I’m not a fan of any kind of “currency” to bypass the queue, or of any kind of priority queue since it won’t actually fix the problem, IMO.
However…
How about giving the option to “split queue” if one of your queues is a high-queue role?
So basically, say you check off support and dps, and the dps role has a 10+ minute queue. The game should detect that you’re trying to enter a queue with a long line and should both notify you that you’re about to get in a long line for a game, and also offer to “split” your queue and put you in for both roles separately.
The idea here is that while you’re waiting in line for a DPS game, you can play games as support or tank. Then, when you get near to the front of the DPS queue the game will simply pause your wait until you finish whatever game you’re in.
The problem right now is that if you’re in queue, all you can do is wait. Get rid of the waiting and let us play.
Hell, don’t even implement it openly. Just do something like that behind the scenes and let people occasionally get into games as DPS when they’re queued as both DPS and something else.
When a position in the DPS queue becomes available thier would be a short “enable” time to allow selection. Thinking about it more; placing a queue time cap may not solve the DPS queue time either. There probably would be stubborn DPS players spamming their “mouse 1” to attempt to get into the DPS role. Which in turn leave tank and healer roles still waiting for more players to queue in to balance the load to reduce queue times.
Stubborn DPS players may develop strong index fingers
Thats basically the Token idea i have with much less control.
Your idea is different in one way, that the dps player can pick any other role they want and still get the “token”.
What you dont seem to understand what the token is. All the token is is time.
For your idea the token is the “pause” mechanic. Or the ability to save time playing another role.
Tank and healer queue times are under a minute 90% of the time. You play another role and you get to play dps when you get back.
Also who goes first when thousands of people are “paused” waiting for the game to start?
Thats why my idea is better, in my humble opinion. You target the very specific need that yields the greatest result instead of marginally reducing dps while playing other roles. Remember when those players that were paused arent in another role anymore and they are paused waiting for their game the tank queue is getting smaller, losing players.
Thd dps queue is so long for two reason. There are alot of dps only’s, and not enough tank player. To get the most dps time reduction, you should aim to increase the amount of tank players. The game simply cannot start if you dont have two tank players ready. My token idea targets that directly and can dynamically change to anything the developers need.
I think I may understand what your proposing. I may have a better way of explaining what your trying to suggest. The “token” idea is a cut in line pass. I imagine a very long DPS queue. One of the DPS earlier played healer and got a token to “cut” in line. Are you trying to say it’s fair to cut in line?
Thats exactly what is is, but is it really? When the dps leaves the dps queue and plays tank, the dps line gets shorter and there is another tank to play with the dps. Its a win win for dps only and a win win for players that would rather play those tanks and be rewarded instead of waiting in line.
So what exactly makes these unique? Priority queue and “Rework tanks to make them fun” have been suggested in the past.
People can either play an hour’s worth of tank games to get priority to DPS once…or they can just play DPS and get 4 DPS games in an hour. Why even bother?
Second…it’s been said many times that fun is subjective, so what would you even rework tanks to to be more “fun?”
I see we both agree it is a cut in line idea. Considering the game is based around team play, players that recognize that it’s ok to cut in line may spill off into real life. Is cutting in line socially accepted? I don’t believe it is… Most likely that person cutting in line would get in trouble.
If someone came up with “cut in line” technology then data communications would be in real trouble.
They would be able to “cut in line” and change sensitive data that could be considered as theft or terrorist attacks. Sending a crucial data stream to “halt fire” may be changed to “continue fire”. Scary stuff…
No. There’s no “pause” mechanic beyond what is necessary to avoid having your DPS game pop in the middle of another game.
Incorrect. In my idea there is no “token”. There’s no way to amass a bunch of “tokens” for later, which is the problem behind a priority queue. If you let people all earn “queue currency”, then the priority queue stops being a priority queue and simply becomes “the queue”.
“When everyone has currency, nobody does.”
It’s a queue. I think you’re missing that fact. The queue time doesn’t go down just because you’re waiting. It goes down because there are less people in front of you in line.
That’s okay. You’re allowed.
I think your idea is too complicated, and has too much back-loading through “tokens” that will ultimately leave people unsatisfied and feeling betrayed when they land right back in a queue just because lots of people decide to spend currency at the same time.
Allowing multiple queues solves that problem as well by simply offering a short queue in return for playing an in demand role while you wait for the role you actually want to play.
You’re trying to make the solution more complex than it needs to be.
Tank queue is much shorter than dps, usually under 30 seconds. There is a chance you will finish your game before you would even get a dps game.
But the magic is how much control blizzard could have in queue times. By targeting specific champions blizzard could more acurately match dps with with the lowest population class or characters.
Dps queues are long for two reasons, too many dps, and a lack of tanks to pair them with. Without two tanks games simply wont start for dps players. This method aggressively attacks this specific issue. It takes dps out of the dps line and into the tank line have double effectiveness on dps queue.
Instead of forcing the dps to play another role, blizzard wntices the player with a token, or basically time. It fully depends on. Blizzard to determine just how the token would affect time.
Most important rule happens to be the glue to the magic. The player ONLY RECIEVES THE TOKEN IF THEY WIN. The player can only play the specified champions or class of choice the entire match.
This creates risk/reward where a player risks his spot in queue to recieve the token but has a great reward.
As for the champion reworks. I think the idea is different because the kits themselves arent changingbat all, only the character model. Again blizzard is enticing the player with for playing specific champions, you can play with the best and coolest looking champions in the game. It may not be much but id bet that more people would play tank if they were way wsy more aesthetically pleasing.
The cut in line idea still ignores the problem that stubborn DPS players (probably most) wouldn’t care about cut in line tokens to begin with…they just don’t seem interested in tank or healer even if you may offer a cut in line token for the DPS queue.
The more relevant problem is what someone else stated earlier. I will just use my own words.
If some players don’t play healer or tank to get tokens they may always be pushed to the end of the DPS line.
They may never get queued in to play at all.
The cut in line idea is sort like anarchy in the gaming world.
I use the term token very losely. Whats good about token is the amount of control possible. You could place limits on tokens, like 1 a day, or carry capacity from only 1 to 10. They could change their values from percentages of time to flat reductions in queue. They could limit how many people could use the tokens at once. There are ALOT of possibilities.
If you think of it like that then “holding your place in line” is nothing but a token, a rule, an action that causes a specific reaction, in this case, less waiting in a queue.
With your idea, players get rewarded even when they are helping make the dps queue shorter by picking healer. Quality of games would go down when dps players only pick off tanks like dca or roadhog.
Its not complicated at all. Play what they need then and skip people who are less flexible. The less flexible will be stuck with the same time as before.
The best part is with this method blizzard would have more control, players that play flex get rewarded with shorter waits in dps queue and if blizzard wabted they could rework all the tanks to be hella fun and have the syst3ready when people stop playing healer for tank.
Stubborn DPS players may develop strong index fingers 
