We need to do something about role lock

Simply put, for every one player who says “i only find great games” there are 3 more that are in the opposite situation.
We need a REAL fix for this game, not something as meaningless as BRIBING players to use a role they don’t even like to begin with.
First off, why are people mad?
Those who like role lock don’t want goats or 5 dps in their teams (i don’t want them either).
Those who DON’T like role lock either are dps players who have insanely high queue times or those who miss the old flexibility this game had and the ability to flex (i’m in this group).

So, while i know that flexing is good and really fun i also realize that level of freedom leaves games open to 5dps and hanzo mains.
So, how do we fix this?
Well, we can’t, not by just restricting the roles or nerfing/buffing champs. Blizzard started altering the core mechanics so it’s too late to back out now, we should alter them even more.
I said this in another post and another player made a similar post himself, we need more classes.
Not only that, we also need for those classes to still benefit from the 2-2-2 and the dps restriction so, how should Blizard do it?

Hybrid classes.

The way this would work would be that, if you queue as a tank, you can pick either a “true tank” or a “hybrid tank”, same for dps and support.
Simply put, the only “true tanks” should be the ones with BIG shields so Winston, Orisa, Sigma and Rein (no zarya and certainly no hammond), the “true DPS” should be guys like reaper, genji, snipers, tracer and soldier and the “true healer” should be mercy, lucio and zenyatta.
after that restriction the rest of the heroes should be divided (and most importantly appropriately REBALANCED) to fit in the other 2 categories:
“bruiser” (tank/dps hybrid), “defense” (dps/support hybrid) and “vanguard” (tank/support hybrid) and should fall in like this

-Bruiser: huge hp pool, personal or single shield, more damage than a tank but not as much as a true dps.
Roadhog, Zarya, Dva and Hammond would be the tanks to be refitted for this and Mei (less damage, more tankiness), Bastion and Phara would be the dps to be refitted in this category.

-Defense: decent damage, one or more utility/CC, less damage than dps and (if present) healing with restrictions.
Moira, Ana and Baptiste would be the supports refitted for this class while Torbjorn (with his armor packs back and weaker turret), Symmetra, Junkrat (with more traps) and Sombra would be the DPS refitted for this.

-Vanguard: less defenses than a true tank, either lower or restricted healing
For now this category only has Brigitte from the healers as there are no tanks/healers in the game yet (other big problem, DPS are way too much compared to tank/support) you could stretch it and make torbjorn a vanguard but that’s another can of worms.

Basically this change would make so those who main Mei, Torb, Symm and Junk would have another role to pick to reduce queue times and people who already pick tank/support would have more variety and could “flex” if they feel they need to do so.

Again, i KNOW this can’t be done immediately by just shifting heroes into the new categories but i think if this was implemented it would appease most of the divided community (there would still people complaining but we could work something out from there)

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The fix is a revert, and even that won’t get back all the players that have left. Role lock just can’t work, and it made no sense to implement.

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While I agree there’s no magic quick fix, this is actually a really interesting idea. I’m thinking maybe the combination of attack & defense DPS heroes wasn’t such a good idea now :thinking:

From a technical point, does anyone know why it’s taking so long for DPS queues? I mean, let’s say there’s 10 times as many people waiting to play DPS role than tank and support; in theory shouldn’t those slots gets filled up much faster than tank/support that have significantly less people queuing for them?

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They only implemented the 2-2-2 system cause they are too braindead to balance or fix the brigitte/goats meta

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it’s the other way around, fret: imagine 10 tanks, 10 healers and 20 DPS queuing. Theres’s 5 full teams of 2:2:2 and 10 DPS left over. They have to wait for the next batch of tanks ‘n’ healers.

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it’s what bloke said, there are literally not enough tank/support players for all the dps :frowning: and even those who liked playing tank/Support (like me) are feeling powerless because of the current meta that uses double barrier, requring a moira and a junkrat in every game, problem is not many players pick them :frowning:

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But that would mean the initial 10 DPS players get in to games fast, just like supports and tanks, where are those mysterious DPS queues that find games fast? They all seem to take forever :thinking:

yes, they get in game fast as soon as 2 tanks and 2 support are found, either by them finishing the game they were in or queueing up from scratch.
theoretically there is a way to “fix” the wait time but it’s not something any community likes: filling mechanics.
Basically, if you are in queue for too long, you get assigned to the first available spot, regardless of the role, meaning you could queue up for dps and end up as tank for one of those 10 dps that are still waiting.
Of course this would make leavers go into overdrive and would force Blizzard to harshen the penalties for leaving, punishing those who just had a random disconnection or a server error in the process.

If you talking about the Comp timings for DPS, they already widened the range where people can be matched with, many posts confirms this. They did that as well to “speed up” the already slow DPS queue. No help tho, I have played lot of ranks from silver to plat and dps queue times are still on average between 8-18 mins.
For the QP why is it slow as well because there is also a range there it tries to find players from, it tries to group you with similar level players eg when you create a brand new acc thats the worst because it will match you with another noobies under lvl100. When you hit silver frame you will notice that the QP players around you are mostly from that bracket or at least 1-2 more.

The wait is especially annoying when I group with friends, alone I don’t care alt+tab and read something but they cannot wait, over 2 mins they start losing their patience looking at the Searching… box and we fall back to QP classic.

Cutting the roster into smaller groups won’t help. Even if we only include Orisa and Reinhardt as “main tanks” they’re not in any way the same. Just because someone can play one doesn’t mean they can play the other. This is worst for DPS. If anything we should just have hero-based SR, and a FULL RESET.

It’d also help if SR were based on your individual performance with that hero, compared with other players, instead of win/loss ratio.

does anyone know why it’s taking so long for DPS queues?

Because there are about 3 times as many DPS as tanks or healers COMBINED.

shouldn’t those slots gets filled up much faster than tank/support that have significantly less people queuing for them?

Think about it like this: each tank only needs 2 dps, very easy. each dps needs 2 tanks, which are rare.

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it wouldn’t be simply dividing the heroes, it would make the same heroes available from multiple roles, meaning someone who wants to play Mei (which i put in the tank/dps hybrid) could pick tank instead of pure DPS and get to play the hero they want faster, reducing the queue times

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Ok that makes sense. So there’s at least 3x as many DPS players sitting around waiting for the rare tank mains like moi to come and fill up the team, in which case Mir’s idea would for sure help reduce wait times because there won’t be this one massive group of 20 or so DPS heroes lumped together under one DPS umbrella. It’s definitely worth exploring I think.

How do you think expanding the classes would fit in to 2/2/2 framework? Right now it’s a 3 classes, 2 of each on both teams. But if there’s say, 6 classes, how would that work? I think giving players the freedom to pick between all 6 classes would work well. Like give players the option to go double shield main tanks, or one main one bruiser, like Rein Zarya. On another level I think this might even help class heroes a little better so their actual roles and characteristics can be allocated better and players understand what they’re best for.

Again the main benefit I see in this is the huge DPS player pool being split up in to 3 new classes, that’s the focus here I’m assuming.

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are you dumb? this was the MOST requested feature EVER for overwatch and then they say “Okay, we hear you.”. and you then call them braindead? if you don’t like this, Don’t play. this is the best change that has ever happend to overwatch by a mile. Of course there are down sides like long queue times for dps. but that is all part of it. if you want a better experience in Overwatch you have to sacrifice something.

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But that’s another problem. Mei isn’t really a true tank, and there aren’t even enough Mei players to make a difference. Plus that’s just triple dps, which is what the role lock supporters are against.

There’s also an issue for new players, your system is kinda complex. And it needs to be, but I’m not sure whether Blizzard would go for something like that.

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2-2-2 was implemented for OWL, not for the casual players. The best DPS players in the world were forced to play Zarya or Brigitte, the viewers didn’t like that and Blizzard had no clue how to change it.

Tank-Dps-Supports ( 2-2-2) groups are fine as they are as you go into a game knowing what you want to play And keeps the game balanced ( not the heroes though ofc ) I really don’t think mixing the pool/categories of heroes will help. Queue times may be long but I wouldn’t change anything in-game there has to be another way :confused:

Well, let’s make an example, you go with 2-2-2, and you are a tank. As a tank, based on the distinction i made, you can pick all true tanks (orisa, winston, rein, sigma) plus all bruisers (zarya, hammond, roadhog, dva) and this is the exact same as now. in addition to that you would be able to pick phara, mei and bastion from the dps and brigitte from the healers.
this way, in the instance you need a bit more healing, you can pick brig to help your healer. if you need more zoning you pick mei and if you need to break a barrier in a choke you cna pick phara.
As you may have noticed, i purposedly split-up phara and junkrat, putting them in tank/dps (phara) and support/dps (junkrat), the reason being this way everyone has access to a barrier breaker if they need one, reducing the “PICK A JUNKRAT FFS!” from support and tank players in chat (i’m guilty of that too sadly).
With these alterations you aren’t impacting 2-2-2 that much because those who can still pick the true dps that were the main cause of the 5 dps meta, are precisely the 2 players that ACTUALLY picked DPS in their queue, so you will never have more than 2 from this group:
ashe, hanzo, widow, soldier, reaper, mccree, genji, tracer.
those guys, however, are allowed to pick any of the dps hybrid classes which wouldn’t impact the game negatively that much.

of course, those put in the hybrid classes would need serious rebalance, Mei for example, would become a bruiser, not a tank. you can’t just shove her in there and call it a day, you need to increase her HP, lower her dps and maybe tweak her ice wall, if you think about it, Mei isn’t that different from roadhog as both have decent damage, a self heal and CC (roadhog has a chain, mei has the freeze).

We have to keep in mind that this is a class based game so each character needs to have something for a specific situation, meaning they should also have a map or a situation where they are a TERRIBLE choice. If players started to think more about the strategies behind this game, i can’t say we woulnd’t have had goats but surely we wouldn’t have had 5 dps meta.