The "Third Queue" Question: What is Quick Play?

General Discussion
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Was watching the Dev interview on the Group Up! pod when they brought up the question of if the game should have another “main” queue card to differentiate Unranked, Ranked, and the truly casual players. It got me to thinking about how Unranked/Quick Play kind of has an identity crisis about what exactly it’s supposed to be, that the devs have been struggling to resolve.

Quick Play, in essence, is supposed to be the faster, low stakes queue you play when you want a classic game of Overwatch, but don’t want to invest 30 minutes to an hour and put your rank on the line. However, the only thing that’s different in terms of game-speed is that non-parallel maps are only one round instead of 2+ with side-swaps inbetween. If you get Control, *Push, Flashpoint, or presumably Clash when it launches, the game will still be the same average length as a Comp game of the same mode.

Of course your rank isn’t at stake in QP, but there’s still skill based match making, which isn’t necessarily a negative in terms of fairness. However, fairness is only in question so long as there aren’t friends queuing up in a group with a massive skill range, or the looser matchmaker doesn’t squeeze together a really skewed game to keep the queue under 5 minutes. Again, no grouping restrictions and a matchmaker that favors queue speed isn’t inherently a negative for Quick Play, however it does certify it as a casual game mode.
And yet, as a game mode meant to be quick and casual, they put in some very extreme leaver penalties that discourage people from getting out of games they don’t want to be in. Mind you, I’m in favor of discouraging leaving the game, and I basically never do myself, but the penalties got pretty extreme and even in this interview the devs seemed to admit they took them a little too far.

I think the notion of Quick Play’s identity crisis is comically exemplified by the game itself not even knowing what to call it. The blue card on the screen is labeled “Unranked”, however when you click on it you’re met with “Quick Play” role and open queues. The only other queues in the card besides those are some fan-favorite arcade modes that are getting special treatment.

Ultimately, the identity crisis of Quick Play boils down to the devs being unsure just how casual it’s meant to be. They try to keep the games fair, but there’s considerable exceptions. They try to keep the games quick, but half of them will be no faster than an equivalent ranked game.
This confusion ultimately creates the question of “does Overwatch need a third queue”. As one game mode is the high-stakes, serious competitive mode, and the other acts as though it’s simultaneously supposed to be as fair, balanced, and competitive as Ranked, but also casual, quick, and low-stakes. Trying to be two things at once, that don’t really play well together…
I’m not the god-king of Blizzard (team-4) but if I was, I’d solidify Quick Play as the casual queue. I’d rename the card to say Quick Play, as it should, and lighten the leaver penalties. I’d take a look back at the first Quick Play Hacked (Quicker Play) to implement more of those ideas to make Quick Play games faster than their Ranked counterparts on parallel-map gamemodes; something they actually seem to have done since in a recent patch they implemented 1 (one) of those Quicker Play ideas into live: making the Push-bot push faster (*pardon me intentionally ignoring that earlier in this post for rhetorical purposes).
With such changes, the fairness-exceptions in the game’s matchmaking would sting a little less as it’s apparent that it is a casual, non-competitive mode that you can just hop into for a truly… Quick Play.

Anyways, that’s the end of my speech, vote me for president? I think that’s the point I was getting at. Nolan 2024: let the word “Goon” mean what it originally meant again (please… my username is ruining my life, boss)

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Arcade is the third queue

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Yeah agreed, this was my suggestion too when it was out. Make a ‘comp practice’ q that’s quicker comp and emphasize quick play is the chill mode.

Not just to make qp more casual, but as someone who only plays comp because I hate qp ruleset (I like being able to make a comeback), it’d be nice to have a slightly more casual/faster mode with the comp ruleset.

That said I think they’ve killed the game too much to have any more qs until the reinvigorate the playerbase with 6v6.

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Resolving the first phase of assault can often take as long as an entire game of the other game modes.

“Extreme” my left spork. You have to leave 15% of your games to get the first penalty, which has a shorter duration than resetting your router or dealing with that urgent bathroom break. And even leaving 30% of your games still only nets you a five minute break. You have to leave half your games to see any real penalty. Leaving games to “shop around” for the games you want isn’t fair to other players, and having frequent “emergencies” stretches credibility.

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Don’t think they’re extreme at all…I think they’re reflective of just how many people were making a habit out of leaving matches

A third queue is unnecessary as there are plenty of outlets for people to get what they want out of the game….the one thing I would add is skirmish as a selectable mode, since that seems to be what a bunch of people want QP to be

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The devs could just add a role queue mode into arcade. Because the loudest complaint of not wanting to play arcade is the lack of role queue.

So the people who want to play a “no penalty” mode, could just play the role queue in arcade if one existed.

That way people who want to play “practice comp” could play quickplay, without having to go and practice new heroes in comp itself to avoid throwers, trolls and leavers.

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I don’t think thats true at all. In fact, before OW2, it was just QP , Competitive and Arcade/Customs. Then within Arcade you would find OQ.

Now they are in fact, putting the correct label, which is “Unranked”, which does NOT mean, at all, like not even close, “Casual Mode”.

For some reason some people wants to keep ice skating uphill and pretend it is the casual mode (which is not) just because they play it more relaxed than Competitive. Yes, you also play Arcade more relaxed than competitive, but this is not a binary issue (otherwise there would be 2 queues only).

TLDR: Yeah some people still dont understand that “Not Competitive” =/= “Casual”

Correct.

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Glad to see some people finally found this post, but I wanna clarify some things:

1: I don’t think the game should actually get a new card/gamemode, and the devs don’t seem to think so either. One of the hot-button issues in this game is queue times, and that’s one of the primary reasons they cited in the interview for not adding a “third queue”, as that’d be another place for players to be divided among the other modes, lengthening the overall average queue time.

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In a literal sense, yes, but practically it’s not really an alternative to playing QP. Most of the modes are randomly cycled through each day, and said modes mostly have entirely different rulesets from the main queues’ modes. You go to Arcade when you want to play an Arcade mode, not when you want to play OW but chill.

Ultimately the point I was getting at is that the reason there was a question to whether or not they should add another “Casual” or “Comp-Practice” queue to the game is because they’ve ended up making the game’s de-facto casual mode seem more competitive. Ultimately there’s no getting around the fact that QP is where a massive bulk of the playerbase is at all times, and that a massive bulk of the playerbase is also casual. Adding a third main queue isn’t a practical solution, so what they should do (in my eyes) is greater define QP as the casual mode. Make the games quicker, the stakes lower, keep the queues fast. If you want a serious game, play comp. If you want a quick one, you know where to go.