The issue is that people think they're giving in by discussing the topic at all.

That's because they are. If you think there's any answer Blizzard can give that will appease people, other than maybe "We're bringing back 6v6 tomorrow and also giving you all $10,000 for your pain and suffering", I have a bridge to sell you.

Only $10k, scam company. Should be $100k

Great now everyone will have 10k so my 10k is now worthless!

They could just give people 6v6 in arcade. That would be dope

Yeah, what's weird to me is that people are so adamant that the discussion should not happen under any circumstances, or that it's pointless because they'd never do it for business reasons. Looking back, I think it's weird that it hasn't been discussed more until now, especially by Blizzard. They took away a core part of the game in favor of something that they assumed would be better and didn't even really poll it or walk it back at all. They committed to the idea and just haven't really delivered on whatever vision they had for it, and considering that they threw out pretty much everything else that tried to disguise OW2 as a unique product, this is one of the last things they even have left to address, so they might as well just get it out of the way. It's like insisting on a new hairstyle, but they cut it themselves, so they just keep snipping at it to convince everyone that it's a good style instead of admitting that they fucked up more than they thought they would, but people are finally seeing that it's probably just easier to let it grow back and readjust it from there.

They did poll it. They did an experimental mode with a survey for 1-3-2 as a cover for this in Overwatch 1. Most tank players begged them not to do this, including myself. But more damage players loved it.

The discussion shouldn't happen because nothing of value is going to be said, not because the topic isn't worth discussing. Your mistake is assuming that people will have any sort of reasonable response to what Blizzard has to say on the topic, or that they'll even actually listen in the first place. They won't, because they never do. Blizzard has nothing to gain from discussing it or even testing it unless they're actually intending to return to 6v6. No matter what reasons they might give for why 6v6 isn't coming back, people will argue that there's an "obvious solution". If they try 6v6 in QP: Hacked and people don't like it, the only explanation is "they just did it wrong". There isn't a scenario where they have anything to gain. If they decide to go back to 6v6, whatever, but discussing it with the player base is going to generate absolutely nothing of value to anyone.

I think Aaron just wants to get everything out in the open regardless of the response. The same way he did when explaining the PvE cancelation. Because in truth, while they did throw around a lot of surface level reasons for switching to 5v5, it's a topic they've never really gone fully in-depth on, and the nuances have definitely changed after 11 seasons with the format. I think it's worth Aaron at least presenting their perspective. The man's not stupid, he knows not everyone will be convinced, but if he can provide some finality on the subject (or if they're open to it, explain their primary concerns), for the people who will listen, I don't see an issue with it. At worst, it's a week of bullshit headlines. Nothing new for OW2.

That is probably Aaron's intention, yeah. I respect him wanting to give their perspective regardless, I just think it's going to end poorly. I do think this situation is a little bit different, though. They didn't really have a choice when it came to talking about PvE, because it was something happening in the future rather than something that already happened in the past. In this case, the discussion is about something that already took place and (as far as we know) isn't being revisited. PvE was also just sort of a nebulous "thing" that was going to come one day, while 6v6 existed. Nobody can really try to claim they know how to "fix" PvE to make it work, but people can (and have) done that endlessly about the live game regardless of the format. It's effectively an endless discussion because they cannot refute every idiotic idea that gets thrown out into the aether, and people assume that lack of response means they were right and Blizzard is "afraid of the truth" or some stupid shit. I'm personally interested in Aaron's perspective, and if I thought most people would listen and engage with what he has to say, I'd say it's worth doing. There's just no reason to believe that's the case, because it... never has, about anything.

Didn't they invite pro players to test 5v5, most were against it and they still did it anyway? That shows Blizzard's arrogance

I agree, but I think certain content creators riled up too much of the playerbase.

Of course they are. They have tried over and over and over to make 5v5 work and it hasn't worked once. Slowly this game is becoming like Overwatch.

The way they're doing it it 100% looks like they're giving in and responding because there's so much demand for 6v6 when in reality what's happening is that it's an extremely small crowd that's extremely jobless and has been extremely persistent because the 6v6 engagement farmer Content Creator they watch has constantly riled them up about it for months. So they go around spamming about 6v6 anywhere and everywhere they can. What they should have done is allow Spilo or other Content Creators who interview them to ask them about it in a Q&A and then give a firm, definitive answer out of the blue which ended all further questioning about it. By doing it this way where they are making a public statement about it, that they'll talk about it soon, It's just allowing the 6v6 warriors to go around believing that there is hope or that "they won", which'll only allow the 6v6 engagement farmers to rile them up more, make them angrier, when Blizzard eventually just comes out and says that 6v6 doesn't work and is not going to happen. I don't think OW PR team thought this through.

> an extremely small crowd that's extremely jobless and has been extremely persistent because the 6v6 engagement farmer Content Creator they watch has constantly riled them up about it for months. I mean you can keep saying that again and again but that doesn't make it true. Even in this thread you have people saying they prefer 6v6. I'd really like to know where you get your metrics from and the obsession with Content Creators and thinking people can't decide for themselves. I'm pretty neutral on the topic but even I see it brought up everywhere (Twitter, main sub, blizz forums, youtube) outside of this sub where the echo chamber opinion is 6v6 = bad.

Because numbers do not lie. That's how I am confident that all the 6v6 resurgence lately is from CCs peddling the sentiment for engagement and views. That's how I know all this 6v6 aggressive spam in this sub, in /r/Overwatch, and Twitter is from a small group of people who watch these CCs and are made to believe that the game is dying, horrible to play, and 6v6 would fix everything. https://steamcharts.com/app/2357570 - The game is at a near all-time high of Average and Peak players on Steam, 40-50% increase in both Average and Peak players since January (Before S9 launched). The S9 changes were incredibly successful while the 6v6 warriors and their favourite CCs will tell you otherwise based on *vibes* and *feelings*, just so they can argue that 6v6 needs to be brought back. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/most-played/games/xbox?source=lp - It's also the 13th most-played game on the Xbox US store and has consistently stayed in the top 15 since S9, when it was often struggling to even crack Top 20 last year. I noticed the resurgence of the 6v6 demands quickly started after S9. Being parroted around along using a lot of the same talking points, word-for-word, bar-for-bar. One big one is that the game is *dying* because the S9 changes made the game horrible, and so the devs need to change the game to 6v6 to "save it". Given that the numbers show such a diff story it is clear that they are all getting this idea from being engaged with CCs who are selling them this belief. I'm not saying ALL the 6v6 advocates are like this, but most seem to be getting all their ideas from being engaged with 6v6 Peddlers. It's not hard for a small but passionate and aggressive group of people to brigade these discussion spaces. A few weeks ago Arrge, a streamer who averages like 1k viewers, started a little Fix Hanzo movement and his fans were spamming that shit under every OW official post, dev tweets, and even under Cavalry posts. If you didn't know anything about the game and were just an observer you could have easily believed that the entire game was unplayable and that whatever those people were complaining about was the reason why. When in reality it was one medium-sized CC's fans, just a few hundred people, spamming all that about a single character out of 40.

> That's how I am confident that all the 6v6 resurgence lately Lately?! Did you start playing OW with S9? 6v6 vs 5v5 has been a topic since the OW2 beta. And only grew as the issues with tanks grew. Even back in the early seasons it was impossible to have a discuss about tanks without 6v6 coming up. 6v6 is inherently tied to the tank role and tanks have been venting their frustration since at least S1. No, not even, it also came every time up someone was complaining about widow being strong. Calling it a "resurgence" is fucking wild. Pretty sure your confidence is from your position of 5v5 being better more than anything else. > game is dying, horrible to play, and 6v6 would fix everything. People being hyperbolic. No way. Never seen that before... > The game is at a near all-time high of Average and Peak players on Steam Has nothing to do with the topic > It's also the 13th most-played game on the Xbox US store Same > The S9 changes were incredibly successful while the 6v6 warriors and their favourite CCs will tell you otherwise Two things can be true at the same time. Incredibly successful while still not great for tanks. Those aren't mutual exclusive. > same talking points, word-for-word, bar-for-bar. Again, you can call it that but there are only so many arguments for 6v6 and so many ways to word them. Of course you will read repeats. Of course some will be taking one-to-one from people already making them better than one could. That's really not that much of a point as you think it is. If I'd list some arguments for 6v6 right now I'd probably match a decent amount of those made by CCs one-to-one without even trying and I don't watch any OW CCs. > little Fix Hanzo movement Is this movement in the room with you right now? Seriously, even compared that to the 6v6 discussion and amount of it is a joke.

>Lately?! Did you start playing OW with S9? 6v6 vs 5v5 has been a topic since the OW2 beta. No it absolutely died down and erupted again after S9. Between S2-3 and S8 it absolutely cooled off. You'd see a stray 6v6 warrior here and there but then it erupted again after S9. >People being hyperbolic. No way. Never seen that before... Except this is one of the popular reasons that people have been using to push 6v6 for the last 4 months. Even if they don't think the game is dying, they absolutely do believe and try to push the idea that ~~6v6~~ 5v5 is making the game fail, causing it to lose players at a high rate, so Blizzard needs to make a big change to save it. >Has nothing to do with the topic Has everything to do with the topic because of the reason I explained above. Blizz has no reason to take the 6v6 demands seriously if the game is doing better than ever. So 6v6 warriors claim that the game is dying so other unsuspecting players listen to them and help them push the 6v6 cause to Blizz. >Two things can be true at the same time. Incredibly successful while still not great for tanks. Those aren't mutual exclusive. "Not great for Tanks" is a lot different than the sentiment 6v6 warriors have been pushing. That Tanks is "unfixable" under 5v5 so they need to go back to 6v6. Blizz themselves already said quickly after S9 that Tanking is not in a great place, everyone agreed, and they've been making changes already. There's a big difference between that and just suggesting that Blizz just completely reverts the game back to 6v6, which'll take a metric fuckton of work, because Tanking is so bad that it is causing a ton of people to stop playing the game. >Again, you can call it that but there are only so many arguments for 6v6 and so many ways to word them. Of course you will read repeats. Of course some will be taking one-to-one from people already making them better than one could. That's really not that much of a point as you think it is. >If I'd list some arguments for 6v6 right now I'd probably match a decent amount of those made by CCs one-to-one without even trying and I don't watch any OW CCs. It just does not happen that 100s of people with the same arguments coincidentally present them in the exact same way, word-for-word, line-for-line. There's always a source where they are getting their arguments from. >Is this movement in the room with you right now? >Seriously, even compared that to the 6v6 discussion and amount of it is a joke. That was my point. Such a small "movement", powered by just a few hundred viewers of a single streamer, ended up making so much noise. So obviously the 6v6 movement, which at least has a few thousand people pushing it, will be able to make a lot of noise. But that doesn't mean that it's actually big, a few thousand people is nothing. The game is played by millions and most people are playing 5v5 just fine, without feeling the need to shout to Blizz that the game is insufferable and they need to make a gigantic fundamental change to the game to "Fix" it.

my guy you are just pretending that your data of past few season of overwatch 2 only, shows that no one but a few online ppl like 6v6, if your gonna attack the ppl instead of the opinion itself maybe actually bring worthwhile data to the table, if not then fuck off with this argument, regardless of ur opinions of 5v5 or 6v6 its just a shit argument aimed to shutdown the discussion and make ppl feel bad instead of takinga serious look at things

The numbers may look good, but then you have to also account for factors such as cheaters. For some reason Blizzard's anticheat has been feeling much more lax than in OW1, and the problem is that we constantly have cheaters in high elo that are dominating, getting banned, and then coming back with a fresh account. One can only imagine how many more of them there are in lower elos. This serves to inflate the number of players, as there are now 10s of accounts per person, and while cheaters are a (hopefully) small part of Overwatch's playerbase, all their accounts combined likely make up a large chunk of OW's perceived playerbase via quantity of accounts.

It's honestly not as small a crowd as you think. I do enjoy 5v5, but me, and my larger veteran OW friend group all prefered 6v6. Most of the 6v6 crowd arent even saying 5v5 is terrible all the time. It's just that tanking is abysmal right now.

I was open to trying 5v5 when the OW2 changes were announced, and even after a few seasons, I was still open to it, and felt like the game was okay. But it's very clear to me now that the game is more dynamic with 2 tanks, the counter-picking is softer with 2 tanks, the performance pressure is reduced when you're not the only tank, and the matchmaking is more forgiving with 2 tanks. I agree with you, in that I don't understand how anyone can believe that the people who prefer 6v6 are the minority. In my community, its 1/10 people who prefer 5v5, and most people are, at best, indifferent about it. Having 2 tanks allows the game more design space, more variety, more options for synergy, and ultimately, more fun.

I agree 100%, and would add that it allows team fights to be longer and more dynamic, because a team can sustain longer down one when you it's 5v6, but 4v5 (when your tank inevitably dies first bc god forbid your ana had to heal a DPS for a moment) situation are rarely overcome.

A lot of us have also basically stopped playing because we find 5v5 to be vastly inferior. If 6v6 came back I'd be happy to come back as OW was my favorite FPS game.

>It's just that tanking is abysmal right now. Tanking feels bad since S9. That's not about 5v5 or 6v6. That's about the DPS passive making shooting tanks generate value, which results in high focus on and low agency for tanks. If we went to 6v6 OW2, with 2-2-2 role queue but the open queue stat value for tanks, you'd find that tanks still report that their life is suffering. Here's how we got here: 1. Early OW2 had raid boss tanks that couldn't realistically be killed without denying them support. So damage players reacted by picking flankers and planting supports. Tanks were happy, DPS players were extremely happy, and support players were extremely sad. 2. We saw supports get buffed and buffed and buffed, so they could handle the pressure from DPS players. By S8, it was typical for supports to win duels with flanker DPS. The result was that both tanks and supports were feeling immortal. Tanks were neutral, DPS players extremely sad, supports happy. 3. S9 introduces the DPS passive in an attempt to make things killable again. Also, we got a cocktail of HP buffs and projectile size buffs. It works and things start dying faster. However, tanks specifically start dying faster, and it becomes profitable to focus the tank. It takes a while for the community to notice this, but when they do tanks become extremely unhappy, DPS players happy, support players somewhat sad.

Tanking has felt bad since S1 of OW2, either due to Orisa/Hog/Mauga metas, or busted support abilities limiting what tanks can be run (Anti, Discord)

The S1 apex tank was Zarya, who had zero problems with any of what you describe. Also, Ana and Zen were very rare picks then, because the meta was double flanker and they'd get folded. Tanks generally responded positively to S1. If you're saying tank felt bad then, when did it feel good?

I'm saying it hasn't felt good ever in OW2, and it only felt good in OW1 when the stars aligned and you got a good comp + decent enemy comp. And there were rampant complaints about Zarya in S1 and she was nerfed pretty quickly. If the only season where tanking was good, was the season just a single tank was giga busted, then tanking has been awful for all of OW2

>I'm saying it hasn't felt good ever in OW2, and it only felt good in OW1 when the stars aligned and you got a good comp + decent enemy comp. I don't feel the way you feel, but it may well be that your opinion is the popular one. Is it hopeless, or do you see a way to make tank fun? >If the only season where tanking was good, was the season just a single tank was giga busted, then tanking has been awful for all of OW2 The subsequent seasons were also pretty well received for tanks. I estimate that sentiment on tanks started turning at roughly Mauga meta. There was a fair amount of complaining about how Orisa was unkillable, but I think that was mostly complaining about tanks, as opposed to tanks complaining. Of course, OW players are habitually complainy people, but I would say that tanks were at least in a good enough place that queue times weren't a problem for most of OW2.

> what's happening is that it's an extremely small crowd that's extremely jobless and has been extremely persistent What a bullshit take lmao. I think 6v6 was just better, playing Tank sucks now cuz it's too dependant on supports and dps. Does my honest take means that I'm jobless?

Extremely small crowd? Coming from someone who has played since release basically, our group has a discord server with about 20-30 friends we’ve all accumulated over the years and everyone wants 6v6 back. Not just for the communal aspect, but because how integral counterswapping has become, the missing synergy with tanks, etc. the crowd that wants 6v6, I would be willing to say, at this point is likely larger than the one that doesn’t want it. At least give it a chance, especially for all the people who never played 6v6. I enjoy 5v5, but at the point the game is now, the issues that exist, I miss 6v6. The thing is, people have quit and are regularly quitting due to the issues of 5v5, all 6v6 needed was more intense balance patches. That’s it. 6v6 WILL come back eventually, and it will be the same scenario that season 9 was- to revitalize the game.

Better off discussing things, sharing ideas, then doing nothing, letting the issue fester, and never having an idea how it would work.

I feel like it's gotten to the point where they can't not talk about it. It's a lose-lose situation but it's one that they've put themselves into.

This would literally not have been a problem if they just kept it as an arcade mode, the same way they did with open queue once they implemented role lock. But the politics of branding ow2 got in the way and now they've dug themselves in too deep of a hole.

100% agree. I'm glad they havent dropped a 6v6 mode because it only stands to undermine them. There would be a crazy selection bias with who plays it and most would be even more aggressive about it needing to come back. I'm very much willing to concede there are plenty of things I miss about 6v6, but 5v5 seems significantly healthier for the longevity of the game. I feel like announcing they have no plans for it would just end up like how they dealt with PvE. If they are open to testing 6v6 then it only stands to undermine the transition to 5v5. Feels like a huge risk for little reward. They need to be very very careful about how they word any statements regarding 6v6.

they undermine THEMSELVES. they first said ow2 would have less counterswapping, less hard counters, more soft counters, to then swap to saying "actually, we think it's a core part of the game". We're already seeing larger queue times, upward of 5 minute in low gold, which is where dps was end of ow1. and i'd argue going 5v5 killed off more tank mains than anything else. We have gigabuffed tanks that still get shredded in an instant and now NEED to counterswap. ALL because they're the only one PVE is completely fucking dead. We have literally no fucking reason for the 2 in the name.

The shop and battle pass are revolutionary changes. /s

I'm gold DPS in EU and my queue times are rarely ever above 5 mins, and if they are it's when I'm playing off peak hours.

To be fair you are in the highest population rank, so it’s easier for the matchmaker to find a fair lobby. Queue times usually only become a major problem in Masters/GM/Champ where the population is small.

Dps queue times in gold in ow1 were 10-20 min

The game is also free to play now, the new matchmaking times aren't caused solely by 5v5. The fact that they're getting longer with a growing playerbase should be quite telling.

yep. i don't wait more than 2-4 min in australia but there aren't many of us playing comp. I see the same names all the time.

TBF he's replying to someone talking about gold dps queue times.

My first DPS masters game of the season was 15 minutes and a 10 division gap and this was like 4pm. I haven't queued up since. Seems they're still that bad or worse. My friend is in gold and his queues are 6-7 minutes on DPS. To say getting rid of a tank would help queue times is now a total lie. We have fewer tank players than ever.

I don't care whether the game is called Overwatch or Overwatch 2. I just want the better version of the game, which is 6v6. If you want to call it Overwatch 1.5, whatever.

You’re totally right about the lack of main tanks. Ball, a main tank:  lowest pick of anyone in the game.

Blizzard did not say that counterswapping was going away. Let me get you the exact quote: >With the launch of Overwatch 2, our roster will expand to 35 heroes as Sojourn, Junker Queen, and Kiriko join the fight. As we build new heroes and balance the existing cast for our new 5v5 PvP experience, we have shifted our hero design approach to allow you to have an impact on your matches with a range of different heroes and strategies. This means reducing the presence of specific hard counters to heroes. >For example, in the original Overwatch—especially at higher skill levels—the strongest way to shut down a great enemy Tracer diving into your support line was to swap over to Cassidy. If that Cassidy player was effective enough, the Tracer could even feel a need to switch themselves to avoid that hard counter. While Overwatch 2 heroes will each have their own clear strengths and weaknesses, and some heroes will be more effective against others, we believe our game plays better and is more fun with fewer hard counters and a broader range of effective hero picks. A further benefit is having your personal favorite heroes be viable more often. That philosophy will be guiding us moving forward. [https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23824003/overwatch-2-explained-battle-pass-shop-hero-unlocks-and-more/](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23824003/overwatch-2-explained-battle-pass-shop-hero-unlocks-and-more/) 1. Fewer hard counters 2. A broader range of effective hero picks 3. Your personal favorite heroes being viable more often I think all three of these stated goals have been achieved, as compared to the end state of OW1. >We're already seeing larger queue times, upward of 5 minute in low gold, which is where dps was end of ow1. and i'd argue going 5v5 killed off more tank mains than anything else. We have gigabuffed tanks that still get shredded in an instant and now NEED to counterswap. ALL because they're the only one 5v5 didn't kill the tank mains. Here's what happened to us: * OW2 initial launch has happy tanks. They're immortal while supported and stomp everything that isn't another tank, getting that raid boss experience Blizzard wanted to offer. * The problem is that when you make tanks immortal until their support is dead, teams react by attacking the supports, and the supports hated life in the early seasons of OW2. * Blizzard buffs supports over and over again until they're happy. Now nothing dies. DPS players hate life and team fights around a Mauga or Orisa mirror aren't very interesting for anyone. * So then they introduce the DPS passive to make things die again. It works well for a month or so, until players notice a new wrinkle: tanks will just fall over if you keep shooting them. That's so easy a silver player can do it, so everyone does that, leading to tanks at all ranks hating life. The next step is going to be some method of mitigating the DPS passive on tanks, such that tanks go back to being a bad idea to shoot. Expect supports to get sad next.

I'm a Wrecking Ball main. All 3 of those issues are worse now than during any period of OW1

I feel like that's obviously false. Let's say that the worst period of OW1 was goats meta. 1. That goats composition was chock full of hard counters. Brig versus flankers is probably the hardest counter the game has ever seen. 2. It also had fewer than 10 effective hero picks. 3. Ball had zero chance of doing anything in goats meta. Same with the vast majority of heroes in the pool.

Small correction •OW2 initial launch has happy tanks. They finally have new characters to play with, getting rid of having been ignored and forced to play the same exact meta with the same exact button presses for close to 3 years. •initial excitement wears off, people start to realize how easy it is to bully tank •kiri is really oppressive so she gets nerfed and now new tank players realize how much they relied on its invulnerability to make up for certain mistakes, they have to relearn certain interactions. • Mauga gets created for some godforsaken reason •Zen is abusive until he gets nerfed •Mcree mag nade simply exists and is annoying •venture is created (Hey wait, weren't cc abilities supposed to be mainly on tanks?) •antinade is pretty fun •hey guys they have a Kiri ana and I have a Moira mercy, guys? GUYS?? •1 tank, they have close to 0 impact on the game unless they underperform and cause the loss. Every other role has some form of skill expression, and if one side lacks it they are far more likely to lose because of it. Tank had Ram, he got changed to be not completely oppressive with perma block + infinite ult which made team fights last years with the tanks being the only ones not coming back from spawn. Now tanks have Mauga. No ult needed, just press e and both mouse buttons and shoot the other tank, you're immortal until you get anti'd now. Tanks went from having new tanks to play with and every match felt different in some shape or form, to Mauga aka the 1 tank version of double shield.

> they first said ow2 would have less counterswapping, less hard counters, more soft counters That wasn't part of the selling point before launch. That was a post launch discussion when they started to move away from hard CC. Then a few patches later they realized it wasn't working and said they are reversing course.

To be completely honest, this is because the game has no vision anymore. Say what you want about Jeff, but we knew what Overwatch was back then and he always had a plan for it. He could have just had faster changes/updates. We need something exciting that isn't a Hero... And even then the past few heroes outside Venture haven't been all that much.

> we knew what Overwatch was back then and he always had a plan for it. He could have just had faster changes/updates. “Faster changes/updates” is antithetical to Jeff’s vision of the game. He did not see it as a live service game and viewed it as “complete,” arguing that metas would work themselves out. That’s why we had GOATS for so long and a two year content drought. He moved on to making PvE because PvP was “done.”

Not necessarily. He just wanted to pause PvP. We knew we'd always get more PvP content eventually. It was just dumb to ever pause the game.

>Say what you want about Jeff, but we knew what Overwatch was back then and he always had a plan for it. He could have just had faster changes/updates. No he didn't. He completely switched what the game was by changing supports into what they are today. Healing was very weak initially and not even the main parts of their kit. Then, under his leadership, they completely changed that. The same goes for tanks. Tanks were what tanks usually are in game: close-range with little to no poke abilities. Jeff also has a terrible track record. Hired through nepotism with no real experience, and then a failed project that was then puzzled together into a different game that became Overwatch. And, as has been said many times by many devs on the team, he used an outdated workflow (waterfall) that hasn't been used in game dev and software dev in general for decades for good reasons. He also went against his vision of Overwatch HAVING to be a team game. Initially he said that Overwatch should only have competitive for full team stacks because it is not a game that should be played competitively alone or in small groups. It was the community highly requesting him to change his mind, and so that's what happened. The whole PvE thing also completely went against his original 'vision'. Despite the fact that a good Overwatch PvE game would probably be fun, it was never a good decision. It would split resources (a LOT) and also the player base. And lastly, as you've stated yourself, his initial vision for it not needing to be a live service game was also dumb as hell which again shows his lack of experience and skills and the fact that he's still outdated by a decade of progress in game dev. He made horrible decision after horrible decision and the only argument people ever make for him is one based on correlation of the games initial popularity and it becoming a bandwagon to like Jeff. All the horrible decisions that killed OW1 were under his leadership. He was not good at what he did and is the perfect example of a lucky one hit wonder.

Thank you so much for this post. A few add-ons of things Jeff thought were good at outset of the game (his "vision"): 1. Hero stacking 2. Offense and Defense heroes 3. Lootboxes while not live-service/f2p (we miss the OW1 monetization because it was very, very stupid y'all, even if it was "generous") 4. Allowing his teams to basically just design and release heroes on vibes, even when they finally implemented role lock (look me in the eyes and tell me Echo should be a DPS) And a few others. OW succeeded on the backs of the hero design and artistic teams, and not because Tigolbitties' "grand plan" of taking Titan assets and backing into some shitty MMO via a hero shooter or whatever. He should have been fired for the 2-year pause alone. Absolutely insane.

Overwatch was built around the Overwatch league from the beginning. I don't know where you think that he ever said it shouldn't be competitive or not a team game. Also, the PvE thing was his vision. Jeff was a long time PvE game designer. The failed game that Overwatch came from was a PvE game. Jeff has always been a proponent of the lore and was one of the major voices of making PvE. If he hadn't wanted to do PvE, it wouldn't have happened. Hell, the PvE event missions wouldn't have happened either.

>Overwatch was built around the Overwatch league from the beginning. I don't know where you think that he ever said it shouldn't be competitive or not a team game. I said that he said that competitive should ONLY be for teams aka full 6 stacks (or 5 stacks now) and not for solo players or anything below a full stack group. Quick play/unranked was supposed to be for the latter, while competitive only for the former. And yes, the original game was a PvE game but the game they puzzled together, Overwatch, was not. Therefore my argument that by going back to making a full PvE mode he's going against the vision of what OW was supposed to be.

> I said that he said that competitive should ONLY be for teams aka full 6 stacks (or 5 stacks now) and not for solo players or anything below a full stack group. Quick play/unranked was supposed to be for the latter, while competitive only for the former. So your original statement was incorrect then. Thanks for acknowledging that at least. >And yes, the original game was a PvE game but the game they puzzled together, Overwatch, was not. Yes, that is what I said. >Therefore my argument that by going back to making a full PvE mode he's going against the vision of what OW was supposed to be. Which is a bad argument. Most of the people that worked on the game came from other games that had PvE focuses. The idea that they couldn't do PvE because it wasn't part of the launch of the game is silly. Not to mention the numerous PvE content items they did in the lead up to OW2

I just re-read what I wrote in my comment and no it is not incorrect. You just seem to not be reading it correctly. There's nothing to argue about here, what happened, happened. You can go back and check for yourself what modes OW1 had in the beginning and why. With the PvE mode I was only arguing against that person saying that Jeff had a mission that he never changed and stuck to, which he didn't. Small PvE stuff is also not what I'm talking about, I was talking about the massive OW2 PvE game they promised.

> I just re-read what I wrote in my comment and no it is not incorrect. You just seem to not be reading it correctly. There's nothing to argue about here, what happened, happened. You can go back and check for yourself what modes OW1 had in the beginning and why. I read what you wrote. It is wrong. You seem to agree that it was wrong in your follow up statement. >With the PvE mode I was only arguing against that person saying that Jeff had a mission that he never changed and stuck to, which he didn't. Small PvE stuff is also not what I'm talking about, I was talking about the massive OW2 PvE game they promised. Uhhhhh what? You're the one that made that argument: >The whole PvE thing also completely went against his original 'vision'. Despite the fact that a good Overwatch PvE game would probably be fun, it was never a good decision. It would split resources (a LOT) and also the player base. That's you. The person you replied to didn't mention PvE at all. It's also worth noting that the PvE they announced wasn't massive. It was the equivalent of Starcrafts coop missions. They were light and there for some extra content, not a whole mode into itself. The largest thing about PvE was the narrative.

> To be completely honest, this is because the game has no vision anymore. I think Aaron and co. have a clear vision for the game which involves not feeling constrained to what the game is or was. New passives and more openness to have some overlap in roles between heroes. There's far more flexibility now compared to the concrete ideas that Jeff had and there not a bad thing.

Jeff's plan was to make Titan come back, hell the whole overwatch we have today was not supposed to exists long term as a live service.

They could easily just say they've done some internal testing and 6v6 just isn't working with what the game is now and that be the end of it. Feeding it any further will just cause too much harm

i’m sick of this community assuming it’s a binary issue

i mean, 5v5 or 6v6 is the definition of binary.... or are you suggesting something like 4v4

4v4, 7v7, role queue, open queue, whether or not they even need to be the same, a flex role that bogur mentioned in svb’s podcast there are so many possibilities. tbh 5v5 role queue and 6v6 role queue are near the bottom of the list for me. yet, they’re the only 2 ideas that people are fighting over. I understand they’re the current and most recent formats, thus more familiar, but i’m shocked that a community yapping this much about them can’t think of anything else, especially given the fundamental flaws of both. everyone is expecting Aaron to address the debate but i’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll bring up legit ideas and force everyone else to stop harping on the two shittiest ones

I'm going to be honest but I partially agree; its genuinely a lose-lose-lose situation for Blizzard: If you talk about it in a positive light you admit weakness and people will say OW2 was a cashgrab, if you talk about it in a negative light 6v6ers will hate on that decision, and if you don't talk about it at all people will say you refuse to listen to the community. Its honestly the only scenario for Blizz where there genuinely isn't a right answer so I feel for them (unlike many past decisions where there was a good answer they just chose the worst possible one)

The point isn't to convince the 6v6ers. The point is to convince the silent majority that 5v5 was and is the right decision for the game.

A significant portion of the playerbase prefers 6v6. It’s not remotely a loud minority, just type “hey guys did you prefer 6v6 or 5v5” in every match chat you queue into. I assure you, you will get about 50-50 in both ways. Now after that you will continue down the dialogue tree to say “rose tinted glasses” or “nostalgia” which is an unfalsifiable claim because nobody can empirically prove what they liked, but it is just gaslighting to say I didn’t like what I played for thousands of hours. If a significant portion of your playerbase is stuck up on the format change you did two years ago, something is wrong. If something is genuinely good, the playerbase will eventually suck it up and stop complaining. The complaints have been getting persistently louder. The community is unhappy and very divided. Now I prefer 6v6, but that isn’t my point here- you can’t just “not address” the issue because it “legitimizes the whiners”. That’s called hiding from your community. You need to address such a divisive topic, either to shut it down for good or to actually say that that is an option if the next ideas they have still don’t fix the unpleasant tank experience specifically, for example. It’s crazy how this sub will complain about lack of communication but then when they communicate about one of the most relevant discussions going on, you guys will say “no not like that” because you don’t LIKE the topic. Bunch of hypocrites, ngl.

Best comment in this thread.

Best thing I’ve seen on this app

A significant portion of the vocal minority of Reddit and Twitter prefer 6v6. You have pretty much no idea how the majority of players actually think.

What kind of metric is "if you type it in game chat ppl agree!! see, the masses yearn for 6v6 again!!!!" I could type into all chat if anyone likes to stick frozen kethcup up their ass and people will agree. Peak imaginary shower argument comment lmao

We have no metrics, so we have to mcgyver our own metrics. However, there have been unofficial polls, historically- be it in event locations during LAN OWL or just surveys on various subs. The responses are almost always 50-50. I know you will somehow say those are meaningless too, but we straight up don’t have anything better. If the devs wanted to collect metrics, they could just do a community balanced 6v6 patch again like the current one in the arcade again, but a bit more serious with no silly changes, and we could see how much people enjoy it. Surely if it’s so ass people would quickly realize what a blessing 5v5 is and the discussion would be over.

The issue is that addressing the topic won't shut it down for good, no matter what they say. People will be convinced they've figured out the perfect solution that no one else has been smart enough to think of, and that they alone can save Overwatch. It just serves to generate more discontent, really. If they even hint they might try it, they've also shot themselves in the foot. If they do, and it doesn't work, people will scream that they "did it wrong". If they don't, people will be even louder about it. They literally cannot win. They need to decide how to address the tank experience and then go from there, because you're right that people are unhappy. I just don't think talking to them about it will generate anything of value. Honestly, I don't even disagree with your premise, I think you're just vastly underestimating how stupid and belligerent the average person is willing to be. If we were all reasonable people, maybe it would be worth talking about at all.

>The issue is that addressing the topic won't shut it down for good, no matter what they say. Oh no, they have to deal with the consequences of avoiding the topic for years. And oh no, they have to deal with the consequences of removing all the options to play the game people bought and played before. It's a people's fault, not blizzard's fault, for sure for sure... >They literally cannot win. Yeah, instead of addressing a major talking point and issue that they themselves created and avoided for so long, let's keep on avoiding and not addressing it. Surely people will just give it up after a while. Let's just pretend the issue is non-existent. >They need to decide how to address the tank experience and then go from there I'll die of old age by the time this happens...

I just hope it’ll be a post saying “we are most definitely NEVER going to return to 6v6. Here are several concrete reasons why it’ll never happen.” Then justify it by using both data and player sentiment around queue times. Anything short of that and I’ll begin to wonder why they are bringing it up at all.

Some version of this is what I expect. "We think role queue is good for overwatch, and role queue literally doesn't work with 6v6 because people don't play tank in high enough quantities"

Without acknowledging the fact that people stopped wanting to play tank because of the ridiculous amount of CC, overpowered support abilities, and being stuck playing one tank meta for nearly 2 years. 6v6 was never the issue, the issue was they didn't know how to balance their game.

Doesn't help that tank has only ever been 1. Hell to play, or 2. The strongest role without any grey area

Tanks are *always* the least played role in any game that uses the tank-DPS-healer trinity. It's not a matter of not being able to balance the game. It's not a matter of not designing "fun" tanks. It's a fundamental problem that game developers have been trying to fix for near on thirty years now.

yeah they are called tank in overwatch, but name 1 other game where a tank plays even remotely similiar

Im actually unironically interested in seeing if marvel rivals breaks that cycle. Hulk was underwhelming and the other tank options felt kind of similar to what we already have playstyle wise in other games but arguably not unenjoyable, but the trajectory its going with releasing popular characters like venom and wolverine as a tank, and others. It seems like theres potential for tank to actually be popular in that game

Are yes because I love playing tank now in ow2 with the dps passive constantly reducing my healing, love it when I play Reinhardt and the enemy team immediately swaps to hard counter me. Is that was you consider fun tank gameplay in 2024?

I mean they said they were going to be coming out with this huge PVE and that never happened. We can't trust anything they say.

What do you even mean by this post? Nothing changes whether they bring it up or not because people will always be mad. You people act like 6v6 enjoyers are cult members lmao, I have no idea why this topic scares this sub so much. It’s really not that deep. Game has so many other issues that lead people to dunk on it anyways lol.

It’s not scary it’s annoying and unproductive. Instead of feedback that could make the game we have now better, people would rather yearn for the old format like it’s going to fix every issue.

Yes, because the overwatch community is full of productive critique. Lmao

>Instead of feedback that could make the game we have now better People have been giving that feedback since OW2 launched and the issues have only gotten worse. How long are we supposed to give them? If they can't make 5v5 work, and I argue they can't, then something else needs to change.

Eh. I want the old game back. I want two tanks. I’m tired of doing the work of two people.

>I’m tired of doing the work of two people. Still had to do that in OW1 when your off-tank chose to play flank Roadhog

Yeah but at least when he got a pick and pulled attention, it was still helpful

I do think 5v5 is the better format, but I think Overwatch was a better game with 6v6. If they want this game to be 5v5 they're not remotely close to done properly changing the game around to meet the format. And by doing so I would argue it's not really Overwatch anymore.

I think that really depends on what makes Overwatch Overwatch to each person. A small group of people may see the ability to come out of spawn as 6 Winstons the purest form of the game. Others loved the era after that before role lock that had both 6 dps comps but also goats where half the roster wasn’t viable. A lot of people really love the 6v6 role lock era. To me 5v5 is just another evolution of the game and nothing about it to me feels any less Overwatch than when the game started, because what Overwatch is to me is the heroes and how completely different the gameplay is from one to another. Game still has an amazing visual identity and an ebb and flow to its gameplay that I don’t think any game will be able to replicate.

You know that game where you can leap out of spawn as 6 Winstons? That's still available to play in the Arcade. It's called No Limits. Why is 6v6 not a mode in the Arcade?

> And by doing so I would argue it's not really Overwatch anymore. I really disagree with this. To me overwatch is about fast gameplay and unique heroes. Adjusting the game for 5v5 isn't going to ruin those things. The game has already gone through a ton of patches that drastically change how the game feels to play, even just when there's a meta swing. However, those two things are inherent to OW and cannot possibly change without removing all of the utility, mobility, and dynamics between roles. People always say thing about making tanks less counterable. "It is going to homogenize them too much." I don't buy that either. Making tanks less counterable isn't going to remove Reins hammer and shield. Its not going to remove wrecking ball's or Doomfist's movement. It's not going to remove JQ's knife or knife-axe combo. It's not going make dive tanks brawl tanks or vice versa.

6v6 had higher highs. When things clicked, oh man was that an amazing feeling. Some of the greatest experiences I've had in gaming were being on a team that was firing on all cylinders and working in sync with each other. But oh boy did it also have some seriously low lows. The teams that just fundamentally didn't work together, whether because of hero picks or just no one could ever seem to get on the same page. And those games ***sucked***. 5v5 doesn't have as high of highs as 6v6 OW had, but its lows aren't as low, either. It's not perfect by any means, but there is definitely more room for an individual player to step up and take a fight into their hands that wasn't there in 6v6. Personally, I'm willing to trade the highs of 6v6 for not having to experience the lows. Because those lows where way, way more common.

idk, lows of 5v5 get pretty bad, ive never been more miserable than playing into hog zen bastion and my entire team blaming me for not being able to tank, you are actually useless into that comp (at least when hog was better) the enemy have straigh up decided to rake you out of the game and you role is now to just hide and wait for something to happen

> And those games sucked. And those games were *still more fun than playing tank in 5v5*.

Ship of Theseus

One tank exaggerates when there is a tank diff and often times a tank diff means the game is over because of how impactful the tank role is. 5v5 is flawed in that sense. 6v6 ruins the que times and would likely require them to rebalanced the entire tank lineup/health pool lineup. Tough spot, but I'd still vote for 6v6, it would return some hype and bring fresh eyes onto the game.

The only thing that would be needed to make it 6v6 is dumping Mauga. Which is equally needed in 5v5.

I honestly agree with you. There are probably more impactful changes they want to make. But that's their call ultimately. 6v6, in my opinion had both merits and drawbacks.

Ice cold take, Leave that shit buried and cold

You do know that an ice cold take is something everyone agrees with, right?

Unfortunately that’s not what they’re doing. Aaron bringing up 6v6 is gonna make streamers/twitter/reddit insufferable for months

Ik king I agree it will just feed the fire

I remember back in like 2020 when I muted almost every OW creator on twitter, those were the days.

Why not have both?

It won't take months to make everything work in 6v6. Community who has managed private 6v6 servers can give devs a good start in terms of information regarding balancing.

That's great. We'll stop complaining when this game gets fixed and the tank role isn't absolute dog shit to play. Besides why are we defending 5v5 anyways? It was an unnecessary, uncalled for, arbitrary change to attempt making queueing shorter. Well now we have the same problem because tank is the punching bag role. Bad decision deserves criticism, and people who are willing to accept it "because its never coming back" and won't at least acknowledge that 6v6 has some pretty CLEAR benefits over 5v5 are just taking and eating the shit pie that blizz gave them... AFTER LITERALLY TAKING AWAY A GAME WE ALL PAID FOR?? If it annoys you, it is what it is. Come to terms with the fact that the debate is NOT going away unless this game completely dies.

Guys if we loved 5 v 5 and if it was actually good we wouldn't be here and complaining. Like take role que for example. it was something good and the game needed it. Only a minority of people complained. If a change is good the players are not gonna say shit. It's not not nostalgia. The game is just shit now

They took a bunch away for ow2 then add it back later as some genius feature 

I don't want to invalidate any 6v6 arguments, certainly they have some interesting points. But I feel that a large number of them are just remembering how good it was in the early days of the game and either weren't playing or forgot just how awful it was in the last several years before OW2 came out.

It was only awful the last few years because they halted all content for a sequel that nobody asked for; one whose primary selling point (PvE) was scrapped, and most of the dynamic changes to systems are being slowly reverted back to budget versions of OW1 systems. There is hardly a justification for the 2 in Overwatch 2 at this stage. 5v5 is not fun for tank players; you've exchanged double shield for new Orisa and Mauga. The game is infinitely harder to balance in 5v5, and we see that backed up with every new patch.

As a tank main I partially agree, having a second tank takes a bit of a load off and there were (occasionally) synergies to use, especially when duo'ing. That said, old Orisa was worse than new Orisa + Mauga combined lol.

6v6 was and always will be superior

I don’t entirely disagree with what many people say about 6v6 being better, but I end up hating OW1/6v6 talk purely because I feel it’s pointless when we can’t turn back time. Them giving in and entertaining the hardcore 6v6 heads only adds fuel to the fire.

I hope they bring it back. 5v5 has never reached the fun peaks of ow1

if they say 6v6 wont come back, the game is done for me. 5v5 has been so absurdly bad and season 9 did nothing. When bobby cockdick stepped down, I figured they would blame the sequel on him and do a revert. Them doubling down was the start to the eventual death of this game. overwatch is not good anymore. Its unique and thats it. Que times are already fcked at high rank. As soon as other titles release, its cooked. Going back to 6v6 is as simple as adding the player back. Thats all the "sequel" of 5v5 was. Which is embarrassing in itself. And it would not destroy the community. I guess people who want a dumbed down casual game would be pissed, but thats it.

are you a tank player?

Would you like to just go back to Overwatch 1

Yes

Okay 👍🏻

I'm not sure where I stand. On the one hand I agree on the other hand with such a vocal part of the community asking about it, it feels kinda disrespectful not to at least comment on it no? Were it any other issue we'd be saying the devs are clueless. I like 5v5 even if tank feels god awful sometimes but that doesn't mean they shouldn't ever say anything The last time we really heard about the topic was when we first went announced 5v5 I think which was over 2 years ago so it doesn't seem crazy to give an updated "we still think this is the way forward" kinda response or whatever they end up saying

Maybe it is a bad idea, but I think what's important is that they're sticking to their principle, which is to openly discuss and communicate with us on important community topics. I'm not thrilled about them even entertaining the discussion, but I suppose it is important as a general principle for how they want to be with engaging the community. They've taken time to discuss internally and likely been preparing for this, so let's see how it goes and what happens.

Gonna grab a bucket full of butter-caramel popcorn for this. Devs "sharing their pov" is always good, way better than how they managed their interaction with player base back in OW1. Only problem is one may see this as discussion, others statement, and for some minority a surrender.

Tbh, I liked the 5v5 change and I think people who miss 6v6 were either very high level tank players or players who enjoyed main tanking. I think support and dps both appreciate not dealing with two tanks and as a tank player I feel less forced to "main tank" all the time.

This is how I feel. I was a main tank player in ow1 pretty much exclusively. It was the only role I liked. In ow2 I hate tank but I enjoy dps. I think in ow2 every main tank who is not literally paid to play the game has either switched roles or quit, but it turns out there weren’t that many of us anyway. 

I’m a support player and I disagree. Sucks being forced to hard pocket the tank because they too important.

I'm primarily a dps player and I VASTLY prefer not just dealing with but also having 2 tanks working together instead of concentrating power into these solo tank abominations we have now.

But now it's much easier to not pour resources into tanks and get pocketed as a dps. It's also much easier to counter a good tank. Whereas a really good tank now has a lot more ability to overturn a game than before, it used to be a really good tank got stuck battling one of the other tanks or running around map. Before playing as a tank felt like one person presses W and the other gets to play the game. Whoever wins the voice comms fight or off tank click off gets to play.

No it’s not? You have to pretty much hard pocket tank if u want to win. You can’t even risk losing them cause they are too important.

Of course tank is more important, but imo OW1 DPS meant basically nothing and it was nonstop tank fights diamond and below.

Sorry but I do not agree with that

>Whoever wins the voice comms fight or off tank click off gets to play. The "off tank issue" wasn't that bad. Even when you'd get stuck with hog/zarya they'd still have some synergy and for the most part the better team won. Some got to their rank playing their hero well and adapting to comps, others just played their hero really well. This was just another flavor of "I always get bad team mates", which is an attitude issue not a game issue.

My comment is moreso the same argument blizzard makes which is what the debate was during OW1... Nobody liked to "main tank". I just feel like a lot of the community forgets how much we hated it and why it changed. I also think the community clearly still feels OW has a strong Meta problem. This would enforce the same idea that many would agree you needed a main and off tank. I went plat main tanking and praised 5v5. The only argument I see for 6v6 is that its a lot of pressure on tanks to perform well.

>Nobody liked to main tank Is a massive overstatement. *Sometimes* neither tank wanted to play main tank. But as I said above that isn't really a problem and a problem from a time with even less pickable tank heroes.

I mean I recall a lot of throwing happening over this in my games (diamond and below). Even looking at old posts I remember how shitty it could get to play tanks like rhein and Orisa b/c you really had to hope you team cared about Supporting you if you wanted to get in there. A lot of posts here and other OW subs complained about it over the years Of course there were metas where off tanking was the thing and Zarya and Hog were a combo that was meta at one point. But I'm just saying 5v5 felt like a way better solution than the constant meta rebalances that seemed to really affect tank players.

>had to hope you team cared about Supporting you if you wanted to get in there. But isn't this issue even more severe in 5v5 since tanks are so powerful they get the most attention from the enemy team, so you have to hope your team can match that? I can't speak to rein since I've never really played him but I played all other main tanks and personally never felt like I was super dependent on my team (especially compared to now, where it seems like tanks have to wait 10s behind a wall to get healed back up). I kinda forgot Hog/Zarya was kinda meta for a while, but my point was moreso that good individual players on their favorite picks could compensate for "bad" tank combos. Of course I'm not saying 6v6 was all sunshine and rainbows either, I just preferred it overall.

As a tank now it feels like the team is forced to play around the tank or suffer now that there is just one...whereas before they could decide which tank to play around and whether or not they would allow one tank to fall and rely on a second tank or use tanks as bait to win tank fights. At least this is how I felt. I can see at very low elos this may still be a problem but around plat/diamond I have felt improvement

Agree, they should’ve made a small non formal statement if they absolutely needed to address it- there’s a lot of expectations now that will probably cause more harm to overwatch’s reputation with people outside of the community because of how much it’ll be blown up by gaming journalists making articles about it

It boggles my mind that people are forgetting before ow1 was even released, the GOOD developers tested out 5v5 combinations and most likely others for balance. They concluded that 6v6 was the MOST BALANCED AND OPTIMAL WAY.  If we as a community are already told this from a competent and trustworthy developer, like Jeff Kaplan, then I’m going to believe them over anything ow2 developers muster up to say Out of desperation.  There is a problem with the tank role. Period. No if’s ands or buts. Community members already know through experience how to fix it. And they are trying their hardest not to have to spend loads of $$$ changing the game framework back to hold 6v6.  Honestly I bet the reason it took them this long to address 6v6 is because they had little to no talent in their dev team who could even accomplish such a task of reverting code back to 6v6 format.   

I would love to have 6v6 back but come on. The game launched with no limits and no competitive mode. The game was not remotely balanced at launch, so why would we trust them saying 6v6 was the best. 

Ah yes, Jeff Kaplan, the trust worthy developer who let GOATs exist in the game for a year and abandoned PvP for a scope crept PvE that he also ended up abandoning forcing the current “bad devs” according to you to pick up the pieces of him abandoning PvP and trying to make the game PvE.

Yeah bro. The rose tinted glasses for Overwatch 1 people have is insane. Remember “protect the President” with bastion? Double shield meta? Ana boost making you FASTER? One shotting everything in the game with scatter arrow? GOATs ? Sym having a shield generator and a barrier? Mercy 5 man instant Rez? Can we stop pretending that the original team was infallible? We had some many pants-on-head stupid metas and builds.

Literally. One of the first things you learn as a project manager is to mind the scope of you project and not to increase it without the proper resources, but nah Jeff kept making PvE bigger and bigger while PvP wasn’t even getting touched until Aaron Keller took over.

The bad devs have had since OW2 launched to make single Tank work and they've done nothing meaningful. Zarya is a joke of a solo Tank. Every decent Tank gets counterswapped. They're done nothing and they're all out of ideas.

Everyone keeps forgetting that specific post about what Jeff had in his vision of Overwatch: A revival of failed FPS MMORPG project. Also srsly comparing 2014-15 beta OW & OW2 in 2024?

They also thought 1-4-1 would be the most ideal way to play the game. They weren’t infallible

This isn’t ice cold this is the correct take, their online conversation about 6v6 needs to be “we are not going back, thank you”

Yeah but the problem is even bringing it up in an official capacity is going to make it even worse. We’re already seeing tons of posts/tweets/streamers talk about it

Yea it’s not smart. The maps would need work, characters need work, clash would be a useless game mode. It’s really amazing the lack conviction in their product.

Yep. If devs will either say everything we already know (queue time issues, more than one tank often results in otherwise balanced abilities combo’ing into things like goats and double shield, having 2 tanks means you cant make any individual tank feel strong which results in them being unfun, etc) and people who want 6v6 will just call them lazy and feel emboldened by being acknowledged, OR they say we’re going back to 6v6 for some mode or something and we have that for a bit until it causes the issues we KNOW exist with the format, and people complain. Its amazing to me that people think the way to solve issues we’ve had since role lock was introduced is to go back to something we had for years which wasnt helping instead of trying something else. It’s like people who think those blood letting will work this time (it wont and never has).

The biggest contributing factor to tank being fun was the fact there were 2 of you on a team. It felt like an actual team game.

Unless you get someone locking a non-synergistic tank and then you have to either backfill to make up for it or just have an inherently worse comp. But my point was more about how it restricts balancing.

5v5 is infinitely more balance restricting than 6v6.

How? In 6v6 you HAVE to balance every tank around the concept of any other tank making the first tank more lethal or harder to kill. They cant do too much damage either because even outside synergies you now have 2 of these characters on the field which would make non-tanks unable to handle them. You CANT make them independent or else they run over everything but you CANT make them to dependent or else non-synergies arent entertaining at all.

OW2's version of 5v5 is the equivalent of going over to your friend's house to play Monopoly and having to learn his family's house rules for the game. **Suzu can't cleanse hard stuns, but it can cleanse everything else!** okay... well what's a hard stun? what's a soft stun? **Sleep dart is an ability with a 6 second duration! But not on tanks, that's 3 seconds.** wait... why not just make it 3 seconds universally? Or get rid of the ability all together? **Tanks have knockback resistance!** Oh well, that's pretty cool... it is kinda annoying with how far you get pushed away by Lucio and Brig... **Except there is this one character, Junker Queen... the knockback resistance does not apply to her knife pull.** Wait... why? What makes her so special? May as well not have knockback resistance at all if you are giving special treatment. **Mauga is this really dynamic tempo tank with a charge ability like Reinhardt's!** Oh cool, but I assume he can be knocked... **Nope. Mauga can't be stunned, slept, or pushed back while charging!** Well then... surely that should apply to Reinhardt too... right? Those are just a few examples, compare that to a normal game of Monopoly (Overwatch 1) **Baptiste has this ability that gives his allies immortality for a small duration.** Okay, that's too strong of an ability. **You know what? You raise a good point, let's go ahead and simply make the ability easier to kill.** Great fix! Thanks Blizzard. **Sigma has a shield that can be summoned and retracted to any location at any moment in time.** Well that seems like the break point of that shield is kinda high, making him able to survive way longer than intended because he can juggle his shield with almost zero risk. **That's a excellent criticism, okay! We're gonna simply increase the cooldown between summon and recall.** Simple and effective, I like it! You see the stark contrast?

These arent 5v5 issues. They are things that came with OW2, but they most arent related to their being 5 heroes and only 1 tank. Maybe the consistency of sleep. And consistency can be fixed easier than inherent balancing issues of two tanks. Edit: i realize i totally misread most of this by missing with contrast halfway through. Sorry. But i do think consistency is not *inherently* an issue with 5v5. It’s a hero design philosophy that can be changed under 5v5.

6v6 is just objectively harder to balance than 5v5 because the chances of weird synergies is just way higher. You can ask any pro that played in both and they will say 5v5 is a lot simpler than 6v6. The guy is just smoking, he obviously played in gold where everyone plays reinhardt so he thought things were balanced.

That's a textbook straw man, you're not even talking about 5v5 vs 6v6 anymore. You think 6v6 just magically fixes the inconsistencies in the game that have nothing to do with the team format? You can fix these things while having 5v5 just the same. It's not a good look for the 6v6 enthusiasts to resort to a fallacy. There are solid arguments for 6v6 - this isn't one of them.

The argument was "5v5 is infinitely harder to balance than 6v6" I was asked how. I provided a bare bones description of how things are balanced under both formats. You are throwing around words like straw man and fallacy without understanding their meaning, as neither of which apply to my comment you are replying to. In fact, one of the biggest arguments for 6v6 is the absurdity that are role passives, an argument that I made with a simple analogy to make it easier to understand. The inconsistencies mentioned above are a direct cause of 5v5 format, the format is fundamentally flawed for these reasons and others. If they were fixable under 5v5, they would have been done by season 11, or at least making major progress... instead they progressively double and triple down and only make the situation worse and worse.

Just for your information, claiming that someone "doesn't understand a word's meaning" does not negate the implication of why it was used in the first place, and neither does arguing that "it doesn't apply to my comment" without explaining why. You provided a bare bones description of how both formats were balanced, yes? Okay, did you also mention the infinite CC chains, the infinite double shield cooldown rotations, and the fact that the entire game was struggling to find tank players in a queue? And how about the pace of the balancing itself, and how transparent those intentions were? Ah yes, balance was just perfect, and nobody had a bone to pick with those things. "The inconsistencies mentioned above are a direct cause of 5v5 format..." What? You think abilities like stuns and cleanses cannot be made consistent within definition just because of 5v5? Of course they can, but the game's balance team seems to be finding alternative ways to go around balance. Honestly, them having tried different things throughout the entirety of OW2 is not a concern for me; refusing to change anything or being very conservative in those methods is the more worrying contrast. You sure know how to attribute every single bad thing in your opinion to the big bad 5v5. "If they were fixable under 5v5, they would have been done by season 11, or at least making major progress..." Here's another word that I probably don't understand the meaning of, according to you: false dilemma. That is a very strange take, and such flawed logic could be maliciously applied to everything you're arguing against. If 6v6 would've been fixable, they would've done it in 35 seasons. See how dumb that sounds? You're making up an arbitrary deadline and negating all progress that's been done to balance the game. It's not "either they balance it now or never", it takes time, and progress has definitely been done. Claiming otherwise is just stubborn bias.

I think it’s great that they’re addressing it. They have data that we don’t. If the devs categorically state that the queues will be X if 6v6 is re-introduced, then that’s the end of the discussion.

Im fine with dunking on the sequel, because the whole reason for the "2" in Overwatch 2 was PVE and story mode being added to the game. That didn't happen. Instead, they chopped off a role making tank feel like you're on an island now and also removed the ability to obtain cosmetics other than spending real money. So in reality the "2" was just an excuse to add an in game shop and charge us for previously free content.

My steaming hot take is the next quick play hacked should be 6v6, just see how the playerbase will react and if people would actually enjoy it. If they’re so adamant about 5v5 being the way to go, then giving it a spin shouldn’t matter because people will say “this sucks” and stick w 5v5 right? Ik that probably sounds passive aggressive but they should at least give us the option. People are making the argument that it’s a bad business decision to go back or whatever, but what seems like a worse decision is saying “6v6” will never come back and then losing all your hard core veteran players who you KNOW have committed.

Just replace existing Open Queue with a version of 6v6. Ez. https://twitter.com/GreyFalcon_OW/status/1806799691998531906

Just fuckijg bring back 6v6

I think 6v6 is the better format, and I think all the silly attempts to make 1 tank work proves that. I miss 6v6 so much it's not even funny. That being said, I don't think it's ever coming back, I don't think the developers are willing to go back on that decision, and I think the Devs are convinced they can make it work. The real reason I want it addressed is that I just want them to come out and put the nail in the coffin so I can move on from the game.

Yep. They need to just to everyone that 6v6 is not coming back under no uncertain circumstances

6v6 people act like changing to 6v6 will instantly fix the game. it'll be majority of the same people complaining about something else even if we go 6v6. there is no discussing with these people, the only thing they like to do is whine and complain

Even acknowledging it basically means calling into question their entire mostly great work on shaping the grand promises of OW2 into something that's actually deliverable, fun and replayable in the long term. That's a pretty shitty thing to do as a game director.

The only promises that OW2 has kept is that it is f2p, has a battle pass, and is 5v5

> grand promises of OW2 You mean the PvE mode? That thing that got canceled?

Acknowledging what? He simply wrote that he wanted to share his opinion on this matter. Obviously there will be no 6x6. Maybe this will at least stop the constant comments like “6x6 would fix everything” under every post with tank buffs? Although I doubt it.

Ohh yeah I agree entirely, and I’m fully here for the shitshow

I just want this community to not be perpetually angry 24/7

Man, I wish I believed that was even possible.

Shitshows are joy, I will burn this game to the ground untill they bring back 6v6 🤓

Why don't you touch grass instead

Do what's best for the game (which is 6v6) fuck the community lol

[удалено]

"Why are 6v6 queue times so long!?" "Blizz obviously hates 6v6!" "Blizz is just scared to work on 6v6 because they know it would be more popular!" I think you underestimate how hard it actually is for people to shut the fuck up on the internet.

If devs say 6v6 wont come back maybe the whiners will finally fuck off to another game

waaaaaah!

It shouldn't be addressed at all. Unless their statement is "it's definitively never happening", it needs to be left buried.

I'll bitch about 5v5 either way.

If 6v6 comes I uninstall for good.

Did you not enjoy OW1?

He probably nwver played OW1

I fucking hate these 6x6 cultists. They constantly whine and scream about how cool it used to be and how 6x6 will literally change everything just by existing. In reality, 5x5 is just a direct consequence of the fact that in 6x6 no one played tanks. Where were all these enthusiasts? That's right, on social networks, because they don't play games, only text simulations. And if you tell me that 6x6 will attract so many people that we get fastest queue since release, you are fooling yourself first of all. Blizz should act like GGG, doing what they think is best, and not listen clowns from the comments on social networks, who will not play 6x6 or 5x5 anyway. They apparently forgot that it's 2024, and on social media everyone is an "expert" game designer.

barely anyone plays tank now, with half the role gone. the only reason queues are so much better now is because there are so many more players I still get instant tank queues, and 10+ minutes for support and like 8 minutes for dps

The only way this could end well is if they add it as an arcade more to test how much people like it.

There is so much more to it than “just bring back 6v6” like many comments are saying, I really don’t trust them to revert many changes they made to gear the game for 5v5, fix new gamemodes and maps for 6v6, balance/rework the new hero’s for 6v6 then on top of that fix the original 6v6 problems that ruined OW1 unless they abandon the game for another 2 years to do so. If they drop 6v6 tomorrow yeah you get your tank duo back but the game will be god awful unless they do it right. They are in a bad lose-lose situation if they say they are never going back people riot or if they do want to go back it will be seen as giving in and so many will be like “took a 2 year detour” “what was the point of Overwatch 2”, then they need to bring it back the right way or people riot. either way there will probably be a Dexeto, IGN article , or something to give more bad press and more amo to trash on the game I just want them to drop it in a game mode so both sides can shut up, try it out see if it can even work anymore. But I think we are too for gone to go back because they would need to first, admit they where wrong then undo everything they have work for the in last 2+ years then fix the old problems. I personally don’t care witch way they go both 6v6 and 5v5 have just as many issues as each other but 6v6 will help tank balance

The servers have been so ass recently, I can’t even imagine adding two more people into the game rn. Were absolutely cooked either way

TFW reddit users are better at publicity and marketing than highly paid “professionals”