Overwatch matchmaking has always been a bit of hit-or-miss for some players. A lot of people find pickup teams to be a little disorganized as players often feud over which roles to take in a match, often leaving teams unbalanced or disorganized, and thus at a disadvantage. With players often wanting to play a specific role, and sometimes getting caught out or on tilt if they don’t get their preferred slot, Blizzard is finally revealing a way to combat that too.
Say hello to the Role Queue, a tweak to current matchmaking systems that will allow players to select what roles they would like to play in some game modes, and the server will automatically balance the teams according to role selections and relevant skill indicators. Every team will be made up of two of each role – Support, Damage and Tank. This will be in effect in Competitive Play and Quick Play.
The goal with the Role Queue is to improve match quality and give players more control over their play experience. At least that’s what Blizzard says, and it makes sense. MMOs have long made use of this kind of system to ensure player parties in dungeons and raids have a balanced mix of DPS, tanks, support and healers. The same should obviously be true for a shooter like Overwatch to help keep the game fair.
Another element that’s getting tweaked with this new update is the aforementioned skill levels. Players in Quick Play modes will now have skill ratings for each of the assignable roles, allowing the system to create balanced teams to a further degree of granularity. It will also give gamers a target to aim for while improving their skill within the shooter.
If you want to learn more about the new system, check out the developer update video down below with all of the details. Right now the feature is only live on the PC test servers, allowing players to fool around and get used to it, but Blizzard does indeed plan to roll the feature to the console versions of Overwatch on PS4 and Xbox One sometime soon.
