Stylosa/Jeff Kaplan Interview Part 2 - Competitive Talk, Role Queue, Game Features, etc

Discussion of Topics:

  • Brief comparison of Baptiste if he fills into GOATS or other team comps
  • “Be careful what you ask for” - Jeff Kaplan in regards to bring Brigitte to the game
  • Jeff says its easy to force the meta to where its disruptive for many players in the community and they don’t want to try to do that.
  • Jeff: “We think Mercy is not as dominant as she is now and is now balanced.”
  • Jeff: “We have aggressively made changes to knock [Goats] 3/3 down, and specific characters who are enabling 3/3.”
  • Jeff: “I am a huge fan of 2/2/2 comp and we believe this is the accepted way to play the game.”
  • Jeff: “I think role queue is a great idea.”
  • Jeff: “It took over two years to write the matchmaker, and if we want to pursue a role queue it will take months and months to implement a role queue, and we have people working on this now.”
  • In its current state, the average queue time would go up to as much as 13 to 26 minutes in order to get a fair match in a damage role. So it is not as easy to solve. He did mention he could flip the role queue switch right now with these problems.
  • It would be easy to balance the game if the game was restricted to 2/2/2
  • “We would like to pursue a role queue and a 2/2/2 meta but its the scope of work required in order to make sure it works for everyone.”
  • The psychological mindset of players on the PTR does not make the PTR effective to determine hero balance.
  • Stylosa: “Who’s the best region Jeff?”
    Jeff: “I will never answer that. I am taking that to my grave.”
  • The development live ops team (Bill Warnecke’s group I believe) has an “emergency patch” ready to go if a balance change makes things in the game terribly out of whack but is not often taken advantage of. (35% Ironclad Bastion comes to mind).

That’s it, everyone! So, in summary, it is very likely one day we will get a role queue, but it will still take a very long time to make.


UPDATE 2/28/2019

Jeff Kaplan has made additional comments about 2/2/2 & Role Queue in this thread:

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Anyone have a transcript? Not in an audio friendly environment.

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I am adding in notes as I watch

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Thanks! We really appreciate the stuff you do, like this.

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I just don’t understand why the DEVs go so much out of their way to make sure that one-tricks and people who main so hard that they might as well be one-tricks are happy…

It’s just rewarding people for being selfish.

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Eww, 20 minutes of those two? Yeah, I’ll have to wait for the summary.

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I’ll wait for the summary too, I don’t wish to watch the videos in their entirety (for personal reasons).


Thanks for posting the notes (when they are fully done)!

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I kinda feel bad for Jeff he knows what ever he says he will get hate no matter what “I feel mercy is balanced, I’m probably gonna get a lot of hate for that” like he knows anything he says will get twisted and used against him. We act like some damn fools on the forums

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that was a very good interview!

sometimes it needs to be told out loudly … its us who created brigitte
also i always try to remind people that dev team got gargantuic number of statistics to make a decision… that we have no acess to

people who are willing to see how much is happening to deal with 3-3 are already aware that it is going on for quite while

theres only one thing i would like to tell devs:
guys, we simply need more communication - you know that we are waiting for anythng and communication (with or to us) happens too rarely

i got that feeling that Jeff got a shieeeel… just joking… but i got that feeling that Jeff very often talks directly to all of us here

things take time
things must be checked
things must work 100% fine
things have downsides
things might turn the other way than intended

i just wish we could have similar interviews more often

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While some of it does lie with community, it was still blizz ultimately that did it with their decision not to nerf dive directly. That they’re still untouched in terms of their core problems till this day, is evidence of it.

Still, them giving out more interviews like this is good. Backlash and people misusing/misinterpreting it non-withstanding.

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interesting about the wait time comment. yes you might wait long for a 222 role q game. but how much of your time is wasted anyway grinding for a match where all 12 people want to play a ‘real’ game with sensible comp.
they say use LFG but that can easliy take you like 30mins minimum of finding people and quing.

i just want a quickplay or arcade mode with 222 role q, and i dont mind having a long wait time. it’s basically like using lfg but the game just sorting evrything out at the switch of a button, so its easier to use so more people would use it so its got more chance of putting together more balanced teams and having lower q times.

im not bothered about it for comp if they say it will take them a long time to adjust the match maker. just give us a casual 222 mode.

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OW is actually very ‘fluid’ if its about everything in game… some things simply cant be predicted like players behaviour
thats why Jeff mentioned those ‘emergency patches’ - they got only such possibility to test things, and when it goes out to wide spectrum of players things might turn out preeeety unpredicatable

Dive is still a problem till now, and while they certainly learned not to sledgehammer nerf now, it doesn’t really change the fact that the core issues are still there.

If GOATS been knocked down, it’s going to be double sniper meta all over again. Then if double sniper is knocked down, Dive is gonna be that.

I just wish they just solve the issue right now, instead of repeating past mistakes again.

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Then whats the point of a PTR…

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yes, because meta = balance
goats are the effect of balance meta right now - and there always will be meta… wether we like it or not, wether this group of people like it and that group dont

honestly? meta does not concern me, because i am not top player… but i follow OWL closley, and it is tiering to see that onver and over again

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You know… I really used to like Jeff. But I can’t watch this guy anymore. He is so disrespectful to the community.

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PTR can be used more if it wasn’t just locked to US servers.

If you’re from a different server outside of it, it’s gonna be lag city and barely anything can be tested out. I’m assuming that PTR servers aren’t cheap, but this is the biggest barrier for more people to test the changes.

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So…you don’t want us playing Junkrat anymore?

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To locate and report bugs if we find them.

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oh come on, i disagree

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