Thank you for your input person I don’t know and don’t care about. 
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It’s just all empty for me.
This does not fix the game. This will do nothing.
You mean before RQ? Everyone knows the answer is “very, very low” (like 1 minute).
Aaron probably thought he didn’t have to say that explicitly because it’s common sense. RQ queue times are a function of the tank/dps/support ratio, in OQ there is no ratio.
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Ah yes just as vague and non-committal with an allusion to a maybe the mode will come back for good after years of testing, as I expected.
Tests are great but need to start a year ago and not in 2 seasons’ time.
We can’t go from 6v6 functioning on a technical level for 6 years to it suddenly being a worry, either, especially with 12 player custom game modes working just fine.
Average queue times mean nothing when we’re comparing a game in maintenance mode to an active live service with frequent updates and that’s disregarding the changes that broke matchmaking in order to drastically lower queue times.
After 2 years of failing to balance 5v5 as the only main game mode, you’re still intent on it…lol. If this would mean no actual balancing per mode then there’s no point and going by the laziest (and only) change ever made to OQ, nah, I doubt massively. Neither should be treated as the main mode; both should be developed alongside each other if both are to exist.
This is so clearly an attempt to pretend you’re listening but not actually do anything because you ignored and let it all bubble up for so long and it’s just…tedious.
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It’s very clear to me that a LOT of people in the comments did not play OW1 or at least not early OW1. Every point Aaron pointed out is absolutely true. 6v6 Open Queue WAS NOT fun probably 50-60% of the time. Not a single person enjoyed playing with 5 or 6 dps every game. Especially not people who wished to take the game seriously but didn’t have the skill to get past diamond. With all the new heroes we have now, returning to that system would likely be even less fun. If you read this and think to yourself “They should just revert all of these restrictions back to how they were in OW1,” remember that OW1 was basically a dead game for the last year or two of it’s life. And that was largely because of 6v6 issues. Returning to the same way it was is NOT the answer.
Ready up for disappointment!
This would be a large effort that would most likely take at least several seasons to accomplish.
Reads to me like 4 seasons minimum 
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Their whole argument is that 5v5 RQ is better than 6v6 RQ because of queue times (being lower), without even mentioning that queue times weren’t a problem in 2016-2019, before RQ 
…
Geniuses.
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“Support heroes also had to focus almost exclusively on healing since there were bigger team health pools and more incoming damage on the field with the additional Tank player. In 5v5 they have more agency to add some damage or duel other heroes.” - Aaron.
ummm… ever heard of DPS Passiv??? So, Supps are still only healing… u know !
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While what you said prior to this point was absolutely true, this bit is just false.
It was basically a dead game because they announced that they were abandoning it as if it was a good thing and then proceeded to do so.
The current game is a free to play live service that is actively getting updates and not abandoned, even if the quality of each change is abysmal.
ikr lol
Yep…meanwhile we had an actually functioning 6v6 mode before.
Also I loved the bit about supports being forced to healbot in 6v6…yeah nah, I never felt like I had to; I felt like there were situations that called for it and some that allowed for more offensive play, but that complexity, as with tank play, is gone and every meta is now either ‘healbot the tank’ or ‘don’t heal at all, just go for kills and play selfishly’ with zero middle ground.
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I’m a simpleton but what would something like the OQ format look like if implemented now? First come, first serve when it comes to hero picks like the old days?
We are just wasting time on this. Make the actual game better. It’s still terrible and basic things are missing. Still same old terrible career profile. Can’t even filter roles, maps etc. Still no rank icons anywhere. I’m still playing against groups as a solo player this doesn’t make any sense at all and biggest crime this game is making. Balance is often terrible and your balance dev have no clue what he is doing. I still can’t show my preferred heroes during hero select phase. Ranked system is terrible, far worse than pre S9. Flow of fights, gameplay questionable especially after S9. It’s wonky and the tank complaints were expected. There are ‘‘legacy’’ heroes, modes, maps in the game. The game isn’t coherent, the game doesn’t have ‘‘vision’’. Where is data ? show us winrates, pickrates. Stop being a blackbox. Show us some cool interesting data. Make our career profile more interesting. Show me my map winrate. Give me some form of map agency in ranked.
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Disagree.
Disagree.
I didn’t care, and this honestly did not happen as often as they’re acting like it did.
That doesn’t make sense? 90% of the player base never made it past Gold I believe. A majority of the player base did not play ranked. If you are someone who was serious about ranking up then you find a team / a group of players who are your level and climb with them. You don’t just random queue and hope for the best if you’re trying to take the game seriously. If you were getting crappy people and not able to rank up because you’re queing randomly, that’s a personal problem.
It’s far easier to revamp less than 10 heroes than to redo the entire roster for 5v5 - which they didn’t even do properly.
Because of the higher ups deciding to abandon the game! Lol. If the developers had continued putting out new content, updating modes, adding PvE campaigns, kept adding multiple heroes every year, and didn’t leave the game to stagnate the game would not have died. It was a billion dollar franchise. They killed it.
And that was largely because of 6v6 issues. Returning to the same way it was is NOT the answer.
See above. The game dying had NOTHING to do with 6v6. It was because someone at Blizzard decided the devs had to abandon the game to develop a sequel nobody asked for.
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OW1 support was so much fun and strategic. I miss it. I play tank in OW2 because that’s the only strategic role now. Support is basically inferior dps now.
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Wish I could like posts twice.
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TL;DR version: 5vs5 because queue times in 6vs6 where very long.
They will literally bring back 6v6, many versions of it, let the players test it and then see whats more popular.
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Thank you for the detailed article. It contains many important points and I am glad that the discussion is at least now being held again.
I am still a big advocate of 6vs6. I believe that this mode, along with the hero concept, was the essence of Overwatch and that it was simply taken away and replaced without consultation or discussion with the community is still incomprehensible to me and seems like nothing more than an economic decision “from the top down”. But I see the points brought up here and am willing to take part in any tests.
For me, however, it is not debatable that the balancing is still completely disproportionate. It may be that the tank role is still the least popular, but it is not a solution to make it so strong that neither the role itself nor playing with or against the role is fun.
Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to the future.
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" Many times, fights in 6v6 couldn’t resolve until ultimate abilities came online. Correct that, until ultimate combos could be executed to break through two tanks worth of mitigation supported by high, uncontested healing output. The world of 6v6 could have really high, highs, but reaaaally low, lows. One of the design goals of 5v5 was to try to raise that floor, even though it was at the expense of some of some of those high moments.
Overwatch 2 also has a greater emphasis on FPS gameplay. There’s less damage mitigation and CC, and players get to shoot at enemies more. Crowd Control could take players out of the game for extended periods of time, especially when they were chained back-to-back. A five second Sombra Hack, Mei Freeze on her primary fire, Brig Bash, Ana Sleep, Orisa Halt and Sigma Rock could all happen consecutively to one player! Typically, a Tank who could often survive this onslaught… at least in game, their real-life mental health was another story.
Damage heroes often complained that their role was the least impactful relative to the strength of super powerful Tank synergies and Support heroes undoing their playmaking. The emphasis on ability cooldown management, ult tracking, shooting barriers instead of players, and not big enough timing windows to just shoot enemies and get eliminations were all factors that contributed to this feeling.
Support heroes also had to focus almost exclusively on healing since there were bigger team health pools and more incoming damage on the field with the additional Tank player. In 5v5 they have more agency to add some damage or duel other heroes.
Tank synergy wasn’t always fun. It slowed the game down, and stabilized it, but sometimes it absolutely ground it to a halt. People point to the double shield meta as an example of this. It wasn’t just about double shields, though. The ability to stack a very defense heavy lineup, especially in game modes that required a team to push through a small choke, caused a lot of matches to feel like there was no progress at all. The game is faster now, and it doesn’t typically stall out. It feels like there is more room to move around a map without the need to earn every inch of it. In 5v5 fights are often less focused on moving around in a death ball formation and there is more room to take angles, flank, and duel other players, which brings in more of that FPS gameplay. "
100% perfect portrayal of OW1 and why 5vs5 has increased this game’s health. 90% of the active users in this echo chamber are probably lazy and/or overchallenged support mains or low elo players deciding to share a world where 5vs5 is to blame for everything they don’t understand or are not able to do.
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I’m glad that this topic is being addressed, that is something I can be grateful for.
Although, I fully expect this promise of continuing the discussion of 6v6 to be the new “PvE is coming guys, just wait!”
I’ve played Overwatch since 2016 and I’ve seen this game through A LOT. But I can say, I’ve never enjoyed Overwatch less than in Overwatch 2. Some of these seasons have been absolutely dreadful. I don’t play tank at all anymore (it used to be the role I queued second most.), the role feels horrible. Constant counter switching, too much pressure, etc. Tank feels the worst it has EVER in the history of Overwatch.
The queue times obviously seem to be an issue, but I feel a lot of players would prefer long queues but more fun matches. Its the same argument that happened when role queue was implemented. I overall believe that role queue is good for the game, just as I believe 6v6 is the better format for the game. But I also believe more people will queue tank if they had a second tank to fall back on, I know I would.
Another option would be 7v7. 2 tanks, 3 damage, and 2 supports. The tanks need that second tank for tank synergy and to alleviate pressure of a single tank. While the damage queues need to remain low. I don’t know how this would turn out overall, and there would need to be a lot of changes. I’m not even sure if the engine could handle it.
Anyway, I’m done rambling. Thanks to the devs for at least addressing this. But I’m not getting my hopes too high up.
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“Damage heroes often complained that their role was the least impactful relative to the strength of super powerful Tank synergies and Support heroes undoing their playmaking. The emphasis on ability cooldown management, ult tracking, shooting barriers instead of players, and not big enough timing windows to just shoot enemies and get eliminations were all factors that contributed to this feeling.”
This leaves you wtih an issue.
Either you do 6v6 where dps is terrible to play and supports have to heal bot two tanks. Having tank synergy when ìt happens is truly only fun for the tank.
Then you have 5v5 where because the only have one tank the tank gets hard focused which can be unfun for the tank at times.
Either way though the rest of the team gets deleted by tanks the second a tank dies.
6v6 the tanks with synergy usually win and the other roles are just there.
As a support tank and dps player. Id rather have the one super tank.
At least all roles have impact this way. Despite always being less impact than the tank has.