I’ve taken a 15 year hiatus from WoW, returned, leveled to 80 and finding sporadic solo shuffle arenas and BG fun. However the que times are horrendous and unplayable for my role.
I do like to see the many positive changes the game has undergone, yet all that doesn’t really matter if the game I’m interested in isn’t possible to actually play.
Role balance and que times were issues 20 years ago!
If content is going to be put forward by Blizz with certain role ratios being essential (whether mythic+, raid, rated arena, BG - whatever), and I do think there’s merit in doing that… there need to be calibrated solutions / incentives to balance role population in the player base for those sub populations engaging in that content. People aren’t paying their sub fee to sit in que, getting 2 games in an hour… we don’t want to wait around not playing the game.
Long que times have been around forever due to role imbalance… and even as frustrating as long ques are - this isn’t new and it’s proven conclusive that long waits do not compel the population to self-balance and switch out of their preferred roles. Something else needs to do that.
Players need to be met where they are.
People don’t hate healing, nor tanking in PvE as part of an exploration of their character - I think could be incentivized to play the role more as part of a bigger picture.
The common feeling non-damage roles have is feeling less agency over outcomes. However healers already are more influential to outcomes than DPS, so this incentive needs to exist outside of just buffing the healing role directly.
Since this has always been an issue and it seems no bright ideas have emerged, here’s my attempt at resolving -
- A solution would be giving characters who cover needed roles, like HEALER role if that’s what solves ques - leveling incentives to the character, improved honor collection, buffs, or collectibles - whatever - when the player opts in to performing as a healing class / spec for a certain amount of “active duty” for the content that role is required in. Targeting specific content (ie, raid, pve, arena).
All healer classes have damage specs, so the implementation for this would be that the person selects this either at character creation or through an NPC and is locked into a certain amount of hours or runs @ level 80 playtime as a healer for that specific content, putting their time in… but getting those benefits and still getting to their preferred role endgame in comparable or less time than had they gone for damage directly - or at least with something cool to show for it if / when they respec. Maybe some will like it and stick with that tole.
Players would be able to override and cancel this lock-in incentive to be able to play other roles early if they want; but to counter abuse from taking incentives without performing the role - a semi-longerterm negative debuff would be applied if they spec to a different role early.
I see a mechanic in hardcore WoW - the Makgora Coward debuff - which notably is long term which could be inspiration for a “Role Deserter” debuff and used for this to keep people from respeccing before enough time in the healer seat is done, weakening them if they are in their non-needed spec to where they are somewhat useless.
- Option two is a little less to the point… but still easy and effective.
Damage role for the 20+ years seems to have not hungered for players. It was crowded before and still is. There’s definitely some psychological feeling that role satisfies unto itself… but I think beyond that - the measurements help it’s popularity.
Killing blows in PvP and Damage meters in PvE are satisfying… they provide an immediate feedback mechanism and ladder to climb which helps as a competitive feedback mechanism immediately while playing out the content. To some extent there are healing meters, some tanking metrics tracked by addons… but these aren’t particularly satisfying or reflective of competency because they don’t really represent perfect play or best play, buff uptime, combat time, damage negated, or good decisions.
There’s a variety of ways to provide in-game measurements and feedback to establish competency tracking for these roles that would be 10x better than what’s currently being done… and players would find it satisfying if they can have their competency ranked against their counterparts or against an ideal performance.
In a battleground or raid people notice the 47 Kill 0 death player, or the damage who’s gapped the rest. This should exist for other roles also in a form that captures nuance and accurately reflects great play.
I’m sure there are other ideas beyond these 2 but something needs to resolve role balance for specific content. I like the game but I mean the amount of subscriptions lost or will be lost to 10 to 30 minute que times must be staggering.