Say "Support is fine" all you like but if they don't queue

General Discussion
1

Then it is a failed design.

That is it, OW2 is designed so that it REQUIRES there to be almost as many support players queuing as DPS.

IF they don’t queue, then you have to go back to the drawing board until they do.

It doesn’t matter what you think the balance is, it doesn’t matter if you think the role is fun, if they don’t queue, then they don’t queue.

No amount of stomping your feat, and crying changes it. There is an adage in software design, “You can’t change your users”

Or in design “in matters of taste there IS no argument”

You have a measurable way to see if you have made the support fun enough for release, and currently the game is failing on that.

They will go back and try to buff the supports, and that may even help.

But I expect that they have to find a way to engage their currently unengaged support base, and engage them in a way which sticks.

If they release a new support hero for Beta 2, and they get even numbers, then that is great, if they manage to keep them playing for Beta 3 - 4 and release.

But I don’t think it will be quite so simple.

You see Game Design is about social contracts, and the support social contract is, “we will let you indirectly but impactfully tilt the battlefield in your teams favor”

Do you note that doesn’t usually include a lot of “so, you are a DPS now”?

This is the battle that Blizzard will have to face, to either make it so they fill that social contract, OR make it so the supports are so fun that no one cares about it any more.

Currently they are failing on both fronts.

And ANY argument that supports are in fact fine, is just not understanding the problem…

If they don’t queue, then they are not fine.

200 Likes
2

its funny because i dont mind playing support in overwatch 2. i LOVE that queue times are so low and you can basically just pick flex role which you’ll end up support so queue times are very fast

dont want that to change really lol… i like having instant queues.

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3

I mean, a big factor for supports not queueing is the lack of changes to test.
DPS have a new hero, 2 reworks and a handful of changes.
Tanks have 2 total reworks and a lot of changes.
Supports have… a passive and a bit of a change to brig.

You can’t really compare that. I usually rarely play tank and occasionally DPS. But on Beta i still want to test those roles more.

I am not saying that supports are fine, but keep the above in mind.

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4

Is it? The queue times are getting worse as the Beta goes on. if this was the case, it would be the other way around.

Beta 2 will come up with a new support hero, and I expect the queue times will be pretty good for all 3 roles, but I don’t expect that will remain the case for the beta after that.

Anyway, my point is, regardless of ANY arguments have over how much fun or balanced the game is, you won’t be able to argue with queue times.

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The main problem with supports are:

  1. nothing really new

  2. The role is harder to play in terms of survival and mechanical skill requirement

  3. People genuinely don’t want to play a shooter.

The third point seems to be the major problem and I don’t think that it’s fixable or should be fixed. There’s an unbelievable amount of people who actually want to play another genre of game.

If they removed the damage passive and gave that to support on top of their existing passive Supports would be really good and fun to the people who likes to play a shooter but the people who don’t like OW2 support won’t like it even if that change would likely make them slightly OP.

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6

Game dies if it isn’t fixed.

That is it. You will have a perfectly balanced dead franchise of you can’t get games because you have made design choices where one role won’t queue.

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7

I’m not sure that it does. Because “fixing” that means going back on everything that objectively made the game better.

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If they don’t queue, you have a dead franchise. That wins at the end of the day.

No arguments of how much fun or how correct something is, if people can’t play.

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9

If they buff them to the point where they are fine, it’s simply a matter of building a new support player base for release. Healbot supports that never dies simply isn’t what OW needs to be successful.

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No it’s not.

Most support players are fine. The ones who are still trying to play like 6v6 are not.

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11

If they don’t queue, then you lose your game. If you can find a group who will queue then you are good.

But if they don’t you don’t have a franchise.

I don’t care if they are new players, or old players, but IF you don’t get people to queue for support, then it is a bad design.

If you don’t have support players queuing then you don’t have a game. It doesn’t matter if you think their reasons are good or bad ones.

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12

That’s assuming the game only keeps the initial playerbase + the current beta players how ever many new players that might be. If you make the game fun for the passive supports, it means you have automatically made the game less fun for tanks and damage. With a new influx of players you get people trying it out who won’t have the same bias as the old players.

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But they are, so we’re good

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If they don’t queue for support, you lose the game.

It doesn’t matter who you get to queue for support.

IF you don’t get people to do so, it is a bad design.

DPS and Tank queue times are saying you are currently not.

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15

If you don’t make the game fun for tanks and damage the game is dead and it’s bad game design, period.

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It doesn’t matter how much fun it is for them, if you don’t have people queue for support, they don’t get to play.

That is it…

As I said, you can have a great dead game.

Basically it REALLY doesn’t matter how much fun 2 out of the 3 roles are, if the other role isn’t.

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17

IMO Supports are actually fine.
I got to thinking that maybe they think Supports are bad because none of them got anything.
Meanwhile there’s something for Tanks and DPS so it’s kinda like a FOMO.

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18

Not having a fun game for tank and damage means less people queuing for them and the game is dead on arrival = bad game design.
If you can’t see how flawed your logic is if it doesn’t apply both ways then there’s no point in you making this argument.

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Don’t be ignorant.

With cutting tanks needed in half, supports would obviously take the shortest queue time.

It’s still way more balanced than OW1 so far.

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And you could should have a living game, They are not the bottleneck. If you have a lack of one of those roles, then yes, you have a problem there.

But currently you don’t.

It DOES apply both ways. If people don’t queue for a role then the design is bad.

CURRENTLY that role is support.

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