The devs have changed too much of the game to suit 5v5 now; small changes and tweaks to large major reworks - they all aren’t needed for a 6v6 environment. Also new heroes and changes to old maps were made with 5v5 in mind.
Like seriously I have no faith in the dev team to be able to revert things back in a balanced state. We are just going to end up with some heroes in 5v5 balance in a 6v6 format.
i feel like this game is doomed regardless now honestly & wont ever be back to being as enjoyable as it once was.
It works way better than you think. Check out the 6v6 discord. Better balance than 5v5 has ever seen. Putting 2 more players into the new maps is a non issue. I know hog is fat and all but they fit in the map.
I’m a gamer, I thrive on gaming. It’ll be fun to see how the changes made during OW2 affect 6v6. It’ll probably be like playing Terraria now versus playing in 2012.
People who parrot Samito think that 6v6 is a magic wand.
Team 4 failed to make the tank role enjoyable enough for people to queue tank in 2-2-2.
Also shooting shields 24/7 was an actual problem in 2-2-2.
I would like for the devs to give 6v6 a fair try once again, with actual proper balancing and emphasis on the fun factor.
Maybe they will manage to remove the infinite shield problem.
But i’m not so sure about queue times.
Tank will always remain a niche role in shooters.
Both 5v5 and 6v6 are theoretically balance-able, but it might not be a balance problem in the first place. It might be a role design and culture problem.
who’s to say to not revert it back? they have a baseline they can work with such as using the Oct 2020 patch as a good starting point (not the patch where mccree, bap, and brig get buffed, before that). they can also revert all of season 9 changes, remove role passives and use all of OW2’s characters to nerf them similar to the Oct 2020 patch’s power level. if you have a thorough plan, 6v6 can work.
for transparency, going into this reply with the mindset of wanting 6v6 back, but trying to keep an open mind. Looking at the big hero changes we’ve had, and assuming tank hp would be nerfed somewhat to account for the 5v5 health buffs:
Maximum ultimate charge retained when swapping 25%. - honestly a generally good change, affects nothing in 6v6 imo
All tanks now have 30% knockback resistance and provide 50% less Ultimate charge when damaged - maybe a tad OP in a 2 tank environment, would consider a nerf to both
All supports now heal 15 HP/second after not being damaged for 1.5 seconds. - Fine, no notes
All forms of extra health from abilities (e.g., Brigitte’s Rally or Lucio’s Sound Barrier) are considered Overhealth (green health bar) instead of a secondary type of armor or shield health.
Overhealth reduces Ultimate charge gained by opponents by 50% when it’s damaged. - honestly will be more noticeably enjoyable in 6v6 imo
Sombra rework: honestly, 6v6 will make facing sombra a lot nicer for tanks. If sombra hacks your tank now, you don’t suddenly not have a tank
Bastion rework: No more infinite bastion, will go a long way to avoiding bunker comp meta. For anyone forgetting, the classic bunker comp was often Orisa and Sigma barriers rotating to protect a Baston. which brings us to:
Orisa rework: No more Orisa barrier takes away one of the major pain points in double shield.
*Winston ignoring armour: with 2 tanks, this will hit harder no doubt. If both your tanks are armour based with health nerfs, this will be borderline OP.
Doomfist Tank rework: Just adds another option for dive.
the new characters I’m not sure how they’d factor in in all honesty, Granted things like Mauga could become more of a nuisance, but the rest I don’t see being affected by the switch much. Outside of some minor - moderate balancing, I don’t see a huge issue we’ll face?
You do realize that 5v5 RQ queues are only slightly faster than 6v6 RQ queues because they started mixing players from very different elos and ranks ever since the game went F2P in late 2022, right… ?
Queues only started getting problematic in 6v6 because of RQ from 2019 to 2022.
5v5 RQ queues are faster because they decided to hide ranks since October 2022. 6v6 will be more or less the same although tanks are still the least favorite role in the OW community.
The amount of players per team is irrelevant in terms of getting fast / slow queues. It all depends on the matchmakîng now being more forgiving, and not really trying to find the fairest matches to anyone queuing.
Let’s not forget that F2P Overwatch can mix players with a 2-3 rank disparity in Competitive, which was rare in OW1 glory days.
And all of that has already been taken care of by several community made patches. The other alternative is going back to the last OW1 patch and just balance new characters and the few reworks as a starting point. No big deal.
Both options are likely not optimal, duh, but they are both very good starting points that require little effort to implement.
I mean the main issue of people not queueing for tank in OW1 was apparently the stacking of CC. They removed multiple CC’s and destroyed heroes in the process (despite those heroes having the least problematic CC, and now they’ve basically re-added the problematic ones lmao) so according to this, more people should want to be playing tank. I honestly have no idea why more DPS players don’t play tank though - they have the lethality of DPS for the most part.
I am slightly skeptical, despite wanting it to be true. Kiriko is already fundamentally broken and obnoxiously survivable. Another tank to protect her would just make her more annoying to kill. Does she really need swift step in 5v5? Some supports like lifeweaver and kiriko already make it impossible for some tanks like ball to do anything, because they just cycle suzu and grip (and neither can be dove themselves). Illari pylon would be even more annoying in chokes in 6v6 so they’d need to half the healing and give her 2 or something (because never having her pylon available would feel awful for illari players).
It would be if they just said 'ok we are going back to 6v6 and are going to revert all previous heroes back to their previous state, except for Orisa (literal solution to double shield was just her rework but they decided rework + make a whole new 5v5 format ???)
All they needed to do was to stop stuns spam and boop spam. A brig and cass alone would shut down tanks all game with bash + flash + whip. Why not just make tanks increase resistance to most quick CC when it is applied in a certain time or something.
Yeah. I don’t know why they didn’t just make a hero where deploying shields against them benefits them… like Symmetra…? or a hero that closes the gap to prevent spam damage from double shield comps like… symmetra? Or maybe make a long range tank that has consistent damage that bypasses shields. Or just deploy the orisa rework?? because rein + sigma doesn’t work for double shield because rein can’t do anything whilst shielding.
Let’s be real they will never just revert everyone back and then add the obvious changes. Like sombra in 6v6 was never a problem. Yeah she had a CC, but it was a silence you had to cast and not an instant stun like brig or cass. Anyway they did like 2 reworks for her for 5v5, which turned her into whatever we have now. All i know is that i see people complain about sombra 1000x more than they ever did in OW1, but they will not revert her. Just like they won’t revert doom either (although whatever doom players want more, but idk what they want). Revert hog? Don’t think so. Even though hog is basically unkillable now with how his new kit works.
tank is the least picked queue.
50% less required tanks = faster queues.
they might’ve done more than just cutting the tanks in half to fasten the queues as well, but pretending 1/2 the required players isn’t impacting the queues is a farce.
The common denominator is Role Queue, which is the main reason queue times are a problem.
Tank is the least picked queue, indeed, but the very reason you’re getting fast queues currently is not because of 1-2-2, yet because the OW team made is so that they mix people from different ranks in the same match after the F2P update in October 2022.
6v6 with 2-2-2 queue could have the very same fast queue with current forgiving matchmaking that mix people from very different elos together.
Keep in mind that in OW1 with the 2-2-2 setup was subject to very accurate matchmaking in terms of SR equality between your teammates and the enemy team (which made queuing very long). This is not the case anymore.
In current F2P Overwatch, people regularly play with people from very different ranks (sometimes 3 ranks disparity). This is the reason why we don’t see people’s rank or the average SR from both teams, like we used to in OW1.
It’s been proven many times, after the F2P transition update, that ranks between players within the same match were very different (in Comp).
Given that the population on Overwatch is decreasing, the best way to fix queues would be to remove RQ altogether and make Overwatch a 5v5 Open Queue game (with balance patches around it).
It would require role reworks for tanks (and maybe support too) but that’s the only way for the playerbase to have fairer matches and no long queues anymore.
You can add limitations without being forced into role queues prior to entering a match. For instance, you could limit the tank heroes to two per team (same for supports).
She wasn’t. You can cry all you want, but she was significantly healthier in 6v6 without hacking in stealth, bonus damage to hacked targets etc. Her value was from big brain plays and not cheap BS, which is why people hated her on their team because most players were bad at her.
Even that map reworks have created so much cover that wasn’t needed with 2 tanks. I’m pro 6v6 but there would need to be a massive overhaul to basically everything in the game.
