Overwatch players report issues with Priority Queue matchmaking

Overwatch’s Role Queue system received a major update with the addition of Priority Queue, making it so that players won’t have to wait as long to find a new match in the event a game is canceled – but the feature may have some issues.

When players queue up as DPS, they can find themselves waiting upwards of 10 minutes to find a match. However, if a player leaves the match early, it gets canceled, forcing them to queue up and wait again.

Priority Queue kicks in when players from a canceled match queue up again with the supposed benefit of finding a game faster. Now, players are saying those games are incredibly unbalanced.

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In a post on the Competitive Overwatch subreddit, user ‘Azaryiah’ explained they found themselves up against a six-stack after using the Priority Queue system while solo queuing.

“Me and my teammates (all random, no duos or trios, no Stack) we were put against 6-stack, I found that odd but later today it happened again, and SR rating of the stack was way higher, even a low-master was with it,” the Diamond tank player said.

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“Was the solo/duo protection thrown out? It’s been ages since I’ve been put against with 6-player full stack,” they wondered.

Stacks of players together can be very difficult for solo queuers to win against, because groups are likely to have strong coordination.

Others have had similar issues with Priority Queue leading to bad experiences.

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“In general I find priority queue games to actually be more lopsided than regular games. It might be confirmation bias but my priority queue games have only been stomps,” tmtm123 wrote.

Another user noted the issue could be with Priority Queue itself, and how the matchmaker has to take liberties to get people to find a match sooner.

“In order for priority queue to actually reduce your queue time, the matchmaker needs to be less stringent with some of the factors it uses to find a match,” rumourmaker18 suggested.

So far Blizzard has yet to comment on the issues, but hopefully, we’ll get some information on Priority Queue soon – and if there will be changes made to the algorithm.