I know that Papa Jeff said they HAD tried 1/3/2 team comp before, but have you guys ever tried expanding the team composition? Maybe try 1/3/3 or 2/3/2? Those are only 7 heroes, but what about more? Like 8 or 9 (imagine 3/3/3 lol). I know this might be a stretch, but maybe let US the community, try it out in the next experimental card. If you have tried it, how did it go? Did the game feel thrown off a bit. In my logic, expanding to more than 6 characters, while at first might enrage the community and make everything feel “new” again, it would greatly decrease the queue times for every role.
1 Like
I don’t have a link to the response, but he’s said there are technical limitations with the game engine that make more than 12 players per match difficult.
9 Likes
They’ve talked a bit about it before, and apparently having more the six heroes per side puts a strain on the game engine.
edit: Valkyrie beat me too it.
5 Likes
Seems kinda nuts for a 2021 game to not be able to achieve 7v7
3 Likes
It wouldnt be a problem if the base of the game was first programmed to be 7v7. But its been almost 4 years, itll take a while and maybe a price increase to implement that
3 Likes
The game might be moving into 2021, but the engine was still made prior to 2016. There were technical limitations back then that don’t exist now. I don’t know how hard it is to edit or upgrade an existing game engine, but I doubt it’s simple enough to do while the game is still active and running.
For all we know, maybe it’s in the plans with the new engine for Overwatch 2. Though I doubt it would be the default, since Overwatch has been running on 6v6 for so long. I wouldn’t put it past them to add larger modes if the new engine can handle it.
1 Like
The year doesn’t matter - the game was designed for 6v6. Adding more will break things.
It’s generally not very easy. Changing one line of code can break 10 other lines of code, and fixing those could break another 100 lines of code.
3 Likes
then theres the issue that the tech strain as they’re not leaving behind original overwatch players…well, even if they could manage it in overwatch 2, the fact that overwatch 1 players would still be on the old, unoptimized game would cause more problems.
1 Like
There’s always the possibility of
a) they put the original Overwatch under maintence for a few days to upgrade the engine
or
b) larger game modes are exclusive to Overwatch 2
People, even in 7v7 or 8v8, “if strawberry doesn’t taste better”, if tanks are not improved or released from restrict synergies, even then there won’t be enough people playing tank!
As I read this, it’s technically not impossible, but would take serious resources that might not be worth the pay-off.
If they did ever do it, I think they’d need to feel they could fully commit to it as a sure thing and not just an experiment.
2 Likes
I mean, if the game was in it’s development phase, you might have a point, but OW was specifically designed for 6v6. Everything: game design, graphics, visibility on the battlefield ,ect is going to shape itself around that number.
The issue isn’t the game engine, it’s the server strain. The servers are outfitted with hardware that has a set amount of headroom specifically to handle 6 vs 6 without behaving erratically.
Going above that in 7 vs 7 or 8 vs 8 exceeds the headroom and forces the server to either drop inputs, cause desync errors, or crash the server.
Think of it like… the number of cupcakes you made for a 12 person party so that you have some leftovers, but everyone gets at least 1 cupcake. You’d need like 13 or 14 cupcakes… now imagine bringing that same number of cupcakes (13 or 14) to a party that has 16 or 18 attendees – some of them aren’t going to get a cupcake, and those that do might have to share and sacrifice their portion to make sure there everyone feels satisfied, and that usually doesn’t go well.
The only other alternative to make sure the party goes smoothly, is to make/buy more cupcakes, which might exceed your budget for the party. now imagine this repeated for hundreds of thousands of parties, it gets prohibitively expensive and costs potentially 1.25x - 10x more than you expected to spend on cupcakes… that breaks the bank
This isn’t necessarily about code, it’s just a server player limit… we’ve had this for decades in dedicated servers across multiple generations of games.
3 Likes
I have never understand why they cant upgrade the game engines? in hots… wow… OW… I mean isnt a bit silly to have an engine in which u cant update or replace her without a drowback? its 2021 jesus…
1 Like
It is a bit disappointing that they will stick to upgrading such a limited engine then. A new engine would make the sequel take much longer to make im sure, but it would make the game more capable into the deeper future.
Wasnt there a bug in custom game at one point that let people have dozens of AI opponents…and the game didnt crash?
2 Likes
do…do you make games? or program?
They could upgrade it, but doing so would require time, resources, money. Most of all, it would require the shutdown of servers and the game, likely for at least a year.
I could not understand the ironic part of the 1st line. As I said on my post, I cant understand why they cant upgrade the engine. It is not a troll phrase or something, it was the truth, I dont have that kind of experience. Anyway!
Since they need to shut down the game for a year at least. Can they upgrade the engine for example for the Overwatch 2? and release it like they do? so we jump to the upgraded engine without losing the current game?
especially because there are some games (not saying they are good, but still), that are able to achieve 100 people in a lobby all fighting each other to the death, while having a moving circle where they have to rotate to every minute or so while shooting and building stuff.
They can’t increase team player count yet because that requires a bunch of system modifications. OW2 has to be done first before they even consider it.