5V5 defenders all have the same two, bad arguments

General Discussion
1

It’s always ‘queue times’ this and ‘double shield’ that, but they never actually consider WHY those were problems in the first place.

I’ll dispute both, and also rant about player hypocrisy whilst I’m at it.

Queue Times:
Everyone knows that at the end of Overwatch 1’s lifetime, queue times started to get a little long due to the lack of Tank players. I don’t disagree with this point at all, but it’s important to know why that happened in the first place; developer neglect.

Back in around October 2020, there was a balance patch that was universally agreed to be really good. Multiple content creators even now still speak highly of this, Samito and Flats for example. Then The Fire Nation Overwatch 2 attacked. The devs made one final patch and then dipped to work on all of the fantastic PvE we definitely got. But the balance patch was awful. This spawned double shield’s rise to oppression, but not because shields were strong, but because hit-scans were. Playing Double Shield became a necessity just to live, and believe me, the Tanks didn’t like it any more than anyone else did.

Tank players began to leave, because they simply couldn’t be bothered to play. Keep in mind, back in 2021, everyone thought that Overwatch 2 would come out the following month or so, so they all assumed they could just come back soon when the game is being updated again and the balance is finally fixed. Because of the Tank abuse and the false promise of a sequel on the horizon, Tanks just stopped playing, causing queue times to spike for the other roles. This is what people tunnel vision on as the main problem of 6V6, but they ignore the fact that God awful balancing and dev neglect caused it to happen in the first place.

I am also aware of the counter argument stating that if we were to move back to 6V6, queue times would get worse. Again, I don’t disagree with this, but queue times in 5V5 are getting worse right now anyway because of Tank bullying, the same problem we had at the end of Overwatch 1. Going back to 6V6 would spike the queue times, but hopefully it’ll pave the way to better balancing decisions and queue times will be able to even-out again. If we stick with 5V5, there isn’t any solution in sight.

Double Shield:
Fun Fact: the best way to avoid being lobotomised by a sniper is to hide behind a magic blue rectangle, and typical shield busters like Symmetra and Junkrat, who aren’t the aforementioned over-buffed hit-scan, fell to the side because they sucked, which allowed double shield to remain in power as the sole defender against hit-scan’s oppression. Not to mention, double shield, like GOATS, was most prevalent in higher ranks, while all the lower ranked Tanks played actual good comps, like ReinZarya and…Roadhog dive?

Another point that should be brought to attention is that there were no balance changes happening for 2.5 years! The devs all left to work on their shiny new game, leaving Overwatch 1 to rot in the shadows. Double shield, ALSO LIKE GOATS, wouldn’t have been a problem if it didn’t last for years upon years. It just got stale, which it also did for the Tanks, who were sick of having to mash every button they had to avoid a one-way ticket to the spawn room.

Player Hypocrisy:
I’ve seen a lot of people mock Tanks and claim they just want to be able to run in, kill everything and run out without a care in the world. They dismiss their complaints by simply telling them to ‘play around cover’ or ‘to stop inting’.

BUT THEN THESE SAME PLAYERS will complain and complain and complain that their Tank is playing Roadhog or Wrecking Ball and isn’t protecting their team enough.

What ever happened to ‘taking cover’? If your Tank is eating CC and debuffs in the enemy’s backline, maybe you should start getting picks and hide behind cover yourself so the enemy doesn’t focus you down.

If the Tank is eating every damn ability in the game and your stupid butt is standing in the open and you die for it, that’s entirely on you. The Tank doesn’t owe you a 24/7 shield, they’re protecting you by distracting most of the enemy fire and taking most of the cooldowns.

TL;DR:
This is a little bief, so read the rest later.

6V6 never failed, it just got stale and Tanks left because they were being bullied by a terrible balance patch for 2.5 years.

Double Shield also got stale because of the absence of balance patches, as well as just how oppressive Hit-Scans were, necessitating Double Shield.

And players expect the Tank to do everything and nothing at the same time, whilst they fail to take cover every now and then.

13 Likes
2

Yup.

Because that’s how basic Algebra works.

  • 2 is 100% larger than 1
  • 1x match of 6v6 has 100% more Tank players per match than 5v5
  • 5x matches of 6v6 has 100% more Tank players per match than 5v5
  • 100,000x matches of 6v6 has 100% more Tank players per match than 5v5
  • To queue an equal number of matches of 6v6 compared to 5v5, with the current number of Tanks, would have 100% larger queue times
  • UNKNOWN #1: Some amount of Tank players would rejoin or change the that role for 6v6
  • UNKNOWN #2: Some amount of Tank players will leave the role, or quit, if the game goes to 6v6, and they have to nerf Tank back down to OW1 power levels. (I.e. Make Tank less of a Fat DPS, then you get less DPS mains playing Tank)
  • It is virtually impossible to get more than 100% more Tank players while getting 0% more DPS players, so you’d need probably many times more Tank players than listed above. i.e. 200% to 400%.
8 Likes
3

Uh huh, that’s great sweetie, you learn that in school today?

Look at the bigger picture. 2-2-2 worked for most of its life, then when it all went badly and the devs left for milk, Tanks began to leave, so 2-2-2 began to suffer.

The the devs came back, they tried 1-2-2 and buffed the Tanks which worked, but then the Supports suffered so again, 1-2-2 wasn’t working, since now you didn’t have enough Supports.

Instead of going 1-2-1, they giga buffed the Supports, so now the lone Tank is eating crap 24/7, which causes EVEN MORE Tanks to leave, so 1-2-2 still doesn’t work because there’s still not enough Tanks for even 50% what they were before!

8 Likes
4

And while we are at it.

The October 2020 patch wasn’t actually that good, it was just 2 overlapping placebo effects. Where the devs did some minor nerfs to Brig and Sigma, and so people stopped playing those heroes for a month. Additionally OWL was at the end of the main season on SuperHog meta, so there wasn’t anybody handholding Top500 with scrim meta. There was a near identical patch in December 2020, when OWL was in it’s offseason and it was a hard Sig/Brig meta.

https://i.imgur.com/NGHXGdp.png

The whole hype on that patch, is fake revisionist history for gullible people.

3 Likes
5

Minor nerfs to Brigitte and Sigma is still a better patch than half the things they’ve done for Overwatch 2.

Also I’d argue the hype for 5V5 is from people who were just bored of 2.5 years of nothingness and were desperate for something, ANYTHING new.

They could’ve released another Brigitte 1.0 and it would’ve been sort of funny for at least a week.

8 Likes
6

Pros weren’t playing Ladder or Scrims, so it took longer than the usual 2 weeks for a hard meta to form.

That’s got absolutely nothing to do with what the actual Balance is.

Also, for real, the December 2020 patch was damn near identical to the October 2020 patch, and it was a hard Sig/Brig meta.

7

Yall just refuse to acknowledge the other arguments that exist… Thats it.

1 Like
8

Such as?

2 Likes
9

  1. It’s harder to be stopped when flanking usually in ow1 the off tank would stop you but now in ow2 you have more room to go find a play somewhere else.

  2. Balancing, outside of tank really every other role feels fairly easy to balance heck the games balanced now its just people say tank feels bad if anything.

  3. Back fill is easier if you care about that, your usually only waiting on 1 person to backfill compared to 2 tho this is random a 2 stack could leave anytime its just a in general thing.

  4. It is a lot simpler then ow1 less stuff to keep track of well 1 less person to track at least which can make a huge difference especially when that other person also had around 400 hp.

  5. Design restrictions, there not going to do things like “oh this is a shield and this is an off tank” this is more of a high ranked thing and something the community decided butttt tank is a tank.

  6. Faster balancing it’s easier to get a grip of heros and like see where everyone is strength wise.

1 Like
10
  1. Being easier to flank isn’t necessarily a good thing, since backline heroes like snipers tend to suffer more.
  2. Balancing for DPS and Support hasn’t really changed, because they still have their synergies and whatever. They’re abilities are generally worse against Tanks, but that’s about it. Judging by how the balance patches have looked for the past year or so, Tanks are impossible to balance.
  3. Backfill only really works if the Tank doesn’t leave. Even then, it doesn’t always work. We were down a Support for about 5 mins once.
  4. I think the appeal of Overwatch 1 was the chaos and how to strategize to circumnavigate it. Plus you now have 1 giant teammate with 800 health.
  5. There are definitely way more design restrictions in Overwatch 2, since now all Tanks have to be able to do everything and all heroes aren’t allowed to screw over Tanks for 6 seconds, like how Hack or Sleep Dart were nerfed.
  6. There’s faster balancing because the devs are actually working on the game and not a sequel that never came.
7 Likes
11

Don’t forget the #1 crucial thing, almost every player here and in the past was not playing double shield, goats, or any other meta because most people are far too bad at the game to play any given meta as is.

It’s why changing the format and forcing RQ or 5v5 is entirely stupid, the vast majority don’t care about forum specific complaints and problems, nor do they care about the flip side of it with pros/creators. They are silent and in the middle and they will simply leave without stating why when the game is turned into an ugly unfun mess.

Also, I noticed a lot of 5v5 shills seem to be posting less and less, can only think of 4 or 5 names I still see regularly, what happened guys? Finally wake up?

10 Likes
12

Worklng on my Vermintide 2 builds.

13

So if you’ve left for another game, why do you argue why this game shouldn’t go back to 6V6? Mind your own business.

9 Likes
14

6v6 defenders always misrepresent and leave out 80% of the cons of 6v6. It wasn’t just queue times and double shield lol

2 Likes
15

5v5 defenders always misrepresent and leave out 100% of the cons of 5v5.

9 Likes
16

Yeah, but I don’t know any personally. Imagine if 6v6 came back and they tried to argue for 5v5 LOL.

17

It did?

I swear these forums were a garbage fire about queue times and metas and heroes and players etc for most of ow1’s life, and an enormous point of complaint was how strong tank synergies were, they basically decided every meta par from a few

Its moreso the case that tanks were starting to have less fun in the game so they started leaving, even though for a lot of other players the game had already lost a lot of its value when tank became the number one role that could make or break a game, dps was even more lost in the sauce in ow1 than its ever been in ow2, because straight up whats the point in playing a hero with 200 hp that does damage when you could be playing a hero with 600 hp that does as much damage AND usually has insane CC or protection abilities as well.

I would agree for most of the metas, but goats was kind of special in a way that its reach got all the way down to bronze, because when i had coaching sessions with players who were bronze not too rarely either i would see some form of goats there, more rarely than in say GM or Masters, but still.

Its only so many times you can tell the same exact story to people until you realize they are refusing to listen to other people, and wish to just hold their own beliefs above anything you can tell them

Because people who dont actively play this game anymore because of some other reasons (burnout, just dont like the game for other reasons, busy life, etc) could still care about the game deeply and want to voice their opinions on topics they believe they have insight on, especially GreyFalcon, being on almost 75000 posts its clear they genuinely have some level of care for this community or game

And 6v6 defenders always misrepresent and leave out 100% of the cons of 6v6, because youre not trying to argue why its worse but why its better, its far more convenient to let someone else tell you whats wrong with your point of view and its far more beneficial in terms of involvement from other people, and to form a proper conversation on the topic to have other people correct you on things you didnt mention, the same way you did with this post.

With your post youre kinda just giving excuses as to why 6v6 wasnt fun at the end, or at some other points, instead of acknowledging that the game just had faults.

Thing with this topic as well is that there isnt a concrete answer on which is better. I like 5v5, but i liked 6v6 too, theyre both fun, its extremely opinion based and extremely personal to everyone whose played the game, trying to pass EITHER as objectively better is extremely silly

2 Likes
18

6v6 was always hit garbage. With 12 players crowding the map, you had less than 10% infuence over the outcome of the match whcih made you feel powerless and insignificant. Everything was about team play and coordination. Or more like ult economy with the team that has more ults up for a fight will always win, which made games boribg and predictable. Simply a bad and unfun design that plaguaged the game throughout it’s existence and 5v5 fixed it along with every other major problem you even listed there. Heroes feel more dynamic and powerful now and the game is just more fun thanever before. And it’s comming from a returning all times master tank main who rather play a supertank D.va than a weak defense matrix bot with limited dive capabilities.

1 Like
19

Hold on a second. We had queue time issues well before the end of OW1’s lifetime.

Here’s an article from February 2020 that talked about the queue time problems already present and what the devs were planning to try and deal with it.

As for October 2020 - what ended that honeymoon? Cassidy, Sym, and Brig getting 25 extra health? (Brig’s would be reverted shortly after.) Nah. That time was just a honeymoon phase that ended once people figured out the new state of play after the double shield nerfs and the end of Gigahog. They had to implement priority pass bribes in December because throughout it all, those tank queues never improved. It’s not something that can be recaptured and maintained, and it didn’t even help tank queues anyway.

3 Likes
20

Especially with tank ults being how they are, and were, since they tended to be the strongest damage doing ults in the game point blank with enormous CC, or insane damage potential out the gates having 2 of them at the same time practically guaranteed a fight win.

The only scenarios where it wasnt was with a winston, or maybe a ball, because they can be rather easily countered, but most other combos were pretty much always a teamwipe unless the enemy team had some secret to pull out to win it