The dream would be to fix the tank role for sure. They were never able to do it in OW1 and it’s been a very real struggle in OW2 as well (I’d argue the best state for tanks was early in OW2, but a lot of changes were made to fix the support experience and there were knock on effects of those changes). I think the main problem with the idea of going to a 6v6 format at this point is that they’d have to somehow prove that there would be a viable tank fix in that mode before they went to 6v6.
If you go to 6v6 before having a workable tank fix in that mode, you’re just in the same position you are in now with a lot of extra work on top of it. So how would they fix tanks in 6v6 before going to a 6v6 format?
The problem here is the same one that we often run into in OW- things are way more difficult and complex than the players realize, but players like to think there are easy fixes, so the devs get compared to fantasy scenarios that exist in the heads of players.
But the reality is far more comlex.
I expect the blog to just talk about the reasons that they went for 122 in the first place. I imagine the TL;DR will be “queue times”.
But here’s a crazy thought! Have you noticed that the community joke mode currently in the arcade is neither pure OQ or RQ, but role limits? I wonder if that means anything. Role limits wouldn’t need actual tanks to start games going so maybe a role limits mode could even have two on each team. Hm. 
1 Like

Well i think it will be the ground breaking “6 minutes to midnight” announcement because not matter how you look at this. It changes the game in a major way again.
1 ) In one aspect it solidifies bringing back the 6th friend that was told they were bad and not to come back to play Overwatch.
2 ) it gets rid of insta-nuke, so 1 bad player in a group blends in better.
3 ) 5 4-lifers will be mad about it.
- Complaints about metas existing in Open Qs.
If they chose to do anything. It would be best to put the game into a 6v6 format for SOME modes. I get it, that there are people out there that want 5-5 competitive out there and that making a 6-team work in coordination is a pain.
(Try world of warcraft and being a guild master in 40-man raids. hold my beer).
Eitherway. Looking forward to either playing MORE or moving on with my life. 
I don’t even see how 6v6 would work with the current tanks. Some of the combinations would be horrendous to play against even if they weaken them a bit for 6v6.
1 Like
I think theres a reasonable chance they bring it back in some form, even if only to test. OW2 isnt growing and it’s the only card they have left. Long shot, but not totally impossible. In all honesty I think OW2 is in maintenance mode already and Blizzard is focused on their new FPS. They just won’t ever say it. We’ll see.
Wait, which new FPS would this be?
Lots of rumors on what it is exactly, StarCraft fps, extraction shooter, PvE like helldiver’s and so on. But long story short a bunch of job descriptions posted on their the last few months looking for people for their “new multiplayer shooter”.
I hope the devs take the harddrive containing all the data for OW 1 and smash it with baseball bats like the movie Office Space when they do the dev update.
If you’re referring to the rumours I think you are: All we know is that there are job openings regarding a game with PvE. Nothing about genre or IP. Could be Rock 'N Roll Racing 2 for all we know. Did some new info get revealed?
There will always be a lack of tank players period. There will always be queue time issues unless they change the number of players per role on a team to be proportionate to the amount of players each role has.
In which case the game would would have to become 14v14 (with 1 tank, 4 support, and 9 dps players per team) to match the proportion of players per role.
3 Likes
Here’s a few grabs from the job descriptions. Draw your own conclusions.
Creative Director:
Fully own the process of developing our game’s IP, working with Art and Game Design leadership to develop the settings, characters, themes, and multi-season story arcs within that world,”
Gameplay Designer:
shepherd a shared vision around our key aspirational characters and teamplay core fantasies. Build a robust understanding of our game world, characters, and lore.
Combat Designer:
shepherd a shared vision around our key aspirational character and teamplay core fantasies.
The survival game was officially, formally cancelled in January 24. These jobs are not for that and all posted since May of this year.
I think it will be very, very hard to do the work necessary to go back to 6v6
and they’d be doing it with a crew that has been severely diminished by MS
so I wont be surprised at all to hear something like “we have no plans to return to 6v6 at this time”
I’ve heard the “we have no plans” line many, many times now…in relation to something a lot of folks claimed couldnt or wouldnt ever come back…Pink Mercy
we all know how that turned out
so, i preach patience…
1 Like
Isn’t that the golden question?
1 Like
Theres so many answers they could give to this and really only one correct one in my mind, and knowing blizzard theres zero way they get this right.
The genuine answer is that 5v5 open queue needs to be removed and replaced with 6v6 open queue.
Everyones concerns with 6v6 about queue times is well founded, but this game was not and will not ever be designed well enough for 5v5.
But people have found themselves liking it, and removing one or the other means a sizable chunk of the player base will think they got the wrong version of Overwatch.
We physically have to coexist.
Open queue is pointless and no one cares about it. Anyone who says they do is lying. Give open queue a reason to take up a slot in the QP and Ranked screens.
Make them 6v6 open queue to solve queue bottlenecking, return the game to an Overwatch 1-like state, with no passives, no HP or hitbox changes, no turbo buffed tanks.
Make an effort to balance both when you can, and should we find that theres still too much CC in the game for 6v6 even post the removal of many stuns, reintroduce the anti CC passive for tanks.
The DPS passive, Support passive, and Tank passive that gave less ult charge from heals or damage can be removed entirely.
I am not lying when I state, as I have stated many times before, that I and many other players vastly prefer role-less queue over the excessive queue times, absence of flexing, unnecessary restrictions, and other severe problems that 222/1222 have added to the game
I consider 222 to have been THE worst change ever made to the game, with no close second
Personally I agree. I liked it at the time, but its pretty obvious that 2-2-2 is the only reason we have 5v5 today.
The real REAL reason being Blizzard is a disgusting worthless employee touching company that was so inept they couldnt balance GOATS out of pro-play which was outright affecting their bottom line considering how much money they sank into making Overwatch an E-Sport.
Or pull a Jeff Kaplan and blame us for it.
4 Likes
I will continue to demand for 6v6 no matter what gaslighting statements they put out.
I want 6v6 so that we ran run doom/ball/tracer/sombra/lucio/kiri as a comp.
The absolute chaos would be incredible.
1 Like
While queue times did become a more severe issue in the final stretch of its life in particular, that problem alone wasn’t enough of a concern, in my opinion, to where the right answer was to force a format change onto a player base, and then atop that delete access to the old game along with it.
You can say PVE was also a driving force for it but apparently that was a snowballs chance in heck of happening long before any of us knew it.
So at this point I fail to see what they lose by trying it. The games reputation and satisfaction among players can’t sink all that lower. Nowhere to go but up at that point eh?