Idea for enforced 2-2-2

General Discussion
1

I’ve recently seen the interview with Jeff Kaplan on Unit Lost and found it very insightful. I, like many others, think the gameplay would improve massively from locking the players into a 2-2-2 comp.

I understand that as a solo queue player, this would significantly add to their queue time, but wonder if (as an alternative take on the idea) it would be possible/logical to enforce 2-2-2, but only when players queue as a 6 stack? After all, this is where most normal players will see GOATs or 3-3 (I don’t think you really see GOATs in solo queue at any level below masters). And I do believe that 6 v 6 organised play is where the game really shines.

If it is successful maybe the player base will use the team find option or queue with their friends in order to get more quality games.

Just an idea I had from watching the video.

Thanks!

2

You can already enforce roles to make a 2-2-2 in LFG.

3

Yes, I understand that, but the enemy team are under no obligation to do this.

2 Likes
4

How many others? I personally checked reddit, the official Blizzard platform, and the topic is at best a controversial one.

Unitlost will say everything as long as it gives him views.

5

6 stacks will face 6 stacks unless there’s really no one playing and they are forced to put small groups against them.

So hopefully the enemy team is a team of people ready to play specific comps like 2-2-2 or 3-3.

6

I think I’ve put across my point. The idea is to improve the gameplay by implementing better rules which, to me, seem much needed in organised play- but less needed in solo queue play.

I mean, as it stands you’d be putting yourself at a massive disadvantage if you do that @Nuu

7

Think about how much you lose, though:
The quick Hammond-swap to get to contest a point.
Mei to stall.
Overall creativity. Say what you will about GOATs, but there were people who actively came up with that style of play, and it worked. Then there were people who refined it.

I get the impetus to go for 2-2-2, because it allows for the most variability in comps, but what if there were some brilliant idea to combo 3 DPS abilities? How much pressure does it put on the decision what role a hero belongs to? Zarya and Bastion are both tanky and highly damaging, yet one is a tank and the other is not. Rightfully so in my opinion, but where do you draw the line? Even Brig is sort of a mixture of all 3. Symm was a support for a long time, and people still made arguments about why she actually belonged there.

And then there’s flexing - which is something the devs always intended to be part of OW (little did they know…^^). I’ve had multiple games where I’d play tank on attack and support on defense, because someone else swapped the other way round. What if that’s actually feasible? What if you want a specific comp to counter the opponent - say, you need a Rein, but your Winston who queued as a tank can’t play Rein. He could play Lucio, and the Ana could play Rein, but how would they swap? Of course they don’t have to, but Blizz wants people to be able to.

And then there’s the logistics. Think about it mathematically: say you have 40% queueing as DPS (low estimate, I think), 30% as tank, 30% as support. We start with the first minute of a season, 100 players - 40 DPS, 30 tanks, 30 supports. We get 15 games with 2 of each, 10 DPS mains wait.
The next minute starts, we get 100 new players. Again they form 15 new teams, 5 of those gobble up the overflow of DPS from the 1st minute - they won’t mind, waited only for a minute, right? But now we have 20 people queueing as DPS while everyone else is already in game. 3rd minute, 100 new people - we can have the 20 DPS get into 10 of the 15 games, but now we have a stack of 30 DPS mains still in the queue.
You can clearly see: it doesn’t get any better. The queue times won’t get any shorter, only longer. Unless you get a consistant 33.3% queuers for every single role, there will be an avalance for the waiting time. Sure, supports and tanks will find a game in 3 seconds, because there will always be so many DPS waiting, but the only way for it to ever regulate is for DPS mains to go “Hell no, I won’t wait that long!” and queue for a different role or a different mode. In other words, role queue would mean that the most picked role - and that is DPS, considering how Blizz keeps on dumping on the other roles - will be forced into a game of patience.

As for stats: sure, if you look at overall comp pick rates, tanks and supports come out ahead, but that’s not because people choose to play them, but because people flex to them. With role queue, there would be no “I’ll join the game and if noone else plays tank, I can do it.”, it would be about “I want to play THIS.” You know, like in QP, where tanks have a total pick rate of 24% (supports: 31%). And even those numbers might be skewed by the “Uggh, I don’t want to play in a 6 DPS comp.” crowd that still swap.

8

3 dps comps will be complained as much as 3 tanks 3 supports or quad variants.
Unless everything is = someone will always complain.

Swapping 4-5 heroes because someone can’t play one will be as bad as not doing that. Rip 4-5 ults in that case. And lmao “can’t play rein” pog first time i see this. If you have a pulse you can flex on Rein.

9

Not a problem if you queued as 6. Both players who want to switch roles would need to be in spawn and drop their character, and the game would not allow them to come out of spawn with anything but 2-2-2, so if they tried to pick a third dps/tank/support the option would be greyed out until that role was dropped by somebody else. This also enforces good grouping up. Again, think of this in the context of having a 6 player team and you all know each other.

You then go off on a tangent talking about something I wasn’t even suggesting, which is role queue. I already understand that would cause problems with queue times. I was suggesting that you do this for organised 6v6 play only, not solo queue. And it would be simply a different set of rules where if you’re a 6 stack, you will play the closest 6 stack to your rank and you can’t run anything except 2-2-2.

There are 2 approaches in designing rules for any competitive game. You can go for a player-made experience where you give us control and we can have lots of different possibilities which may be really fun. Or you restrict it a little bit to make it overall a more quality and competitive experience. Then the game can be balanced around those rules.

The game is bleeding players right now because of this unfun meta. I take part in quite a bit of organised scrimming and about 75% of what we go up against is GOATs because that’s how you stay competitive. This is the game being played at its finest possible level and it isn’t fun for anybody.

Again, like I said, solo queue and anything less than 6-stacking wouldn’t be affected by this change. I’d just like to impose additional rules to avoid game-breaking compositions.

It’s why other competitive games like magic:the gathering have ban and restricted lists. The community will always find a way to break the game if you leave it wide open. At least they save the competitive game by implementing these rules.

The pro games would also be far more enjoyable to watch because the OWL players get signed as dps, tank and support. It just makes complete sense.

10

a) I literally talked about different comps on attack vs on defense. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you don’t keep ult charge between those.
b) I just looked at your stats on Overbuff to check how good your Rein is. Looks like you don’t have a pulse.^^

11

Rein will still be the best tank in GM. At lest he will have dps on his team after the nerfs. 11% pick rate is absurd. And he has that pick rate because everyone can flex on him.

13

Eyy more good stuff


role que, role spesific SR what is this my dream?
14

Guess its time to drop the game then. No point in spending this much time learning to 3-role when in the end one tricking has not only been made completely fine but actively encouraged.

Eff this game.

15

Still better then having a Rein only player go like Hmm yeah guess ill start playing Widow at 4k SR ignoring the fact i got carried up to this point.

16

no really uses that since its garbage,same in wow.The lfg system list is just one decline after another since they always find something “wrong” with you.

It has to be automated queue.Like qp or comp now,just with 2-2-2