Solace for Tired Feet

There’s a major potential upside to a microtransaction driven monetization model specific to OW. We know that Blizzard is putting in a new in-game currency, which will be used to pay for battlepasses and in the shop for a la carte cosmetics. If they were also to put this currency on the Flex Queue instead of (soon to be defunct) lootboxes, priority passes (this may have an added bonus, as these might have a destabilizing effect on the matchmaker and game quality) and the thoroughly unenticing 25 OW1 credits, it could be the panacea for our two most pressing, existential level concerns. The queue times, and the – quite fair – complaint that the game is moving away from the egalitarian and customer friendly loot system towards an exclusionary and predatory one.

The question concerning the queue times is self-explanatory: who wants to spend 10-15 minutes waiting for a 15 minute game? You have to be mental. Yet, the fact that so many go through it is a testament to how good the game is. The second concern is that with going to a free to play model, we will no longer be able to earn cosmetics through simply putting time into playing the game. By letting us earn in-game currency through flex queue Blizzard will have – in theory – ameliorated both of these problems.

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Yeah, I mean look at Diablo immortal
What could go wrong
:face_with_peeking_eye: :fire:

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I was expecting this thread to go in a whole different direction. But I do agree, if blizzard is desperate enough to solve queue times I believe they will offer BP rewards and/or currency as an incentive for flex queue.

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Give it time, it just may. :nerd_face:

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the word feet needs to be banned from these forums. They also need to add a scoreboard/top contributors ranking system and give us PM on here when ow2 launches… also let us swear, they literally swear in game ???

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The speed at which I clicked on this post when I saw the word feet. I think I need help.

You raise some good points. With the Battlepass system I see queue either being much better or much worse. At the end of the day the only real fix to queue times is growing the playerbase.

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So… Schrodinger’s cat?

The simple truth is the only reliable fix for queue times is more players.

Also I think you showed us Schrodinger’s feet. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive you for what you’ve done.

It could be, sure. I’m a big proponent of the notion cautioning against jumping to premature conclusions about queue times in OW2. New players eager to actually play the game are more likely to queue for the role that’ll get them in the fastest. But having a overly rosy outlook is also not recommended, in my opinion.

The queue time problem is created by us, the players, and there’s little hope for our nature changing in the long run. I hope that Blizzard is preparing for all contingencies. They need to weigh the benefits of player retention against short term revenue acquisition and set up the mechanisms to artificially regulate queue times, should the former consideration win out over the latter.

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Upon closer, post-release inspection, “legacy” credits don’t look all that unenticing now. Blizzard could try using these as a lure for the Flex Queue again. They are now basically equivalent to Apex’s “crafting metals” currency for buying various non-event and BP skins and fluff.