While I understand why you want this, queue times would be even more terrible which such a system. Especially if they also match based on MMR.

I am usually forced to play open queue in Overwatch because in role queue my queue times are at least 12 min. And that game has 80k concurrent players and crossplay

And how would you fix fake roles?

Because people can say they are DPS and only slot healing skills, sets etc. There is no technology currently in the game to check this.

The only way to actually fix all this and make it more balanced 'hero shooter style' is making hero templates like Vengeance.

Ironically: that would be the most fair and balanced way to play a mode like battlegrounds: templates + MMR + role queue.

Radiate77 wrote: »

Ask yourself, how many people false-queue as a DPS while playing Healer or Tank in random dungeons? I don’t think I have ever seen this.

That's a different case, there isn't a win involved to another team in PvE trials and dungeons.

Playing zippy healbot has won me many many BG matches. I am one of those people who end up with 0 kills, 1 death, some assists and have +10k medals playing objectives and healbotting with one or two other players that also focus on the objective. Just like in Battlefield, Overwatch, Rivals, Call Of Duty, ... I play the objective first. It's nice to win and we just use the tools available to do it.

No thanks

Role-based matchmaking only works when the game has role identity. ESO doesn't.

Role queue isn't just a matchmaking feature, it's a whole ecosystem feature. Other games can use it because they build roles into their entire framework. They have clearly defined roles, role-specific kits, players who generally stay in those roles, and (most crucially) enough population to absorb the increased queue fragmentation. We don't.

Almost sounds like you might want a Vengeance-esque Battleground system

Solantris wrote: »

Role-based matchmaking only works when the game has role identity. ESO doesn't.

Role queue isn't just a matchmaking feature, it's a whole ecosystem feature. Other games can use it because they build roles into their entire framework. They have clearly defined roles, role-specific kits, players who generally stay in those roles, and (most crucially) enough population to absorb the increased queue fragmentation. We don't.

Yet New World managed to pull it off flawlessly, with Arenas as one of their most popular systems.

When you create an experience that people can enjoy, naturally, more people will take part in it…

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Solantris wrote: »

Role-based matchmaking only works when the game has role identity. ESO doesn't.

Role queue isn't just a matchmaking feature, it's a whole ecosystem feature. Other games can use it because they build roles into their entire framework. They have clearly defined roles, role-specific kits, players who generally stay in those roles, and (most crucially) enough population to absorb the increased queue fragmentation. We don't.

…A good start would be to allow the playerbase to choose what mode they want to play (aka 90% want to play deathmatch) and not separating the playerbase too much. That way ZOS will hopefully realize that their objective modes are poorly designed and doesn´t promote proper/decent PvP (avoiding the other teams and not fighting is not "tactics" or "proper PvP".

Or, bear with me. What if match variants were weighted based on the type of group you’re put into based on said role-queue.

Let’s say you end up in a 4 DPS vs 4 DPS match… Deathmatch would be more heavily weighted, whereas teams with support roles could be weighted towards Objective flag games.

Role queue cannot work when game doesn't internally define what a role is, and the queue fragmentation it would cause would balloon queue times because we don't have the population to sustain it.

Games that use role queue generally have systems to ensure roles represent the active playstyle. In ESO, we have a simple toggle where the player says they are playing something, but can still do basically any role with any weapon, on any class. This means role information fed into the mmr system would be useless at best and manipulatable at worst, since player's are then incentivized to just choose whichever role would pop fastest (exactly what happens in PVE, btw)

For the record, I don't disagree with this concept. I'm not arguing against role constraints in principle, but I am trying to point out that that the current ESO architecture does not support them. I deeply believe constraints are needed to make mmr in ESO mean anything at all. However, it is not something that can just be plugged in and fix all our problems, and is honestly more likely to make some of them worse.

Our existing role select system is entirely optional and completely disconnected from the active playstyle. What's more, we have a much wider variety of playstyles due that freedom. Haki himself famously plays a hybrid sorc that both heals and does damage, dependent on what's going on. How should he queue?

Unsure New World is the best example given its spectacular failure and imminent shut down, but sure, let's run with it.

• From a systems perspective, does it constrain playstyles? (Are playstyles tied to a specific weapon, maybe?)
• Can a system recognize the difference between a DPS and a healer? How?
• Can a DPS just say they are playing healer and manipulate the queues?

I'll reiterate, the BG population couldn't withstand the fragmentation that would result from this. Everybody talks about seeing the same people in their queues, but never seem to put 2 and 2 together. The ESO PVP population is tiny, and the BG population is a fragment again of that.

I did bear with you, but the idea of being corralled toward objective games modes on my support coded characters is... I'll just call it unappealing. Enjoying support ≠ being an objective player?

Ok then @Solantris , sounds like you've given this quite some thought

How else can we prevent multiple healers on one team in 4v4?

I've been in favor of the OP's idea for years, but I'll take your word for it.

Solantris wrote: »

Unsure New World is the best example given its spectacular failure and imminent shut down, but sure, let's run with it.

• From a systems perspective, does it constrain playstyles? (Are playstyles tied to a specific weapon, maybe?)
• Can a system recognize the difference between a DPS and a healer? How?
• Can a DPS just say they are playing healer and manipulate the queues?

“This is not some crazy puzzle.

Other games have proven locked loadouts can work when queueing into activities, and role-requirements also work, like a max magicka and magicka recovery threshold, or for a bruiser role being a max health and resistance threshold.” - Me, 5th post

Their arenas were perfect.

They solved matchmade PvP in a gear-based fantasy MMO, by doing exactly what I quoted, they tagged a Wisdom (magicka) minimum requirement on queueing as a healer, and required a Life Staff.

In New World, there were no class abilities so you literally could not be a healer without a Life Staff, that said, ESO wouldn’t need to restrict based on weapons. Max Magicka and Magicka Recovery are more than enough.

Solantris wrote: »

I'll reiterate, the BG population couldn't withstand the fragmentation that would result from this. Everybody talks about seeing the same people in their queues, but never seem to put 2 and 2 together. The ESO PVP population is tiny, and the BG population is a fragment again of that.

You say that the BG population couldn’t stand fragmentation, but with a role-queue, how do you quantify the impact that would have to our queue timer? We’ve already cleared up that a support role would not be necessary to fill a match, so the bottleneck is gone in that regard.

Solantris wrote: »

I did bear with you, but the idea of being corralled toward objective games modes on my support coded characters is... I'll just call it unappealing. Enjoying support ≠ being an objective player?

What happens in a Deathmatch when both teams have a phenomenal healer and the variant doesn’t encourage teams to spread out? You end up with unkillable teams on both sides.

Deathmatch was not designed around unkillable players, and a successful matchmaking system filters them out.

For the record I'm not against OPs idea at all, I actually do think its the solution to this problem. Im just saying it can't exist with our current ecosystem. Role selection needs some underlying connection to playstyle in order to be effective in matchmaking, and we just need more players

For example, WOW tightly controls playstyles and thus roles by constrainimg playstyles to specialisations, so the available kit is already mapped and locked down before the player even queues. Mobas do the same thing: characters associated with certain roles generally have a kit optimised for that role. New world did have elements of this with weapon choice but in all of them, a matchmaking system has signals it can reliably use to tell what role someone is probably bringing in, by looking at what they are playing.

We just... don't have that. Our ecosystem is a weird case and our role select is meaningless.

If I was designing for this?

Problem: Role select needs to matter, and it currently doesn't. Game is too mature to redesign core combat to reflect role choice.

Solution: make optional role select matter

Eso has an entirely different design philosophy around player freedom, so constraints the other games use cant be added in without riots. I'd say that that leaves incentives for correct role assignment as the best solution.

I'd add unique buffs to role select that directly support the indicated playstyle.

Examples could be like...

DDs: +x% damage done
Supports: +x% healing & shielding done
Tanks: +x% damage taken reduction PLUS -x% healing & damage done reduction

(Dont quote me on these, its just more the idea that role selection should have gameplay consequences that naturally reinforce the role. They'd have to be balanced for, ofc)

This wouldn't do a thing for fake roles in normals, but in pvp they'd ideally be significant enough buffs for a system to reasonably assume the majority of players are playing what they say they are. I'm certainly not an mmo combat designer, but I am a game designer, and that's how I'd tackle it.

I don't really have insight on how to fix the queue fragmentation tbh. That problem has one solution, and it's get more players into pvp. That's above my pay grade

Me: the game needs subsystems to support role select!
This guy: well, New World defined roles by using subsystems! Checkmate!

We're definitely talking past each other my guy.

For impact on queues see: this entire thread, every game with role based matchmaking, or even just ask haki. (I believe his original queue shenanigans were caused by getting too much medal score from healing)

It seems the real issue here is that you just personally don't like having good supports in your games. Regrettably, you dont actually get to just banish what you dont like to queue hell.

Having said that, I can wholeheartedly agree that healing/support as a whole needs an entire overhaul. Its just far easier to achieve impact as a support, not to mention healing itself is wildly imbalanced both mechanically and mathematically. BUT, the solution to that is good design and balance, not just pushing support players to objective modes so you dont have to deal with them

I would be utterly fascinated to see how you determine what a support is through max magic and recoveries though. Would it be class based, since every class has different recovery kits? How would sorc class masteries play in? How would you factor in return over recovery?

Just in general, at what magicka threshold does one suddenly become a support?

Oy vey

I’ve began quitting lobbies and swapping characters to queue again as soon it becomes apparent that I’m fighting a team with a healer, while our team has no healer.

If an effort won’t be made to role-queue, I won’t waste my effort on a losing match.