by Jason Parker (Ragachak)
Editor’s Note: The full article can be found at this link.
How many times can you think of, whether it’s in League, Smite, Paladins or Overwatch, has someone decided that just because your team needs a healer, that they shouldn’t have to do it, because they’re the best Zed/Freya/Maeve/Genji in Bronze 2? It’s probably a lot unless you always hyper carry your teams to victory. It happens, they feed, they blame someone else, and the cycle begins anew. In Overwatch, people could just pick whatever they wanted in any mode, and you have no leverage to convince someone to swap if they don’t want to. I mean, the chances are high that you’ll lose without a healer, but it’s not a 0%. Victory is never 100% assured, after all. So Overwatch announced that Role Queue is coming to the game, and it’s probably one of the best things to be added to the hero shooter. Now, I do think ultimately it kills a lot of “unconventional” comps, but there will still no doubt be creative, fun team comps available in the game. I do wonder if there were other answers that could have worked (hero bans, et cetera), but I still like this choice.
There are so many people that play team-based games that simply do not understand what it means to be a team player, creating an unfortunate, unpleasant experience. That is the major reason that I have passed on Ranked Mode in practically every game I play (except MTG Arena, but that’s not the point). However, Overwatch is doing something different compared to League of Legends and Smite – You just queue for the role you want, and that’s it! There’s no “Oh, you wanted to queue for Jungler/Mid-Lane, but you’re going to be Support”. Instead, there are three queues – Damage, Tank and Support, each with their own queue time, based on how many people are queueing for the roles. I imagine that Support is going to have the best queue times, with Damage having the worst times. You will have to play through five placements for at least one role, but you can go through all three roles (for fifteen placements total).
This is going to affect all game modes (though probably not all Arcade Modes, as some matches simply would not make sense). On a personal note, I don’t think it should affect Quick Play, but since QuickPlay is just Ranked without Point Gain/Loss, I understand it. Now, there has been a great deal of backlash and hurt feelings about this, but I don’t really understand why. If you want to just queue for damage now, you can do it without worrying about having four to five other damage in your games! It just means that Overwatch is enforcing Two Damage/Two Tanks/Two Supports in all matches (including the Overwatch League!), and is that really so bad? Sure, the Three Tank/Two Support comp is fun, and everyone loves to go five damage/one support, (maybe not that one. . .). But this will make the game more competitive altogether, with teams not being hampered by one or two jerks holding things up for everyone. From what I’ve read, there will also be a Classic QP in Arcade Mode where people can just do whatever.
So, personally, I love and welcome this change. It’s even letting dps one-tricks continue to play just dps. There’s nothing stopping you now! You might just have to wait a little longer to join a match, but that’s not really the worst thing in the world. As someone who played Support in Overwatch, it doesn’t bother me one bit. I also read that there will be potential rewards for players that play the most desired/needed roles for matches. Is this going to “ruin creativity” in Overwatch? I don’t think so. You know what your opponent will have in terms of roles, but you don’t know what they’re going to pick and what strategies they’re going to employ. All this means is that players will be able to queue for what they want, and not have to stress about people ruining their games because they absolutely refuse to play anything but Junkrat. It won’t fix the problem of people trolling/leaving matches, but perhaps that’s next on the docket. A lot of “wacky” comps are going to go away, but that’s not the worst thing to happen to the game. This change isn’t to combat any particular team comp, but to make the overall game experience better for the vast majority of players. At the end of the day, players can play whatever role they want, provided they’re willing to potentially wait a little longer to do so. It’s a great move for Overwatch, and exactly what it needed.
