mode entirely and do all his stuff in custom games.

Is it really because it isn’t in client? That the ease of use isn’t there? No.

Lets take a look at the xbox and console community. Like LFG before it, clans are built right into the system. It is system wide so you can even send put notifications to your clan when they are playing other games. Tournament system is built… right into the xbox system.

NO ONE USES IT!

So. Even if you give the playerbase all these tools, like LFG no one uses it. Sure, Jayne is forming tournies… if you pay him for no prizes (often overlooked you have to sub, or be semi-pro in order to enter). However, to enter into comp there is still a fundamental problem with the game or the community into forming long lasting groups in the game in which a guild system would help further enrich.

Solutions:

So, first you have to solve the main problem with the game… which is motivating the player base to form groups and to play into the team game they bought.

So far, the only stick that the playerbase seems to care about is their SR number. It is the main motivation in the whole game. It is the drive for selfish behavior, its the drive behind toxicity, it is the drive to play the mode.

It is also the mode that is so far removed now from pro play, that there is now talk about something working on “ladder” that has no place in the pro scene. Jayne is even moving people off the ladder system, because it is now viewed as the “proper” way to get to pros because well, you need to learn in a “proper” environment… and it can only be found in Pugs.

Why?

It is because the one thing people are about in competitive is being viewed as the best. That’s why they put such stock in the SR number. They see pros in top 500 and think if they get to top 500, they can be pro. If that goes away, comp turns into QP.

What do we do? Well, we make comp the same game the pros are playing and rank people accordingly. How? By making the SR number mean that someone is good at the team game, not the lone-wolf play promoted by ladder.

Right now, you can LFG a lot and the ranking system will place you against other groups. You play in that exclusivly and the SR system will place your appropriately… in that mode.

You then take that same SR into solo q… and you will find that the games are not good. They are usually lopsided. Either they are really easy, because you fell while LFG’n… or they are too difficult because you climbed high on the back of your team play and you feel your team is losing you games.

So, you need to make the SR equal. You either need to have a separate SR for both group and solo… or make there just be one number that means the same thing. The later requires the grouping priority (the thing that matches like sized groups against each other) to go away. This will mean solo q people will go against large stacks (at the same sr) as they would all solo q games.

This simple solution would in my opinion solve almost all of comp’s problems.

  1. It would make the SR number mean the same thing regardless of how someone plays.

  2. It would promote people to group as a team, even in solo q… because success would require teamwork against the corridinated teams.

  3. An equal measure of teamwork and mechanical still will be required to rank up at ALL RANKS. Right now, the only way to rank up below diamond is to stat pad while winning.

  4. LFG would be used more to find teams that will corridinate well with your playstyle and hero choices. Role Q is built into the LFG so that solves all of the solutions people want from RQ without any of the negatives… because.

  5. It keeps all player choice available. If you want to solo q, you can still do so, but you know you will have a harder experience. Solo q people will be throwin into the LFG system either into auto-fill groups as flex players (an improvement to LFG’s UI that still needs to be done) and/or they will be fills into smaller LFG groups to form a 6team.

Now you might say, that it isn’t fair to play solo q against stacks. Naw man, sorry… this is “competitive” in a 6v6. You shouldn’t be sheltered from the 6 stacks. You going solo vs 6… that is your choice to make. Maybe use LFG or learn to adapt and flex to all strategies.

But LFG is lulz filled with mean people that overmanage their teams. Well, that is the case now… but you make the easiest way to climb the rank being forming teams and you will see more of the laid back rational crowd joining LFG like it was the first week before everyone realized that the games were more difficuult then solo q.

In closing, before you do guilds… or make a mandatory role Q, you have to solve the fundamental problem that the OP rightly pointed out. People don’t want to work together… because they don’t HAVE to in order to make their number go up.

After LFG becomes mainstream to use, THEN we can start looking into getting an in client guild system that will enrich the formed team bonds.

7

i dont think the problem is countering the meta, cuz frankly people are doing that already. the problem is that the meta so dominating an you force to play the “counter meta” or mirror comp(not the same as counter meta), which is plaguing the pro play right now. no one likes to be forced into a comp cuz the enemy team did this, therefore we have to do this or lose.Also no one likes watching mirror matches, in just boring an sometimes harder for the audience to understand. But with a 1 hero ban( or maybe more, its kinda a WIP), the meta is less defined an open up for a lot more different team comps.

if you take a look at jayne pro pub, he’s been testing the waters with the ban system he made up. So far it shows the most diversity in comp set ups ever. Honestly considering that their playing real overwatch an we who play ladder aren’t, i can say that banning is definitely a viable system, just not in the hands of soloque. it forces people to learn multiple heros to have back ups, gets rid of one tricks, an get us a step closer to real overwatch.

i also argue that with bans this actually help bliz to find the broken heros, and we already got forums for why a character is broken anyways. do you think that their looking at our games to find out, no they listening to our feedback an work accordingly to find the best way to balance a hero.say we go back to day 10 brig, but had a ban system. here we already have time to test what brig could do, and the meta she able to enforce. people would start banning the backbone of goatz meta so they didn’t have to play into it. this in turns gets blizzard attention they can also look at ban rates to see which heros are getting banned most, and then go from there. like just watching OWL should be enough to know why brig broke cuz u see first hand how cordinated people can abuse said character. meta is just best when the meta less defined( like less one comp centered an how to beat it, but more flexibility to make comps of your choosing).

i dont think that SR of groups and soloque should be the same, but i do agree that they should be seperated. cuz one tricks torb or whoever someone onetricks its just not gonna be as good in 6v6 scenarios cuz they lack the knowledge of teamwork. also its a real screw you to casuals which bliz isnt trying to do. What we need is a different mode for 6v6 only.

8

Actually, this added structure would bridge some of the gap between pro play and ladder play, since everyone would be playing 2-2-2, from bronze to OWL. It would be as strict as hero limits are. The greater level of structure would help elevate solo queue and add some new life to pro play. We would actually see DPS played again.

You wouldn’t have an issue of someone taking the two DPS slots before you can because you queue for a specific role. If you queue for multiple roles, the game tells you which you’re assigned during that game. You’re then locked in, and you’ve always signed up for said role, so you’re never stuck filling something you don’t want to play.

You could argue that hero limits restricted creativity, but in the end, it led to more interesting compositions and more choices. I think a forced 2-2-2 would be similar, and would actually lead to more variety at the highest levels of play, since tanks won’t be able to dominate. And the lower levels of play would benefit greatly, too.

And again, this structure helps solve some of the problems in ladder play. Yes, you’ll need a team ladder to solve the biggest issues, but structuring the game so everyone knows they’ll have the basic building blocks will make things significantly easier on everyone.

I think enforcing this solves problems in the game that “just form a team” doesn’t solve. Did you even skim the reasons I give? Here’s a to;Dr: It improves the meta, makes balance easier, lets you play the role you want, closes the gap between the highest and lowest levels of play, allows you to be ranked separately for stearate roles (a thing LoL does to great effect), “no role restrictions” can still exist in arcade/custom, you can allow swaps if you want (though not if you have separate SRs for different roles), and this seems to be the direction Blizzard is actually considering if they do anything with role queue.

I actually don’t think removing the protections that solo players have would help much. You’re still ranked as an individual, so it’s not encouraging true team play. What we’d need for that is a true team ladder, where you form a named team and then you play with them consistently, and your team is the one gaining and losing SR. Something more like WoW arenas or Guild Wars 1’s Guild vs Guild. This could come before guilds, but would still be enhanced by guilds when they arrive.

9

No one wants to play 2-2-2 or especially no GOATS. The way the game is designed is the main problem. Most people prefer 3 or 4 dps per game, which tends to tilt the other two people who are trying to “fill.”

10

I could not disagree more. I dislike unbalanced compositions, especially those that completely get rid of the DPS role. Triple DPS isn’t much better. Can these comps work and be fun sometimes? Sure. But the same is true of comps that only exist in no hero limits. Yet, they introduced hero limits for the good of the game

11

The problem is that a team queue/SR thing won’t work because well, no one stays together long enough.

Then what do you do when you change members… or add members… or swap in and out players of the team.

Say, you have a team of 12. You have 6 players on bronze… and 6 in GM. You do placements with the bronze players to say… be ranked in the Bronze “league/season”. Then, the team/guild puts in all their GM players and proceeds to completely destroy the whole league.

How do you balance that if you don’t attach individual SR to each person so that the game is matched properly.

What happens if say… a team of Six is created and gets Gold. But maybe they have a GM ringer on their team and the rest of their team is a bunch of silvers/bronzes. GM gets frustrated and leaves… leaving the team with only 5 players. Can they even play until they find a 6th?

Even in a team queue, you need to have individual SR for each player so that they can match the game properly, or that their progress isn’t erased when they switch franchises/guilds.

When recruiting players, how would you know if say in the first example, someone fits in the league you are playing in.

Then there are the throwers.

Say you base the team ladder based on the SR of solo q like Jayne’s Peasant Tournament he recently held. You had to have a team of all plats… but then if you looked at the teams in the finals… they all had at least a master’s player… some even a GM player. Jayne’s crew even did a really good job of screening people, but still ended up with a bunch of smurfs on alt accounts. You think that’ll work on ladder with basically no oversite?

12

You’d probably want an individual MMR on top of a team MMR to assist in the actual matchmaking process. Even though the only visible ranking is your team’s. Or they could do an individual SR that carries over if you leave your team so people can see how good someone was on past teams, but over time, the person’s individual rating should end up near the team’s. And the important number is the team’s; the individual’s would really only be for reference.

For teams with varied SR/MMR, I’d say they’d just weight it heavily towards whoever has the highest MMR. You’re choosing to play with people worse than you, so you should have to play near where the top player is at and your friends sink or swim.

Nope, you’d need to rebuild your team first. I don’t think that’s a big deal, to be honest. Building long term teams you work with over time is the only proper way to have a fully team-based game.

This is probably best solved by requiring SMS protect for the team mode or any competitive mode.

13

2-2-2 is stupid. There aren’t just 3 actual roles in the game. There’s at least 6, and some are only situationally needed. Furthermore, some heroes don’t exactly fill just one role, with some being able to fill 2 at once and others being able to fill one or another depending on skill rating, map, and even team comp.

2-2-2 is a decent-ish guideline to building a somewhat decent comp, but it frequently doesn’t mean you’ll get an actual team composition that works. Take for example something like Zarya + Roadhog + Torb + McCree + Brigitte + Zen, there’s just no synergy, it might be 2-2-2, but it’s a terrible comp.

14

Look, we need to realize that QP+ can’t be saved. No amount of changes, whatever the heck they maybe, is gonna make QP+ into a comp mode. Jeff even said it wasn’t meant to be competitive, just a place to make people feel good about themselves after work an relax. 2-2-2 will just make people even more saltier. Sure we could add a roleque, but that will have tons of trolling an the gamemode will still be crap cuz people are expecting teamwork.

 You are most likely to never, ever, get teamwork in soloque. This only happens on the rarest of rare occasions. so instead of trying to turn QP+ into something its not an nvr will be, just play it for what it is. lock your main, throw the game, don't switch, turn off mics, whatever you want just don't be toxic in the mic. As long as u do that, by bliz standards its perfectly okay. I find myself having one heck of a better time just turning off mics in soloque or queing in a 6man with friends for real games. 6man to work on teamwork, soloque to improve individual play.

  Now if U want to make an actually competitive mode we need a team que. we also need something to get people to stick together longer like guilds or something. Then give it greater rewards like exclusive skins and more comp points. Make soloque the only thing in QP+ so u dont they don't have to deal with 6man teamwork an relax. Also host like weekly tournaments where people can freely group up for rewards an good games on the weekends.

  Lastly, dont enforce that 2-2-2 bullcrap man. It removes a lot of flexibility that overwatch should have. We removed no hero limits cuz QP+ rly looked like a meme when u got 2 bastions, 2 reins, an 2 mercys holding down a choke. You put 2-2-2 into soloque an people will just get even more mad when "SURPRISE" doesn't improve teamwork at all. A role que isn't gonna make that any better either, I can easily abuse that system to troll people, still get genuinely bad teammates trying out a role, Soloque still a carry mode. Stop trying to enforce teamwork in a mode that wasn't meant for teamwork.