I think 6v6 is better for the game. (Discussion)

General Discussion
1

I think having one tank limits too many options and makes the game simpler. While it’s debatable whether one tank or two tanks is harder to balance, from a gameplay perspective having an extra player creates less frustration among the tanks.

A big issue surrounding overwatch 1 were the queue times. As I see it, we just shifted the queue times from dps to support by removing one tank. Queue times for support are pretty bad, especially compared to other titles such as Valorant where a match is found within 30 seconds.

I might create a more detailed post along with a full youtube video later to elaborate, but I just wanted to hear what the forum community thinks. Some topics to consider:

  • Will queue times be fine, considering we have 7 new tanks and supports (new support coming soon)
  • How can we deal with AoE healing issues (Brig Bap’s AoE is generally considered to be what caused problematic metas)
  • If 5v5 is better, what are ways to make tank less frustrating to play?
  • Whatever else comes to your mind, feel free to express your opinions!
2

No. The issue has always been a lack of tank players compared to DPS/Support. That has never changed, and no signs of changing.

You can’t without removing/reworking it. Having multiple tanks that can cycle defensive abilities only makes AOE healing stronger.

It’s less of an issue in 5v5.

Lessen the effects of counterswapping, but don’t remove them.

Like, Zarya should always have a matchup advantage against Dva because her beam goes through DM. But does Zarya really need to deal exactly the amount of damage she deals to Dva? Probably not. Would she still have the advantage dealing less? Probably so.

3

How would you implement a new feature/change existing mechanics of the game to lessen the effects of counterswapping?

4

Hard to say tbh. The game is designed for good and bad matchups to exist because we have a roster of unique heroes. This isn’t a game where anyone shares the same weapon or abilities, so there will always be heroes that just kind of perform better when facing particular opponents on average. Like, hitscans are naturally going to perform better vs. Pharah compared to Symmetra for example. So there’s not really an end all be all solution for every situation.

Honestly, I think totally removing ult charge when swapping wouldn’t be a bad idea. Like, you’re already getting a matchup advantage, should you also already be partially toward your ult too? I’m not sure. There could also be direct balance changes to try to tackle it. Like, everyone knows Dvas main weakness is beams. The classic “You go Dva, then they go Zarya/Sym/Mei” example. Idk, maybe beams should deal 10% less damage against armor? Dva has a ton of it. That would lessen how hard she’s countered while still making it an effective strat. But, that would also make beams less against all other armored heroes too.

5

There is no way to make 5v5 work. On a core fundamental level, OW is made for 6v6. The only way to force 5v5 to work is to remove the ability to swap heroes entirely, a bad thing to remove as it’s basically the only thing OW has left for ‘uniqueness’ and even that will go away when Rivals is here.

Blizzard claims to have 100 million players, I don’t believe this but if that were true then allowing 6v6 to coexist alongside 5v5 should be a nonissue. There should be enough players for all roles for queue times to not matter.

But also, RQ is bad for the game because they could just nerf the support role entirely, it has problems. Invulns and rez shouldn’t exist. Problematic metas caused by tank duos were only enabled because characters like Bap and Brig can endlessly sustain the tanks while requiring 0 effort or thought on the Bap and Brig player’s part.

It was never a format issue, don’t forget that. It’s always been a hero kit issue, mainly in the support role that exaggerates the tank roles ‘issues’.

Edit: Just adding, the sheer amount of garbage they’ve had to do to try and force 5v5 to ‘work’ at all should be the eye opener for even the biggest morons around here and elsewhere. It shouldn’t require 8+ hero reworks, map reworks, and entire modes being released as garbage for people to see the problems but here we are, people still deny the problems.

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6

the number of any type of player is not an issue, and has never been a problem

the so-called shortage of tanks is an artificial problem created by 222/122

it is not an issue for the game per se

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7

There is no way to make 6v6 work. At least not if it’s role queue.

There are nowhere near enough players that find tanking fun in an environment where they are all significantly weaker than they are now AND the game requires 2 of them, the same as DPS/Support. It is mathematically impossible for queue times to be manageable with how big of a difference there is in how many people are queueing for each role.

And deleting RQ making it open queue only isn’t an option either. Yes it would have good queue times but the awful match quality would make countless players leave. Not worth it.

Sure let it happen but I’m telling you the 6v6 RQ queue times would be atrocious

I think the only way you get 6v6 is as an alternate open queue mode. Nothing else would survive

8

It’s delusional to believe that players would also want to solo tank either. Just completely unrealistic for an expectation. In every game that utilizes role based systems, tank is always the one with the least players. That’s because most people can’t handle that responsibility. From a psychological standpoint, 5v5 will not work just because of this alone. You can’t make tank fun without making the other 2 roles unfun, and then the cycle just viciously repeats itself as they nerf all 3 roles.

Just be realistic. There are no amount of changes they can make to make the tank role both fun and enticing to get more people playing it. They can’t do that on a game like WoW, what makes you think they could here too? The short answer is that it’s a true impossibility.

And as I said. They’re lying about having 100 million players, if it’s true then there would be plenty of tank players. People stopped playing because they chose to stop adding new heroes to the game while lying about the sequel they announced.

9

Actually, it can work because it has worked before, for a much longer time than we’ve been stuck with the current pay to win 5v5 game

The game can be played just fine without role restrictions/limits; and as such, no, the game doesnt require 2 tanks, or 2 of any role for that matter

excessive queue times are only a problem in 222/122

6v6 has no such issues

I and many others find that role-less queue offers much better match quality than 222/122

I see 222/122 as playing the game on training wheels

To me, the addition of 222 was THE worst change ever made to the game bar none

10

Well…I enjoy solo tanking much more than I did tanking with another player in OW1. And the bit about “in every game that utilizes role based systems, tank is always the one with the least players” is Exactly why role queue 6v6 will never work. That’s what I’m saying.

I agree and I disagree. Contrary to some I really love that Tanks are raid bosses now. There are lots of people that agree with me. However, you are right to an extent that some people will just never find the Tank role as fun as DPS/Support, and that’s just fine since there’s only 1 tank required per team now. It wasn’t fine when it was 2 like the other roles. That’s where the queue times really suffered.

11

You know it doesn’t matter at all if RQ just isn’t in the game. The vast majority of people defaulted to 222 of some kind or 132 of some kind. That was 99% of my games, or they can put that garbage idea into comp only. There was never a reason to enforce such things onto QP of all things.

Either way, even with only 1 tank required now, it doesn’t change that queue times are getting worse with each passing day because no one wants to play the role. It’s fine if you can handle the solo tanking, most people cannot handle this and never will. That’s really just the majority, but 2 people are more likely to enjoy having a back up tank at the minimum.

Oh and again. They claim to have 100 million players, let’s test and see if that’s true. If it is then the game did grow and there will be enough tanks to sustain any form of 6v6. More people might even come back.

12

Many people would disagree with this. But I know this is the only possible way for 6v6 to have a chance of working, so I get why you’re saying it.

You misunderstand what dictates queue times in role queue. It’s not how many players are playing any particular role. It’s how many players are playing a particular role compared to the others. So even if there was a million players willing to play Tank in 6v6, it doesn’t make queue times good if there are 5 million DPS and 5 million support players. Queue times will still be bad.

13

Neverwinter had a real issue with Guardian Fighter numbers. Hardly anyone wanted to play the role because all they did was sit at the bosses ankles and hold their shield while jabbing at shins. Their literal job was just to take all the damage and hope their Devoted Cleric/Healadin could keep them alive.

When lifesteal was insanely broken, people stopped running Guardian Fighter altogether and groups would vote to kick any GF’s that queued up because the Scourge Warlock (which is supposed to be a Glass Cannon) could do the job of a Tank and a Support (so even DC’s and OP’s would get booted too).

And then when everyone figured out how to make a DPS/Tank/Support hybrid Oathbound Paladin/Healadin with an ability that came from a DLC area, then everyone wanted OP’s instead of GF’s.

The role of Tank is so often a very thankless job that gets abused in pretty much any game that it exists as a role.

14

not at all

although there werent enough players who wanted to play tank to meet the artificial demand for tanks created by 222, 122 didnt solve that artificially created problem because even more tanks dropped out when they found out they’d be tanking solo

as such, the artificial demand for tanks still cant be met

5v5 wasnt the right answer

the right answer is to either make tanks more fun to play or to undo the artificial demand for tanks. Or both. Either is entirely doable as long as Blizzard is willing to take on the effort

15

And yet these people will have children. Really makes you think, huh?

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16

Crazy to think that people who can’t handle playing Tank will raise humans to run the world one day lmao

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17

Honestly never thought about that. If most people can’t even tank in a video game then… :cold_face:

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18

Weird thing is, there’s already a way they can adjust this interaction - by tweaking armour’s resistance to Beam damage.

Sure, it affects more things than the D.Va-Zarya matchup, but the game mechanic was added in Overwatch 1 specifically because of how hard Zarya countered D.Va there (also a good reminder that hard counters absolutely existed in OW1/6v6 - they aren’t going anywhere).

Increase it from 30% to 35 or 40%. Zarya won’t lose her advantage but it will less one-sided.

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19

The problem is simple imo.

  1. Extremely designed characters create bigger synergies and counters, esp. tanks/supps who should play as a team.
  2. The more characters you have in a role/team, the stronger synergies you have.
  3. The less characters you have in a role/team, the stronger counters you have.

3 characters in a role created so BIG synergies like in goats, while 1 character in a role exposes (too easily exploitable)vulnerability to counters.

2 characters in a role would be optimal but considering q times, we should allow more dps places imo. We had 2 separate dps roles originally but the 2 roles were combined into dps somehow. But we could now divide dps into 2 roles(like short-ranged mobility and ranged) again and make 2 places per role, so we have 2 tanks, 2 mobility dps, 2 ranged dps and 2 supps? (I’d like 3 supps here because it’ll be somewhat harder to manage with only 2 supps)

Another solution could be to design/rework characters not so extreme, less synergy and less counter, then any format could work. But the RPG-favored devs and some RPG fans won’t agree.

20

I agree that 6v6 is better for the game in the long run.

I have never seen so much dissatisfaction with this game, and I’ve played through every meta since the release of OW1. It’s not just tank players — players in every role are not enjoying the game. There are new videos about the poor state of OW2 released almost every day. You don’t even have to look for them. This should not be an issue after 2 years, considering the rapidity of updates and range of developer support. 5v5 is very clearly a failed experiment.

Double shield was a problem, yes. This was a balancing and hero design issue, not a format issue.
We are seeing something similar in 5v5 right now:
Tanks are so tanky that the gameplay loop is very similar to double shield. The strategy at most ranks (and even upper ranks to a degree) that is damage dumping most tanks, the bulwark of a team composition, is almost the exact same strategy that existed in double shield meta. The only difference is that it’s not shields we’re blasting, it’s a supertank that will destroy your team otherwise. Whoever kills tank first all but automatically wins the fight, because tank is simply that powerful.

You can’t solve counter-swapping without drastically reducing or removing the tanks’ weaknesses. You can’t solve tank in 5v5 without making things miserable for the other roles.
Even if counter-swapping is ineffective, tanks would still need a ridiculous amount of HP to not explode. That’s the issue with this format.

6v6 opened up more options for team play as well as individual play. Counter-swapping, though powerful, was not always necessary as there was enough expression to overcome even bad match-ups.

If an issue in 6v6 is that there weren’t enough tank players, then the role can be made more appealing to a wider range of players/play-styles.
The issue with tanks in 6v6, other than a lack of content and balancing, was that there weren’t enough of them, and they appealed much more to a certain kind of brain and play-style.

More tanks can be introduced to maintain interest. Mobility/dynamism can be added to existing or new tanks to make them more interesting to play even for DPS and Support players. More dynamism will also reduce the amount of HP in shields needed for these heroes to be viable.

An argument against 6v6 is that “there aren’t enough tank players”. Well then, the solution is clear and obvious. Get more tank players.

People always get this wrong:
Just “getting new players” isn’t the only solution for a healthier amount of players in a given role.
Overwatch also has an existing massive playerbase in the other roles. It’s a question of finding ways to dip into and utilize this playerbase.

It boils down to this:
If the game is fun and interesting, more people will play it. If the role is more interesting, more people will play it. 6v6 is the answer, but getting more players (particularly in the tank role) is a must to have a great game.

The solution:

Return to 6v6. Aggressively rework problematic heroes like Brigitte and Baptiste. Attack sustain (the problem that exists in both formats). Make tanks more interesting to garner interest from existing and newer players if necessary. Make shields weaker, but the pieces behind them more dynamic to be viable.

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