Something seriously needed in Overwatch
One thing seriously missing from this game is a public game lobby system. It seems to be the consensus that it's very hard to get serious play in quickmatch, yet outside of competitive we're left with no option outside of custom matches.
Because , no, somehow getting 11 other people somehow for skirmishes is not viable for the vast majority of the playerbase and so isn't a valid alternative.
It's really weird that this isn't even talked about by the devs ( i might have missed it somehow but i doubt it, someone correct me here otherwise) and specially how this isn't a major discussion point in the community.
Every taste could be catered to so long as people were interested in it, you could have neverending skirmishes just for fun, serious practice matches on a specific map, etc.
It really can't be that hard to implement, the custom game system is already there and making a lobby can't be that hard when games more than a decade ago already had it (even warcraft 3 had a system for this..).
So yeah, TL;DR Why the hell isn't a public game lobby system in the works/being actively discussed.
Posted Sep 1, 2016, 11:54 AM UTC
I'm not certain how a public lobby system would be different that quick play. If it's just 12 strangers playing Overwatch, what would prevent people from doing all the dumb stuff they are doing now in quick play?
Well you could make matches for specific maps only. Options to restrict entry could be made (level above x or SR above x on in range x to y). You could setup any mode you would want , which you can't do in quickplay atm, there's no skirmish in quickplay for example.
To me the most important factors is that i can't practice a given map and instead my option are to go QP/competitive and get random ones or get 11 people who want to do the same without any good method to do so which the public lobby would accomplish. Same goes for serious practice matches since atm you either go competitive or you go into quickplay where people just say "who cares it's just quickplay" when you try to say anything helpful.
Good points. I think giving players more control over how they play the game is a good thing as long as the player base supports it and queue times never get too terrible as a result of segmenting the player base.
I dont think that would be an issue for the foreseeable future, game is massively popular (something like 15 million buys last time i checked) so it can easily sustain various options for play.
The 15 million number is split across 3 platforms, and there are (I believe) 5 regions on PC, where I play, so it's not quite a queue of 15 million. The game has done a ton of sales, for sure.
Personally, I find the queue times a little long already. I play on the US East Coast usually like 5pm-11pm, and I still get queue times over a minute fairly regularly. It's not terrible, but it's not a total non-issue, either.