Update for Competitive Play - Season 16

i guess im okay with this. i mostly solo queue to begin with and whenever I do group up its almost always duos because i almost never win in a three stack. i think most GM’s and even masters prefer to duo over stacking anyway (just based off of me and my friends I wouldn’t know about the rest of the GM population)

the whole mode should be restricted to duos or solos only not just GM

literally everyone complains about how bad solo que is and now your removing my ability to play with all my friends in one match
or Im going to have to smurf with everyone and ruin masters> games if I want to do that
Thanks blizzard :rage:

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Good thing I have no friends. :slight_smile:

This all makes sense in all, it just kinda funny that a “Team” based game is telling the best players of this game to not play in coordinate teams

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Scott, Now you just need to tackle the LOWER Tiers, we need some LOVE too :frowning:

1 ) Rank Reset from Bronze through Platinum :wink:

2 ) SMURFFS. smurffs and more smurffs… So many smurffs that “practice” on their alt accounts and ruin the experience for others.

People in GM weren’t using LFG anyway, so that’s irrelevant.

So only for Grandmasters. It basically changes nothing for the 95% of players. okay…

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Yeah cause it only affects grandmasters. Not so hard to understand I would say.

So if 3 or 4 GM players want to play together, they’ll have to play on their low-rank smurf now? And that’s meant to be an improvement?

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Blizzard: Hey, we made a teambased competitive FPS shooter.

Also Blizzard: You may not play as a team.

This doesn’t even affect me but it still aggravates me. I wouldn’t mind if there was ANY incentive to play as a team (team queue, timed tournaments) but right now as a high ranked team you can only look for scrim partners (NOT supported by the game in any way btw…). Instead of prohibiting teamwork Blizzard should find ways to promote it. Oh my…

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Your Overbuff profile would suggest you’re not a GM based on the trends, you decayed to 3600’s but you started at 3800

I think this is a good change for most GM players who don’t play in big groups, but might make the game less fun for a very small minority.

As a member of top500 lucioball for both seasons. I’d defo like to know the answer to this. Me and my friends always play in a 3 stack together. We’re a good balance of positions and synergise very well.

I’d rather not pick between them and get 1 random.

Actually it doesn’t do anything for 99% of players, since GM is around 1% of the playerbase IIRC. :wink:

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Seems like a nice change. It doesn’t affect me directly, but on streams, it’s pretty painful watching the same couple of OWL teams ruin match after match.

I was at that level in Heroes of the Storm and played solo queue vs. professional team 5-stacks on a regular basis back in the day, so I can empathize. Occasionally our solo team would win or at least manage to make a close game of it, but far more often it felt like a complete waste of time.

I just got back from a small weekend getaway (felt really good by the ways) and I have some challenging questions and comments that I will share again.

Why?

I get it from a single-match perspective, keeping groups together has a perception of looking fairer, but when looking from the progression of players looking to develop their skills as a player over the long-term, grouping up just to face against other groups of equal size is literally playing Overwatch on “hard mode.” But why does it work this way instead of incentivizing teamwork at all ranks by not restricting groups together whenever possible? This still remains the one and only one question that I have as a player and as Forum MVP1. Not to say the reason for having “group priority matchmaking” is a bad thing but I think doing this gives less incentive overall to group up across all ranks and I am trying to figure out why.

The nature of playing Solo or Duo queue versus teaming up as a group are two very different styles of play. The style of mostly solo queue is far more chaotic with a lot more carry potential, while grouping up really requires a focus on teamwork. Both styles of play can work great with Overwatch, but it can feel really bad when a solo queue player has to pair up with a 5-stack (especially if they face against a 6-stack). I suspect that separating matchmaking between Solo Queue and Group Stacks is not practical (based on what I have seen with the current matchmaking and how the matchmaking worked in other games like Heroes of the Storm2). However, at this point, I feel that if it is a priority for the development team to keep group stacks of equal number paired together, then solo queue players should have the option to avoid any group stacks.

Finally, I think I speak for a good majority of players here, that if keeping groups of equal size together is a priority, the next step in Competitive Play has to be to introduce mandatory role queue with restricted 2-2-2 compositions. While having extreme compositions like triple tank/triple support, 4-1-1, and others do work for coordinated groups and the pro levels of play like Open Division, Contenders and Overwatch League, not having restrictions on what roles to queue for is continuing to cause the Competitive game mode (and Quick Play for that matter) to result in toxic situations arising when more than 2 or 3 players try to pick a single role (typically damage). Introducing Role Queue will help support and benefit the solo queue playstyle which is now mandatory at the highest tier, so the faster you guys can work to implement it, I think the better experience all players of all ranks will have to enjoy Overwatch. Cheers! (^^)v

1Forum MVPs do not represent Blizzard. Everything in this post is of my opinion only and do not reflect the opinions of Blizzard Entertainment.
2Heroes of the Storm used to separate solo queue and team queues into two separate modes. They no longer do separate solo players from group stacks, but solo queue players still have the option to only pair with other solo queue players.

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So if im a masters player (3900) and while doing placements and lets say win first 4 (approx 24~ish) and im stacking will i get the restriction for group size?
No idea how placements come to SR, but i was just curious if high masters that could place GM will still get the restriction during placements or will it only be after they placed.

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^this
I feel like masters who mostly group up with teammates they trust should know if it affects them at the high end. Plus I’ve seen posts saying that this will prevent GMs from playing in plat matches at late nights, but would this change anything if masters would do the same thing too? They’re the 2nd highest rank to get and I’m curious if this has an impact to their rank.

First they make LFG, now they dont let you use it. Great :slight_smile:

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