Lots of “troll” accounts with 1.5k SR lower on off roles.
Diamond smurfs who are Diamond on their alt and LOW GOLD on the other 2 roles.
GM hitscan players who are Diamond on tank + support.
Even if you are only gonna play Roadhog as a GM hitscan in a diamond game, your decision making is faster, your hooks are more precise, your hero pool and willingness to only play Hog might be your downfall but still it’s not a “fair game”.
Like, farming tickets is meant to be FOR PEOPLE TO PLAY AT THAT SAME SR.
If people farm tickets in low elo to then play their main role in high elo, do you guys at Blizzard see how that’s a problem and that doesn’t fix queue times?
It’s existence is entirely for the purposes of reducing queue times….
Gameplay implications are not something that they cared about
Queues severely impact the game and are an enormous factor in the enjoyment of the game….could prob argue that it’s more impactful than whether or not people are even playing tanks/supports
Like 5v5 exist in LARGE part because of tank queues in OW1
I should maybe word it in simpler words, here: there are tons of people who farm tickets at 1k-1.5k SR lower than their main role SR, and this skews queue times because nobody actually flexes for tank tickets in masters/GM. A 3700 DPS player doesn’t care about climbing on tank and maintaining rank on tank so most 3.7k DPS players “deliberately” stay like 3100 or so on tank (not to the point of throwing but to the point of "playing tank very casually at that elo).
Since nobody flexes for tickets in masters/GM, masters/GM queues haven’t been improved by flex queue, at the same time, low elo has been destroyed even further by diamond-GM DPS players farming lobbies on Hog.
Again, not disputing anything you’re saying….just that how they’re used and how it impacts the game is secondary……the important part for blizz (and the reason for its existence) is to attempt to reduce queues
cause they lacked foresight when implementing RQ -actually no Jeff did warn everyone and then they did it anyway
Yeah on my initial suggestion for Priority Passes someone pointed that out and I agree the tickets should be per rank. Otherwise you are not truly a flex player but … as long as they are not throwing, it should be Ok I guess.
It did help queue times at the expense of lower game quality. With a reduced POP I don’t think they had much choice. OTOH, I still think the “bug” on queues the other day was an intentional test to see how the distribution looked when people couldn’t make role decisions off queue times…
I wish you could get better games without using the passes or flex, but when I test it games feel the same.
Flex queue itself is fine. Adding the incentive of tickets is what makes it a horribly executed idea because that means people like me aren’t going to care when we get placed as tank for the 10th time in a row so we can actually play the game in a timely manner for the role(s) we’d rather play. Win or lose we still get tickets and if we’re gonna be placed on tank for the 90th time without any on dps or healer then you start to care less
one tricking Hog in say 2700 elo and going like, win loss, win loss because you don’t try your hardest AND don’t flex and your main SR on DPS is like 3700-4k IS throwing. Btw what I write is something pretty common among GM DPS players, they semi-deliberately soft throw on tank and although they don’t afk, they don’t rly wanna win on tank either so they basically stay in diamond or so with 50% winrate, remember that a win is 6 tickets so you need only like 2-3 wins per day to refill for 2-3 days.
what incentive do you propose for flexing? People aren’t gonna flex for free, they will just play their fav role.
idk what u are on about, tank + support are at an all-time high, tank + support are stronger now compared to DPS than say in s22, DPS over last 10-15 seasons got weaker overall.
You can make a case for tank + support being boring, but that’s due to the meta heroes (Orisa, Sigma, Hog, Brig, Bapt) being more boring than the “fun” heroes for tank players (Rein, Zarya etc.).
It did what it was supposed to do: more players in tank and support roles.
But it did it in the worst possible way. It forced players to play a (random) role they didn’t want to play in order to get a bit of queue discount in their chosen role.
The logic is almost sound. “Here, go play a filthy tank for 20 minutes, to get a 7 minute (possible) discount on your fav role.” Or to put it differently: “Wait 25 minutest to play what you want in stead of 12.” Some people can’t do math and that’s why lower SR ranks are peppered with dps, and now healers, playing tanks. I would say that issue is marginal. It is there, but it’s not that impactful.
It just makes us appreciate “proper tanks” more.
I’d say it worked in a way. I mean I constantly flex q’d tank for tickets and managed to get to masters one tricking ball the whole time so I’d like to think that it worked a bit.
Not many people on the forums tend to have my same opinion however, it’s nice to que and know you get 2-2-2 instead of 4 dps 1 support or 1 Hog 1 Mercy and 3 dps.
I’m a flex player and my SR for all 3 are pretty close together. Sometimes i get a tank who is clearly only on tank for tickets and instana locking Hog or Zar so that’s annoying.
For me anyway, open que made it feel like I was obligated to pick a hero for the team if you picked last which felt extra bad if everyone else picked dps.
especially b), many DPS players wouldn’t queue tank AT ALL otherwise (including myself probably) if not for the flex queue system.
I know that people in low elo hate tank and support and are deeply convinced these roles are underpowered, but as for myself, I don’t get frustrated by tank inherently. I wouldn’t queue the role without flex queue, but with flex queue, I do play tank AND try when I queue tank. However, what ruins the fun for me is the fact that tank in my elo, basically boils down to, the enemy tanks force Orisa + Sigma, or some super cancer spam comp like Bapt Zen Hog Sigma, and you have to go Sigma, Orisa, Hog to win. Tank isn’t rly a skillful role, it’s mostly, you go the right tank and win, or lose otherwise (I’m assuming here you mastered the absolute basics of when to push, how to aim chain hook etc. which I know can’t be taken for granted in Diamond and below).
there are no proper tanks left because all proper tanks mained Rein, Winston, Zarya etc. and those heroes are super dead on ladder in high elo.
because you probably (like me), care somewhat for all 3 roles, so try on all 3 roles. But most people don’t. It’s a VERY common feature in GM to have someone who is, GM support and gold on other 2 roles. Or GM DPS and gold other 2 roles. Obviously these are semi-alt accounts, but still, these people destroy gold games to refill tickets.
You can say its common among a certain sector of GM but even if it was, that is a very very very small % of players mate. Priority Passes are not infallible or perfect, some things you cant avoid like that.
Again, if they are even semi-trying and as you say they are winning matches (even better) the bad doesnt outweight the good.
I really doubt that it is like a common practice, not in GM, certainly not every DPS, and certainly not an “exploit”. Queueing with a Tank friend is 4x better and faster still
I haven’t noticed many players who were crazy high ranked on other roles tbh maybe like 4 during the entire time i’ve played ow. Not that I can check private profiles or that i check every game. I agree that it’s not good for the role/rank they’re flexing to and essentially smurfing or throwing.
I also agree that i care about the other roles i play. I honestly don’t care about tickets.
Personally, I could live without tickets in order to discourage people from playing off-role to something they don’t care about. Flex que only improves the game for dps.
