A major flaw has been discovered with Overwatch’s new Priority Pass system that may even be making queue times worse for some players.
The Priority Pass feature was implemented along with the Winter Wonderland 2020 update and was designed to make queue times a lot shorter for DPS players. By queueing as the “flex” role, players would find themselves in games as either tank or support and earn Priority Passes.
The passes themselves can then be used to speed up their search for the heavily requested DPS category. While players would get passes just for queuing as “flex,” winning the match would earn players even more.
Now, with the system in place for a while, it would seem like there are too many passes in use.
When everyone and their moms have a priority pass and queue up as dps. pic.twitter.com/Wa5mja5KcO
— Arrge (@ArrgeOW) December 18, 2020
Finnish Overwatch player Arrge tweeted a photo of his own estimated DPS queue times as being over twenty minutes long. “When everyone and their moms have a priority pass and queue up as dps,” he joked.
Elsewhere, this time on Reddit, users have noted they can’t even use their Priority Pass in Quick Play.
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“When everyone gets priority pass no one does,” one user remarked.
The doom and gloom aren’t just limited to queue times either. In another thread, users have reported that the flex role is resulting in players not familiar with the tank or support role ruining matches.
“Anyone else experience a lot of people who are not on their respective roles because of flex queue?” asked jsanc356 in the Competitive Overwatch section. “I’m all for shorter queue times and all but the overall quality of my matches have gone down tremendously.”
A tank main even responded to the thread, remarking how when they queue as “flex” they keep getting games as support.
It’s unclear what exactly is going on with the Priority Pass system, but Blizzard has stated they would be willing to tweak it as time goes on until it’s in the right spot. As it stands, however, while the idea is good, it seems some work needs to be done to perfect the concept.