Yes but we are not in the first year in to Overwatch. This May it will be 3 years ago Overwatch released and in these 3 years we haven’t seen:
Lmfao do you ever stop? They clearly don’t see Reinhardt as a balance problem (rightfully so), and Zarya literally JUST got nerfed on the PTR. This idea that these tanks are somehow “mandatory” in your silver games is so fundamentally wrong I don’t even know where to begin.
Winston just got an absolutely MASSIVE buff (and is amazing against lower ranked players btw, don’t know how people never seem to figure this out), Orisa was given a buff, and Hammond was given an awesome buff too. Literally all 3 other main tanks were given buffs. Not to mention, Winston got much better at fighting Rein specifically.
Like what more do you want? A patch note that reads: “Reinhardt’s hammer swing damage reduced from 75 to 25 per swing”…? Lol these posts are so ridiculous it’s insane.
Heh… surprised to see this pinned. I guess the devs really want our feedback on this.
Proof the dev’s aren’t as passionate as they once were.
This is unfair, taken out of context, and just plain untrue. If you guys honestly believe Jeff Kaplan doesn’t care about the game, or isn’t passionate about it, then I guess I just genuinely don’t understand this community anymore.
They’re still passionate, just not as much
I worry it’ll force them to homogenise a lot of heroes so they can all function as either Off or Main Tanks or Support.
Getting two of either is still going to land you with a terrible composition.
I could not disagree more. I think they’re just as passionate now as they ever were.
Thank you very much for the post/notes, Wyoming!
Very excited to learn that the dev team is aware and working on role q. This has been needed since release, but especially pertinent with GOATS meta. I actually was losing faith in the direction Overwatch had been heading, but now I am confident in the dev team.
Notice that it says the queue time goes up in order to get a fair match in a damage role. The problem isn’t whether there are enough players, but rather whether there are enough players to fill roles in forced 2-2-2. If say 95% of the playerbase just wants to queue as DPS and the other 5% will play Tank or Support, that 95% is gonna have to wait a LONNNNNNGGG time before they get a match because players who will fill tank and support roles are few and most will already be in matches, while Tank and Support players will always automatically find matches because there’s no shortage of DPS players to fill the role. Obviously, having a majority of the playerbase constantly waiting for matches isn’t healthy for the game, so things have to be set up in a way that these wait times are healthier.
I feel role queue punishes players who want to flex. You know, the original appeal of this game was a diverse hero lineup. If I just wanted to play damage heroes all day I would just play csgo. If I wanted to only heal or tank I might as well play an mmo or
Moba.
There aren’t three classes in this game either. At a minimum, there are main tank, off tank, off healer, main healer, and you can go crazy if you want with the dps heroes. What if your two dps players both play projectile, and the other team has a pharah? Well I can play hitscan, but I queued as tank so I’m not allowed?
On that note, I don’t like playing rein but will happily play zarya or Winston. So when the other tank player locks Winston or Zarya I’m unable to play their natural tank counterpart. Sometimes they will want to play orisa, which is a terrible pairing for someone who only plays zarya and Winston.
I think there are too many situations like this to make a role queue viable. It would only further validate players who simply want to play one single hero (so many genji one tricks e.g.).
It is good that Blizzard isn’t pandering to bad players, but it’s painfully obvious at this point that the dev team doesn’t understand why GOATS is so cancerous. Jeff outright admits that Brig is a weak and overnerfed hero in most lineups, but she’s still picked in every pro match because the parts of her kit that enable GOATS have mostly been left unaddressed.
If Blizzard wants Overwatch to be an esports game, the need to source advice from actual esports professionals is practically unavoidable.
I’m so glad for this interview and I really wish these kinds of things would happen more often. Just so it doesn’t feel like we’re being left in the dark.
That being said, I’m no longer super opposed to Role Queue or forcing 2-2-2. If they could just figure out a way to make it so that dps players don’t have to have astronomical wait times, I really think that this could be good for overwatch. He mentioned that forcing a 2-2-2 would make it easier to balance as well. So perhaps this would mean quicker balance patches?
That being said, I’m not completely sure what the solution could be for long-wait times in a role queue. In others games with tanks, supports and dps roles, dps almost always have to endure very long queue times. Its just the nature of the beast when the majority of your playerbase prefers the damage role…
I have multiple options to solve the queue time issue:
This first one, although it has two queues, may be faster, because the UnlockedQ would have a lot of 3-5DPS compositions.
This is one I came up with today. Although I would still prefer 2Flex-2Tank-2Heal. (Or just call the Flex role “Damage”, but in subscript say that hero selection is unlocked.)
In addition to the above idea (assuming DPS demand is only as big as Tank and Healer picks combined.)
This system may also be useful, it allows you to sermlessly trade roles with someone, without going back to spawn.
✅ [Hero Swap] RoleQueue or RolePick
Could also use an Apex style draft pick, but I feel like that would force you into a third role you might not be good at. But maybe you have it so you only have the two roles you selected with the previous system.
✅[Draft Pick] 2Flex-2Tank-2Heal
So as far as game balance goes, the PTR is just a patch preview and nothing else? The rest of the effort goes into finding bugs?
I agree it has to be used for that, but if they take the time and effort to put balance changes in it, why not take feedback about it seriously? Sure there will be trolls, but if you encourage the players most affected by it (aka pros and maybe streamers) to give feedback, it should be something to be taken seriously.
Isn’t it selfish to want to force others to play in a way that makes YOUR own experiance better, all while ruining their experience.
What’s funny about this interview is that Jeff basically word-for-word said a lot of the things I keep saying in these forms.
It actually surprised me the first time I saw this interview.
Jeff 
They dont lie to the community. They are working on stuff, but it takes time
But this is our fault.