Why 5v5 is Inherently Flawed

General Discussion
1

The answer is simple. There’s only 1 tank. People claim that they like it, because there’s less shields to shoot at. And how they enjoy the much faster pace of the game, and yet those same people in other posts claim they hate how certain heroes (e.g. Sombra, Sojourn, Zarya) are dominating their games. Mind you, I’m even someone who hated those 3 in my games. But, I also wasn’t someone claiming I enjoyed 5v5.

Here, let me make things a bit more easy to comprehend for you all. You see in a 6v6 scenario, you had 2 tanks, 2 DPS, and 2 healers. Usually a main-tank and off-tank. The main tank held the front line, and made space. They were the play makers essentially. Your team fight enablers. Where as your off-tank acted in synergy with your main-tank, and also would PEEL for your healers. If your healers got flanked, your off-tank’s job was to stop what they were doing and defend. Which ultimately is why heroes such as D.va was such a high pick in higher ELO’s. Not because Asian gamer girl with giant robot.

Now then, let’s look at OW2. You have 2 healers but 1 tank. If your tank is holding the front line, and your back row gets ambushed/flanked? That pesky: Genji, Sombra, Tracer, etc. starts their shenanigans? Your supports and back row are screwed the vast majority of the time. Why? You have no off-tank to peel, and take that pressure off.

Oh, you could have another DPS try to help you. But, what are they really going to do at 200HP besides getting slapped up? Resulting in the supports now having that much more of a harder time now keeping your tank (you have 1) alive along with everyone else. And you know what that means. “Where are the heals!? Our healers suck! Omg, the healers are throwing!” Do you get it now?

By people complaining (it was the DPS specifically) of OW1’s team composition, they essentially created 1 of the primarily hells that everyone now in OW2 is experiencing. And ironically enough, they are STILL complaining about in the posts we see today.

Out of curiosity for the entire community, don’t you think it’s a bit odd how a lot of the hero kit designs are meshing in OW2 compared to OW1? And how absolutely busted and broken certain combinations are now? With little to no counter-play, because people wanted a faster pace and more offensive game? Isn’t it strange how a Roadhog or Zarya can now go into a game, and just tear groups to pieces up? Or a Sombra or Reaper? You didn’t really have these problems in OW1. Well, you did (specifically Reaper and Sombra after certain buffs that were quickly removed after being given in OW1), but it was nowhere near how awful it is now.

So, think on these things. The next time that those of you who support of 5v5 are in an uproar about certain things happening in your games, that seem ultimately out of your control? Whether it be: Zarya melting folks, Sombra bullying your bac-row, your supports getting mushed? Think in how strongly flawed the request of 5v5 is. There’s a reason why polls on Reddit, and the vast majority of those of us who played OW1 prefer 6v6. Overwatch (as in team PvP) was NOT designed for 5v5.

Side note, take note at how both Jeff Kaplan AND Geoff Goodman left Blizzard. And ironically enough, they both dealt with hero and overall gameplay design and balance. You could say what you wanted about OW1’s balance (and yes, it had some terrible formats like GOATs for example) — but it was never this atrocious.

46 Likes
2

You didn’t always have two tanks on your team synergizing with eachother. You’d have throwing wrecking balls/ hog. Weird comps like Winston/ Hog. Waiting in 10 minute queues for the worst tanks you could ask for.

5v5 has fixed queue times tremendously. 2-3 minute queues for dps in OW2 compared to 10 minute queues in OW1.

Double shield ruined OW1 and they still haven’t reworked Sigma the worst designed tank in the game.

The Zarya nerfs are going to be great. Lets see how broken Ramattra is on release.

9 Likes
3

Well, that’s not really a 5v5 issue then, but more of a ‘one tank is missing’ issue (not nitpicking, genuinely trying to understand).

Perhaps you wouldn’t mind playing 2-1-2?

4

I didn’t read but yes, two tanks was better. One reason is if your tank dies your team doesn’t just melt automatically. You kind of have a back up. The game just flowed better if you ask me. Maybe not at the highest skill level but in the lower ranks… it’s very obvious.

I think the tanks currently should do less damage. That would force tanks to play more of the tank role instead of trying to pew pew. They wouldn’t be effective at pew pewing so they would play more of a protective role. Buff their defense and reduce their damage. Many different ideas could be done to fix the game, but blizzard will never make the huge changes necessary, because they would have to admit that they botched it.

9 Likes
5

They ‘fixed’ queue times you claim, but look at what was traded for it. How is that matchmaking and overall game quality looking? Oh, right. Just about everyone is complaining at how horrible it is. So yes, do cheer for how faster your queues are at the expense of garbage quality. Faster doesn’t always mean better.

5 Likes
6

Game quality is great besides Zarya being op. The ranking system is worse.

The game quality in OW1 was worse with having throwing tanks/ double shield. Long queues.

1 Like
7

2 or more tanks created too much unbalanced gameplay and no skills for too much shields.

Add to this main/off tank differences was impossible to balance.

This are some of the reason why Blizzard started to experiments with brawler tanks and this leaded to 1-2-2/5vs5.

This solved problems ow1 haved for years.

Jeff Kapln and Geoff Goodman talked they wanted this changes. in the reddit ama of 2020.

This is the Goodman comment

"Actually we’ve been talking about Tanks, as role, a lot recently. In the past we’ve had trouble trying to figure out how to make tank heroes like Roadhog compete with big protective tanks like Reinhardt. Lately we’ve been thinking, what if we just go the other direction? What if Reinhardt was more like Roadhog? What would that feel like for the entire game? Basically, what if all ‘main tanks’ became ‘off tanks’?

This would mean Tanks would be less about pure protection, and more about brawly offense. Barriers would be less prevalent, damage overall would be higher (tanks doing more dmg, and reducing less dmg), which is kind of scary potentially. We’ve already been experimenting on this front and so far its been pretty fun, though the game does feel significantly different. Players have to play the map angles a lot more aggressively as you can’t just rely oin your Tank/barrier for cover."

This is the Kaplan extract of the comment.

“my personal feeling is that i would like to see less barriers and cc and see the game trend slightly more in the fps direction than the moba direction”

4 Likes
8

Don’t forget, there is very good reason to feel the way you do about 6v6. Many players hated it even in the betas:

Also, every time some of these posts talking about how superior 6v6 is, some Blizzard shills usually come out to defend, so prepare yourselves.

2 Likes
9

5v5 vs 6v6 is completely subjective. There isn’t a right answer, and there isn’t a community consensus either. Trying to claim that there is one in favor of 6v6 is disingenuous.

2 Likes
10

Thank you for providing one of the polls on the matter. I forgot to include the link.

1 Like
11

I’m only gonna say:
Every hero in this game was created under the concept of 6v6.
Some made the transition into OW2 without being touched whatsoever.

But the whole concept of 200HP, every single value of damage, mechanics, cooldown, were thought and balanced in 6 years of hard development under the 6v6 shields and everything balance.

Make it 5v5, remove most of the shields, make close to no balance to some heroes, and what’s the result?
Bursting Zaryas, Dashing Genjis, Headshotting Soujourns and Widomakers, oneshotting Roadhogs, oppressing Winstons, and so on…
Because it took 6 years of 6v6 development and everything around shields and more only to take it away and break everything.
It will take at least one year to have a balanced game and expect more heroes to be nerfed, Widowmaker along Soujourn for sure.

4 Likes
12

You understand pool or even this “forum” aren’t representative of the playerbase?

Specially now with f2p.

Kaplan and Goodman knowned for years ow1 was a casual mess gameplay and tried to fix it for years.

They talked in 2020 of this tanks problems and this was the reason why they started to experiment with brawler tanks.

Their solution was 1-2-2/5vs5 and worked perfectly for tanks.

All real problems derived from tanks afflicted ow1 for years are solved now.

And now they have a real good base from start balancing.

1 Like
13

OW1: Flankers are running amuck. Introduce Brigg to help low elos deal with Flankers. Breaks game

OW2: Complety change the format of game, Flankers are running amok. Brigg cant deal with them. what NOW??

1 Like
14

Doubt

it was worse. goats was bad but its the little things they did in between that proves how bad there balance is.

for instance, when goats was meta they kept trying to buff dps to counter it. one of them was reaper and they gave him something like 45% life steal in high elo this had no effect but in low elo reaper had become god.

in a post i made a lil bit ago i mentioned the mccree buffs, how they kept buffing him over and over again until eventually ppl started to play him and they realized the best way to use him was to spam fth exclusively.

this is because they pick who too nerf/buff based on pickrate and winrate then they choose how to balance that hero based on what would more positively effect low elo.

this has caused all of ow1’s problems and its likely to cause all of ow2’s problems because blizzard rarely accepts they were wrong.

every negative balance aspect in ow2 is a direct result of this. instead of simply nerfing the thing that caused goats (too much healing) they started nerfing tanks and buffing dps and when that didnt work they forced role queue, which killed ow1 a second time because of queue times.

fastforward to ow2 and we are playing 5v5 with role queue (that adds way longer queue times then it should) and all that it would of taken to prevent all of this, including the death of ow1, would of been to nerf the healing output down too an acceptable range.

2 Likes
15

Players start to relaying on their personal skills and stay with the team, not waiting something like no skill shield to fix lack of positioning skills.

Blizzard fix the more inadapt support heroes, starting with add mobility.

16

what im saying is Blizz is prob going to add a dumb OP healer hero that breaks the game again. And we repeat the process

17

Not really they are shifting the “power” of support role.

They are giving more carrying potential to support role too.

They started with new hero, Kiriko.

Now they must adapt the older heroes not working.

Blizzard don’t have choice.

Mobility will fix some complaining.

But giving carrying potential to support role too will fix the queue time.

So if they want Overwatch 2 to survive they don’t have choices.

Blizzard have only one road in front of her, they must choice if go foward or stop.

They taken 5-6 years to do the same thing for fixing tanks problems.

I hope Blizzard learned from ow1 errors.

18

They have so many ups and downs that you can’t really say one is directly better.

Torb has more kids im pretty sure.

19

You can say which is better when you know the general direction of the game.

Blizzard general direction of the game is Competitive but approchable.

6vs6 with double or more tanks was always a problem of balancing, tried for years to fix and wasn’t possible.

This type of unbalancing, an intere role have problem, is bad for a game want to have a COmpetitive gameplay.

5vs5 fixed all the problem of main/off tanks differences and no skill shields problem.

This fixed a big problem of balance of the game, something really good for a game want to be Competitive.

5vs5 is objectively better for the plan for Overwatch series Blizzard always haved.

20

tanks in 5v5 are forced to stay on the frontline and hold space for as long as possible, because any other positioning or target priority means the enemy tank rolls over your dps and then eventually deletes your supports and you usually cant do anything to stop them

thats why 6v6 was brilliant, each role had two hands not one, you could exercise a large variety of playstyles and positioning without being instantly punished and deleted from the game

5 Likes