I personally don’t believe Role Queue will fix anything and will make queue times unbearable and here is why:
Assume I am a good DPS player for my tier, I queue for dps along with 90% of the other people and I will have to wait longer, fine I understand this. Once I finally get into my game, we play but our tank is playing poorly, there is no space and we lose. This is in no way and indication of my play I may have popped off, and the loss was close because there was no overcoming bad play. Now I have wasted a lot more time to get into a game that was just as bad as before role queue.
Fine, I queue to Tank. My healers think their damage potential is more important than healing the tank, so they can TANK damage, and make space. We lose.
Fine I queue for healer. I am healing and healing, but nothing on the other team is dying. Because 70% of the people queued for DPS are bad.
Role queue will not fix bad play, nor will it create an environment to correct bad play or teach others.
The problem is NOT role queue or lack thereof. The problem is and always will be, punishing people for playing as a group, in order to cater to solo player needs. The rank ladder does not even teach good play.
A role queue will not fix the disparity of skill and game knowledge that exists in every tier, possibly it might work at GM and top 500, but nothing below that will. Not even touching the topic of smurfs and throwers,
This is a heavily team dependent game and it is beautiful when you have a team that works together, find a way to make that the competitive experience, over trying to cater to people who can’t make friends.
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Role queue isn’t some miracle solution to every problem, obviously. If you ever utilized that trash in holy-trinity based MMOs, you’ll know the amount of grief that still happens when you get healers that don’t heal on principle, tanks that are actually DPS in disguise, trying to cut the wait time. And DPS who think they are immortal. That’s all understood and fine.
Still. It’s some organization for what otherwise is utterly chaotic mess. Because in those very same MMOs, when role restrictions get thrown away, it, somehow, actually gets worse. As hard as it is to imagine sometimes. I’d rather have bad tank cosplaying DPS than no tank at all.
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Obviously role queue won’t magically find me players that play how I think they should play. But what it will do is ensure that I don’t get 5+ DPS stacks as teammates, or let me play as something other than tank or healer if I want to.
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Overwatch is all about flexing, you dont flex then you suffer the consequences.
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Yeah. That would be nice too.
You assume that we want Role Queue because we think it will solve all of our problems. That’s not it, we just want it to ALLEVIATE some of the biggest issues. Whether or not we get people pretending to be a tank or healer player only to grab DPS, at least the chances of getting a team of 4 DPS mains is less likely
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But do we need a queue for this? Role specific queues will make the wait time longer for DPS players, actual good ones also.
Wouldn’t it be easier to lock roles once enough were picked?
As a good dps player, if two people picked dps ahead of me, I just fill. Most people don’t, so lock it after two.
Apex does this right by having a pick order, which I believe is randomized.
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That would be cool solution indeed. Everybody gets their time to rambo entire enemy team, eventually.
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Id rather have 2 trashy dps from roleque, than 4-5 that I get on a daily basis now. If you dont want to flex and play other roles as intended thats your fault, it doesnt matter if youre a good dps.
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I do flex, I was just creating the scenarios where role queue falls short.
I believe people are looking at happy path outcomes of role queue but none of the problems that will remain unaddressed.
But as it stands nothing is being fixed, obviously role que has its drawbacks but the game in its current state is a complete mess. The playerbase is stubborn as hell and toxic. I for one cannot stand playing this game solo because I make my OW experience more RNG based on who I get grouped up with, what their mood is, their preferences, if they communicate, their playstyle etc.
My interest is dropping rapidly for this game, cant even play it for an hour sadly. If its not roleque then fix matchmaking, do something!!
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I agree with you, Blizzard really is undervaluing the intangibles that take place when playing with teams vs playing with strangers. There is a lot of teaching/learning that goes on in a healthy team environment.
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Role queue would absolutely solve most of ranked’s problems IF the following were added at the same time:
Different SR scores for each role, and another for flex. SR decay for all ranks below GM are removed. This makes it where not only can everyone play what they want, but it will also allow people to practice on roles they’re not as good on without throwing games at their main roles’ rank.
Forced 2/2/2 unless 5/6 members of a team vote to enable flex slots, and anyone that picks a hero for even one second that’s not in their initial available hero pool will have their flex SR changed in addition to their queued role’s. Teams can only unlock flex slots at the very start of the game and cannot revoke it.
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This reminds me when the forum was on about private profiles and how people were warning how it was a bad idea
Hopefully the forum won’t repeat mistakes because it’ll be a massive one if people get on that train
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I agree with OP… Rolequeue isn’t going to magically solve the problem. Even the perceived benefits it might bring non-DPS players, i feel it is outweighed by other issues. Like it or not, these DPS-mains are still part of the OW community (they probably outnumber the non-DPS players lul) and if they get shafted by abysmal queue times, they might leave OW entirely. If enough of them leave… we’ll start to feel the pinch when there’s a lack of players at your level, and the matchmaker takes longer and gives unbalanced games.
The solution i see, is that the game should encourage flexing, maybe a 10% SR boost for wins if enough % of gametime is from 2 categories… 15% if balanced between all 3.
You’d still have to be good enough to win to reap the benefits, and the gains are small enough that the “i only play one category” people don’t feel they’re losing too much. But at least this way if a game is going south there is an incentive to swap to a different role to get some gametime to benefit future wins (and who knows, maybe turn the game around in the meantime)
I do see some potential for abuse (e.g healers who decide they’d get some DPS time or low-key throwing in a losing game)… but ultimately, if everyone learns how to play every single role with some proficiency, I believe Overwatch would be a better place.
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I do flex all day long (which actually means that I am playing Tank/Heal 95% of the time).
Yet I still have to suffer the consequences of DPS players being stubborn and insisting that we need a 4 DPS team comp on defense.
100% this.
They could implement a system where you can state which role you want to play the most and which other roles you would be willing to play.
If you didn’t get your DPS role the last 2 games, you are guaranteed to get it in the 3rd game.
This way queue times will only get longer if you queue up for nothing else but DPS.
You realize that role queue is meant to increase your chances of winning by giving you a reasonable composition, not a GUARANTEE that you will win, right?
It also doesn’t address the matchmaking system problem, which many people also complain about, where people are paired together with players at extremely differing skill levels. Or trolls, or smurfs, or any of the other problems that the game has.
Role queue is only meant to give players an option to play with a 2-2-2 comp reliably so that they aren’t stuck with a 6 stack DPS for every match, that’s it. It’s not a magical angel that flies out of the sky and gifts you an amazing healer and tank so you can continue to miss your widow shots.
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After of 3 years you still havent played on a premade-team that does scrims 3 times per week?.
Everyone playing their mains, with lots of coordination, with lots of hours playing as team etc
I don’t think players of this game should be forced to and find ‘scrims’ or sign up for discord or whatever else just to play the game. I want to be able to log in as a casual player and find a matchup that is 1. At my skill level, roughly, and 2. A reasonable composition so that I (and everyone else!) are able to play characters we actually want to play.
Those are not insane or lofty requirements of a game. Games are meant to be fun. Blizzard can fix this with how they let us play this game, but they choose not to, and that is on them.
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I fail to see how this is on them. They have already given us the tools to do so (LFG, avoid as teammate).
The community needs to let go of this “mains” mentality IMO if we want any meaningful lasting change.
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