The idea of incentivizing people to play the “flex” (lets be real it’s just a fancy name for tank) queue by dangling a priority pass in front of them creates more problems than it solves. It doesn’t actually make players want to play tank or support more because they want to play tank or support and that’s what the game actually needs. At the very least make the priority pass only available if you win so people don’t throw or just not care/try since it’s “an off role” and they’re just there for priority. Yeah people may “waste time” if they lose a game instead of winning for priority but if a loss is a waste of time because you didn’t get the pass for priority to play damage, are you really queuing flex because you want to play all 3 roles?
If they’re only “wanting to flex” if it gives them a priority pass then they don’t actually want to flex. They want to play damage. You get to play the game in one of the three roles you said you wanted to play when you queued. That is the reward. If they need more incentive than that to pick the role then they don’t actually want to play the role to play the role do they?
The whole system does nothing to actually help.
The queue times for people who want to play damage will still be stupid long and if they only want to play damage we don’t need them “flexing” on roles they don’t care about just to get a free pass.
It doesn’t solve the actual issue for flex players who don’t want to pick a role but know choosing all three is basically choosing tank. There is no actually saying “I want to play all three roles equally” if picking all three is just going to get me a tank game.
If anything they should put a way for me to rank or prioritize the order I want to play each role and how long I’m willing to wait for people who are fine playing all three. That way they won’t just get rank nonstop. Let me say “I want to play damage but if I’m waiting more than 5 minutes open it up to support too and if I’m waiting 10 or 15 minutes, then open it up to tank.” I’ll still play all three like I want too but I won’t just be playing tank 90% of my games. That would allow people who are actually willing to play all three roles to still do so without just having to constantly play tank or not pick tank.
Ok saw your link from the “DPS wait times are terrible” thread
It basically says what I was saying but you are elaborating it more by saying that maybe the Devs should “shake it out a bit”, to bring diversity in it. As much as I would personally agree with that, I sincerely doubt that it would work from a technical perspective. It borders down to people asking to have more than 12 players in one game to cater to DPS Q times. It would require more work from the technical perspective and I do not think that that is what Blizzard wants. As fine as it may work on paper it is something that they would really never do.
It is basically changing the whole concept of the game just to cater to those who never wanted to play anything else in the first place. Even when this game was released for the first time. Again I personally would not mind any route that the Devs would decide to go through, not because I am a Blizzard fan or whatever, but because I would still only look at my own personal gameplay no matter the mode.
But it would not work in the grand scheme of things I think. I also think that this priority pass may even be a temporary patch of some sort to settle down the crowd before OW2 comes out, so they would stop whining about every little thing that has to do with OW1.
EDIT: And even if hypothetically they would do what you suggested, there still would be people who would complain about it. It all basically comes down to that no matter what you or Devs do people would still complain about it. Basic human instinct to s** on everything.
You know what would actually help reduce queue times in Competitive?
A modified version of backfill.
But it’s been years and Blizzard haven’t added it. They’d rather leave a team at a massive disadvantage instead of returning matches to the supposed fair state promised by the matchmaker and helping reduce queue times.
Dude… The issue I was addressing was not queue times. It is that any flex players who actually want to play all three roles equally, really can’t.
We either exclude tank or we functionally queue for tank if we pick it or go for this “flex” queue since it’s just going to put you in the most needed role.
If a player is only picking “flex” to get a fast track for a damage queue and not because they want to play tank and/or support? Then they don’t actually want to flex and should not be encouraged to do so for any reason other than that they want to play those roles.
If they let us order the roles that we want to play and how long we are willing to wait before opening the queue to other roles, people could actually queue for every role without functionally just queueing for tank.
I don’t mind playing tank, on some maps I even enjoy it the most over other roles. However, a “flex” queue or queueing for all 3 roles is realistically just queueing for tank.
Backfill will not address or fix that in any way. Queueing for all 3 roles will always be functionally queueing for whatever the “most needed” role is at the moment, usually tank, sometimes support, and almost never damage. Let us prioritize the roles in an order we want to play them in for people who want to do so and then “flex” queue, won’t functionally be “tank” anymore.
For once I actually agree with you. If the LFG had been done even slightly better and if players had the patience to sit through it then role lock wouldn’t have been nearly as needed. People who desperately wanted specific comps could search for it, while also asking for people who played the same styles as they do. While people who didn’t care what the people they played with do? They could just go on in.
Let’s use some logic here. I have two choices. Choice 1: Sit in a DPS queue for 10 ish minutes. Choice 2: Play flex most likely as a tank in a game that is going to last at least 10 minutes even with throwing? Then with my ticket I still have to wait 5+ minutes for my DPS match.
The only adjustment that needs to be made is the loss tickets need to go to 1, completely nullifying the time savings should someone purposefully lose while at the same time giving a consolation prize for people that do the unselfish act of trying as a flex.
I still wonder what is going to happen when these all get stacked on DPS. Because let’s be honest these are DPS tickets.
