I flex - never going back to RQ again - all this " goats " talk is bs as well.
Games are fun - less toxic and the reason I enjoyed OW in the first place.
Many more interesting games - and if a team wants to go ALL OUT by going Goats when the chips are down - then its either u out DPS them or match them in their own style. FUN.
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That basically means most supports have moved to OQ 
imo the introduction of RQ killed what Overwatch was for me, the ability to FREELY choose roles was how the game was supposed to be played, the whiners ruined it for everyone demanding 2/2/2 comp, no we have it, tank players aren’t happy, supports aren’t happy, and DPS has to wait so long they lose motivation to do well.
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I do play tanks and can say they are by far the most impactful role you can play if you arent some mechanical god who can play Widow or Tracer or Genji or Ashe. It’s the best role for your average joe who wants to climb off of gamesense instead of aim.
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Imagine being so biased that you consider the experience of a single person on the Forums with queue times as decisive of the state of entire game modes for possibly millions of players… 
I would love to see any evidence that points out to this claim turning out even remotely true in the future.
Please provide context, because if RQ is ““rigged”” for some unknown reason, then I don’t see any reason why OQ would be any better.
Lmaoo imagine still thinking in 2020 that 2/2/2 role - lock was rightfully introduced into the game due to the Goats comp fiasco, when it has already been officially confirmed that development on the mode began before said game mode was even a thing.
No - Hero Limits was how the game was actually meant to be played from the beginning.
Does that mean anything now, 4 years later??
I don’t think I even have to answer that…
Love all these baseless generalizations, which can be made about every single game mode out there, including OQ as well.
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Hero limits had nothing to do with the ability to freely choose what to play. In game and here on the forums, all I see are people complaining about wait times, ballhog tank lines, and dps support roles, baseless generalization? I don’t think you even understand what that means.
The game was designed around people being able to freely play what they wanted, it was originally balanced around that up until the “Elite OWL” players started to whine about not having a 2/2/2 composition, Blizzard almost never listens to people here on the forums, this coming from someone who STARTED Blizz games upon the release of Diablo. While they do care for our enjoyment overall (this is why OQ was re-released), and why RQ was implemented to start with, the game has changed from what had originally sucked players in, to forcing set roles, with no option to flex in whats considered the “main” comp mode (smh didn’t Blizzard say they would never do this, did it anyhow).
Just face the facts, Tank role almost ONLY ques for the free lootbox/coins, and normally play 2 off-tanks (fat dps) to avoid que times. When is the last time you qued up and didn’t find either Ball/Dva/Hog/Zar and no main tank? They just want to dps without the que times.
DPS players suffer from detrimental que times, only to find dps tanks and support.
Support players, same thing as tanks, most are simply avoiding the que times of the dps role, Ana V Widow, Brig facetanking and swinging the mace, Lucio off in his own world, Zen that forgets to harmony friendlies, Bap that doesnt realize he can heal, etc.
Along with many other Blizz games, I have been playing this since just after it’s release (still suck, but I have fun). So maybe, just maybe, I’ve been lurking the forums (many accounts now) and have seen complaints about this for 20+ years, I just might know a thing or two about what I’m talking about.
Edit: I generally ignore reports with his fancy letters, s/he thinks everything is rigged, and pretty much just trolls 70% of the time (No offense but seriously, bring something solid to the table).
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I used that phrase because you made it seem like all Tank, Support and DPS players act in the way you described by generalizing their behaviors, something which of course is totally false.
Please don’t tell me I have to repeat that whole Goats segment again…
This especially is the sentence that is being thrown around and what led me to reply with the No Limits logic, which is really the exact same one as the one quoted above.
Because if you think about it, the reign of Overwatch happened from the game’s release up until Season 3 or so, a time period dominated by the old No Limits system.
Therefore, does all that mean anything now about the state of the game and the decisions that were made during these 4 years?? That is my question.
None of these subjective statements based on your personal experience (experience which I don’t in any way deny, please don’t get me wrong) will ever be even remotely close to facts as long as no actual evidence has been provided which support said statements.
Will keep that in mind… Thanks.
Rigging is knapsacking and constraint solving. It’s trying to match tanks, dps, supports based on trends, performance data, etc… to promote a 50/50 expected outcome. The supply/demand + constraints is what gives you queue times.
There is structurally less rigging in open queue, because there are fewer constraints and performance data, role-selection, and hero choice is more variable. It has to be more open ended and looser when fitting people into a match. There are almost no queue times for open right now.
This isn’t a data/evidence argument, it’s a model/structural one. The open queue model is better if you want to avoid queues and additional rigging. The open queue model is also objectively more enabling to free-agency and compositional complexity.
Too early to give evidence. They don’t publish numbers. But we can make observations that infer a declining population.
- The active player base is almost dead during off hours.
- Multiple snapshots of nearly empty LFG (even if it’s just 5% of playerbase using LFG).
- Multiple snapshots of matches hosted on the wrong servers, because of a lack of demand in that mode/rank/region.
- Multiple snapshots of sparse mixing - matches with the same 20ish people reshuffled over and over without any fresh accounts showing up.
My hypothesis works off of role-lock queue time observations, lootbox bribes, and the burnout of wearing handcuffs all day. They still have a supply/demand/fun/rank mistmatch that will snowball gratification over to open roles and faster queues.
Absolutely. That’s classic Overwatch. Once hero-limits were dialed in we had the classic, golden age of OW.
Absolutely this for the better part of the ladder. At the top tier it’s meta all the way. Which is why my comment said you can’t expect much freedom, creativity, innovation, and diversity from the top 1%. Top1% is exploitation, not exploration.
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Still wishing I was good at the forums and knew how to quote someone (like I said, it’s been 20 years, still cant figure it out 
)
I absolutely did not mean all tank/support players feel this way, DPS players, 100% I know they hate the que times (even if it brings a better quality of game 90% of the time). 20 seconds for tank, 75 seconds for support 12.5 mins for dps (at least where I play) doesn’t seem right.
For the GOATS comp, maybe again due to where I play, isn’t even a slight hindrance, with GOATS comes no hitscan, and now with the addition of Echo, it would be useless, unless used by the elites, and not that I would know, I’m sure even they would struggle with Echo/Mercy/Phara raining down on them without changing.
I remember the no limits comp, it was indeed a nightmare, but you still had the freedom to play what you wanted, at anytime during it, just because 5 people wanted it, didn’t mean you had to conform.
While I will agree that the tank/support issue is personal experience, I know full well I’m not the only one facing it. I do not know what rank you play in, but if it’s between bronze all the way up to diamond, from what I’ve seen, is true.
While I do play both RQ and OQ, and try to the best of my abilities, I much prefer OQ due to the flex factor, not everyone does, but I’m sure you, like everone, has had times a dps/support/tank left the game and wished you could swap roles, because what your team is lacking, you could fill, and potentially win, even in a 5v6 situation.
Edit: and sorry [ȐĔPŐŖŦŜ], but I do read a lot of stuff you post, you might not be trolling, but it comes across that way to me. Lots of what we’ve both said is very similar if not the same, but I do find it hard to agree with quite a bit as well.
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This seems logical to ma as well, but of course we won’t know whether this is actually true or not unless someday we find out exactly how this game’s infamous matchmaker works…
But all these personal observations of yours, if anything, they support the game’s overall decline in population, not just of 2/2/2 role - lock’s…
Once again, we will most probably never know whether your hypothesis, mine (which differs a lot from yours but that’s another story), or anyone elses will ever be the one that comes true in the end… Unfortunately…
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Sorry, I missed your hypothesis? You think 222 is going to become more popular as time goes on?
Generally speaking, my hypothesis is that 2/2/2 role - lock will of course remain as this game’s main Competitive game mode around which the game will be balanced around. Some people will quit for Open Competitive, but since most of them will naturally be DPS that only positive queue time reductions will grace RQ…
From that point and one the two game modes are going to co - exist harmonically, as it should had happened from the beginning, and new possible players will follow the examples of the older ones in terms of which game mode they will prefer.
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On that note, and once again my personal opinion, I know several tank/support player mains swapping to OQ simply because the majority of people that lock those 2 roles, actually want to improve at said role. Now I’m not saying this is everyone, but the ones I know personally, and have climbed quite quickly, to where I can’t que with them anymore (real life, 50h works weeks kids, it happens)
About balancing, I hope they continue to improve RQ to where all roles are balanced, I simply prefer OQ, I honestly believe RQ saved the game for thousands of players, and for that, I am grateful.
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The “main competitive game mode for which balance is centered” is basically a top 5% experience. It’s tuned around OWL viewership and esports aspirations. This is non-representative for the vast majority of the population. And this out-of-touch mismatch is likely a contributing factor to playerbase attrition.
So yes, they can maintain this - and the remaining population will keep dropping off, an obsolescence strategy that actually increases OW2 profits as the honeymoon/hype spikes surge things back.
The steady-state ‘equilibrium’ they reached in Korea was OQ surpassing RQ.
Korea is typically ahead of NA and EU in terms of every emerging OW trend. We know this from developer screenshots showing activity levels by game mode and region, early into S1 OQ beta, late S1 OQ beta, and I think one during the S2 OQ beta.
For PC/NA, I personally think RQ lockdown is going to become stale for the masses and OQ will pick up and surpass it (while the sum of both populations steadily declines). Lagging behind, the final straws would be via popular streamers/content creators progressively moving over and broadcasting all their fresh hype and enjoyment of OQ.
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Just select the text like you normally do in any computer or mobile phone and then an option will pop up saying “Quote”. Just click on that.
Okay so basically all that was just your personal hypothesis/assumption of how this game’s players behave, all based of course on your extended, albeit still subjective experience.
Glad that’s cleared up 
I mean you certainly don’t have to per se but to say that I have a different view on this subject especially would be an understatement…
Well, personally as a Platinum player while all stinkers such the pseudo - Tank and Support players that you’re talking about certainly do pop up, they don’t in any way though represent the majority of the people playing Tank and Support in my games… That’s for sure…
Of course. I bet everyone had such moments, even if tons of people like me remember the situations pre - 2/2/2 role - lock when Tank/Support players would ““Flex”” in order to help their team by only switching to DPS, but would end up handicapping their entire team as a result much more vividly.
I disagree completely and especially when so many different pieces of evidence have popped up throughout all these months, all supporting the fact that the majority of the player base actually enjoys 2/2/2 role - lock (whether you personally consider said pieces of evidence as valid or now is another story of course).
As you said yourself, no evidence exists that proves the game’s declining player base and certainly none that supports the claim that, if the above decline is true, the element of the game to blame is 2/2/2 role - lock.
Accidental leaks of game modes have happened from other regions as well… That doesn’t suddenly make them the fortune - teller of Overwatch if you understand what I mean…
I personally doubt that extremely and especially when there has been no indication so far that any of this is becoming true, but of course everything is technically possible in this crazy world of ours…
Will reply more to this in a few hours, gotta sleep before work! But I will touch on your last point, quite often it’s a tank or support that has left the game, I would love to be able to swap to said role in RQ if I was playing dps, because thats normally the win condition. Yes most dps players wont swap to another role, and I believe most tank/support players would want to swap to dps not realizing they were needed on the role they selected.
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Enjoys vs. Prefers (enjoys more/most) is entirely different. And what evidence do you have that 222 is fine and well? For open queue support, I’m talking about screenshots that Jeff himself, and later Josh, posted a huge initial uptake of OQ. The follow-ups showed continued interest and activity. People do what’s enjoyable. The numbers were posted, and OQ was on track to overtake.
It stands to reason that whatever “indicators” they had access to internally were enough to spend precious dev resouces (reserved mainly for OW2), to reimplement the OQ mode. And later it even moved up to the comp tab by popular demand. Clearly, enough impact and popularity to hold it’s own against jailqueue.
Again, we don’t have to take anyone’s word for it but the queue times. Queues are almost universally unenjoyable, and they signify an unoptimized product and/or service. The evidence is a supply/demand mismatch. RQ isn’t satisfying enough people fast enough, so they’re going to move to OQ. That’s just what study after study about wait times do.
Next up we have the ‘subjective’ discussion about what handcuffs do - here, study after study says gamers give up on over-constrained environments sooner than ones with additional degrees of freedom and agency.
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Agreed.
The pieces of evidence I made a reference to show exactly that…
- We don’t know if OQ ever overtook 2/2/2 role - lock in any region other than Korea.
- Game modes are known in this game for reaching the peak popularity right after their release. The same also happened with the now failed 3/2/1 experiment, which lost tons of players that were thought to like the game mode as time went on, because they had experienced for example all the new Tank changes that the game mode had to offer. I don’t see how the same couldn’t possibly be true with OQ as well.
That’s very true. Either OQ reached a popularity status that the devs considered would be enough to guarantee a place in the main menu for the game mode and/or OQ was moved to the main menu according to an initial plan to reduce queue times for RQ.
I’m not denying neither of these two possibilities.
Would love to have a link to all these studies you’re talking about and their correlation with the tons of people who have the will to sacrifice short queue times for example for a more structured and organized playing environment, etc.
Haha nobody cares.
Supports are a dime a dozen, enjoy being treated like a dps.
Joke aside,
Its a simple tank problem.
Its horrible we havent learned from 20y of wow that more ppl like to play dps than tank.
The only solution is 321.
It is reality of human population.
But cz 321 had polarizing love/hate feedback, blizz is still scared to expose the passive dps offtanks.
I say we embrace 321.
We dont need hog players in overwatch. We need poeple with main tank mentality
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