I HATE role queue

now i know the community was asking for this for years but i wasn’t, here is why i dont like it, first off its forced a meta meaning that you can only play 2 of a certain class no more, second im sick of the queue times for just wanting to play even in normal games why is it even in normal i cant play dps any more purely because i dont want to wait 5 minutes to play a game that took seconds to get in to before this queue stuff happend and worst part is the apsolute worst part is if you have bad team mates at there role to bad your stuck with them in that role cant switch out like you use to i can play all rolls so i use to take over in positions where my team were failing but i guess playing is a sin now, now you can argue i should just queue up for what i want my argument is why should i now have to wait to play what i want when before role queue i could play what i want any way and not wait 5 to 8 minutes just to play it, well iv vented my frustrations

2 Likes

Every system has its pros and cons.

Having gone back to some Quick Play classic recently, and being driven to full on “seeing red” rage in the space of 2 minutes, I’m happy we’ve left that behind.

For me, the pros far outweigh the cons and I consider it to be the best change made to the game.

Classic QP even with ocassionally missing tanks and support is still 10000x more fun than role queue trench warfare

For me the game has become more fun since role queue, more reliable teams and games in general. Sure there are balancing issues and the current meta isn’t my favorite but neither was GOATS.

With some more balancing it will be alot better in my opinion.

Was Overwatch ever in danger of dying because people were leaving? Right before the role lock I had fast queue times every time I tried to play. Now? Not so much.

Of course you won’t have faster queue times now that role lock is a thing.

Slower queue times was the leading reason why Blizz was avoiding it. (At least, that’s their public reason, the amount of work required to reconfigure the matchmaker also likely had a part to play).

Forgive me, but I don’t find 5 DPS & a Winston vs an enemy team that has a barrier tank support players “fun”.

Or maybe they were avoiding it because there was no reason to implement it until the 3-3 composition in OWL made them panic.

The playerbase was calling for it before GOATS was the de-facto meta.

So? The player base calls for many things. They called for a revert to Mercy’s ultimate, for Genji nerfs, for certain arcade mods to be permanent, for solo queue, for harsher punishments, for the removal of OWL even. Doesn’t mean Blizzard are obliged to listen to them or the calls are the reason they finally took action.

They do, and as developers, Blizzard have a set number of resources (i.e: Staff) to assess those requests from various angles, including:

  • Amount of development resource to action the change.
  • What benefit it brings to the game. (As in, overall health of the game)
  • How likely the change is to promote engagement with the game. (Remember, this is a product at the end of the day, and they’d like you to stick around to give them money)

From these factors, Blizz will make a determination on what makes the most business sense for them to implement, as they have to be able to justify what they do to their beancounters over at Activision.

Lets assess this against the criteria I outlined above.

  • Development resource required

    • Very minimal
      • Its just a revert to an older part of their code-base + some internal bug testing & PTR before it rolls into live.
      • Less forum moderator time spent dealing with salty mercy mains.
  • Benefit brings to the game

    • Perceived harm to the overall meta
    • Mercy continues to be a very passive and boring character to play inside her ultimate
    • Mercy players are encouraged to hide rather than take part in the team fight so she can get that big 5 man rez
    • Less toxic mercy mains in game (in theory, there are those that liked valkyrie)
  • How likely is this to promote engagement with the game?

    • Actually likely to reduce enagement
      • Mercy now has a very passive ult, making her more boring to play.
      • Outrage bait Mercy main Youtube channels will lose their rage bait. Less rage bait means less people will watch. Less people watching is less engagement with Overwatch as a product.
    • Community gets to trumpet the “Blizzard listened!” headlines for a few days, may draw some lapsed Mercy players back in.

Of course they aren’t as its their product they can do what they wish within the bounds of the law. However, they want their product to keep making money, and their best way of doing that is to drive people to engage with that product.

I don’t believe I at any point stated people’s calls for it are the sole exclusive swinging factor, but community outrage is certainly something that drives developers to action. I’ve already stated multiple factors at play.

If we go over the 3 factors I mentioned earlier for role-lock:

  • Development resource required

    • HEAVY demands on developer resource, complete reconfiguration of matchmaking system + a requirement to harvest months worth of data that does not currently exist to feed into early versions of the new match maker.
  • Benefit to the game

    • More consistent end-user experience due to predictable framework of 2-2-2.
    • Lower frustration due to teams almost always having the components they need to play a “fair” game.
      • In theory leads to less toxicity
    • Easier to balance.
      • A certain meta way of playing will always rise to the top, however by reducing the variables your playerbase has to mess with you can balance around that reduced variable set.
    • More accurately rank a player based on their ability at a given role-lock
      • Previously I could say, climb to Masters as a tank, then play support and be god awful at the role.
    • Makes their esport easier for people to follow and understand.
  • How likely is this to promote engagement with the game?

    • Community gets to trumpet “Blizzard Listened!” generating positive buzz for a bit.
    • Players (i.e: more than just Mercy mains) re-engage with the product to try out the role lock

Those factors are always weighed against one another, and you can see that despite the heavy dev resource cost of role-lock, it was determined by Blizzard to give enough good to the game, that it was worth doing.

2 Likes

It was good for OWL because it was getting stale and they could not balance it properly. If a rash decision like this one could save them plenty of time wasted on balancing why not do it? Once again, it was done for the sake of OWL and not for the common player. To think otherwise is to be willfully ignorant.

Yet you have no evidence for the assertion that the change was for OWL exclusively and not for the common player.

I think we can both agree that OWL will have been a big swing factor, afterall Activision-Blizzard are pooling massive money into esports (see the Call of Duty League) trying to force it to happen, and Blizzard development teams, such as the Overwatch team, are obligated by their management to “follow the money” as it were.

However, I completely reject your assertion that this change wasn’t in any way for the common player. For you to at least acknowledge my point that there was plenty of community outrage (your previous comments about Blizz not being obliged to listen to the complainers), and then state that the feature all those complainers were requesting finally making it into the game was in no way to shut those complainers up is… Well, willfully ignorant.

Here is an easy way to prove it. This change alienated 3 core types of players

  • flex players
  • DPS players
  • solo players
    All 3 types are having trouble with this system for various reasons and are not happy if we are to judge the constant stream of negative feedback. So the decision Blizzard made was not a solution if it actually made the game worse for so many players now was it?

Now lets look at OWL where not only the best DPS players finally started playing their characters again but also role lock makes it easier for them to specialize and increase their skill cap. Meanwhile it also improves the viewing experience because watching DPS characters making plays is more exciting than what we had before. Overall it has no clear cut negatives for anyone.

And then Blizzard themselves, who now don’t really have to dance around for an year trying to force a meta they themselves forced by releasing a completely broken character. Now every role will be represented no matter what so this is one less thing on the agenda for them.

It is clear who are the winners and who are the losers. The timing is also perfect, after all if they wanted to make role lock for the commoners they would have done so months, if not years ago.

You’ll have to elaborate more here.

We can definitely agree flex players are somewhat shafted by this change, however:

  • Most people who claim to flex, actually are not very good at their off-roles. There are very few actually good flex players. This is anecdotal evidence of course, but I don’t believe either of us can provide figures here.
  • Flex players CAN still queue for all 3 roles if they wish, sure they’ll be locked into one of those roles once in game, but there’s nothing stopping them queuing all roles and benefiting from those rapid queue times.
  • Flex players, due to their ability to be consistently good at all 3 roles, will actually earn more CP for their gold weapons per season than pre-role lock

As for DPS players, yes their queue times are longer, but now their actual in game time is more enjoyable due to having everything they need to support them in their role.

As for solo players, I fail to see how role-lock harms them, it guarantees them a pre-set 2-2-2 with everything they need to win rather than having to use group finder to get that. The headlining benefit of 2-2-2 role lock is to solo players rather than those that stack. I really don’t understand how you believe solo players are alienated by this change, and would like to see you elaborate.

As previously stated, and has been stated by Blizzard themselves, the changes to the matchmaker were extensive, requiring a lot of data which didn’t exist. Frankly, if they thought they could just flip a switch and kill GOATS from OWL, they’d have done it by stage 2 playoffs.

The big reason why your arguement about this being done exclusively for OWL players really falls apart for me, is that Blizzard didn’t need to implement any technical measures at all to bring role-lock to OWL, they just had to make it a rule of the league, and call it a day. Blizzard didn’t do this, so clearly role-lock wasn’t exclusively for OWL.

We agree, its been great for OWL. This is a great thing for fans of OWL.

Was we’ve previously discussed, Blizzard were resistant for a long time to this idea to the point were they weren’t even working on it prospectively.

Once they decided to do it, they then realised they needed months worth of data to try and make the new matchmaker not absolute hot garbage (which one could argue they failed in when OWL pro choihyobin got placed in gold).

As for timing, as I mentioned earlier in this post, the timing really isn’t perfect at all, all they had to do to bring this to OWL was make it an official rule of the league, but they didn’t.

If this was a “flip the switch” change, they’d have done it Stage 2 playoffs.

As much as I’m enjoying this discussion, I’ve got shopping to go and get before the supermarkets close, so I’m afraid I’ll have to park our discussion here.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. :slight_smile:

This is completely wrong. You do know teams need to practice, right? Not only through scrims but also through playing competitive to improve their individual skill. Making a rule for only OWL matches to be 2-2-2 would make it awkward for them because they’d play 2 different games.

The rest is kinda worthless. If they, as you say, were planning this change before the OWL problems became apparent they wouldn’t have rushed it half-baked and marginalized such a big chunk of their player base. They are either bad at their job or had a different agenda.

I agree with you. I wish the old system comes back again…

At least people used vc in comp. QP and QP classic are pretty much the same mess, mainly due to lack of comms.

just going to say it, blizzard are screwing around with every one, making everyone unhappy about something they own.
literally, role queue should have never existed, since i keep getting terrible players on my team or the enemy team spam attacking / spam stunning / spamming the whole game and so on.

blizzard just like to mess every thing up since that’s the only thing they are good at.

Im happy that we got role queue i couldnt go bavk to the classic woth 4 or 5 dps it was a mess

Best change? 10 min instead of 3 in queue,most of the heros dead now,random ranks on alternative class(example i am diamond on dps and i got plat on tank but i never played tank in my life so now i play tank like an bronze so i throw every match becouse i got an much higher rank)