Role Queue Thoughts

General Discussion
1

I came to Overwatch a couple of days ago after roughly a month of not touching the game, I’ll state now that nothing really drove me leave the game, I just got bored and forgot it existed for a while but I decided I should give role queue a bit more of a chance, my previous experience with it was a couple of matches that didn’t leave me particularly moist.

I don’t think Role Queue is all that bad, I can see what they where trying to do and I support trying to make the game a bit more structured but then, it does get to me that I can’t change classes when needed. Sometimes you really don’t need 2 tanks and 2 healers, I was in many matches which proved this point, it’s not just the hero and their respective class it is of course how you use them and how good the player themselves are in general. So far, sadly I have only managed to secure a place in matches playing as a Tank or a Healer. I don’t hate either class, I just don’t find them as fun but they’re more fun than sitting in the waiting room for 10 minutes at a time just to play DPS again so I gave in.

The thing I found and this of course is just my experience, is that many of matches seemed very one sided over the last couple days. Either flawless victory is utter defeat and I’ll be honest it’s not much fun to steamroll an enemy team or not be able to leave the spawn room before getting shot from 6 different directions. I prefer a longer match, a close call. Mine or the enemy team winning by the skin of our/their teeth in a tense, exciting match and I haven’t had one since the beginning of role queue.

Overwatch doesn’t have a lot going for it as it is, I say this not in anger or disappointment just factually. It’s just a FPS/MOBA thing which may have been original once but no more with some kind of interesting characters, even if it feels like they make too big a deal out of things. Not sure why it matters that Soldier 6 is Bi and Symmetra is autistic, doesn’t affect gameplay at all so I never cared either way. More and more, it seems to be making changes that reduce the love it gets by the community, a bunch of my friends long ago abandoned the game. I don’t want to take their side mind, but Role Queue has made me sort of see where they where coming from when they said the devs make bad choices, I mean I already kind of knew that but anyway.

Sorry, I ramble.
My point, summery, thing is that while I support the choice of trying the role queue bit, I don’t perceive it as being too successful in making the game better. More balanced, maybe in certain matches depending on hero picks and player skill but really, let me opinionate for a moment and say I never found Overwatch to be unbalanced and I’ve played since about a month after launch. All these hero updates and patches and nerfs and such just kind of make it all a bit more boring, because players are unwilling to put the effort in to hone their skills they cry to big daddy Blizzard and it complies like a bad parent.

I won’t say Overwatch is dead, it would only qualify if the servers where 100% empty and also the amount of people crying about that could irrigate the Sahara, I will say it’s come a step closer to making me put it away for good. It’s kind of sad to me, after all this time I find myself being driven away by the changed. Maybe people like them, maybe this game will one day just not be for me but I do hope I can find reason to stick around longer because too few games get the mechanics of a shooter as right as this, health kits, fast paced, colourful and exciting rather than dull, brown and boring.

If you read all this, well done. If you skipped to the end, eh you missed very little.

1 Like
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For games to be balanced the SKILL of the players inside them must be balanced. You think its fun to have 1000 SR difference groups aka gold players playing in an all-diamond games? You think its amusing for yet another smurf to show up and single handedly decide the outcome of a game in either direction on a whim? You its great that multiple people all grouped up and on their mics are put against a bunch of randoms?

It doesn’t matter one bit how “fair” the team composition is if the matchmaking at its core is rotten.

3

It wasn’t that it was unbalanced, it was that because of the freedom of team structure, every few months we had a new meta, dive, deathball, goats, etc, this meant that every few months we had to put up with new nerfs, new buffs, because the devs have to constantly dance around metas, rebalancing the game, and tbh it becomes really annoying. Games that can’t find long term balance lose that feeling of stability and after a while it becomes boring and loses players.

I have left games in the past due to this, devs not having a clue what they want to do balance wise and every patch things change, like The Division. So one positive of role q is that now maybe these constant balance changes won’t be needed as much and the game can finally start to have some more long term balance without having to constantly adjust to new and different metas.

But of course nothing’s perfect in life, and yes this comes with annoyingly long DPS queue times. This is a direct result of Blizzard making 3 times as many DPS heroes as other classes, something which we now have to pay more. If there was even distribution of roles, or even if it’s not exactly even, but more reasonable like, 9 tanks, 9 supports, 12 DPS, there would be less waiting in queues, more fun and variety among tanks and supports, etc.

3 Likes
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To me just seems people cry because they can’t go 5 dps and throw it. Playing against an organised team when you have 5 dps who can’t even play sucks. I really like role queue other than the dps wait times, but I get rewarded for playing tank which I mostly main.

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I doubt we’ll get an even number. Now we have more dps they’re just going to continue to dish out one hero to each category. Yes, its nice that we get a new tank and healer, but we also have more dps then.

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You know, the whole point of multiplayer team games is to create new metas and shake things up, otherwise the game will become stale and boring rather fast. This “stability” means negligence, it will spell the death of a game. Change is healthy, hibernation is not.

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Overwatch isn’t dead, it wont be any time soon, however as much as I love 2-2-2 stubborness of some people just annoys me and leaves me with “shallow” experience. Enemy team has 2 barriers - team mate picks widow, we need barrier tanks - team mates picks Dva, hammond,zarya, we need main healer - team mates picks zen/lucio and dps their brains out… 2-2-2 would be amazing experience and offer much better quality of matches, it’s just players refuse to communicate, refuse to switch when it’s necessary.

8

You can win without being a meta slave.

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Sorry to break it to you but the number of DPS heroes does not affect anything. The problem you describe is caused by the number of DPS players, which is the result of Overwatch privileging multikills over healing or tanking duties.

And the constant rebalancing is YOUR FAULT, you’re the ones who keep getting upset about every meta. You forced us all to play 222 forever just because OWL players were tired of watching GOATS. Now everyone’s shifted the complaints towards double barrier, and we can expect another set of stupid support nerfs.

10

Tell that to the most popular competitive FPS team based shooters in history like CS, Quake, BF, and so on. They all had long term stability without the need for constant changes.

Of course Overwatch is a MOBA with all unique heroes so it’s harder to achieve that stable long term balance across the board but it can definitely be better than what we’ve had which feels like constant, endless balance changes up and down.

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The number of DPS players is a direct result of the vast number of DPS heroes in contrast to tank and support heroes. Sure multi kills and gold elims are great, but that’s not the core reason. What you’re describing is the ‘fun’ aspect, but at the end of the day is subjective, the core reason is there’s simply far more on offer in the DPS roster, something which could have been alleviated years ago if more effort was invested in to tanks and support heroes.

1 Like
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What are you talking about, the new Quake is nothing like the old Quake. Do you remember how all characters had different abilities in Quake 3? No? Obviously the idea is the same, the execution is different.

CS also evolved. It might not have been as rapidly as other shooters with hero classes but I don’t remember way back in 1.6 era having things like molotovs. Or the constant patches still fine tuning the game. If by being stable you mean only new things being added without a change you are mistaken.

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You know exactly what I’m talking about when I say long term balance, in comparison to Blizzard’s balancing approach. You just want to argue about it which I have zero interest in doing with you tbh. If you don’t understand the point, you don’t understand. Fair enough.

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You don’t explain the point. The core of Overwatch is the same it has been since its inception. The objectives are the same, most heroes are the same(and even the reworked ones play similarly to what they were before). The only thing changing is the meta which happens in every competitive multiplayer game. Ever. You cant argue that, I see why you wont too.

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rq is utter garbage and made me stop playing this game. Good news to you is, when more people follow and 80% of the playerbase quit, queue times will be great again.

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I’m not arguing that it doesn’t happen in other games, you’re not reading properly before responding. I’m arguing that it happens way too much in Overwatch and unnecessarily a lot of the times. Sometimes they make illogical hero changes and then change them back weeks or months later when everybody knows the numbers don’t make sense to begin with. Brigitte release, Hanzo rework, etc, are just some examples.

I’m hoping role q will help stabilize things a little and reduce the need for endless hero buffs and nerfs but knowing Blizzard, I doubt it.

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I suggest you pull out a Dota 2 balance patch to see what we are talking about there. Tons and tons of buffs, nerfs, changes, additions. And as it stands Dota 2 is one if not the most profitable multiplayer online games in the world. Change is not bad, it brings life and enjoyment to the game. If the changes are bad this is not because change is strictly a bad thing.

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You think the people who decide to play Overwatch randomly select a role based on the number of heroes in that role? Why would that happen?

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they don’t do it randomly, its a deliberate willful decision.

20

Good riddance to salty garbage then, and no 80% of the playerbase won’t quit