In Season 23 Blizzard decided to add back up again the old competitive Open queue, Competitive Open Queue was actually the original Overwatch queue format. Open Queue allows players to select any hero, regardless of role. Competitive Role Queue replaced the Competitive Open Queue as the official developer supported mode in 2019 after the Overwatch developers failed repeatedly to nerf the infamous three tank/three support composition.
With the two queues now up there are a lot of players getting back to Open queue and giving up on Role queue for many different factors, the biggest one is the long waiting queues they have to face on Role queue which can be from 10m to 1h, players can’t flex into a role that a team member is performing poorly or the option to change role or hero during the game is also a major factor for anyone who wants to play open queue now, Role queue is still the primary competitive mode for Overwatch. The two differences between Open Queue and normal competitive play is that the former has no role restrictions or role queues.
Overwatch players are free to use heroes in any combination provided ,they don’t choose the same hero twice, both queues also have a separated rank, so if you are Diamond or Master in Role queue it doesn’t mean you will be also in Open queue and you will have to play placements on both queues to get your rank. Overwatch team said that the existence of both competitive options will decrease long queue times in both since open queue attracts more damage players than tanks or supports which make them play more open queue than role queue and it helps balancing out the roles.
As a result, adding a new open competitive queue made the process of finding a team faster in both Open and Role queues. But what is more important is that now all kinds of players can enjoy playing Overwatch and players which were not happy about playing a locked role will now be able to play another mode where they can still play competitively without being forced to play a specific role or hero the full game.
Overwatch developers are doing their best to keep all players happy and enjoying playing the game by adding a lot of different options you can choose in the game , also with the new Overwatch 2 coming out it’s been confirmed that the PVE and PVP will be kept separate, with the PVP remaining on Overwatch and Overwatch 2’s primal focus being the PVE. It’s really going to revive and divide the community in a good way.
So if you got level 25 and want to play some competitive ranked games, which queue should you choose? Role queue or Open queue?
The choice it completely depends on your preferences, Role Queue allows you to select what role you want to play before you search for a game. Then, when you find a match, you will be paired with players who also play their own prefered roles, you won’t be able to switch role during the game while in Open queue you can team up using different compositions, roles and heroes during all the game. From different feedbacks and posts from players on forums online we can see that players are complaining that Open queue is not being taken as serious as Role queue and players don’t really try hard in this option, but try both queues and choose the one that suits you the most or maybe play both!
Good luck, have fun!
