In my humble gold/plat experience you have the largest chance to end up with 3-4 people who want to play DPS at least 1 of which will not be happy with the need to play anything else because he’s the best evar
This just sounds like you’re looking to avoid 1 tricks. They’re as much a problem with the standard queue system as they would be here. The need for non standard comps is easily addressed by allowing the team to vote to unlock roles. Which is mentioned in the OP
Right now if the soloQ gives 1 team healers/tanks and the other 5 DPS and a healer the team with the heals/tanks is much more likely to win the game. What exactly is a “flex team?” most decent players can play a few heroes from their respective roles. Unless Blizzard bans 1 tricking you’re always going to run into them from time to time.
You don’t have any where this level of control over your groups now outside of 6 stacking or LFG. With soloQ you basically hit a button and hope you end up with something other than a team of DPS classes. This solution drastically improves this…but it’s not enough unless people can preview groups and veto them? No group would ever get formed, ever someone would always have a problem with something.
Well, if someone could make it look like an official looking panel, with an animation, maybe $100.
Ideally with the flow of "click on Comp > Click on Role Queue > Click on one role, then two roles > Confirm > Queue screen
(And maybe a “Change Roles” button near "Cancel Queue)
Was tempted to bug WyomingMyst see if he wanted to do it.
Actually i made a suggestion in an odd hour to this problem so it just gone away unseen.
The summary is, we remove roles in their current form altogether and make alternative variants on all heroes so they can be used in any needed way.
I believe atleast half of the current heroes are well capatable of becoming tank/dps/support separately when needed so people no longer get locked out of cool heroes because they have to play support or whatever. Just choose what you want and fill in the role after it.
The second alternative is atleast doubling the amount of support and tank classes because they are simply not enough to make role quene in a way that its tolerable.
This seems far too complicated and like it would be a nightmare to try and balance.
DPS is always going to be vastly more popular than tanking or healing. Regardless of how many heroes you add (I do think they need more support and tank heroes though).
That’s also a problem in Diamond / Master but I agree it’s annoying. Forcing a 2-2-2 can also be a problem if the other team goes Goats or another strong composition, no matter the rank.
I don’t have anything against one-tricks at all ! I only play support in comp myself. The problem is that the team who has flex people that can play either tank-dps, tank-heal or heal-tank will always have an advantage. I could fill as dps or tank but I wouldn’t be efficient enough for my rank.
One-trick are usually good with their hero so even if it’s not “meta”, it sometimes work having 4 dps, 3 tanks or 3 healers. Forcing people to flex if they’re not good at it is never the answer, in general.
Plus, allowing the team to unlock roles wouldn’t change anything to the issue if no one is good with filling another role. That’s why “2-2-2” meta with the “role select” feature wouldn’t work at all (since it means no one can flex), unless some of them didn’t choose “flex” role in the first place but have some hidden skills and can carry with other roles when needed.
Again, one tricking is not a problem. I just feel like the “role select” feature as introduced by the OP might create even more problems, balance wise.
Unless the system separates teams that selected a perfect 2-2-2 meta as primary roles from the teams where 2-3 players selected “secondary roles”, I don’t see how this would be balanced. Matchmaking a team with 2-2-2 against a “flex” team wouldn’t be balanced at all. Quick defeat for the 2-2-2 composition team.
Even with the possibility of unlocking rules with votes, the “2-2-2” meta team will always struggle against a team that selected secondary roles, unless they’re very bad at their secondary role heroes.
This solution may look like an improvement but it would create other problems in the long run. With the current matchmaking, it’s a complete lottery, I agree but at least it’s not punishing people that are good at their roles.
I feel like the “role select” feature would only benefit to those who had enough time to learn the 3 basic roles on Overwatch. People are already complaining about Goats and the “2-2-2” meta not being strong enough. The role select option would only force a composition that is barely used anyways.
Plus, people that are good flex and that play in Master usually don’t need this role select feature, they either go in a 2-3 premade or carry games with the standard matchmaking. Maybe allow this for people under 3k rank only ?
This has already been addressed via the ability to unlock via vote
So the team with the flex players is the one that is advantaged despite the fact that the flex players will probably be worse in these flexed to roles? Very few flex players in my experience can play all roles equally well; their mechanics may be ok but typically positioning is very poor.
With role queue you have 6 people that are declaring their desire to queue for specific roles before the match, this doesn’t mean they can’t play anything else. What a player can flex to is always a crapshoot.
Without role select you have 6 people all of which likely queued up with a desire to play a specific role but this isn’t declared.
How do you figure the second team is more likely to be better at flexing to other roles? You’re just more likely to get a team full of DPS mains forcing at least some people to flex.
This is sorta the same as above, the team that gets the better flex players is going to be a crapshoot. IDK where the assumption comes from that the SoloQ which will be most heavily populated by DPS players are going to create the best flex team.
How does role select punish people who are good at their roles?
I’m absolutely open to the idea that the problem requires different solutions at higher ranks. I’m sure at masters you run into less players that have no idea what a tank is supposed to do, no idea what positioning is, no real idea about what OW is supposed to look like. In gold you get all of this and more, and the game doesn’t do anything at all to try and enforce good habits and punish bad ones.
Creating a stable 2-2-2 environment even just at lower ranks would provide some MUCH NEEDED structure to the bracket where a lot of people are just learning the game. GOATS sucks anyway and they should just lock comp into 2-2-2, no more GOATS and no need to do a bunch of janky balance changes to try and get rid of it.
Please don’t misread this as a waaaah I want to be ranked higher post, IDC about that. My self worth really isn’t terribly wrapped up in my SR for a video game. I just want less games full of toxicity and games which you know are going to be stomps/losses at the hero selection screen.
And I’ve already stated (twice now) it’s not about being able to unlock via votes, yet about having players that are actually good when filling other roles, or else it’s the same as in Standard select games. Unlocking a role to someone doesn’t mean that one person is going to be an efficient flex. So why bother having this unlock system anyways (since switching heroes is already available in the “standard select”), just a waste of time voting for it.
Good flex even if not the best will always defeat people that can only go for a 2-2-2 composition. It’s not even about skill, yet about having different tactics and ideas to defeating the other team. If the other team always go 2-2-2, they will probably lose, especially if they suck at flexing and can’t fulfill other roles (even with unlocking other roles).
If they can play something else then “role select” is therefore very useless in the first place. And also something you fail to see is that someone that does want to play a specific role doesn’t necessarily want to play with other people that want to play a specific role only. See my point ?
One-tricks and one-role only players like to play with flex people and I don’t think they’d want to be stuck with a 2-2-2 composition without the possibility of cancelling the game before it starts. This feature is even riskier than the current LFG. Plus, it’s not even addressed if this “role select” would look like a premade group or not. Imagine a “role select” team wins a game and decided to go premade aferwards, next game will probably take longer to find a game and it’s gonna be against a stronger team (since the game forces a 6-stack VS another 6-stack.
I guess it’s a matter of personal experience. I don’t feel like SoloQ are heavily populated by dps players and they’re not the issue to me (at least at my rank) but once again, it’s a very subjective matter.
It does if they’re stuck in a team in which no one can flex. No matter how good a healer, a tank or a dps is, they can’t do anything against a type of meta like Goats if no one is a good flex in their team.
It might sound selfish since I’m not a “flex” player in competitive but I like my games better when I play with people that can play different roles. It’s also easier for me to pick the right healer and adapt to their hero.
If everyone in my team can fulfill one role only, it’s easier for the enemy to outplay us so I’d rather have 1-2 people in my team that can switch roles and be good at it than being forced to play with one-role players like myself.
I do realize I’m part of the problem too since I’m not a flex but unfortunately I don’t have time to get good at other roles, especially on a game that’s been released for quite some time now (Overwatch is more of a side game than anything else).
In the end, this “role select” feature is a big “No” to me, unless we can choose to play with flex people prior to starting a game but we all know it’s never going to happen (to easy to exploit SR with this). I’d rather remain with the current matchmaking, at least there are more chances to play with people that can play anything. I don’t mind losing a few games because no one wants to play healers or tanks (even though it’s very rare at my rank).
Its not more complicated than creating new heroes and balance should already follow some basic lines of common sense.
The base idea sparked in me when someone here said that brig with her shield has soo much hp, she could be a tank.
Thinking about this i realised that almost all heroes with secondary support effects/tank effects could be put in hybrid roles without problems.
To make brig a tank all you need is to make the shield a bit bigger, give her +200 base hp as armor, reduce inspire heal to half amount and make repair pack into self heal.
To make Moira into dps you need to raise her damage, change the heal orb into slow orb, make the attack move pull and the secondary (the heal) move push targets. Remove team healing aspects.
To make Zarya support you need to half her hp, make her skills have 2 sec duration, change the self immunity into targeted attack reflect.
It only takes some effort and could actually fix a lot of problems we have like the one with dps popularitiy what comes from the sole reason they have soo many variants.
That’s exactly my point as well ! Plus, someone that wants to go “tank” or “healer” only doesn’t necessarily want to play with other people that one-trick a specific role. The best games are always those were people flex the most (even though I’m not a flex myself, at least I’m honest with this).
Role select can’t work on a game where the “meta” is always shifting. Overwatch is not World of Warcraft.
Role select would have no bearing on someone’s ability to flex. I’d queue for support but I’ll still flex if it means we’d have a higher chance of winning. This is simply part of any competitive mindset; you’re doing what you can to win or you should be elsewhere. Role select simply allows a player to highlight what they’re best at / desire to play at any given time.
I’ve only played in gold/plat so I can’t speak to experience/problems which exist at masters. If masters and above really is some utopia of flex players and great experiences than I’d say leave it alone. Gold/Plat is not this. A bit more forced structure would really assist with helping give everyone a proper idea of what a team looks like, if you join and it forces you into 2-2-2 you might ask the question “what are these…tanks and why do we need them?!” and then go on a journey through the interweeb to educate yourself on this subject, or you might say you don’t care (and thus you won’t have to play one and you won’t be in my game feeding it up).
It is a regular thing for my teams to get in arguments about why we really do need a main tank of some sort to help with the push. Barrier tanks are at an all time low, hearing someone bemoan about how they’ve had to play barrier tank for the last X games and they will do it again but they’re sick of it is also incredibly common (do you see a theme here? people constantly having to play stuff they do not want to play so they can win - give it up for the fella that decides to spend 10-20mins playing something he does not want to play for the betterment of his 5 teammates, seriously)
I’m also not sure about this constantly shifting meta, it stays the same until they patch. They patched and now you see reaper more and tanks blow up faster (making them more difficult and less appealing to learn/play); you also thank god see Doom and Brig less. In gold/plat the best games are when both teams are running 2-2-2, other games typically result in a lot of bickering and stomps; this has never changed with any patch.
Way I see it, 2-2-2 works on ladder, because it creates redundancy. You aren’t ever expecting one player to hold an entire Role by themselves. And if one player dies, your team doesn’t lose a Role entirely. Additionally, and most importantly, because human nature and the matchmaker groups you with people who slack, 2-2-2 only requires strong performance from 3 of your 6 teammates.
And while other comps can work, they usually require a much higher level of trust and coordination. So much so that if you have that, then unlocking the roles by Vote, should be easy.
That said, the other compositions posted are the top are also rather forgiving. Because they never feature a solo-Healer, or solo-Tank. (I.e. A single point of failure).
You are simply overcomplicating it. Role Q cannot exist on its own. That’s why a solo Q and a team Q is also necessary. For solo Q you play with forced role Q and for team queue there are no forced roles.
This way the people who opt into playing as should be the ones we don’t have to worry about screwing each other over.
With you idea you are forcing way too many different matchmakers or putting people in positions where they are at a clear disadvantage. If you put a team that has roles enforced vs. a team that doesn’t then that team that can freely flex will have a ridiculously unfair advantage which is that they could for example go something like GOATs and the role enforced team can’t even mirror to try to beat it.
People who choose to play as a team, in other words the ideal way are those who should freely be able to choose their strategies and team comps because it comes with the assumption that it’s something that’s already agreed upon. The level of freedom we currently have clearly doesn’t work in the solo Q/ladder environment.
There is lots of logic too it, I think you might have just spend a little too much time on your idea to admit that it might have some flaws.
Role Q is not flawless at all as you can have two tank players, neither of which play a main tank. However with a role Q people can specialize in a role more easily.
Except, 2Flex-2Heal-2Tank can run, 1Tank(Flex), 1Heal(Flex), 2Tank, 2Heal.
So I don’t see the logic of your argument.
The only comp 2Flex-2Tank-2Heal blocks is TripleDPS/QuadDPS.
Comps that are usually so unstable that they are only run sparingly with success by Pro level teams. Or typically by weaker teams.
Furthermore, 2DPS and a Mei/Dva/Roadhog can usually supplement a lack of damage.
Zenyatta and Orisa can also help.
Offtank-Winston is also kinda beast on kills, if you know what you are doing, especially with his upcoming buff.
Brig also can be practically run, as a DPS slot, to great effect.
As i said creating a new role for an existing hero is no more harder than creating a brand new hero.
Sooner or later blizzard gonna need to create more support and thank chars so why not cut down the stress on char design by simply using an already existing hero for a different role.
Also not all heroes have to be dual or triple role heroes, only enough to provide equal amount of choices for all roles.
This has been covered many times now, the team can vote to unlock roles. If you have enough coordination to Want to go a non 2-2-2 you will have enough to do an unlock vote
People who choose to play as a team can do this via a vote. People who want to play as a team are not the problem role select is trying to solve.
Role Q it’s an improvement over what we have now, you’re probably never going to come up with a completely flawless system. Even in the situation where you have two tank players who are not main tanks, they probably understand how to play main tank better than the DPS players you would have gotten with soloQ.
! Plus, someone that wants to go “tank” or “healer” only doesn’t necessarily want to play with other people that one-trick a specific role. The best games are always those were people flex the most (even though I’m not a flex myself, at least I’m honest with this).