For those who may not remember me (I avoid the forums these days), I am somebody who has been around this community since the beginning. I have been playing since Overwatch 1’s beta, and I have seen it all. I’ve seen this game evolve over the last 8+ years, and been here for all the ups and downs, and I even remember the OG forums before they were “archived”. So when I say what I am about to say, understand it comes from the P.O.V. of a long term player, and not somebody who has only ever known 5v5:
I have long since been somebody who has been of the opinion that neither 5v5 nor 6v6 is objectively better than the other. I have maintained the stance for the last two years+ that both have clear pros and cons. In fact, I even personally suggested 5v5 at one point as a potential solution (albeit with drawbacks) to the queue time issues, right here on these forums, long before it was ever teased or announced.
Well, yesterday I got to play the 6v6 experiment for a few hours, and it was like falling in love with Overwatch all over again. It was an absolute blast and a joy to play. It only took a few games for me to go “This is Overwatch”.
I am not saying that this solves every problem, it most certainly does not. In fact, it enhances a lot of the same problems 5v5 sought to mitigate. But gosh dangit if it isn’t just more fun. I don’t know how you solve the queue time issues, and to be honest, I don’t know if you really can, but you’ve gotta come up with something. 6v6 must succeed, that’s very clear to me.
What are those problems, really? Because almost every ‘‘problem’’ people said 6v6 had was pretty much born out of ‘‘I dont want to swap out my OP hitscan waifu’’.
What? Im a tank player. Also, aren’t the problems the obvious ones that people consistently cite (i.e. visual clutter, overpowered synergies, map congestion, getting stuck in chokes, tanks feeling like they explode while somehow at the same time feeling dps players feelimg like it is difficult to find openings to kill things, etc.)
(Honestly, replies like these are why I stopped coming to these forums in the first place. What a ridiculous reductionist/strawman argument.) SEE EDIT BELOW, I jumped to an unnecessary conclusion here and came off harsh, sorry about that
What I am saying is that 6v6 is not without drawbacks, something the devs themselves speak on quite a bit. But that it just feels more like Overwatch to me and it feels more fun. Obviously, the big hurdle is queue times, and that’s a HUGE deal. I cannot possibly overstate how big of a deal that is, especially now; It’s a difficult prospect to alienate the largest portion of your playerbase (the most popular role being DPS), by giving them insanely long queues. How many DPS players will sit in a 10 minute queue when they can go insta-queue in Rivals?
Edit: What I’m saying is that they need to incorporate 6v6 as a permanent and serious mode in some capacity, but they need to also find some way to mitigate the queue time issues for the non-tank roles.
Edit: apologies to user above. Came at them way too hard and misunderstood their intent behind their reply.
While some of those can be problems, yes, they are mostly subjective ones. I never felt that maps or visuals were cluttered in OW1.
However, the whole ‘‘dps players feeling like it is difficult to find openings to kill things’’ is exactly what I am talking about. DPS players refused to engage with the rest of their role, refused to play DPS heroes they disliked and refused to let dps heroes that they disliked be played at all.
The truth is that Ashe/Widow/Tracer/Soldier arent supposed to deal with every single tank. They arent even supposed to be good against tanks. But this is a hard truth that the playerbase never wanted to learn.
And DPS players love to micromanage and judge who should be allowed to be good in their role. Or at least they love to let Blizz do that. When Double Shields started, people stated using Symmetra to deal with it. And hitscan players refused to allow that. Symmetra was nerfed in 9 days, and the DPS meta was stuck on hitscans for 3 years.
Most of the gameplay balance problems of OW1 were self-inflicted because Blizz was more interested on pandering to popular DPS hero mains than to preserve the balance.
I havent said you. If it came out like that I apologize but I am beyond tired of the usual boogieman gotchas of ‘‘GOATS!!! DOUBLE SHIELDS!!! 6v6 BAAAAD!!!’’
Well, as someone who didn’t pick up the game until after OW2 launched and thus has no history with 6v6…I’m not seeing or feeling any magic.
I like 5v5, and this experiment doesn’t change that. I don’t like multiple tanks per team, and this experiment hasn’t swayed me on that either. I was surprised at how impactful the extra two players are in terms of adding screen clutter, which is decidedly not a good thing.
I don’t mind if they keep a 6v6 option running, but if they can’t address some of the technical issues with netcode/server/client performance (which is an issue across the board since S12 in particular), I’m unlikely to stay if they get rid of 5v5.
Most interesting to see, in any case, is how the queue times look after initial excitement fades. Where I play, times are pretty even in quickplay for all roles in 5v5 and 6v6 right now.
I think this is very valid and interesting feedback from the P.O.V. of somebody who doesnt have that history/bias. Thanks for sharing!
Edit: I think it’s important to consider the players who joined with OW2 and never experienced 6v6. Perhaps the answer is both modes coexisting, idk. I guess that’s something for the devs to decide.
Hey ThiccBuddha! Thanks for the warm welcome. I don’t plan to stick around here on the forums (ive come to realize it gets a little too doom and gloom and toxic for me), but it’s nice to see you’re still around here. Always felt you were one of the good ones here.
Edit: just really felt it was important to give my feedback on this subject here, even if the devs probably won’t see it.
Also playing since OW1 beta and seen it all over the years. I think 5v5 is better but it’s no surprise you like 6v6 since most tank players do.
I’ll probably try some 6v6 games tomorrow and get me some of that nostalgia. Also played the recent OW classic 6v6 mode somewhat and it was pretty fun to relive the past a bit.
Folks are kind of mad they worsened the current Overwatch 2 balance but that was to be expected. And it gave us a pretty good ground to judge if 6v6 was actually viable.
Personnally, I was surprised at what we got. I thought it would either be like Overwatch 1, which I would have loved or similar to 5v5 which I hate.
It turns out I got something in between, something different.
So far, I thought this 6v6 was conceived with current 5v5 lovers in mind but the feedback I read seems to contradict this theory.
It’s interesting. I guess we’ll have to see Blizzard’s conclusion.
Also, it might just be me but ingame, the 6v6 players are a lot more welcoming and I have yet to see any “HUZZAH COMRADES” (also know as lol ez).
And neither insult nor flex.
Once upon a time, probably now a decade ago, Jeff said they tested every mode and 6v6 seemed the most right and fun.
I don’t think anything ever changed, they just switched to a waterdowned version of the game to be more attractive to casuals and fix the queue issues.
I’ve been playing OW for years and when OW2 came out, I lost all interest in playing certain heroes.
The second the 6v6 test dropped, I found a match and instantly, without even consciously thinking about it, felt like playing Wrecking Ball. I haven’t touched Wrecking Ball in quite literally years, but it was almost like muscle memory or something like that.
Same with some of my other favorite characters like Sigma, for instance. There is definitely something different about 6v6 that just feels better.
10 min queues is just the symptom of the underlying issue of a massive difference in popularity between DPS and tank heroes. That was a fact of the game since day 1.
In OQ, it manifested as 5 DPS asymmetric lobbies causing frustrating losses and later in RQ it causes the queue issue. There have been better and worse days in the RQ days, but is more likely caused by DPS players outright leaving then tank being more popular, because the preceding GOATs meta culled a lot of interest from casuals.
If you ask me, designing the game around a loud minority that will never be happy is not to its best interest and is a losing strategy with marvel rivals now competing in that exact space, but who am I to say…
