Lets get constructive: How to implement 5v5 the right way

General Discussion
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First things first:
I am a ~2000 hour Tank Main and I deeply dislike the idea of 5v5, but since the devs seem to have fully committed to it and chances that anything we might say or do will change their mind on this matter are basically nonexistent, we might as well give feedback to try and minimize the possible negative impact on the game as much as possible.

So here is my take on how to implement 5v5 without scaring away most of the current Tank player base, while making the role as attractive as possible for new players:

#1
Get 5v5 on the PTR as soon as possible.

People can’t give you informed feedback if you don’t give them the possibility to test the changes ahead of release and in time to make some major changes to it if the tests reveal critical flaws.
A lack of this will not only nurture a very hostile and defiant stance from people who expect to dislike the changes, but also false expectations on both sides of the pro and contra 5v5 camps.

#2
Stay true to your promise of buffing Tanks to the point where they can make up for the loss of their Tank buddy.

Anyone who remembers the post rework glory days of D.Va knows how much many DPS players despise it, when they are more or less unable to win a 1v1 duel against a Dive Tank and get heavily punished for disrespecting their presence by positioning themselves carelessly.
But just as Tank players will have to learn to adapt to the rework of their role, so will the DPS and Support players have to learn to play around it.
If you give in to the complaints (there will be plenty of them) and turn Tanks into bullet sponges that can mostly be ignored and get ganged up on after the teamfight is over, then you might as well remove the role completely instead.

#3
Hero Bans and Map Avoids for Tank players:
One of my biggest concerns is, that there will be one Tank that is META for a map and if you don’t pick it, you will have to face the wrath of your teammates and a much higher chance to lose the match.
There are two things you can do to prevent this from happening very effectively:

A) Each Tank player can ban 1 Tank Hero per match.
The pick will be anonymous and take place at the start of the match before team chat gets activated, so the teammates can’t try to influence the Tank player in his choice or get toxic about the choice he made.

B) Allow Tank players to avoid at least one map that puts them at a heavy disadvantage with the Hero pool they play.

This would give Tank players a lot more agency in getting to play Heroes they enjoy and might also reveal which Tank Heroes and maps might need to get looked into again when they get banned/avoided a lot.

#4
The Tank roster is already pretty small, so don’t use the 1/2/2 change as an excuse to slow down on new Tank releases.
Having more options is important to make the Role more popular, avoid stale Tank METAs and also to counteract the negative effects that come with the Hero Bans proposed in #3.

#5
Make a 2/2/2 Role Q Quick Play and Ranked mode permanently available in the Arcade.

I know that it is unrealistic to expect separate balance changes for 6v6 and 5v5, but just as much as you expect your fellow Tank players to respect your decision and give 5v5 a fair chance, you should not disrespect them by making it impossible for them to have some fun with their old Tank Duo friends.
In the recent AMA you said that this might not be happening because of balance concerns, but Arcade modes have never been very balanced to begin with and yet a lot of people like to play them.

Also who knows, maybe 2/2/2 Role Q with super buffed Tanks is working much better than you expect it to do?

#6
Talking about the Arcade:
Don’t get lazy on this one and try to get as many of the modes to work with 5v5 as possible.
Mystery Heroes, No Limits and Open Q might be too broken to still be fun in a 5v5 environment, but modes like CTF, Total Mayhem, 6v6 Death Match etc. will probably work somewhat fine under a 1/2/2 Role Q rule set.
FFA Death Match might be a bit harder, but exluding Tanks from it would be a huge mistake since many people use this mode to warm up for competitive.
One solution would be to make the points you get dependent on the Hero you play.
E. g. Roadhog could get 0.7 points instead of 1 for each kill.
The value could be determined by how good certain heroes are performing in FFA DM which would - at least theoretically - make the mode a lot more balanced than it is even now.

#7
Try to keep the Tanks Hero identity intact as much as possible.
Reworking Heroes is a very sensitive topic for people who main the affected Hero or at least play it a lot. Strolling to far away from a Heroes original design will put off a lot of Tank players.
It will be difficult with some of them (Roadhog and Orisa come to my mind here), but a rework from scratch should be the very last resort.

#8
Tank Busters don’t have a place in a 1/2/2 environment.
If there is only 1 Tank on each side, you should need team effort to take him down.

#9
During the AMA there was some talk about renaming the Role from Tank to Bruiser.
While it seems more fitting with the upcoming changes I would still strongly recommend to not touch this one.
We Tank Mains take pride in our work and already have to deal with losing our Tank Duos and having our Mains reworked.
Even if it would be just a change of cosmetic nature - just let us keep at least this one as it is for good old times sake.

Also “Tank” simply sounds more exciting and powerful than “Bruiser”.

That was it from me for now.
Feel free to give constructive feedback or propose your own changes.

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Yes! I completely agree with all of this!!

I’ve pretty much accepted that 122 is coming to the game at this point, I hope the devs do it right!

One thing that you mentioned that is super important is keeping tanks identity. Hopefully devs do that.

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I agree with most of this, and I’m super glad that you are providing actual feedback on how to make 5v5 good rather than just saying “This is terrible you guys are bad !!” to the Devs.

This will take lots of work but I think done right OW2 PvP will be super fun for all roles! But we as the community and you guys as tank players need to give them actual feedback to make that happen!

Also, there’s a workshop code that emulates the 5v5 build Blizz showed us on the livestream, the code is Y4AY9. Obviously it’s nothing close to what 5v5 will end up like, but even just playing solo tank D.va on there with 300 300 HP/Armor and 4 second DM feels GREAT. Excited to see how they can make the other tanks feel as amazing as her solo!

And obviously tank players are the most impacted by this change, but we should also remember that this is going to have huge effects on multiple DPS and supports too. Lots of DPS characters will be losing CC entirely (like Mei and maybe Mcree) or getting it nerfed heavily, and in turn mobility DPS like Doom and Tracer are going to most likely get nerfed according to the Devs, same with Snipers. Bastion is already stated to be reworked entirely, and it’s looking like Brig and Moira too.

So we all should remember that everyone will be feeling the effects of this!

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Thanks for the support :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Well, I actually did that at the beginning, but it was about time that I cooled down a bit :joy:

I gave the workshop mode a try, but it is unfortunately very buggy, so an official PTR on which they can slap their newest ideas to get some feedback on them would be very appreciated.

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As much as I wish it would, I doubt it will be. Why? Because you either have to play with the balance of 5v5 in 6v6 (which is a stupid idea because two brawl tanks are too strong) or you have to have two separate balance patches with possibly two balance teams that Blizzard and Activison do not want, because of money and then you could also completely decouple OW2 from Overwatch, which will not happen either.

Blizzard has turned away from the players so far that I unfortunately have absolutely no hope in this regard.

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Definitely! And they could update it every month/two months with the newest batch of changes to heroes!

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Like I said:
I know that the balance might be wacky, but that was never really a concern for any of the Arcade modes.
Also both sides will have 2 super buffed Tanks, so even if it isn’t balanced it is still somewhat fair.

The main reason I want this to happen is, to have a place where I can play with my old Tank buddies every now and then and I really don’t feel like that is too much to ask.

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This should be a team decision because Overwatch is a team game.

Uhhh… No? Learn to play all the maps. People wouldn’t get to play their favourite maps because people only want to learn half of their role.

It’s solo tank but you’re not playing alone. The team shouldn’t be completely at the mercy of whichever random tank they get paired with

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1: Dont.

Failing that:

2: Open role, nobody will want to solo tank and I doubt blizzard will be able to balance around solo tanking.

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Quite honestly:
People have always been picking whatever they want.
With 1/2/2 the Tank pick might be even more influential on the outcome of the match, so giving Tank players more agenda in what they “have” and “haven’t” to play would increase the acceptance of this change a lot.

You are basically expecting Tank players to learn and play all Tanks on an equal skill level then.
This is neither going to help the match quality, nor the popularity of the role as a whole and simply not a realistic approach.

That’s going to be the 5v5 reality.

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Why should tanks be the only role in the game to be able to mould the entire team comp? Are supports and DPS going to get bans so that tanks don’t get the power to force them into the same two healers or damage dealers every game?

Being forced into certain characters ain’t a tank-exclusive issue.

This also makes games significantly easier for tank players as they can just ban a tank that they can’t play against.

All in all, bad suggestion.

I mean… Near enough. Not necessarily all but most, yeah. I think support players should know how to play most supports. I think one-tricking should be condemned and I wish it wasn’t as highly rewarded by the matchmaker. Diversity of hero pools is, in itself, a skill.

You might think it’s not realistic, but it’s significantly better than the tank having control over which maps people are allowed to play. That just doesn’t make sense and is straight up selfish. Either maps should be random or any map-selection system should, again, be team based.

This is a dismissal of my point rather than a counter argument. Sure, tanks are going to be the diff in every game, but that’s entirely different to some rando on your team getting to ban out a map you want to play. That straight up makes the game worse for everyone except the tank.

5v5 is going to be hard to adjust to, but I feel optimistic. But giving tanks the ability to selfishly skew map selection and hero selection to their own ends isn’t the play.

Yes, we need more appeal to tanking, but you should be looking for one that doesn’t alienate the rest of the playerbase, bearing in mind that the tank issues come from how much of a minority they are.

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Most of the DPS roster works with basically any Tank and the DPS and Support Role are also much less map dependent than the Tank Role.
I hope that they will tackle this issue in the future, but when they got asked if they will make changes to already existing maps their answer was “We don’t know”, so I wouldn’t count on it.

It is not about molding the entire team comp, but to get at least a bit more freedom when it comes to your own Hero pick.

Hero Bans actually discourage and punish one tricking, so I can’t really follow your argumentation here.

Then don’t group up with a Tank player who avoids maps that you want to play :woman_shrugging:

Feel free to make your own proposals on how to encourage people to play Tank then.

What I posted is, what I think will be needed to keep me playing Tank in a 5v5 scenario and up to now I was rather unimpressed with what the devs had to show me.

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But there’s still 2-3 meta DPS at a time, so you’re still restricted with your picks. Same with Supp.

So what you’re telling me is that tanks will be the most diverse role because they have maps to force diversity while DPS and Supp are just stuck with what’s meta.

Other roles don’t get that

OK, maybe but you can two trick which is barely any better. And it actively facilitates that.

You just don’t care, do you? Think I nailed it when I mentioned selfishness. I don’t queue with tank players, but I still get a random tank in my game… Every game. And he or she can ban a map I like just because he wants to climb without having to go through the trouble of learning his role fully. Nonsensical suggestion, but you don’t care because it can’t harm tank players.

And the segments I quoted are a negatively influence on, like what, 80? 85% of the playerbase?

There’s no point in making a suggestion to help tanks that will have a net reduction in quality due to harming the other roles, that’s never going to fly.

If you want map bans and tank bans to sto one tank always being meta, then have the whole team decide.

  • No more tanks being dominant every game
  • No more tank pick being dictated by map
  • Can’t be abused by tanks who want less to learn
  • DPS and Support players can’t be bullied by a rando tank’s map or hero bans

Find me a downside

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Even in the OWL, where the META is much more important and strict than in ranked play, the DPS players are way less restricted than the Tank players are.

Having to play Reinhardt every single time you get thrown on Kings Row is hardly “diversity”.

Also the META picks of other roles will experience more diversity if the Tank pick isn’t basically set in stone from the very beginning.

They are much more free in what they can pick without soft throwing than the Tank role.
That is one of the main reasons why the Tank role is so unpopular.

Uh… back at you?
You don’t seem to give a damn about what people think who don’t want 5v5 because of its negative drawbacks.

The other Tank gets to avoid a map as well, so it’s not like Tank players would be unaffected by the downsides.

If the devs do a good job on balancing the maps for 1/2/2, then the avoids will be all over the place and statistically you will get to play your favorite map just about as much as before.

If a map is frequently avoided by Tank players, then there seems to be a problem with that map that needs to be addressed by the devs anyways.

Well, 5v5 comes with heavy drawbacks for the Tank player base to profit everyone else.
It seems only fair to give them something in return even if it might have slightly negative drawbacks on other roles.

Of course you are free to disagree with that, but then you are in no position to call other people selfish in this matter :woman_shrugging:

So, who has more power in deciding the ban in your scenario?
If it is the Tank, then nothing changes.
If it is his 4 teammates, then they can ban one of the Tanks their own Tank player might want to play and off-meta heroes might get heavily affected by this in a negative way.

That’s a really good way to make even more players quit the Tank role - which is the exact opposite of what we should be trying to achieve here.

Also the devs have stated multiple times now that they want to make games faster.
Having 5 people discussing ban picks will take much more time than having the one player who will be affected the most by it making a quick decision based on his own preference.

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What did I ever do or say to imply this?

What about just preferring a map…?

What is this profit to everyone else I’m hearing?

Tanks are getting hit the hardest, I’ll give you that, but where is the benefit to others? DPS will potentially get shorter queue times. Hardly revolutionary. And what do supports get…?

Think I am. Your perception of what you do and don’t deserve is warped. We all know that the tank role needs help somewhere. Suggesting a change that actively harms all other players and not caring is selfish. And defending it with "Oh, Blizzard hurt tank players so it’s OK to hurt the remaining playerbase (which is btw, massively larger than the tank playerbase) is an extra layer of selfishness. Me identifying this philosophy as flawed and selfish does not in turn make me selfish.

The team?

Then they can discuss, and the tank player can say “Hey, I’m really confident on Winston on this map so can we leave him unbanned?”

Not full proof and the tank isn’t going to get his way every time, but he at least always has a voice but doesn’t have complete control to drag his team into whatever comp he desires.

I’d love your explanation as to how this will work. Ban systems are specifically designed to shake up the meta, prevent stale mirror comps, improve selection diversity and replay-ability. Who the hell is getting pushed away by that?

It takes 10 seconds to ban a character. It’s also a somewhat engaging process so it’s not like you’re sitting on a loading screen for 10 seconds. I think it’s a bit of an overreaction to suggest that this will make or break player engagement and if you’re not suggesting that, then why did you bring that up?

Because it still affects the whole team. The tank is the centre of the team. This will be especially true in OW2. You will dictate how the entire game is played. Sure, you’ll be the one playing tank but we’ll be the one positioning and managing ourselves around you. It’s ridiculous to me that you don’t think the other 8 players’ opinions matter in a decision like that.

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Your general attitude of ruling out any changes that might profit Tank popularity in a 5v5 scenario because of the slightest drawbacks that might come with them.

E. g. having the Tank player base still enjoy playing their role is much more important than you getting to play certain maps a bit more or less.

Ask the devs, not me.
If you haven’t noticed by now:
I am against 5v5 because I think it is a change for the worse.

This thread is about damage control and finding compromises that help to not leave Tank players behind.

If 5v5 gets implemented into the game the negative effects have to be distributed between the 3 roles as evenly as possible.

Putting it nearly entirely on the Tank players and then calling people selfish if they complain about it and make proposals to better distribute the drawbacks is a really weird take imo.

They can already do that by simply picking whatever Tank they want.
Allowing them to ban heroes they don’t want to feel forced to pick changes absolutely nothing about that.

Both Tank players pick a Tank they want to ban. Done.

Your proposal is to allow the Tanks teammates to ban a Tank he wants to play and you don’t understand why that might put Tank players off? Come on…

And what exactly has that to do with the ban system I proposed?
With or without it the Tank Player can in no way be forced to play what his team wants him to play.

If you want the Tank to make a certain pick you are free to ask him to do so, but he is in no way obligated to follow your request.

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Even the pros don’t what are you even on? This grand idea that Blizz/ow team had thinking people would switch at the dime of a hat to counter and would be able to play each hero at a near same skill level was a pipe dream.

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This isn’t even close to how this conversation has gone. I mean, that’s just a blatant lie. I have given my opinion on two suggestions which will alienate th overwhelming majority of the playerbase. I have also mentioned, multiple times, a desire to improve tank appeal, but I think doing so at the expense of over 3/4 of the playerbase is the wrong move.

More spin-doctoring.

I’m not calling you selfish for complaining that you’re being shafted and looking for ways to damage control. That’s fine, I agree with that pursuit. Tanks are being shafted, and I’d be pissed if the same thing happened to supports, so you’ve every right to complain. What makes you selfish is suggesting changes that damages 8/10 of the players in the match for the improvement of the other 2. I also called you selfish for justifying that change by saying there is somehow a benefit to everyone else (which you yourself were unable to actually substantiate) therefore it’s perfectly fine to damage 80% of the match. That is selfish. Not complaining, and not suggesting, but the nature of your suggestions.

But you remove communication. You get into a game and your damage player says, “I know he’s not meta, but I’m really good at reaper on this map, can we run rush” and the tank says “No, sorry, I banned Rein because I’m not good at blocking shatters”.

You eliminate a layer of coordination. Sure, in a real game there’s no guarantee the team would agree to swap, but there is at least a decision. No one is going to get their way every time. No one should. This is is what we call “fair”.

What I don’t understand is why you value two tanks highly and the other 8 players not at all. You realise that the tank picks influence the entire game? Some people don’t like playing with certain tanks, and love playing with others. You’re saying tanks won’t appreciate their favourite tank being banned, and you’re right they wouldn’t. The 8 other people aren’t going to appreciate their favourite tank being banned either and that affects 4x the number of people. Yes, I agree that it affects tanks more, but not 4x more. This is why I say your suggestion is comes from a selfish place. It’s “this isn’t 100% perfect for tanks so it doesn’t matter if its 80% perfect for everyone in the game” or “this is 100% perfect for tanks so it doesn’t matter that the rest of the players will hate it”. You’re not, even for a second, considering the rest of the playerbase - which, again, is most of it. You just don’t care.

You’re giving the tank custody over 8 players fun without giving them a say.

No, he’s not obligated. But he can. Until you let him ban away a certain tank without consulting the team. This is the “won’t get his way every time” thing I’ve mentioned multiple times. So, you do agree that this approach is acceptable, just not when it’s against tanks.

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Come up with a way to make Tanking in 5v5 bearable that doesn’t affect other roles and you have a point and my support, but so far you haven’t made any useful suggestions in that regard :woman_shrugging:

It is not only the size of the player base that is affected that matters.
It is also about how heavily it is affected.
Potentially having a slightly lower chance to get to play on the map you like is much less invasive than having the Role you main changed in a way that makes you want to quit it.

Every change you would make to Tanks would also have an effect on other roles. Using that as an excuse to completely rule all of them out no matter how negligible the effect on other roles might be is not an approach that nurtures a healthy discussion or will lead to any kind of workable compromise.

If someone doesn’t want to play Rein for whatever reason, then he is most certainly not going to do so.
Any discussion about that is moot and letting the Tank player pick a ban doesn’t affect the outcome of this situation in the slightest.

If you insist on giving the teammates an opportunity for discussion anyways:
Sure, add a 30 second time window in which they can try to tell the Tank player what Tank to ban, but I am 100% sure that this will cause way more harm than good.

Like I said: It is the devs who want to implement 5v5.
That it isn’t in the best interest of the Tank player base is quite obvious and I agree that they did a very poor job at explaining what the benefits for the rest of the player base are, but they obviously believe that they are there.

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So I played some 5v5 lobbies with the workshop code that emulates OW2. The absolute most important thing to do is to tone down all anti-tank tools across the board. They’re going in the right direction with removing or toning down CC, but things like focus beam, fan the hammer, antinade, discord orb, damage boost and storm arrow need to be significantly nerfed, reworked or out right removed as all these abilities make playing half the tank roster feel terrible when they are combined together especially in a solo environment.

Interestingly, there was a bug in the workshop code I used that would cause tanks to spawn in with an additional 150 - 250hp and it actually made playing tank incredibly fun as I could actually go in an attack without getting blown up by anti-tank tools. Of course, an extra 150 - 250 hp is excessive but, I do think Blizz should look into increasing health pools to some capacity if they are set on tanks being aggressive bruisers.

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