Using the Priority Pass and Intended Use

Oh, I play in a series of custom games every now and then, but in the end, it’s not the Competitive Ladder where you are playing for the leaderboards and that I believe needs to offer the opportunity for a more consistent experience.

I don’t believe that is possible unless the devs take a LONG, hard look at match quality. Players are frustrated, and they have been saying so for a long time.

I’ve posted a LOT on the subject of match quality and changes that could be made that would increase it… with my logic posted right alongside in long form. What I posted above is a summary of another, much longer post regarding this topic.

With the priority pass in place, I’ve been getting DPS games in a few minutes. But the match quality is the same or worse. The free keys give away certainly didn’t help, now we also have rusty flex players in the mix.

That’s A LOT of churn that can affect match quality this month.

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And to follow up on this further, this goes hand in hand with my post we had a back and forth on regarding a purgatory and protected queue.

By separating those out, you would have a much higher ratio of experienced players, on their main account, in a match with you.

That means that new players don’t get NUKED off the face of the planet by veterans either… which seems to be happening in a lot of my matches. That or the level 30 account is absolutely rolling a team of high level plats solo somehow. (I.e. match quality is very poor!)

Played for the first time since the update and wow the games were terrible. I mean QP has always been a hot mess but right now it is a full on burning garbage dump.

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Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! This problem has been brought so many times in the past by players and even content creators alike, yet it has never been addressed.

This is literally the most important fundamental issue with LFG since its release due to the fact that it is a grouping - up system… It literally puts you in more difficult matches!

And despite that, does anyone know why now with 2/2/2 role - lock 6 stack queues especially are pretty darn quick, while back then during the LFG days huge queues for large groups was the second most important issue with the system itself?

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It would be nice if there was such a thing as “Competive” PUGs and Scrims, but that’s just me.

So, what happens if I’m in a situation where everyone is at some level that is similar to someone else and I’m the only one that’s where I am (doesn’t have to be different ranks but be within the same rank)? If I’m alone, am I effectively banned by your proposed version of the MMR system through no fault of my own but instead being out alone in a desert with nothing for hundreds of miles but myself and the buzzards?

lots of throwing until the matchmaking/mmr for each role settles.

The passes are good, but too generous I think. I flexed a few games and maxed out to 40 so quick. Gain rate should be halved, thirded or even quartered.

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How is that artificial?
It’s not as if 6 stacks use mechanics or features unavailable to anyone else. They just use the social aspect better.

It’s like complaining that some new player is pretty dang good at aiming and reaches GM at level 50 but stomped their enemies in all of their games. Artificial inflation too by your logic because they were just better at something?

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suggestion: you guys could reduce the amount of passes for a win, make so you dont get any for a loss, to prevent throwers, and make flex queue exclusive to quickplay so people dont lose sr because they got a reddit lucio playing roadhog and feeding on cooldown

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If you’re gonna claim something is by “my logic” maybe be accurate and not stupid.

What?

How would that even happen? You think that the matchmaker couldn’t find a SINGLE other player of your rank? That’s all it would have to do in this scenario.

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I actually can’t with some of these replies.

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The devs can never solve this problem. It is because of the mentality of the players and not the game itself.

IMO, 99% of the player base from bronze to mid diamond think that “a good and competitive game of overwatch is when they snowball the enemy team”. When a team wins every single team fight and everyone has gold on their cards. I have observed playing in solo queue and stacks for thousands of games and its always he same. That is the perception people have that is what overwatch should be.

And for the losing team, its toxicity, smurfs, thowers and leavers and thus a bad game of overwatch but these issues start as soon as they lose 1 teamfight or get snowballed hard in one part of map.

I am sure 90% of the Quality of life and competitive issues will be fixed if 90% of playerbase understand that “a good game of overwatch is not when you snowball but when you take up that challenge to bounce back from being defeated like in dark souls. When you understand that competitive means competition and drive to be better.”

No matter how many changes the dev do people will always complain because the problem lies in the mindset and not the actual system.

Once, the playerbase take a losing fight as a motivation to perform better and start thinking with “awareness” and “tactical analysis” , i am sure 95% of games are going to be better no matter who wins.

In Asian culture (whole Asia), players get angry, talk harsher, and say mean things on another level, but they always give 100% each and every game. I feel Western gaming culture has become less about self-improvement and more about “feeling good” stomping lesser skilled players.
Everyone is lying when they say games are bad in the forum. They do not want to improve, push themselves, take the challenge, be competitive, critical think, be highly driven and motivated by enemy snowballing them. They just want few games of overwatch where they snowball and pop off and get that “dopamine” release in the brain.

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Absolutely not on that last point. People want to play dps in competitive too, not just quickplay. I rarely ever play dps anymore since role queue and the past week or so I was able to play with queues being 2-6 minutes as opposed to 10-20 like they usually are for me. I don’t care if people are playing their off role as long as they are at least trying. I care about the ability to spend more time plaing the game than waiting in queue.

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i feel like this should work both ways. right now winning rewards you 6 priority passes which is really a lot, and i was stacking up on them while the queue time was 2 minutes for every role (yes including the dps role, for like the first time ever :grin:). there was practically no need for more flex players at the time. and 6 passes for winning is way too generous in the first place, 3 is probably more appropriate. it didnt take me long to stack up enough passes to have more than i need.
in the same way that you cant use a priority pass when a role is not impacted, i feel like you should also gain less passes for flexing at such times.
you could use the same system as with the bonus lootbox for impacted roles and reward 1 more priority pass for winning if you flex at a time when the queue times are long.
i think the system is going to need some tweaking but im happy to see it added to the game. i think after some tuning and a bit of time for people to get their off-roles into the right ranks it could end up being a great addition to the game!

With the priority pass release, it was the perfect opportunity to reset the MMR of everyone, so that players do not have to suffer for months ahead.
To prevent total chaos however, you could had reset the MMR of the two least played roles of each player for competitive play.
(MMR and rank will remain the same for the highest time played role in competitive play).

Unfortunately, you left the matchmaker to sort itself, but that won’t happen for months on end.
The result is that the quality of competitive games has drastically dropped down the toilet, to the point that there is no difference between quickplay and competitive.
Not that the bar was high to begin with, but we have reached rock bottom.
Every game feels like team deathmatch with random skills across all roles.
It’s literally a clown fiesta!

In the end blizzard is saying that if you want to play and have decent quality games in competitive, you need to wait at least 6-12months and then play, praying the matchmaker has finally catched up with the real MMR of most active people.

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We demand a MMR reset.

I’ve got a few things that I don’t understand and haven’t been able to figure out:

  • I started with “0/40” priority passes. I could only use a pass once I got “40/40”. Does this mean a pass is given after I collect 40 “points”?
  • Once I reached 40/40, it stayed that way, yet this post talks about banking passes. Based on what I saw, I can only have one at a time. What am I not seeing?
  • When I used my pass, it went down to 39/40, instead of 0/40 like I was expecting based on previous observations. What? I can get 6 fast queues for just one flex game?
  • Then, when I played a flex game and had 40/40 again, I couldn’t use a pass, even though DPS queue was long.

Did I just get a really unlucky series of misdirections of when passes can be used based on the queue lengths? In that case, I’m quite surprised that the 40/40 number refers to the actual number of passes. 6-7 flex games for one, non-bankable pass seemed more realistic to me.