Unless you have a challenge to queue as flex, there is basically no reward or incentive to queue as flex. Getting 5% (once a day) or 1% of a BP level is not a real reward especially if you haven’t purchased it, and OW1 should have taught Blizzard that people aren’t going to swap roles to reduce queue times. Any real cosmetic progress has been removed completely and replaced with nothing. The priority pass system may have been very poorly implemented, but it was bad for years with zero incremental design changes; the system only failed because Blizzard put no effort into it. And the coup de grace is that some challenges actively dissuade queueing as Flex; anything that requires you to win games as different roles is very difficult to complete with Flex, and damage or mitigation challenges are more efficient when done outside of Flex.
While Blizzard’s current money-crazed design philosophy makes it unlikely that they’ll add currency or other loot drops to Flex, there are other ways to encourage Flex play. First off, challenges that strictly require queueing as specific roles should be removed. Second, the priority pass system should return with changes. You shouldn’t gain 3 passes for a single flex game, and the max cap should be removed since it felt like a waste to queue as flex when you were at the cap. Third, the amount of BP XP needs to be greatly increased; the daily bonus should really be the every time bonus, and the daily bonus should be more like 2k xp. Finally, if they aren’t going to add any realistic way to grind Premium Currency, at least you should be able to get Legacy Credits; it’s not fair that people who purchased OW1 have gotten the ability to grind for OW1 cosmetics for no additional real-world cost removed.
2 Likes
Agree. Queuing for flex has identical results to queuing for support. If you choose flex, you will be matched in support. Please bring back the fast pass tokens earned for playing flex.
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Agreed in full!
They should start offering legacy currency for flex queuing. These queue times are getting worse all the time.
Watching streamers who play tank/DPS is just sad: you spend more time watching them play Wordle or some other game than you do playing OW!
Oh you mean some shallow reward like a lootbox or something. I find flex to be extremely rewarding, mentally and spiritually. Sort of an “I got your back” to the entire community, or at least to your group of friends.
Yes, I love tanks and support manned by clueless dps players. /s
If you want to say “I got your back” to the entire community, play support. No one else is. Hence the tiny queue times. Support and flex are, as stated, currently functionally identical roles. Flex should either be either incentivized or eliminated, as it is redundant.
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I personally would never queue all unless you want the BP XP. If you really want flex, you should queue DPS and Tank two games then queue as support for one game and keep alternating. I personally thing All queue gets you worse games as they stuff you into any old hole.
The challenges are the real flex reward, I don’t know why they even bothered offering 100xp per game. At best it’s a visual trick to make it look appealing even though the reward is basically nothing.
The challenges for me today were largely based around healing and all roles queue. For the first time I had no choice but to queue All Roles.
It was not a reward. It was a flanker hellscape. Did I win my matches, yes. Did I get POTG? Two. Did I teach a few reapers and Genji’s a lesson? Absolutely.
Did I have fun? Not a chance.
Challenges should not be forcing me to babysit people who are having fun for BP points.
Need to let people who enjoy what support now is play support. And if the queues are terrible they’re terrible. But it’s better than poor match quality.