So I know from recent interviews that Jeff is a fan of 2-2-2, role queue, and generally trying to fix the problems seen in comp. Lemme be clear, I’m not saying comp is broken, it’s actually very balanced but I have three suggestions for how to get round the common issues seen without restricting the freedom of choice
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a tutorial. Hear me out, when the game came out I don’t think even the Devs realised how tactical and specific this game would be - so it would be fitting to have an actual tutorial on how to play competitive games and some general etiquette rather than having the majority of the player base playing it like call of duty (talking more console here, PC users have chat functions so they usually learn via other players, but barely anyone uses voice chat on PS4 imo)
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role preference. Not role queue, preference. Basically the problem with comp is that a diamond dps player might have to play a healer or tank but be terrible and potentially lose the game - you can’t account for when someones going to play a different role and at what level so unless we get three separate SR ratings - this might be the answer. With role preference, the user would select a primary, secondary and tertiary role that they want to play. This is kinda hard to explain, but the matchmaker would find games based on a 2-2-2 composition for each player’s primary role. Two people who chose primary tank, two who chose primary dps and same for support. Additionally, it would pair the players based on their secondary roles, so of two primary tanks, one would be secondary dps and one would be secondary support. The roles would appear at hero select like they do when enforced by lfg, but transparent to indicate it’s not actually enforced; this will give an indication to each player what they are expected to play, in the event they aren’t matched to their primary choice.
It could also be possible to place players in their tertiary slot if they are significantly higher MMR than their group rating, and try to force balance that way as well, but this is just me theory crafting. -
daily quests… I know, you don’t want to give even more loot boxes away per week, BUT it would be very possible to introduce a new ingame currency as credits towards loot boxes, and have quests to play support and tank characters, to do X amount of healing in a round or eliminate X players with an ult… It’s in HOTS, and I think it’d benefit the game to have more reasons to play tank/support other than ‘the team needs it’.
I know these ideas are unrefined but I’d love to hear some feedback and I really do hope one of the Devs considers at least some of this! Again, comp isn’t dead or broken, but it’s been the same for years now and it’s kinda wearing thin having the same problems every other game, regardless of elo.