2-2-2 DPS queue time idea

General Discussion
1

The wait times for a game in the DPS queue are getting ridiculous, this seems to be something most of us can agree on. It’s especially bad in quickplay though. The thing where some people’s feelings just couldn’t handle the “defeat” screen so they’d quit seconds before losing, leading to last second fills that only got to see that screen and did nothing else except waste their time has always been an issue. With role queue though, it’s extra-bad for DPS. 6+ minutes of wait only to get into a game where you’re a fill, and could very well be exactly the sort of fill I just described? Just wasting your time in the queue, getting matched into a “game” that realistically simply means your queue time got reset and you didn’t get to play? Absolutely disgraceful. The whole system needs fixing, and badly.

I do have a possible framework for a solution, but first let’s see why the queue times for DPS are balooning so hard in the first place. Clearly that class of heroes has always been the most interesting for people to play. This meant that an average game of OW had more people interested in DPS than in the other classes. In QP, people didn’t give a crap so quad dps was the default comp (and that was with someone being the Responsible Adult and taking tank/healer), but in ranked people would usually try to flex into 2-2-2. This option is gone now. Still, that shouldn’t be a problem. After all, people who would be okay with flexing should just select other roles in addition to DPS in the selection screen, right? Well, not so much. Those people still want to play DPS sometimes. Doing what I just said and selecting other roles in addition to DPS means they’ll never get to play DPS (or at least such is the perception). And so, a lot of DPS-oriented players who WOULD flex before, don’t now. They just select “damage” only and let it roll, saturating that portion of the queue beyond all reason. What needs to happen is an incentive against this sort of thing. We need to promote people selecting more roles at once than just damage in the queue if we want any hope of distributing that load. 25 credits for playing tank doesn’t cut it.

And so here’s my idea. It seems now that players enter the queue at the end. What if instead they had a certain credit, based on time spent waiting in THAT queue already, and that was what determined the order? Every second spent in the queue would add 1s to your credit. Actually getting into a game in the queue’s role would reset that queue’s credit to 0. But here’s the kicker - if you’re in multiple queues at once, you’re accruing credit for multiple roles at the same time. So if you’ve selected a DPS+support queue’ing, and get into the game as a support (duh) after 1.5 minutes, you’ve got +1.5 minutes extra added to your current DPS credit (meaning, the next time you start queue’ing you’re already ahead in the DPS queue), no change on your tank credit (since you weren’t queued there) and your support credit completely zeroed (the next time you start at the end of the support queue). That way people could actually select multiple roles other than DPS and still have a reasonable expectation that they WOULD get into a game as a DPS after a while of doing so. This system also deals with the fill issue. Fills of any kind would not reset the credit down to 0, so even if you got into one of those games where you just get to see “defeat” the queue time wouldn’t have been time wasted.

This is a rough outline of a possible solution to this problem. It has some issues. It needs to be thought through further, for example to point out things like “this credit can’t be hidden behind the scenes, it needs to be visible as part of the UI to be effective at changing player behaviour to rebalance the queues”. Or things like “the tank queue is instantenous, so anybody selecting tank+dps wouldn’t really get any dps credit - and we want people in the tank queue to lower the strain on the other ones. Perhaps the minimum credit gain should be +1 minute, even if the actual wait time was less”. Still, it’s something that would help. As it is, if one wants to play DPS, well… time to start onetricking Roadhog and leaving it at that.

3 Likes
2

That is the nicest solution to the problem.

Kind to similar, I’ve been idly trying to cost how much blizzard could make if they put a cash wallet in game. Excluding a class when queueing cost you a something like £/$ 0.05

3

It would probably cost them a ton, in the total marketing spending they’d need to do to offset the negative press that’d get them.

4

The wait times for a game in the DPS queue are getting ridiculous… 4 pages later

You don’t expect anyone to read all that do you?

5

This only works on a surface level. Ultimately you’re stuck with 3 kinds of queuers:
DPS-Player who wants to play DPS no matter the wait.
DPS-Player who doesn’t want to wait so queues for more.
Tank/Support-Player who has no issue either way.

Your approach wouldn’t really change anything about that, except that you get some people gambling on queuing for a role they don’t want, throw the game as tank (because they can’t play anyway) and pocket the credit without any detriment to the SR they value.

If you want to solve the issue there are two ways:
a) DPS has more than 2 slots per team. This is very tricky, because having either only 1 tank or only 1 support quickly becomes unplayable and above all eliminates half the tanks or supports (Solo-tank Zarya? Solo-heal Zen?). Increasing group size could be done, but everything in this game (map size, distances, HP vs dmg, cooldowns, respawn timers) is tailored towards 6 in a team. Having 7 or even 8 would require heavy rebalancing on all fronts.
b) Make supports and tanks more interesting to play. They have been nerfed time and time again (mostly because GOATs was so extremely prevalent, it happened in about 2% of all ranked games thus it had to be killed), making them less engaging. PotG is pretty much here for DPS only, the majority of medals is only here for DPS, the feedback (audio and visual) is only ever happening with regard to damage and elims - in short, DPS players get constant positive reinforcements. There is no “Hey, if you hadn’t done your last bit of healing, your team mate would have died.”, no “That bubble saved a life and led to 2 kills, have a cookie.”, no “Hey, at least YOU remember that there’s a payload.”. We need medals for saves, for non-damage assists, we need people to know when they did something good on the less tangible roles and we need their team mates to know when they got bailed out. Do that, tanks and supports are more interesting and rewarding to play, and we get a balance that’s a bit healthier, without anyone playing what they don’t actually want to play.

1 Like
6

Let me explain why DPS is so popular. Its simple really, the only way to carry in ranks like platinum is to kill enemies quickly. DSP do this. So if you are a good DPS you will climb reliably and wont be dependent on your team. It has nothing to do with how interesting tanks and supports are, as long as they cant kill others quickly(other than Roadhog I guess) they will be the less popular alternatives. You are letting your fate in the hands of your teammates when you play them after all.

7

The thing is that I don’t think these 3 kinds are all there is. You’re missing the players who would actually PREFER to play DPS but are okay with playing something else if need be. Those players would ideally queue up for more than just the DPS queue, but at this point they realize it would be the same as not entering the DPS queue at all. And so they pick the DPS queue only, and it gets clogged more. We need a way to distribute the load, and removing the effect of “if I queue up for more than just DPS I’ll never ever get to actually play DPS” is a low hanging fruit in this regard.

The scenario you describe doesn’t really make sense. If someone just wants to play DPS, they’re still better off just picking the DPS queue. Being in the tank and DPS queues at the same time doesn’t actually get you into a DPS game faster. Even if the tank game is 100% thrown, it still takes time to do so - during which they are NOT in the queue, so they’re not accumulating any DPS credit. If it was going to take 6 minutes of total wait to get that DPS game, then that’s still what it’s going to take, and all the tank game does is pause that as you play it, only to be resumed afterwards.

Anyway, yes, the root of the problem is ultimately that DPS are just too attractive compared to the other classes, so that queue gets overcrowded. Rebalancing and reworking things there is a big job though with no clear answers as to what will actually make things better, which needs to be done gratually. You mention GOATs, recall how so many changes which were meant to “destroy GOATs” were later followed up with “oops we’ve accidentally actually made GOATs stronger”. And so my idea is to help by improving the queue itself, since we can do that without actually changing the gameplay (which is hard to get right), while at the same time solving the extreme annoyance of “you waited forever to get into a DPS game but you’re a last second fill so instead of playing you get to start waiting again all over”.

As for the medals, I’m iffy on that idea. Personally I’d prefer them scrapped altogether, or at least reworked completely - they’re tricky things to interpret since they can mislead as to who’s actually doing their job well, and also I’ve seen people just use them as a license to be awful to their team many times. Just adding more support categories for medals would pretty much be like the healing medal is right now - if you’re a support, you’re gold or silver and that’s that, it means nothing. If there are medals, they pretty much need to be in things that everyone on the team actually does (and is supposed to do - so honestly even the damage medal is ehhhhhh), which has gotten even harder to think up with role queue than before.

The extra ingame UI bling for tanks and supports though, that’s a good idea. Just, let’s not do it through medals.

8

You are falling in the exact same trap that I was alluding to. No, DPS are not easier to carry with - DPS don’t carry at all. Every pro, everyone with game sense or even some understanding on the strategic side of things will tell you that it all starts with the main tank. A good main tank is already half a win, a bad main tank is game over. Put a good main tank with some bad DPS and they will suddenly shine, because they get the space and time to aim more carefully and actually make their shots. Put a good DPS (I’m not talking about 1500 SR higher here, so don’t come with “ooooh, but insert-pro-here could climb out of Bronze very quickly”) with a bad tank duo, the Rein will charge into his death before anything happened and the good DPS will run for their life, being hounded by the decent off tank on the other team.

The real question boils down to: why do people who don’t think about the game as much BELIEVE that DPS are best to carry? Well, because PotGs are flashy. Because a good DPS will get 4 medals. Because the name pops up in the kill feed. Because their impact is - simply put - visible. That’s why the main issue has to be to make other roles’ impact more visible. In DotA, you can see the assists on your team, you get messages when supports do their dewards or grab bounty runes. The score screen shows how many camps they stacked.
In any team game, there will be different roles (unless it’s a really bad and boring team game). Some roles will always be flashier, drawing the shallower crowd towards them. That doesn’t mean that they are the most important roles though, and a great game would highlight the impact of every role. Not just hurrdurr, who do damage?

2 Likes
9

What you are talking about means nothing when it comes to the lower ranks. Tank all you want, heal all you want, if your DPS is not killing you are losing 100%. Scenarios where all players on the team are good and know what they are doing only happen in high diamond, everything below is DPS or bust.

10

Devs don’t read the EU forums. Try posting this in the US forums.

11

Interesting idea. This would benefit players like me who usually tick all 3 boxes and play whatever comes up, which up until now has always resulted in tank or support and never DPS. If I want to play DPS I have to only tick that box and wait around 5 mins minimum.

12

That’s it.
Just a reminder, tanks and supports have been receiving nerf after nerf. No wonder why dps are so popular.

13

Sure, if this helps you sleep at night.