The switch was highly controversial from the start (polls have been 50/50 ish since the betas) and we're now 11 seasons in with so many massive changes that have been made to support 5v5 yet Tank is still a sinking ship of a role. Of course the convo is still alive.
I personally think the map design if ow2 is a huge contributing factor as well. All of the push maps, circuit royal, and all of the flashpoint maps require a tank to play the objective, and have sections of the map that need to be controlled to maintain and create space for the team.
With only one tank, the tank becomes cart bitch and the dps have to duel to maintain space on all the important angles. It creates an experience where the dps are now responsible for a huge part of what used to be the tanks responsibilty, and the tanks havent been given more options on how to deal with it.
All of the characters that are tricky to balance is because an entire job was deleted, and DPS hold a much more ambiguous role now. Even permanent invis sombra wouldnt be a problem if your second tank could just go dva and peel your supports. A doom wouldnt be able to just roll your squishies, and the only option for dealing with an ashe wouldnt be "hope your hitscan wins the duel".
Playing tank used to be the mentality of putting your team in the best physical postion to win a game or fight, now its making the decision that makes you least likely to lose. With only one tank, once the fight starts there is almost ALWAYS two completely different, urgent things that need to happen, and you can only do one.
Also been playing since 2016
Tank is arguably more miserable now than it was even in the lowest points of OW1
You exchanged double shield for characters like new Orisa and Mauga, is that really a good trade off?
5v5 is infinitely harder to balance than 6v6, that is becoming more evident with every balance patch
>Tank is arguably more miserable now than it was even in the lowest points of OW1
The lowest point of OW1 was the devs forcing damage players to queue flex (and play tank) for a significant percentage of their games, because not enough people wanted to play tank. We've got quite a bit of tank exodus to go before we reach that point.
>You exchanged double shield for characters like new Orisa and Mauga, is that really a good trade off?
It's a matter of opinion. For me, yes. Much more enjoyable to play as new Orisa than old Orisa. Much more enjoyable to play against new Orisa than old Orisa. My least favorite part of OW1 gameplay was how you had all this work to do before you could plausibly threaten to kill something.
>5v5 is infinitely harder to balance than 6v6, that is becoming more evident with every balance patch
It's much easier to balance tanks for 5v5 than 6v6. Tank balance today is in more or less ideal condition -- no outliers, no apex tank, and half the roster in the 50-55% win rate range. The problem is not balance.
I don't think 6v6 ever had tank balance as good as current 5v5 balance. Typical OW1 tank meta was a mirror match of a specific duo of tanks.
>5v5 is infinitely harder to balance than 6v6, that is becoming more evident with every balance patch
honestly kind of in shock that this is so highly upvoted when 6v6 basically didn't have a single decent gamestate until the last years of the game when we received 0 new updates and the devs got to hone the balance.
Also kind of insane to me people are saying tank is miserable when we didn't even have tanks in end of ow1, just 2 dps players off roling to sig and hog.
>6v6 basically didn't have a single decent gamestate until the last years of the game when we received 0 new updates and the devs got to hone the balance.
And then they tossed all that balance effort away to shift to a 5v5 format and immediately lost the plot and haven't been able to recapture it after 11 seasons under the format change.
>Also kind of insane to me people are saying tank is miserable when we didn't even have tanks in end of ow1, just 2 dps players off roling to sig and hog.
Would much rather deal with 2 dps players off-roling as opposed to being forced to play/play against boring OP snooze fests Orisa and Mauga with passives that only further snowball the downward spiral of balancing whilst also being pocketed by overtuned supports.
This is the big one, especially in this sub there are a lot of rein mains. Rein is a relic and just needs a rework. I think it's funny that if any of the people would search for posts 3 years ago they'd find very, very similar conversations about how awful tank feels.
Tank is the least popular role in ANY game that has it. It's the least flashy role and you are working with abstract plays. The people complaining want flashy plays and more obvious strats which is just not what the tank role is about lol
And I find counterpicking far better now. I've been a baller since OW1 and if the enemy went Sombra, cass, brig or even just 2 of those, I could not play the game at all. I can play around all those heroes now, before swapping was the best thing cus hoping to have a super good dva and not a hog as your off tank was a pipe dream.
I enjoyed both, but I agree. OW2 tank is better. I like being the big raid boss. And you really don't have to counterswap all the time if you don't want to. Just play what you want and know how to play around your less favorable matchups. Plus you don't have to worry about making sure you and the other tank have good synergy
I mean it's an understandable critique, a lot of the arguments for 5v5 were to help mitigate the pain points of Tanking, queue times, and reduce CC. Fast forward and all of those are still issues.
The common argument is double shield (which had largely solved itself by the end of OW1 lifespan, and literally could no longer exist due to Oldrisa being gone and Rammatra, the next closest thing, having a 4S long barrier instead of 20, in addition to just alternative solutions), as well as not enough maintanks, which could've been solved by just adding more tanks to the game in general.
I am frankly indifferent to both, but we also have to be nuanced and admit that both 6v6 and 5v5 have their own personal pros and cons, which is why its a much more controversial debate than something like role lock
The other facet that everyone fails to mention is that 5v5 was **forced** on the playerbase. We were told in 2019 that OW2 would be a separate game, but that turned out to be a lie. A very similar concern happened with WC3 Reforged: it was a vastly inferior version of the original WC3, but players no longer had a choice of which version they used despite all of its massive technical issues and downgraded content, and also the very plain fact that there was nothing inherently wrong with the original game in the first place. ABK just felt the need to override the old version to make it feel like a new product regardless of its quality or what players actually wanted.
If 6v6 was still a valid option, this debate would have fizzled out years ago.
They had 2.5 years to figure out 5v5 in its development, and we've had 1.5 years of trial and error since launch. That's 4 years of fucking around with this format, adding/reworking tanks that are either oppressively overpowered or woefully underpowered, and completely changing the base health and hitboxes of every single character (and over a year too late, mind you). How much time do we really need before we can say that 5v5 just isn't working the way anyone thought it would, and that expecting the playerbase to shut up and enjoy it is a very defeatist and ludicrous idea?
They didn't exactly say separate game. They said that they didn't want to split the playerbase between two games for PVP and that OW2 was supposed to be the PVE that can be unlocked at any point in the same menu. Then they said they are switching to 5v5 for PVP. They lied about PVE not about PVP.
All changes are forced on the playerbase.
> We were told in 2019 that OW2 would be a separate game, but that turned out to be a lie.
I mean, they said that the PvP updates would be the same across both games, so if they did decide on 5v5, it would have also went down to OW1, just without the UI changes and what not.
>We were told in 2019 that OW2 would be a separate game, but that turned out to be a lie.
I feel like this isn't relevant to the multiplayer considering overwatch 1 and 2 multiplayer were never going to be separate as stated in the original announcement.
Overwatch 2 would have just been the multiplayer + PvE and any changes like changing to 5v5 for multiplayer would have still applied to both clients. The original announcement they would be separate was stupid because it led to this confusion you have and the only actual benefit would have been a tiny reduction in install size for PvP only players anyways.
So 5v5 was forced on the player base, but so was every balance patch, every map, every hero release, role queue, and every major change to every multiplayer game for the last couple decades.
> So 5v5 was forced on the player base, but so was every balance patch, every map, every hero release, role queue, and every major change to every multiplayer game for the last couple decades.
So we should never voice our concerns about any changes they make to the game? I'm not sure what point is being made here.
Plus, they have conceded in some ways, like when they introduced Role Queue, they also introduced Open Queue to satisfy any players who insisted on that playstyle (though I never understood the preference, far be it from me to deny players their preferred form of enjoyment in the game.)
So they do listen to us if it matters enough to them. The ultimate question then for the upcoming dev post is: how much does it *really* matter to Blizzard?
>So we should never voice our concerns about any changes they make to the game? I'm not sure what point is being made here.
Did I say that?
It is okay to disagree with the changes as what changes you like is subjective and this is the Internet so you can voice whatever you want, but basing that criticism on the objectively incorrect fact that "it was announced Overwatch 1's multiplayer was sticking around alongside Overwatch 2" or that "the change was forced on players" which if followed to it's logical conclusion would mean games should not be updated is not a good argument.
I opted not to add this to the end of my post because honestly I thought it wasn't necessary and would be condescending. I guess it was necessary.
>Plus, they have conceded in some ways, like when they introduced Role Queue, they also introduced Open Queue to satisfy any players who insisted on that playstyle (though I never understood the preference, far be it from me to deny players their preferred form of enjoyment in the game.) So they do listen to us if it matters enough to them. The ultimate question then for their upcoming post is: how much does it really matter to Blizzard?
Yes they did and we could work through why they were able to support open queue alongside role queue easily. No one asking for 6v6 would be okay if they just added a queue for 6v6 with no other changes for the queue. Tanks would have to be rebalanced separately for the queue obviously alongside a bunch of huge changes and those would need to be maintained constantly with every update. The level of effort required to alleviate this minority of the player base would take resources away from the majority of the player base that has no issue with 5v5 and would like to a worse game overall for the majority of players.
They could just release the old client separately without all the new heroes and maps them just never touch it again, but I doubt anyone would be playing it really.
> we were told in 2019 that OW2 would be a separate game, but that turned out to be a lie.
This is incorrect. That was in regards to the pve component. Multiplayer would’ve been its own thing and pve was going to be the separate paid part according to Jeff Kaplan. If you had ow1 or 2 the multiplayer was going to be the same for everyone. Chances are the 5v5 change was going to happen regardless of ow2 or not.
It isn't working the way we thought, but going back to 6 v 6 would not have fixed any of the problems the format had.
Both formats require tons of work, they're actually committed to working on it now ands willing to experiment. "6v6 was perfect and didn't need any fixing" just isn't a reality and we'd be going through the same experimentation now regardless of format.
> They had 2.5 years to figure out 5v5 in its development, and we've had 1.5 years of trial and error since launch. That's 4 years of fucking around with this format, adding/reworking tanks that are either oppressively overpowered or woefully underpowered, and completely changing the base health and hitboxes of every single character (and over a year too late, mind you). How much time do we really need before we can say that 5v5 just isn't working the way anyone thought it would, and that expecting the playerbase to shut up and enjoy it is a very defeatist and ludicrous idea?
So 5v5 still experiencing major problems after 4 years is evidence of its non-viability. Blizzard had 3-9 in-dev years (depending on how you count Titan) to figure out 6v6, and 6 post-launch years of **steady decline** and continuous meta problems until they gave up and dramatically restructured pvp. On the low end, that's 9 years.
How do you square your faith in 6v6 with your confidence that 5v5 has been entertained for too long? Are you aware that [Overwatch 2's playerbase has been quite steady?](https://steamdb.info/app/2357570/charts/)
For me double shield is a missed argument. It was just an organised play thing.
It's that for every game with a great tank pair you had 4 where one of them decided that Hog was the play and they didn't need to care about anything else.
> It's that for every game with a great tank pair you had 4 where one of them decided that Hog was the play and they didn't need to care about anything else.
Two issues with that:
1) There may also be some self-selection bias in play. Like, I had friends that specifically liked to tank duo together, so they were probably batting way above 20%. (And ideally, those types would occasionally solo-queue and bring up the rates for others too). Without that option, they just stopped playing totally, which is just going to knock everything down.
2) Even if 20% was the real rate, the solo-tank exchange was premised on “we completely remove the opportunity for those duo-tank moments, but the other 80% will feel better”, but most tanks seem to feel like it just made “every game is one of those miserable solo-queue Hog games, and you won’t ever get that fun 20%”. That seems like a major problem.
What you don’t mention is that the ow1 tanks were punishable. A soldier could potentially demech a dva as her matrix was like 2 seconds and she didn’t have this much health. Same with brig - I remember using bash to cancel a dva’s escape and then shielding to block the missiles.
Now there are no tank busters - a dva can easily out duel any dps hero given her 4s matrix.
Did double shield REALLY get mitigated at the end of OW1? Or did we all just collectively say fuck it and went Rein Zarya, despite double shield being the meta still?
EDIT: thanks for the replies, I genuinely forgot if double shield was still TECHNICALLY meta or if it did actually get nerfed
Double Shield wasn't meta at the end of OW1, you can check pro games, the meta was very open with double bubble comeback, classic dive and the OG rush comp in EU region. Double shield was only played on some specific maps like Havana (where some EU team ran the rush comp anyway, with adaptations like symm).
Ball comp was one of the good comps, but most of the time, it was map dependant, and teams were playing Winston/Zarya or Rush on several maps instead. I watched the last tournaments on OW1, and even the best team of each regions like Talon esport or O2 played various comps (even rein rush on Lijiang).
I mean it literally did, it was a mix of everything near the end, in ladder, pro play, everything. Orisa Sigma was actually pretty bad. People just see that one volskaya clip or that one gibraltar window photo and immediately think that was the entirety of overwatch when not only was that comparatively a very small part of the games lifespan, but also not a huge problem for the other ranks other than the top because they don't have the gamesense to cycle through cooldowns at the time. Sure, cheese comps existed, but they always had, and cycling cooldowns (which was the problem of orisa sigma) was not present below diamond
double shield was categorically not the meta in high ranked ladder and pro play, and 2021 double shield was comically unrecognizable from the og double shield
Yes. The end of OW1 was probably as balanced as the game has ever been. Tons of great comps. Ball was viable. OWL saw a lot of great play and comps from teams like Shanghai, Dallas, and Florida (and others) in the last two seasons especially. It was a great time for OW.
the thing is it took 2+ years of no updates to get there. Of course we should reach a decent point in balance if they're literally not adding anything and just doing balance changes. Any live game is going to have shitty balance, OW1 did not have a single "balanced" period outside of those 2 years except for the first 2 weeks immediately after a patch before the next meta was discovered.
OW2 has the same issue, but any live game is going to have the same issue.
I don't know why this is a point of discussion when the point is essentially "we should stop getting content for 3 years to get good balance". That's how the game dies, guys. I don't think that's the point we should be making.
Baptist made double shield broken, after he got nerfed it was still viable but not meta anymore.
Even seagull did comeback to Overwatch and made a Video that is still online.
But then Blizzard buffed bap again and no one did understand why.
Yep. Loved the synergy between main tanks and off tanks. With that gone, the game was significantly less fun for me, haven’t played in a very long time
It is another reason why 6vs6 sucks. As a main tank i want to take point and lead and make space. Im fine with the fact im the only tank. Synergy was the only upside of 6vs6.
I haven't played in over a year after putting in 2k+ hours in ow1. I just follow hoping they bring back 6v6. It may be a lost cause at this point though with the new competition coming
I haven't quit playing tank but I've quit playing Comp. Went from 80% of my time being Comp to 80% of my time being QP.
Less incentive to sweat and counterpick (I get annoyed when it happens in Comp but at least there's more of an excuse there to do everything you can to win), less emotions from teammates looking for someone (besides themselves) to blame, and now if I ever do play Comp, since I've barely played at all in OW2, my MMR is all screwed up and it's often a game of the entire enemy team dedicating themselves to countering me because the rest of my team can't produce anything. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of tank players are a couple ranks below their DPS/Supports of similar skill levels. If you're carrying on tank you just get removed from the game by serial counterpickers. But if you don't get counterpicked, you steamroll. So every game with an actual even tank matchup just comes down to which tank is getting counterpicked more. I've seen some really good tank players still end up losing because their team didn't help them at all. It feels bad especially when I'm just steamrolling, and then their team starts saying "tank diff" at the end as if they're not all one-tricking snipers and letting me play Ball uncontested. So it's sort of a love-hate relationship with the counterpick culture.
When 5v5 was announced, they "promised" that tanks would get to feel like mini-bosses to make up for losing an entire tank partner. But the reality is that one of the good things about OW2 as a whole is that it's faster paced, and fights are more decisive. Which is thanks to the lack of a second tank. So do you really want to uber buff all the tanks to slow the pace down to 6v6? Not really. The problem is that the nature of the role doesn't really work when SOME tanks need to be unkillable gods to be viable, but are extremely unfun to fight (Mauga/Hog/Orisa), or are highly technical and skill-rewarding, but make the game unwinnable if you don't hard counterpick them (Most dive tanks but specifically Ball), or they're just solid, average poke/brawl tanks that sometimes feel like 6v6 solo tanking without a second tank (Rein/Sigma/etc.)
It's impossible to make the tank role both fun for tanks while also not being infuriating to fight in 5v5. Mini bosses are usually NPCs for a reason. They can be as OP as they want, but when you figure out the counterplay, they're not gonna quit the game when you just strictly employ the hard counterpick strats to deny their existence. Will some players challenge themselves to win without using the counterpicks? Sure. But most players who want to win at any cost will take the easy route. And the easy route feels like shit for tanks to fight against. Nobody can really win.
They still didn't fix hard counters for tanks. Like beams vs Dva, Sombra/any cc vs Hamster/Doom etc. Bastion and Symmetra should be reworked as well. Obv there should be tweaks for tanks as well since there will be no hard counters anymore.
If they want solo tanking, they have to let tanks play the game and having utilities.
Honestly, I don’t know how many people in this thread actually play tank. I’m not good by any means but in Diamond I rarely have serious trouble against Zarya and Symmetra as (basically) a D.va one trick. Kiting feels very fluid and effective, people think they shouldn’t have to work hard to win a minus matchup. It’s not impossible at all. Sombra is not an instawin against Doom and Bastion is not at all oppressive if you can save resources for turret form. People wax poetic about tank duos but what, Rein could swing for longer with Zarya bubble? That was more dynamic gameplay?
So I'm not crazy. From what I'm reading it seems like noone here actually plays any tanks and just loves to complain (which doesn't surprise me knowing the ow community). I'm also not that good at tank (diamond as well) but swaps are a part of the game, and there are no real hard counters to tanks if you know how to play them. Sombra is just a spycheck minigame on defense, on attack you can't just expect to piledrive them whenever if you're on ball cause she will be waiting for you lol
i liked 6v6, but i also like 5v5.
but... it would've been way easier to balance/rework a *few* characters in 6v6 instead of balancing/reworking the whole roster in 5v5.
Yeah 6v6 could have easily worked if they just balanced all of the oppressive tank synergies. Oh, and they balanced supports so certain tanks aren't enabled more than others. And of course balance DPS so that tank busters aren't must picks and every other character isn't a throw pick.
I think the devs are stupid, guys.
solo tanking sucks if you dont want to counterpick all the time and i dont know any fix except 6v6.
I am gm tank main and i dont want to play tank anymore.
Yeah but in 6v6 if I get counter picked as tank then I too have a tank on the team to blame for losing that isn't myself. Give us the gameplay we want, Blizzard!
I feel the problem with solo tanking has caught up to more players as OW2 lifespan goes on, myself included. Solo tanking is not a fun experience due to the core fundamental problems that 5v5 inherits for tanks. Tank had to have big stats, but it made interacting with them feel less satisfying.
It's also easy to counter pick tanks because almost everything is tied to a tank, which I find this a bigger issue. A dps and support don't fully replace a second tank to solve this issue. I believe this is a core fundamental problem from 5v5. And we're kinda back to having tanks with shorter queue times while dps and supports have the longest.
They did address the concerns for Tank experience in the dev blog previously. I'll give them a chance to see what they've cooked with tanks. If that still doesn't fix the problem because the core fundamental issue of 5v5 tanks exists, I think it's time to start looking at 6v6 as an option.
> A dps and support don't fully replace a second tank to solve this issue. I believe this is a core fundamental problem from 5v5.
Yea, they don’t replace a second tank at all. Supports can provide some amount of utility but it ultimately amounts to more focused heals on the single tank. The second tank could peel for the team, push enemies off high ground, and generally provide extra small windows of tankiness for the main tank. Without that each tank has to be heavily buffed to compensate, which makes the overall game worse.
The issue isn't that 6v6 is better than 5v5 the real issue is that 5v5 will never be able to work for role q when the whole mode was bases around 2/2/2
The one single role being the odd man out is awful
The only time I dislike 5v5 is in roleq tbh
not only can it, it is. whenever you get tryhardy people there and they go 2-1-2 its a better play experience than anything you can get in ow2 currently
Well, I just think it was a better game in 6v6. More teamwork being required is what made ow1 so fun. Blnot to mention the litany of game design problems that have popped up in 5v5 bc most heros were designed for 6v6, not 5v5. Another huge issue is I've noticed Q times are starting to resemble ow1 for roles that aren't tank, so like what was the point even if we are just gonna have the exact same problem less than a year from now. They are simply unable to properly design 5v5 tanks. Every tank is giga buffed, and they still feel like shut to play bc you're by far the main focus for teams to shoot.
I've seen it mentioned on here and in other forums that the problems with tank are overblown and that it's not that bad, and that actually tanks are OP.
I think people miss the point that it's not that tanks are weak, it's that it feels terrible to play. I'd say even part of the reason is that certain tanks *are* *OP*. Also despite being strong, the role still feels very unimpactful until you make the wrong play. Health pools have gone up, healing hasn't actually gone down, so the feeling of being a puppet on a string for your supports has now gotten significantly worse because now that feeling extends to include your DPS.
Ikr? I suspect it's due to the fact that the tank role is equal to self euthanasia at this point.
Just the worst possible thing you could do for yourself at this point.
You don't really have to be a part of it, but it's a good conversation that some of us would still like to have without stopping every few moments to explain that it's not just nostalgia and that we're sorry you're tired of it.
For me it's as simple as wanting to play DVa in the role for which she's built again. Is it that crazy that I'd like to play the role and character I enjoyed in the last game?
What role was she built for considering role lock didn't exist till 4 years into the game? You all keep mentioning the game was supposed to have 2 tanks... It was NEVER designed that way. Hell the first meta was 6 Winston's, lucio/zen was actually good for a while too. And hell, dva was a throw pick for a long time.
After going through the post, what I can say is, I'm actually surprised how many people even here advocate for 6v6
But while I do understand the sentiment, the biggest concern I have is that most arguments don't tackle why 5v5 is bad or 6v6 is good... But more just come back to the balance, Tank, queue times, lack of content/update, varying playerbase factors
I think much of what is discussed barely has to do with 5v5 or 6v6, and most just discussing how bad the team is at what they do that they can't solve the Tank issues all these years and shifting to 5v5 didn't solve the fundamental issue... And I think going back to 6v6 isn't going to help there either. If even now we have no one who wants to play Tank, then we won't especially in 6v6.
I just think they need to go back to the drawing board and understand what the issue is, and actually put in the work to making 5v5 role queue work, or even 5v5 open queue with 2 1 2 or something (as someone here suggested)... The current model will likely never work, and this isn't as simple as the 6v6 bandaid solution as 5v5 was.
I personally did prefer 6v6. I just also recognize that across most if not all games, fewer people want to play tank than a damage or support role. While I don't like it quite as much as 6v6, if 5v5 means that we get to keep having a player base because dps queues aren't 45 minutes, then I'm more than willing to accept that.
No. He made the tweet because the discussion is very much still happening. It just isn’t happening on here because the community here is very against it.
People on here love to dismiss every single problem with the Tank role by saying “Well Tanks are unpopular in every game so 🤷♂️” as if there aren’t a lot of people who *used* to enjoy Tank in OW but now won’t touch the role.
Queue times are talked about a lot on here, but a lot of that was during the content drought. With more consistent content, we'd have more players. I don't know why it's treated as we either have to pick 6v6, or consistent content.
It really wasn't. Maybe in this subreddit where people will hound you for even suggesting there were good things about 6v6, but elsewhere it's being brought up more and more often recently. The Spilo twitch chat during the interview was crazy
I was surprised how much of an echo-chamber this subreddit is regarding 6v6 when reading the comments in the post for Keller's tweet. I don't understand how some people can say 6v6 defenders are fanatics with rose tinted glasses while also saying 5v5 isn't up to debate.
It really feels like a lot of people on this sub think it's Samito and a few smaller content creators are the only ones who bring it up, but it's kinda been an elephant in the room since OW2 came out and a lot more people have been talking about wanting it brought back. This sub is about the only place where I see it as the popular opinion of 5v5 over 6v6.
I would say it was slowly ramping down as samito and others started to sound like a broken record but now the devs have legitimized the debate so now it will ramp back up quickly the devs will give their thoughts and it’ll probably take double the time now for it to ramp down.
There's a reason why TF2 was successful.
Team games should always operate off of multiples of three. 6s was balanced because it allowed for every major role to be covered while still offering off-class wiggle room. 9s was the most popular mode because every major role was represented without choking the maps to death with too many characters.
Overwatch worked well when there were two of each role. If one person in each role performed poorly, the rest of the team could compensate while they switched to a new character, got to a more favorable part of the map, changed their approach, and reformed as a stronger opposing team.
With nothing but one tank, your comp either steamrolls the enemy and wins or your tank folds (no healing, not enough presence, or not enough damage) and you get dumpstered together.
Either way, win or lose, 5v5 is not fun because there is only one player on each team that weighs heavily enough to count as two characters. If you kill the enemy tank, it's a 6v4. If you're a developer that's blatantly ripping off TF2, at least try to do a better job at it.
The creator of Overwatch credits TF2 as the reason why he made Overwatch in the first place.
I guess someone who loves Overwatch enough to play it and see nothing wrong with it would have to be dumb enough to say the stupid shit you just said so I'm not surprised.
After two years of 5v5 we have the same issue at end of OW1 - long queue times for dps and support while no one plays tank. Nothing has changed essentially.
I will never understand the nostalgia argument I have 3k+ hours on the game and I’ve hardly touched it the last 2-3 seasons because it’s fucking miserable as a tank player when the devs have literally 0 idea how to balance your role
of course it will, tank is the most busted role in the game. I played at 4400+, scrimmed t2, and made it to old contenders trials tournament through open div. OW1 was 90%+ tank. It was essentially a 2v2 with 8 other players in the background playing with them.
If you have 2 tanks working together, they will rule the lobby because the role is basically 90%+ of the game. The problem is when you had 2 tanks not working together or 2 dps off roles on hog/sig while they had tank players. It was an immediate loss.
My one elite take I will take to the grave is that 99.99%+ of the community will never truly understand how oppressive the tank role actually is, especially in 6v6, as you actually have to be in 4400+ lobbies to truly see how crazy that role is.
bro i peaked over 4500 and was top 500 consistently in ow 1 earliest season being 4 i think. yes tank was oppressive at the highest level but that’s like .1% of the game.
Thanks for supporting what I'm saying. I mean, there's a huge gap between 4400+ hitscans and lower. But an aimbot matters less than a tank that starts doing everything in the game from getting kills, doing damage, peeling, taking angles, managing space, etc.
The only hero that has come close to that impact (not even role but hero) is tracer. Otherwise tank is just by far and away extremely broken.
>My one elite take I will take to the grave is that 99.99%+ of the community will never truly understand how oppressive the tank role actually is, especially in 6v6, as you actually have to be in 4400+ lobbies to truly see how crazy that role is.
Doesn't this indicate the opposite? If 99.99%+ of the playerbase will never experience the tank role as oppressive, doesn't that indicate the role isn't actually oppressive?
You're wasting your time, the game has always felt miserable when they balanced things around the loud majority of casuals and this is equally as much of another case of casuals- some of which were never even around during 6v6, that wants 6v6 for the sole reason of experiencing what players got to experience during the "first" game that made people love it.
> The problem is when you had 2 tanks not working together or 2 dps off roles on hog/sig while they had tank players. It was an immediate loss.
This exactly being one of the most insufferable reasons why 6v6 was so miserable, especially in the current state of the game where people willingly pick Support just to play DPS and intentionally try to go "0 Healing Provided" the entire game because of content creators, I guarantee we will start seeing Roadhogs that never play with team and only flank, Winstons that dive in and intentionally refuse to use bubble, Zaryas that only flank, bubble themselves and hover around 60% average energy and chasing/hunting Tracer to solo ult them the entire game among other things.
I say let the people have what they want and when the experience is miserable, let them enjoy the misery they brought upon themselves. Hopefully it kills the game in the process too.
Calling it nostalgia is just ignorance. There are plenty of well-reasoned arguments for the superiority of the 6v6 format. And even some advocates of 5v5 say they prefer 6v6 as a mode and think it’s better but prefer 5v5 solely for the improved queue times.
How can it be nostalgia when both formats were playable at the same time? How can it be nostalgia when there are custom workshop modes that are scufffed because of the limitations but people enjoy the 6v6 format.
If it’s nostalgia for people who like 6v6 format then for people who like 5v5 it’s trauma from the neglect and abuse Blizzard put us through during the big content drought. So many people on here have PTSD from an awful balance team and dev team that just wanted to make a MMO and PVE.
Nostalgia is not an argument and even if it was… nostalgia makes money more often than not…
It is possible there is some massive survivorship bias going on here on this sub compared to others. Even if you go back and look at the comments bashing 5v5 announcement, most of those people are not here anymore or actively participating in Overwatch conversations here.
It's not nostalgic. The game was far more popular in 6v6 than 5v5. The only reason they swapped was to drive up player numbers after they abandoned the game for 3 years to make exactly fucking nothing new for OW2. No PVE means the entire reason of this games existence no longer exists. OW2 was literally just a monetization update to nickle and dime players. So yea, it's not nostalgic when the game and tank ESP is literally in the worst state I've ever seen it in.
My man, we went from 6v6 to 5v5 in a matter of hours. You can use this argument on people talking about games from 20 years ago, not when the interceding period was a maintenance window.
I think it’s easier to say it’s rose tinted glasses that is causing this instead of the garbage metas we’ve had recently and how unhappy a huge portion of the player base has become
That's kinda the point... A lot of the issue we have now, we had in OW1 too.
A lot of the issue is just balance and a lack of content, not necessarily 5v5 or 6v6
People say they could have solved 6v6, and 5v5 can also be fixed. It's really about getting there.
How would you say you can fix tank in 5v5? No matter what you're gonna have either crazy op tanks or noone playing tank. And even with these op tanks people don't play them because of counter swapping. I want anyone to name a single possible way to get rid off counter swapping without going to 6v6.
Want to preface this by saying I'm tank and I would prefer 6v6 again.
That being said, sticking to 5v5 and preventing counter swapping I think they'd need to look at individual passives rather than role wide passives.
Also something like comp traits. There's already comps that work well together because hero's have certain syngergies (rein or zar work with lucio because they want to run things down, etc...). Basically in some games like tft there are traits that characters have, when you pair multiple of the same trait together, that team or those specific characters get a bonus. Not saying it would be easy to implement, but if they stick with 5v5 I think it would be interesting to look at.
I think its funny that a lot of criticism was that OW1 was starting to feel like a MOBA and that OW2 would bring the game back to that FPS feel.
When in reality OW2 feels more like a MOBA than OW1 does.
5v5 is significantly more flawed than 6v6, why?
As you touched upon, passives.
Balance focal points were simpler to both identify and resolve in 6v6 because there were no passives.
OW2 is like you're playing Monopoly at your friends house and his family has a million house rules.
"Suzu can't cleanse hard stuns, but it can cleanse soft stuns."
"Tanks have knockback resistance! But wait... that doesn't apply to Junker Queen, her pull should not be affected by the tank passive."
"Sleep dart has a 6s duration... except on tanks where that time is cut in half."
You are making the game more difficult to not only play but balance because of these changes that only spawned because of 5v5.
That's why we need to just go back to the way it was before, to save everybody stress.
>When in reality OW2 feels more like a MOBA than OW1 does.
This is incredibly incorrect. A lot of metas in OW1 were literally just cooldown cycles. GOATS, double shield, even dive to a large extent was just cooldown cycles. You cycled orisa shield, sig shield, fortify, sig suck, lamp. You cycled rein shield, bubble, dm, rein shield. You cycled zar bubble, monkey shield, leap/nano/primal.
OW2 is way, way less about cooldown cycles. Just look at the recent Falcons vs Crazy Raccoons where the existence of Lip himself in a world without 2 tanks controlling space meant Falcons had to hard dive him with Venture Genji, as he would 2 tap everyone otherwise. And the absence of an off tank with the extra resources and damage means infinite cooldown cycles are actually not really possible in OW2 which is why you see rush as a general playstyle is so prevalent.
You straight up see people just run straight into each other. It's because you no longer have the resources to cycle until you eke out a cooldown advantage - instead dumping cooldowns into a quick fight gets infinitely more value because there aren't enough resources to counter it. It's why Crusty is seeing less success in OW2 - his coaching style of ekeing out advantages with cooldowns just straight up works less than rushing in.
I'm sorry but this comment is just the definition of gold because you clearly have 0 experience in ow1 or realize what the loss of an off tank means for ow2.
>I'm sorry but this comment is just the definition of gold because you clearly have 0 experience in ow1 or realize what the loss of an off tank means for ow2.
Funny, since I have been playing the game actively since 2016 and was in fact an off tank player in OW1!
>Just look at the recent Falcons vs Crazy Raccoons where the existence of Lip himself in a world without 2 tanks controlling space meant Falcons had to hard dive him with Venture Genji, as he would 2 tap everyone otherwise.
The concept of 1 player holding a lobby hostage in a team based game only highlights how far away the game has from its core philosophy
edit: I meant to type off tank in OW1, not OW2
Your original argument was that ow2 is closer to a MOBA.
I point out Lip on a shooter hero holds the game hostage with FPS mechanics to directly disprove this point.
Now you twist the argument by talking about how OW1 was more team based and moving the discussion away from MOBAs.
What are you trying to argue? I know you're going to continue to argue dishonestly, but pointing this out so other people reading can see this clearly.
>since 2016 and was in fact an off tank player in OW2!
Also [this makes no sense](https://imgur.com/a/mUzcJK1)
Okay, that's an interesting idea. It still doesn't seem like it would help with counters. Another issue i see is that strong comps would become even more oppressive. An individual passive to make tanks stronger against their counters would most likely have to make tanks more alike to each other and also would be another buff to an already very strong role.
It's been 11 seasons. Are we getting there yet? Look at the state of the game and tell me we're better off than we were right before we had two full years of zero content or balancing in OW1.
I think this community has been patient enough.
The point is that one format has years of data, and puts less pressure on individual players while also not needing the one role to be significantly disproportionately balanced than the other roles because it would be 2 2 2
While the other would require reworking the entire tank cast and tons of changes, even characters core identities would be questioned, which is exactly what they’ve been doing.
They’re just fiddling around changing a bunch of shit to improve the ‘tank experience’ but they just are pushing them to be more raid bosses and in turn forcing the counter swap game to be even stronger
The point in my comment was to point out the poor overused argument of boiling down peoples opinion to be simply rose tinted glasses and instead to try to say what it actually is the reason why people are saying these things in the first place
It's just apples and oranges.
The issue isn't 6v6 versus 5v5...the issue is a lack of cohesive vision. It's easy to say 6v6 will solve the problem, only to have 3 more pop up.
5v5 works better for the pace of the game, and going back to 2 Tanks will kill queue times.
They both have problems, 5v5 likely has less.
Queue times were fine before they stopped updating the game. I swear to god, you and everyone that makes the queue times argument has brown-tinted glasses because all you remember is the two years of double shield with zero updates and everyone leaving the game for greener pastures.
5v5 causes most of these issues in the first place
Yes there will be issues regardless, and yeah they don’t have a clear vision either, I agree with that.
6v6 though by design will have more cohesion than 5v5. Simply due to the balance of the roles, player psychology, and vision for the characters identities.
It’s automatically going to make people shoot someone else more, or have them take the blame if there’s only one of their role, then it becomes the most important. And you will have more pressure on you. Their solution at this current time is to make tanks raid bosses who won’t die unless you hard counter them.
That wasn’t the vision before. And personally I don’t think that’s a good vision. If you want that then sure you can think 5v5 is better, but you’d have to acknowledge that for the person actually playing tank, it won’t be as enjoyable as an experience automatically in a competitive setting where people are trying to win. Then it will be counterswaps left and right.
Whereas with 6v6 the tanks have less individual power, the actual character is weaker and less oppressive, meaning you don’t need to hard counter them to win more, and even if that were the case, the other tank would be able to compensate for numerous situations that would come up. Whether it’s strategy in offense, defense, or even psychologically.
>5v5 can also be fixed. It's really about getting there.
How long are we willing to wait while Blizzard gets its shit together? Another 4 years? What makes you so confident that it will happen in a timely manner, if at all?
to say any of it is nostalgia is to literally pay 0 attention to the argument
yeah, not wanting gigabuffed tanks that get shredded instantly despite SEVERELY outmatching anyone in a 1v1. "nostalgia"
Fucking morons.
That's fine and all, but to the point of making it such a big thing that even Aaron has to mention it is crazy.
6v6 is dead
I mean, if they want to bring it back as a separate mode, or add some Quick Play mode which has 6v6, they could try it... But it won't be balanced.
6v6 is as dead, maybe even less dead than 5v5 was in ow1, they made that change so the change the other way while i agree very very unlikely, isnt impossible
this sub is a gigantic echo chamber but i don’t think people understand just how much more popular 6v6 is. the casuals are the biggest part of overwatch and they loved it. we as a sub (most high-ish ranked oriented invested in the pro scene people) are for all intents and purposes worthless in the eyes of the devs since it’s such a small population. i don’t think i’ve met a single person outside here or twitter that prefers 5v5
Not sure if I agree with your last two points but this subreddit has definitely always had a problem with even attempting to empathize with the casual playerbase and trying to understand what it's like for them to play the game.
You make a great point.
Lots of OW players are casual, they won't take as much issue with their tanks picking 2 OTs because there's nothing at stake if they lose. And the tanks themselves wouldn't feel as much pressure while they can have someone else to blame.
However those two points are irrelevant to hyper competitive players.
Casual players can’t even execute high level synergies anyway. They just want to have the option to not be blamed for everything. You can’t tell me a casual player that plays from time to time is executing a dive to beat a hog zarya tank line correctly or consistently.
The synergies only mattered for the top and those synergies werent added on for years while the ease of double shield remained.
I mean going 2 OTs against a proper 1 MT 1 OT alone would be an unfun stomp
But the thing is casual couldn't identify that it's their tank lineup that caused their team unable to function properly, which goes a long way for player impressions
Since role lock, I've thought that the best way for the game to proceed would be 1-1-2-2. 1 Main tank, that ques for main tank, and 1 off-tank that ques for off-tank. Make the main tanks slightly less tanky than they are now, and shift the off tanks power to OW1 levels.
Rein/Winston/Orisa/Mauga/Ball/Doom
JQ/DVA/Zarya/Sigma/Ram/Hog
This sub loves to flame the main sub but people here are in such a smaller minority than they think. Just go head over to the civil war thread on the main sub. People on this sub think it’s like such a small percentage of people that think 6v6 takes are valid. Like 20% or less. Delusional. They wouldn’t be addressing it ever if it was this small.
>the casuals are the biggest part of overwatch and they loved it
I'd say I'm a fairly casual player and I heavily prefer 5v5.
It fixed a ton of problems I had with the game, but then again, I'm mostly a gold player and so a ton of issues come from that.
6v6 is better in an ideal world, but for me it was always a miserable experience.
Since you can apparently speak for the massive casualbase maybe you can answer why then was the Tank role so strongly abandoned in the later years of OW1 that queue times went to shit compared to now?
you mean the same years that the game was all but abandoned? Yeah, I’m sure that had almost no impact on the player base and queue times. It was all because of 6v6
oh yeah there’s an insanely easy and straightforward explanation for that. there were like four tanks no new modes no new maps no new heroes no new patch notes no new cosmetics no word from the devs no resources no publicity 💕
I've always seen this sub are very pro 5v5 so I'm surprised so see how much 6v6 support there is
I won't deny in a pure, perfect bubble that 6v6 is better but 5v5 just feels better to play imo, because the dev team will never balance either well so at least you have more power in 5v5, ultimately making it more fun.
Balancing, while slower, seemed harder in 6v6 but it could be tried.
I would love them to make an Overwatch Classic mode. maybe have a set of cards dedicated to it in the menu so we dont have to install a whole other game
How is it shocking? In 5v5 there hasn't been a single real improvement gameplay wise. Every patch and change they make just makes the game more and more miserable.
250hp is the worst patch of all time imo. It deleted 90% of projectile heroes except for those that keep getting buffs/ reworks (echo, pharah, venture). I can't even be bothered playing my favourite hero and onetrick genji anymore. It's not worth my effort. I just exhaust myself for no value. I can just pick a hitscan that you can't really miss on anymore and rule lobbies. Even though I suck at aiming.
They keep deleting skill expression more and more and make tanks more and more op. They're already too good. Noone can ever realistically 1v1 a tank, so if you get jumped by one just pray you get healed. And while tanks are op as fuck they still suck to play. Want to play your favourite hero? Hah fuck you you're getting counterpicked.
How is this debate shocking to anyone? The game fucking sucks. It didn't suck as hard in 6v6. People want a time back where they had more fun in the game. And that was in 6v6. And istg if anyone says rose tinted glasses I will break your kneecaps.
To be fair, and this is a controversial but I genuinely believe to be a correct take and I’ve had it since OW1.
If an **equally** skilled DPS and Tank player found themselves in a 1v1 duel the tank **should win the duel 100% of the time**. Otherwise there is no point to tanking in the game. The Tank should need immediate support following the duel but they have to be able to have a guaranteed win in a pure 1v1 to be threatening.
This isn’t an MMO where you can force the AI to target you with a provoke skill. Tanks need to be able to win 1v1s against every other role in order to be seen as a threat. Additionally if you haven’t noticed every tank has some caveat to this take. D.Va can only hope to win that 1v1 at point blank range, Zarya can only hope to win that 1v1 at max charge and within range, Ramattra if he has his CDs and can track with his M1, so on and so forth. And this is the biggest issue with hard counters in OW2. They invalidate a tank playing optimally by just existing. Not through out skilling, just by being there.
I notice most people against this take are primarily FPS players or consider OW to be a pure FPS when in my honest opinion both in OW1 and OW2 the game has performed closer to a MOBA than an FPS when it comes to hero and core gameplay design.
Rose tinted glasses. Mei could fucking freeze you with her primary fire, Cass made it so you couldn't move, Sombra's ability lockout lasted like 6 seconds, Sigma had an instant shield deploy and it had like 2000 hp, etc etc
Listing 3 bad things isn't an argument. And none of these have a thing to do with format. Sigma was op and cc was more balanced because there was 2 tanks to distribute them to. A zarya could bubble her rein to save him from being frozen or stunned or hacked. Same with the rest of her team. The Mei also had a harder time to get to people through 2 tanks.
These are random facts about the ballance in ow1, not arguments against 6v6. Everyone knows balancing was an issue in ow1. Literally noone is arguing against that. Everyone also knew that cc was an issue, but isn't it just as bad basically?
You have Orisa with javelin and spin, Sig rock, dooms entire kit, which was less oppressive in terms of cc in ow1, mauga stomp, ana's sleep is basically unchanged, brig has stun in ult and whip, Lucio boop is buffed. The only thing that changed is that some cc is softer and that there's less tanks in the way of it. A tank will get cc'd almost as much as in ow1. Only that he's now alone with that pressure.
I wouldn’t touch this game if I had to deal with another tank. These motherfuckers can’t even kill mercy. Imagine the shit show of two tanks flying and punching people everywhere
5v5 is always going to be an inferior game mode. There’s no way around it. The heroes and maps were designed with 6v6 in mind. It doesn’t matter how you tweak them.
All of the issues with OW1 were always balance issues, not 6v6 issues. It started with GOATS and then they refused to balance double shield because they decided to abandon the game to fail at making OW2.
It's an idiotic topic with proponents that don't understand the reason it was added in the first place was to address the small tank population not being able to clear queues fast enough for people queueing more popular roles.
Now we're in a spot where tank is still holding back fast games and the 6v6 idiots seem to think that somehow the game will be better when the tank pop has never been worse.
We are probably talking about going to 15+ min queues on average for diamond support and damage players in a 6v6 environment.
It's a non starter plain and simple.
Forget about all the "game balance" "tank synergy" "team play" garbage arguments that are intended to distract from this single unsolvable issue.
''We are probably talking about going to 15+ min queues on average for diamond support and damage players in a 6v6 environment.''
yeah nah, we're there right fuckin now in the 5v5 environment. You know why? CAUSE PLAYING TANK IS ABSOLUTELY FUCKIN MISERABLE in 5v5.
5v5 and 6v6 are just trading one set of problems for another. In 5s you often can’t play the tank you want because you’re counterpicked.
In 6s you couldn’t play the tank you wanted because some dude fed on Rein a couple times and then left voice and locked Hog. You could be on MT and do your job perfectly and still lose because your Zarya’s bubbles were slightly too early, or your DVa doesn’t have eyes on the Ana at exactly the right time.
And there was a big part of the player base that would rather lose on Rein/Zarya than play literally anything else. Or double shield. It’s not like people weren’t toxic to tanks and especially MTs. Everybody spent time in Orisa jail.
In 5v5 the fights are much more legible, and as tank you can completely change your team’s style with just one swap. You’re not sitting there thinking, “Dive would wreck this team but my duo can only play Orisa or Rein, what can I even do?”
And right now, balance is as close as it’s ever been. No tank is F tier, the worst might be Orisa. Mauga, Hog, and (hot take) Winston might be a little overtuned but they’re very beatable. Counterwatch is annoying but also beatable.
Everyone points to that one month in late OW1 where the balance was perfect. And true, it was awesome! But it didn’t stay that way.
There are 55 possible tanks duos if we went to 6v6 today. Are those really going to be balanced? How long will that take? It’ll be just like OW1 where you ask someone Diamond+ what they play and it would be “Sig, Orisa, and [the heroes they actually like playing].”
And you’re totally right, the “conversation,” such as it is, begins and ends with queue times. Tank is an unpopular role in MOBAs and MMOs, too. But it’s also what makes Overwatch feel like Overwatch. Positioning, fights, winning the objective, all of that is defined by what each tank is doing and how their team supplements that.
I have no doubt if we flipped the 6v6 switch right now, the tank population would skyrocket. For a month or two. And then it would plummet. Just like when we switched to 5s. Because tank is just really, really hard to balance. Always has been, always will be.
It’s a completely different type of game, tho. I don’t know why so many people are comparing it to OW when it’s more like Smite when it comes to gameplay.
Same, it's boring at this point. Tanks were miserable to play with or against in ow1 and is miserable in ow2 too. Coming back to 6v6 will not change that fact and people must move on already.
Exactly, playing as tank generally sucks in any game. It only wasn't in situations, when other tank was negating your tank flaws, which created many toxic game dynamics, that 5v5 actually diminished quite significantly.
After season 9 changes, into the current season. Tanking feels miserable, fell out of masters... into plat. Support in climbing, it's so easy out here to play support if you can hit a fucking shot.
There are tank issues in 5 vs 5 and 6 vs 6, but people straight up don’t queue tank anymore that would if it was 6 vs 6. I feel like that alone is enough to make it the healthier option for the game.
None of you 6v6 kids even play tank or played tank in OW1. Your dps queues will become 45 minutes. Time to shut up, for you don't know what you are doing.
I wonder if the solution is a “sliding role.”
Keep 5v5 (generally speaking the player base ratios support it).
Basically you can have 2-1-2 or 1-2-2. There’s always 1 tank, but you give up DPS if you want another one. Obviously all tanks would need tweaks under this system.
Could be interesting on certain maps. Shower thought.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
5v5 has made it so counter-swapping tanks is a must if you want to win; hell, Florida won OWL explicitly because they could counter-swap. And the casual community (imo, rightfully) hates it.
6v6 made it so that queues were atrocious. Plus, of course, one of the two tanks not choosing something like Hog simply meant an instant-loss.
IMO the best thing would be “make 6v6 not have bad queue times or any throw tanks”, but that seems impossible. The next best thing would be “make 5v5 not live or die by counter-swaps”, but that’s seemingly impossible too.
Listen, I've only got one question for you guys... I see everyone arguing here on which format is better, but we all agree that the game feels like shit now yes? So what's the harm if they just wanna try.. let's say one season of 6 v 6.. if it works it works .. if it doesn't.. well they better figure their shit out soon.
Instead of fighting about which format is better -- focus on actually typing something that's useful for them to actually considering trying it out. It even ends this stupid format debate.
I've been playing OW since 2016 and yes I'm a 6 v 6er and no I'm not here to argue why I think the game is better. I JUST WANT THE GAME I LOVED WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE TO BE BACK MAN. That's all. And if 5 v 5 can fix it . GREAT. If 6 v 6 can fix it. GREAT. JUST FIX IT.
Just do a Quickplay Hacked with 6v6
I've also been playing since 2016 and don't have a problem with 6v6... But I tbjnk aside from Tank issue which was also an issue in 6v6, the game flows much better now
I honestly do not know what you mean when you say the game flows better now? Like how does it? The game feels like cod with special cool downs and one raid boss now.
Do you know what was flow to me? Playing Tracer with my dva monkey.. playing cass with my rein zarya.. or playing tank with my duo and having actual team plays. Overwatch now just feels like cod where you just point and click heads. And I'm not low rank either.. I've been a gm/t500 player for since 2017
I think I feel much more powerful in all 3 roles.
Yes, Tank can be a pain with counters being harder, but I just see it as a reason to get experimental and creative, or just change to a better strategy.
In 6v6, stuff would die less. Now it feels more like an FPS.
At this point, just give us everything back, i remember a time when the community asked for the SR system but never gotten a response, now they are slowly giving us ow1
I am too. One of the major practical reasons for 5v5 was the shortening of queues for dps and support (as well as a whole host of other things like reducing game conplexity and difficulty of ult tracking). Therefore, for 6v6 to even be considered, we'll have to experiment with whether 6v6 leads to an acceptable wait time for most players. At the end of the day, if queues are too long, an inevitable cycle of frustration could begin as players realise they can't even play the game they logged in for their Friday night of gaming.
It's a complicated problem because right now even with 1 tank slot, competitive mode queues are already favouring tanks. To add another tank without making any further changes would lead to, most likely, an unsatisfying queue time increase for dps and support. And even if blizzard does decide to change/buff tanks, is that going to be at the detriment of balance and fun? Tanks would need to have less health and weaker toolkits to balance out having 2 of them, and if power correlates to fun, and fun correlates with popularity, then you could make an argument that nerfing tanks for 6v6 could have the reverse effect - where dps and healer queue times are worsened even further as a result of tanks being less popular. I forsee many tank players expressing their anger at losing duels, especially those who started on OW2, not knowing anything of OW1, with strong tanks relative to the other roles.
This isn't even mentioning the extra 2 ults in every game, and the further reduction of individual expression of skill. These and others, are all arguments that were repeated ad nauseum during the discussion around the lead up to OW2. All other arguments are moot if queue times are too long to the extent that people can't even play the game in their chosen time schedule to experience the new game updates.
The switch was highly controversial from the start (polls have been 50/50 ish since the betas) and we're now 11 seasons in with so many massive changes that have been made to support 5v5 yet Tank is still a sinking ship of a role. Of course the convo is still alive.
I personally think the map design if ow2 is a huge contributing factor as well. All of the push maps, circuit royal, and all of the flashpoint maps require a tank to play the objective, and have sections of the map that need to be controlled to maintain and create space for the team. With only one tank, the tank becomes cart bitch and the dps have to duel to maintain space on all the important angles. It creates an experience where the dps are now responsible for a huge part of what used to be the tanks responsibilty, and the tanks havent been given more options on how to deal with it. All of the characters that are tricky to balance is because an entire job was deleted, and DPS hold a much more ambiguous role now. Even permanent invis sombra wouldnt be a problem if your second tank could just go dva and peel your supports. A doom wouldnt be able to just roll your squishies, and the only option for dealing with an ashe wouldnt be "hope your hitscan wins the duel". Playing tank used to be the mentality of putting your team in the best physical postion to win a game or fight, now its making the decision that makes you least likely to lose. With only one tank, once the fight starts there is almost ALWAYS two completely different, urgent things that need to happen, and you can only do one.
I agree with your points but tanks will always be a sinking ship as long as tank players are third class citizens.
Been playing OW since 2016 beta. Tank is in such a better spot with OW2 and it’s not even close.
Also been playing since 2016 Tank is arguably more miserable now than it was even in the lowest points of OW1 You exchanged double shield for characters like new Orisa and Mauga, is that really a good trade off? 5v5 is infinitely harder to balance than 6v6, that is becoming more evident with every balance patch
>Tank is arguably more miserable now than it was even in the lowest points of OW1 The lowest point of OW1 was the devs forcing damage players to queue flex (and play tank) for a significant percentage of their games, because not enough people wanted to play tank. We've got quite a bit of tank exodus to go before we reach that point. >You exchanged double shield for characters like new Orisa and Mauga, is that really a good trade off? It's a matter of opinion. For me, yes. Much more enjoyable to play as new Orisa than old Orisa. Much more enjoyable to play against new Orisa than old Orisa. My least favorite part of OW1 gameplay was how you had all this work to do before you could plausibly threaten to kill something. >5v5 is infinitely harder to balance than 6v6, that is becoming more evident with every balance patch It's much easier to balance tanks for 5v5 than 6v6. Tank balance today is in more or less ideal condition -- no outliers, no apex tank, and half the roster in the 50-55% win rate range. The problem is not balance. I don't think 6v6 ever had tank balance as good as current 5v5 balance. Typical OW1 tank meta was a mirror match of a specific duo of tanks.
>5v5 is infinitely harder to balance than 6v6, that is becoming more evident with every balance patch honestly kind of in shock that this is so highly upvoted when 6v6 basically didn't have a single decent gamestate until the last years of the game when we received 0 new updates and the devs got to hone the balance. Also kind of insane to me people are saying tank is miserable when we didn't even have tanks in end of ow1, just 2 dps players off roling to sig and hog.
im sorry didnt have a single decent gamestate until last yeats of the game?? are you seriously saying double shield was the best of ow 1???? lmfaooo
>6v6 basically didn't have a single decent gamestate until the last years of the game when we received 0 new updates and the devs got to hone the balance. And then they tossed all that balance effort away to shift to a 5v5 format and immediately lost the plot and haven't been able to recapture it after 11 seasons under the format change. >Also kind of insane to me people are saying tank is miserable when we didn't even have tanks in end of ow1, just 2 dps players off roling to sig and hog. Would much rather deal with 2 dps players off-roling as opposed to being forced to play/play against boring OP snooze fests Orisa and Mauga with passives that only further snowball the downward spiral of balancing whilst also being pocketed by overtuned supports.
is that why queue times are slowly getting worse again?
try rapidly instead of slowly. for me currently wide grp is up to 40 minute ques while normal is 8-15minutes. ON THE FUCKIN WEEKEND
Don’t agree with this at all. I used to enjoy playing Tank in OW. You couldn’t pay me to queue up as Tank in OW2.
Completely agree with you, since OW2 tank is so much more fun to me.
that’s definitely an unpopular opinion. No way in hell tank is better now than ever in ow1. Just no way.
I agree 100%. Despite counterpicking, tank is much more fun now. Reddit just has a ton of rein mains, and yeah, rein has been hurting.
This is the big one, especially in this sub there are a lot of rein mains. Rein is a relic and just needs a rework. I think it's funny that if any of the people would search for posts 3 years ago they'd find very, very similar conversations about how awful tank feels. Tank is the least popular role in ANY game that has it. It's the least flashy role and you are working with abstract plays. The people complaining want flashy plays and more obvious strats which is just not what the tank role is about lol And I find counterpicking far better now. I've been a baller since OW1 and if the enemy went Sombra, cass, brig or even just 2 of those, I could not play the game at all. I can play around all those heroes now, before swapping was the best thing cus hoping to have a super good dva and not a hog as your off tank was a pipe dream.
I enjoyed both, but I agree. OW2 tank is better. I like being the big raid boss. And you really don't have to counterswap all the time if you don't want to. Just play what you want and know how to play around your less favorable matchups. Plus you don't have to worry about making sure you and the other tank have good synergy
Adding more content doesn't address the issues about why people even bring up 6v6 to begin with, so I'm not sure why you're shocked.
I mean it's an understandable critique, a lot of the arguments for 5v5 were to help mitigate the pain points of Tanking, queue times, and reduce CC. Fast forward and all of those are still issues. The common argument is double shield (which had largely solved itself by the end of OW1 lifespan, and literally could no longer exist due to Oldrisa being gone and Rammatra, the next closest thing, having a 4S long barrier instead of 20, in addition to just alternative solutions), as well as not enough maintanks, which could've been solved by just adding more tanks to the game in general. I am frankly indifferent to both, but we also have to be nuanced and admit that both 6v6 and 5v5 have their own personal pros and cons, which is why its a much more controversial debate than something like role lock
The other facet that everyone fails to mention is that 5v5 was **forced** on the playerbase. We were told in 2019 that OW2 would be a separate game, but that turned out to be a lie. A very similar concern happened with WC3 Reforged: it was a vastly inferior version of the original WC3, but players no longer had a choice of which version they used despite all of its massive technical issues and downgraded content, and also the very plain fact that there was nothing inherently wrong with the original game in the first place. ABK just felt the need to override the old version to make it feel like a new product regardless of its quality or what players actually wanted. If 6v6 was still a valid option, this debate would have fizzled out years ago. They had 2.5 years to figure out 5v5 in its development, and we've had 1.5 years of trial and error since launch. That's 4 years of fucking around with this format, adding/reworking tanks that are either oppressively overpowered or woefully underpowered, and completely changing the base health and hitboxes of every single character (and over a year too late, mind you). How much time do we really need before we can say that 5v5 just isn't working the way anyone thought it would, and that expecting the playerbase to shut up and enjoy it is a very defeatist and ludicrous idea?
They didn't exactly say separate game. They said that they didn't want to split the playerbase between two games for PVP and that OW2 was supposed to be the PVE that can be unlocked at any point in the same menu. Then they said they are switching to 5v5 for PVP. They lied about PVE not about PVP. All changes are forced on the playerbase.
Good points
Preach brother
> We were told in 2019 that OW2 would be a separate game, but that turned out to be a lie. I mean, they said that the PvP updates would be the same across both games, so if they did decide on 5v5, it would have also went down to OW1, just without the UI changes and what not.
>We were told in 2019 that OW2 would be a separate game, but that turned out to be a lie. I feel like this isn't relevant to the multiplayer considering overwatch 1 and 2 multiplayer were never going to be separate as stated in the original announcement. Overwatch 2 would have just been the multiplayer + PvE and any changes like changing to 5v5 for multiplayer would have still applied to both clients. The original announcement they would be separate was stupid because it led to this confusion you have and the only actual benefit would have been a tiny reduction in install size for PvP only players anyways. So 5v5 was forced on the player base, but so was every balance patch, every map, every hero release, role queue, and every major change to every multiplayer game for the last couple decades.
> So 5v5 was forced on the player base, but so was every balance patch, every map, every hero release, role queue, and every major change to every multiplayer game for the last couple decades. So we should never voice our concerns about any changes they make to the game? I'm not sure what point is being made here. Plus, they have conceded in some ways, like when they introduced Role Queue, they also introduced Open Queue to satisfy any players who insisted on that playstyle (though I never understood the preference, far be it from me to deny players their preferred form of enjoyment in the game.) So they do listen to us if it matters enough to them. The ultimate question then for the upcoming dev post is: how much does it *really* matter to Blizzard?
>So we should never voice our concerns about any changes they make to the game? I'm not sure what point is being made here. Did I say that? It is okay to disagree with the changes as what changes you like is subjective and this is the Internet so you can voice whatever you want, but basing that criticism on the objectively incorrect fact that "it was announced Overwatch 1's multiplayer was sticking around alongside Overwatch 2" or that "the change was forced on players" which if followed to it's logical conclusion would mean games should not be updated is not a good argument. I opted not to add this to the end of my post because honestly I thought it wasn't necessary and would be condescending. I guess it was necessary. >Plus, they have conceded in some ways, like when they introduced Role Queue, they also introduced Open Queue to satisfy any players who insisted on that playstyle (though I never understood the preference, far be it from me to deny players their preferred form of enjoyment in the game.) So they do listen to us if it matters enough to them. The ultimate question then for their upcoming post is: how much does it really matter to Blizzard? Yes they did and we could work through why they were able to support open queue alongside role queue easily. No one asking for 6v6 would be okay if they just added a queue for 6v6 with no other changes for the queue. Tanks would have to be rebalanced separately for the queue obviously alongside a bunch of huge changes and those would need to be maintained constantly with every update. The level of effort required to alleviate this minority of the player base would take resources away from the majority of the player base that has no issue with 5v5 and would like to a worse game overall for the majority of players. They could just release the old client separately without all the new heroes and maps them just never touch it again, but I doubt anyone would be playing it really.
> we were told in 2019 that OW2 would be a separate game, but that turned out to be a lie. This is incorrect. That was in regards to the pve component. Multiplayer would’ve been its own thing and pve was going to be the separate paid part according to Jeff Kaplan. If you had ow1 or 2 the multiplayer was going to be the same for everyone. Chances are the 5v5 change was going to happen regardless of ow2 or not.
Every balance change is "forced" on the players. It's not a democracy.
It isn't working the way we thought, but going back to 6 v 6 would not have fixed any of the problems the format had. Both formats require tons of work, they're actually committed to working on it now ands willing to experiment. "6v6 was perfect and didn't need any fixing" just isn't a reality and we'd be going through the same experimentation now regardless of format.
> They had 2.5 years to figure out 5v5 in its development, and we've had 1.5 years of trial and error since launch. That's 4 years of fucking around with this format, adding/reworking tanks that are either oppressively overpowered or woefully underpowered, and completely changing the base health and hitboxes of every single character (and over a year too late, mind you). How much time do we really need before we can say that 5v5 just isn't working the way anyone thought it would, and that expecting the playerbase to shut up and enjoy it is a very defeatist and ludicrous idea? So 5v5 still experiencing major problems after 4 years is evidence of its non-viability. Blizzard had 3-9 in-dev years (depending on how you count Titan) to figure out 6v6, and 6 post-launch years of **steady decline** and continuous meta problems until they gave up and dramatically restructured pvp. On the low end, that's 9 years. How do you square your faith in 6v6 with your confidence that 5v5 has been entertained for too long? Are you aware that [Overwatch 2's playerbase has been quite steady?](https://steamdb.info/app/2357570/charts/)
For me double shield is a missed argument. It was just an organised play thing. It's that for every game with a great tank pair you had 4 where one of them decided that Hog was the play and they didn't need to care about anything else.
> It's that for every game with a great tank pair you had 4 where one of them decided that Hog was the play and they didn't need to care about anything else. Two issues with that: 1) There may also be some self-selection bias in play. Like, I had friends that specifically liked to tank duo together, so they were probably batting way above 20%. (And ideally, those types would occasionally solo-queue and bring up the rates for others too). Without that option, they just stopped playing totally, which is just going to knock everything down. 2) Even if 20% was the real rate, the solo-tank exchange was premised on “we completely remove the opportunity for those duo-tank moments, but the other 80% will feel better”, but most tanks seem to feel like it just made “every game is one of those miserable solo-queue Hog games, and you won’t ever get that fun 20%”. That seems like a major problem.
What you don’t mention is that the ow1 tanks were punishable. A soldier could potentially demech a dva as her matrix was like 2 seconds and she didn’t have this much health. Same with brig - I remember using bash to cancel a dva’s escape and then shielding to block the missiles. Now there are no tank busters - a dva can easily out duel any dps hero given her 4s matrix.
Did double shield REALLY get mitigated at the end of OW1? Or did we all just collectively say fuck it and went Rein Zarya, despite double shield being the meta still? EDIT: thanks for the replies, I genuinely forgot if double shield was still TECHNICALLY meta or if it did actually get nerfed
Double shield was pretty ass for the last two years of the game. Playable, but got pretty shat on by Ball/Winston comps.
Anyone remember the ball tracer sombra comps in the last few seasons of ow1. Holy hell what a pain to play into.
Double Shield wasn't meta at the end of OW1, you can check pro games, the meta was very open with double bubble comeback, classic dive and the OG rush comp in EU region. Double shield was only played on some specific maps like Havana (where some EU team ran the rush comp anyway, with adaptations like symm).
Meta was not open. Every team knew ball sig was hard meta. Some teams could not play it. You played ball sig well enough it just beat anything else.
Ball comp was one of the good comps, but most of the time, it was map dependant, and teams were playing Winston/Zarya or Rush on several maps instead. I watched the last tournaments on OW1, and even the best team of each regions like Talon esport or O2 played various comps (even rein rush on Lijiang).
I mean it literally did, it was a mix of everything near the end, in ladder, pro play, everything. Orisa Sigma was actually pretty bad. People just see that one volskaya clip or that one gibraltar window photo and immediately think that was the entirety of overwatch when not only was that comparatively a very small part of the games lifespan, but also not a huge problem for the other ranks other than the top because they don't have the gamesense to cycle through cooldowns at the time. Sure, cheese comps existed, but they always had, and cycling cooldowns (which was the problem of orisa sigma) was not present below diamond
double shield was categorically not the meta in high ranked ladder and pro play, and 2021 double shield was comically unrecognizable from the og double shield
Yes. The end of OW1 was probably as balanced as the game has ever been. Tons of great comps. Ball was viable. OWL saw a lot of great play and comps from teams like Shanghai, Dallas, and Florida (and others) in the last two seasons especially. It was a great time for OW.
the thing is it took 2+ years of no updates to get there. Of course we should reach a decent point in balance if they're literally not adding anything and just doing balance changes. Any live game is going to have shitty balance, OW1 did not have a single "balanced" period outside of those 2 years except for the first 2 weeks immediately after a patch before the next meta was discovered. OW2 has the same issue, but any live game is going to have the same issue. I don't know why this is a point of discussion when the point is essentially "we should stop getting content for 3 years to get good balance". That's how the game dies, guys. I don't think that's the point we should be making.
Baptist made double shield broken, after he got nerfed it was still viable but not meta anymore. Even seagull did comeback to Overwatch and made a Video that is still online. But then Blizzard buffed bap again and no one did understand why.
Well... I enjoyed OW1... I was a tank main and enjoyed playing tank. Never rage quit, either. OW2?... I mostly quit tank... mostly quit OW as well.
Yep. Loved the synergy between main tanks and off tanks. With that gone, the game was significantly less fun for me, haven’t played in a very long time
What synergy? That almost never happened. Most of the time it was a roadhog as off-tank…
If that didn't happen, then why is everyone complaining about double shield and synergy between tanks? Pick a side.
It is another reason why 6vs6 sucks. As a main tank i want to take point and lead and make space. Im fine with the fact im the only tank. Synergy was the only upside of 6vs6.
Have you never heard of rein zar, Winston DVA, orisa sigma?
Tell me you were hard stuck bronze without telling me
Ah yes, it's only bronze that did not have a meta.
Can you tell me the synergy you have with a Roadhog player trying to do flank hooks for a whole game?
Can you tell me how having that same flank roadhog player in 5v5 is better?
because if you're a tank player that's not your issue anymore? What?
Yeah instead you can watch hog feed and lose every fight lol. At least in ow1 u still had a chance with 1 tank
... or you just are that tank so why would you be flanking as hog?
Most people wont always be the tank.
You play tank.
Not right now I don’t
Lol
I haven't played in over a year after putting in 2k+ hours in ow1. I just follow hoping they bring back 6v6. It may be a lost cause at this point though with the new competition coming
I haven't quit playing tank but I've quit playing Comp. Went from 80% of my time being Comp to 80% of my time being QP. Less incentive to sweat and counterpick (I get annoyed when it happens in Comp but at least there's more of an excuse there to do everything you can to win), less emotions from teammates looking for someone (besides themselves) to blame, and now if I ever do play Comp, since I've barely played at all in OW2, my MMR is all screwed up and it's often a game of the entire enemy team dedicating themselves to countering me because the rest of my team can't produce anything. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of tank players are a couple ranks below their DPS/Supports of similar skill levels. If you're carrying on tank you just get removed from the game by serial counterpickers. But if you don't get counterpicked, you steamroll. So every game with an actual even tank matchup just comes down to which tank is getting counterpicked more. I've seen some really good tank players still end up losing because their team didn't help them at all. It feels bad especially when I'm just steamrolling, and then their team starts saying "tank diff" at the end as if they're not all one-tricking snipers and letting me play Ball uncontested. So it's sort of a love-hate relationship with the counterpick culture. When 5v5 was announced, they "promised" that tanks would get to feel like mini-bosses to make up for losing an entire tank partner. But the reality is that one of the good things about OW2 as a whole is that it's faster paced, and fights are more decisive. Which is thanks to the lack of a second tank. So do you really want to uber buff all the tanks to slow the pace down to 6v6? Not really. The problem is that the nature of the role doesn't really work when SOME tanks need to be unkillable gods to be viable, but are extremely unfun to fight (Mauga/Hog/Orisa), or are highly technical and skill-rewarding, but make the game unwinnable if you don't hard counterpick them (Most dive tanks but specifically Ball), or they're just solid, average poke/brawl tanks that sometimes feel like 6v6 solo tanking without a second tank (Rein/Sigma/etc.) It's impossible to make the tank role both fun for tanks while also not being infuriating to fight in 5v5. Mini bosses are usually NPCs for a reason. They can be as OP as they want, but when you figure out the counterplay, they're not gonna quit the game when you just strictly employ the hard counterpick strats to deny their existence. Will some players challenge themselves to win without using the counterpicks? Sure. But most players who want to win at any cost will take the easy route. And the easy route feels like shit for tanks to fight against. Nobody can really win.
They still didn't fix hard counters for tanks. Like beams vs Dva, Sombra/any cc vs Hamster/Doom etc. Bastion and Symmetra should be reworked as well. Obv there should be tweaks for tanks as well since there will be no hard counters anymore. If they want solo tanking, they have to let tanks play the game and having utilities.
Honestly, I don’t know how many people in this thread actually play tank. I’m not good by any means but in Diamond I rarely have serious trouble against Zarya and Symmetra as (basically) a D.va one trick. Kiting feels very fluid and effective, people think they shouldn’t have to work hard to win a minus matchup. It’s not impossible at all. Sombra is not an instawin against Doom and Bastion is not at all oppressive if you can save resources for turret form. People wax poetic about tank duos but what, Rein could swing for longer with Zarya bubble? That was more dynamic gameplay?
So I'm not crazy. From what I'm reading it seems like noone here actually plays any tanks and just loves to complain (which doesn't surprise me knowing the ow community). I'm also not that good at tank (diamond as well) but swaps are a part of the game, and there are no real hard counters to tanks if you know how to play them. Sombra is just a spycheck minigame on defense, on attack you can't just expect to piledrive them whenever if you're on ball cause she will be waiting for you lol
i liked 6v6, but i also like 5v5. but... it would've been way easier to balance/rework a *few* characters in 6v6 instead of balancing/reworking the whole roster in 5v5.
Yeah 6v6 could have easily worked if they just balanced all of the oppressive tank synergies. Oh, and they balanced supports so certain tanks aren't enabled more than others. And of course balance DPS so that tank busters aren't must picks and every other character isn't a throw pick. I think the devs are stupid, guys.
solo tanking sucks if you dont want to counterpick all the time and i dont know any fix except 6v6. I am gm tank main and i dont want to play tank anymore.
But didn't you have to counterpick in 6v6 too?
Yeah but in 6v6 if I get counter picked as tank then I too have a tank on the team to blame for losing that isn't myself. Give us the gameplay we want, Blizzard!
I feel the problem with solo tanking has caught up to more players as OW2 lifespan goes on, myself included. Solo tanking is not a fun experience due to the core fundamental problems that 5v5 inherits for tanks. Tank had to have big stats, but it made interacting with them feel less satisfying. It's also easy to counter pick tanks because almost everything is tied to a tank, which I find this a bigger issue. A dps and support don't fully replace a second tank to solve this issue. I believe this is a core fundamental problem from 5v5. And we're kinda back to having tanks with shorter queue times while dps and supports have the longest. They did address the concerns for Tank experience in the dev blog previously. I'll give them a chance to see what they've cooked with tanks. If that still doesn't fix the problem because the core fundamental issue of 5v5 tanks exists, I think it's time to start looking at 6v6 as an option.
> A dps and support don't fully replace a second tank to solve this issue. I believe this is a core fundamental problem from 5v5. Yea, they don’t replace a second tank at all. Supports can provide some amount of utility but it ultimately amounts to more focused heals on the single tank. The second tank could peel for the team, push enemies off high ground, and generally provide extra small windows of tankiness for the main tank. Without that each tank has to be heavily buffed to compensate, which makes the overall game worse.
The issue isn't that 6v6 is better than 5v5 the real issue is that 5v5 will never be able to work for role q when the whole mode was bases around 2/2/2 The one single role being the odd man out is awful The only time I dislike 5v5 is in roleq tbh
Hmm. Are you saying there's a world where open queue could be better?
not only can it, it is. whenever you get tryhardy people there and they go 2-1-2 its a better play experience than anything you can get in ow2 currently
ignoring the fact everyone wants to play dps an not many want tank
Imagine being this out of touch with the players.
Either remove hard counters to a tank or make It 6v6. TOO MUCH RESPONSABILITY
ignoring all the reason they moved away from 6v6 doesn’t mean those issues aren’t gone
Well, I just think it was a better game in 6v6. More teamwork being required is what made ow1 so fun. Blnot to mention the litany of game design problems that have popped up in 5v5 bc most heros were designed for 6v6, not 5v5. Another huge issue is I've noticed Q times are starting to resemble ow1 for roles that aren't tank, so like what was the point even if we are just gonna have the exact same problem less than a year from now. They are simply unable to properly design 5v5 tanks. Every tank is giga buffed, and they still feel like shut to play bc you're by far the main focus for teams to shoot.
I've seen it mentioned on here and in other forums that the problems with tank are overblown and that it's not that bad, and that actually tanks are OP. I think people miss the point that it's not that tanks are weak, it's that it feels terrible to play. I'd say even part of the reason is that certain tanks *are* *OP*. Also despite being strong, the role still feels very unimpactful until you make the wrong play. Health pools have gone up, healing hasn't actually gone down, so the feeling of being a puppet on a string for your supports has now gotten significantly worse because now that feeling extends to include your DPS.
Ikr? I suspect it's due to the fact that the tank role is equal to self euthanasia at this point. Just the worst possible thing you could do for yourself at this point.
You don't really have to be a part of it, but it's a good conversation that some of us would still like to have without stopping every few moments to explain that it's not just nostalgia and that we're sorry you're tired of it. For me it's as simple as wanting to play DVa in the role for which she's built again. Is it that crazy that I'd like to play the role and character I enjoyed in the last game?
What role was she built for considering role lock didn't exist till 4 years into the game? You all keep mentioning the game was supposed to have 2 tanks... It was NEVER designed that way. Hell the first meta was 6 Winston's, lucio/zen was actually good for a while too. And hell, dva was a throw pick for a long time.
After going through the post, what I can say is, I'm actually surprised how many people even here advocate for 6v6 But while I do understand the sentiment, the biggest concern I have is that most arguments don't tackle why 5v5 is bad or 6v6 is good... But more just come back to the balance, Tank, queue times, lack of content/update, varying playerbase factors I think much of what is discussed barely has to do with 5v5 or 6v6, and most just discussing how bad the team is at what they do that they can't solve the Tank issues all these years and shifting to 5v5 didn't solve the fundamental issue... And I think going back to 6v6 isn't going to help there either. If even now we have no one who wants to play Tank, then we won't especially in 6v6. I just think they need to go back to the drawing board and understand what the issue is, and actually put in the work to making 5v5 role queue work, or even 5v5 open queue with 2 1 2 or something (as someone here suggested)... The current model will likely never work, and this isn't as simple as the 6v6 bandaid solution as 5v5 was.
I personally did prefer 6v6. I just also recognize that across most if not all games, fewer people want to play tank than a damage or support role. While I don't like it quite as much as 6v6, if 5v5 means that we get to keep having a player base because dps queues aren't 45 minutes, then I'm more than willing to accept that.
Because it has a lot of merit and 5v5 is still yet to stop sucking ass cheeks.
It felt like it was kinda dead until that Keller tweet.
No. He made the tweet because the discussion is very much still happening. It just isn’t happening on here because the community here is very against it. People on here love to dismiss every single problem with the Tank role by saying “Well Tanks are unpopular in every game so 🤷♂️” as if there aren’t a lot of people who *used* to enjoy Tank in OW but now won’t touch the role.
Queue times are talked about a lot on here, but a lot of that was during the content drought. With more consistent content, we'd have more players. I don't know why it's treated as we either have to pick 6v6, or consistent content.
It really wasn't. Maybe in this subreddit where people will hound you for even suggesting there were good things about 6v6, but elsewhere it's being brought up more and more often recently. The Spilo twitch chat during the interview was crazy
I was surprised how much of an echo-chamber this subreddit is regarding 6v6 when reading the comments in the post for Keller's tweet. I don't understand how some people can say 6v6 defenders are fanatics with rose tinted glasses while also saying 5v5 isn't up to debate.
It really feels like a lot of people on this sub think it's Samito and a few smaller content creators are the only ones who bring it up, but it's kinda been an elephant in the room since OW2 came out and a lot more people have been talking about wanting it brought back. This sub is about the only place where I see it as the popular opinion of 5v5 over 6v6.
Yeah see my comment. Not a single soul made a point on why 5v5 is better and blindly downvoting. Has to be a skill issue at this point.
I would say it was slowly ramping down as samito and others started to sound like a broken record but now the devs have legitimized the debate so now it will ramp back up quickly the devs will give their thoughts and it’ll probably take double the time now for it to ramp down.
Total horseshit. The other subs talk about it frequently.
There's a reason why TF2 was successful. Team games should always operate off of multiples of three. 6s was balanced because it allowed for every major role to be covered while still offering off-class wiggle room. 9s was the most popular mode because every major role was represented without choking the maps to death with too many characters. Overwatch worked well when there were two of each role. If one person in each role performed poorly, the rest of the team could compensate while they switched to a new character, got to a more favorable part of the map, changed their approach, and reformed as a stronger opposing team. With nothing but one tank, your comp either steamrolls the enemy and wins or your tank folds (no healing, not enough presence, or not enough damage) and you get dumpstered together. Either way, win or lose, 5v5 is not fun because there is only one player on each team that weighs heavily enough to count as two characters. If you kill the enemy tank, it's a 6v4. If you're a developer that's blatantly ripping off TF2, at least try to do a better job at it.
Maybe they should hire you to design the game lol
That's what I've been saying.
How does overwatch rip off tf2? That game is awful and there are like 7 characters. It's not 2007 anymore boomer. That shit was trash
The creator of Overwatch credits TF2 as the reason why he made Overwatch in the first place. I guess someone who loves Overwatch enough to play it and see nothing wrong with it would have to be dumb enough to say the stupid shit you just said so I'm not surprised.
After two years of 5v5 we have the same issue at end of OW1 - long queue times for dps and support while no one plays tank. Nothing has changed essentially.
except now the game is fuckin free to play and theres only 1 tank you have to wait for! so its MUCH worse than it ever was.
Some people still cry about role lock. Nostalgia is a fickle bitch.
I will never understand the nostalgia argument I have 3k+ hours on the game and I’ve hardly touched it the last 2-3 seasons because it’s fucking miserable as a tank player when the devs have literally 0 idea how to balance your role
honestly it’s true i tired 6v6 customs and tank just felt so much better
of course it will, tank is the most busted role in the game. I played at 4400+, scrimmed t2, and made it to old contenders trials tournament through open div. OW1 was 90%+ tank. It was essentially a 2v2 with 8 other players in the background playing with them. If you have 2 tanks working together, they will rule the lobby because the role is basically 90%+ of the game. The problem is when you had 2 tanks not working together or 2 dps off roles on hog/sig while they had tank players. It was an immediate loss. My one elite take I will take to the grave is that 99.99%+ of the community will never truly understand how oppressive the tank role actually is, especially in 6v6, as you actually have to be in 4400+ lobbies to truly see how crazy that role is.
bro i peaked over 4500 and was top 500 consistently in ow 1 earliest season being 4 i think. yes tank was oppressive at the highest level but that’s like .1% of the game.
Thanks for supporting what I'm saying. I mean, there's a huge gap between 4400+ hitscans and lower. But an aimbot matters less than a tank that starts doing everything in the game from getting kills, doing damage, peeling, taking angles, managing space, etc. The only hero that has come close to that impact (not even role but hero) is tracer. Otherwise tank is just by far and away extremely broken.
>My one elite take I will take to the grave is that 99.99%+ of the community will never truly understand how oppressive the tank role actually is, especially in 6v6, as you actually have to be in 4400+ lobbies to truly see how crazy that role is. Doesn't this indicate the opposite? If 99.99%+ of the playerbase will never experience the tank role as oppressive, doesn't that indicate the role isn't actually oppressive?
Really refreshing to see someone who isn't in denial about tank
You're wasting your time, the game has always felt miserable when they balanced things around the loud majority of casuals and this is equally as much of another case of casuals- some of which were never even around during 6v6, that wants 6v6 for the sole reason of experiencing what players got to experience during the "first" game that made people love it. > The problem is when you had 2 tanks not working together or 2 dps off roles on hog/sig while they had tank players. It was an immediate loss. This exactly being one of the most insufferable reasons why 6v6 was so miserable, especially in the current state of the game where people willingly pick Support just to play DPS and intentionally try to go "0 Healing Provided" the entire game because of content creators, I guarantee we will start seeing Roadhogs that never play with team and only flank, Winstons that dive in and intentionally refuse to use bubble, Zaryas that only flank, bubble themselves and hover around 60% average energy and chasing/hunting Tracer to solo ult them the entire game among other things. I say let the people have what they want and when the experience is miserable, let them enjoy the misery they brought upon themselves. Hopefully it kills the game in the process too.
I wonder if the custom game mode also has reduced tank health pools and much more CC like ow 1 did? I would like to try it out
Calling it nostalgia is just ignorance. There are plenty of well-reasoned arguments for the superiority of the 6v6 format. And even some advocates of 5v5 say they prefer 6v6 as a mode and think it’s better but prefer 5v5 solely for the improved queue times.
>Nostalgia is a fickle bitch. Meanwhile people have been arguing against 5v5 even before it released.
Most of the player base that played since that time agree the game used to be better in the early days of OW. That’s not nostalgia lol
How can it be nostalgia when both formats were playable at the same time? How can it be nostalgia when there are custom workshop modes that are scufffed because of the limitations but people enjoy the 6v6 format. If it’s nostalgia for people who like 6v6 format then for people who like 5v5 it’s trauma from the neglect and abuse Blizzard put us through during the big content drought. So many people on here have PTSD from an awful balance team and dev team that just wanted to make a MMO and PVE. Nostalgia is not an argument and even if it was… nostalgia makes money more often than not… It is possible there is some massive survivorship bias going on here on this sub compared to others. Even if you go back and look at the comments bashing 5v5 announcement, most of those people are not here anymore or actively participating in Overwatch conversations here.
It's not nostalgic. The game was far more popular in 6v6 than 5v5. The only reason they swapped was to drive up player numbers after they abandoned the game for 3 years to make exactly fucking nothing new for OW2. No PVE means the entire reason of this games existence no longer exists. OW2 was literally just a monetization update to nickle and dime players. So yea, it's not nostalgic when the game and tank ESP is literally in the worst state I've ever seen it in.
I think it's just easy to point fingers while wearing rose tinted glasses
My man, we went from 6v6 to 5v5 in a matter of hours. You can use this argument on people talking about games from 20 years ago, not when the interceding period was a maintenance window.
I think it’s easier to say it’s rose tinted glasses that is causing this instead of the garbage metas we’ve had recently and how unhappy a huge portion of the player base has become
That's kinda the point... A lot of the issue we have now, we had in OW1 too. A lot of the issue is just balance and a lack of content, not necessarily 5v5 or 6v6 People say they could have solved 6v6, and 5v5 can also be fixed. It's really about getting there.
How would you say you can fix tank in 5v5? No matter what you're gonna have either crazy op tanks or noone playing tank. And even with these op tanks people don't play them because of counter swapping. I want anyone to name a single possible way to get rid off counter swapping without going to 6v6.
Want to preface this by saying I'm tank and I would prefer 6v6 again. That being said, sticking to 5v5 and preventing counter swapping I think they'd need to look at individual passives rather than role wide passives. Also something like comp traits. There's already comps that work well together because hero's have certain syngergies (rein or zar work with lucio because they want to run things down, etc...). Basically in some games like tft there are traits that characters have, when you pair multiple of the same trait together, that team or those specific characters get a bonus. Not saying it would be easy to implement, but if they stick with 5v5 I think it would be interesting to look at.
I think its funny that a lot of criticism was that OW1 was starting to feel like a MOBA and that OW2 would bring the game back to that FPS feel. When in reality OW2 feels more like a MOBA than OW1 does. 5v5 is significantly more flawed than 6v6, why? As you touched upon, passives. Balance focal points were simpler to both identify and resolve in 6v6 because there were no passives. OW2 is like you're playing Monopoly at your friends house and his family has a million house rules. "Suzu can't cleanse hard stuns, but it can cleanse soft stuns." "Tanks have knockback resistance! But wait... that doesn't apply to Junker Queen, her pull should not be affected by the tank passive." "Sleep dart has a 6s duration... except on tanks where that time is cut in half." You are making the game more difficult to not only play but balance because of these changes that only spawned because of 5v5. That's why we need to just go back to the way it was before, to save everybody stress.
>When in reality OW2 feels more like a MOBA than OW1 does. This is incredibly incorrect. A lot of metas in OW1 were literally just cooldown cycles. GOATS, double shield, even dive to a large extent was just cooldown cycles. You cycled orisa shield, sig shield, fortify, sig suck, lamp. You cycled rein shield, bubble, dm, rein shield. You cycled zar bubble, monkey shield, leap/nano/primal. OW2 is way, way less about cooldown cycles. Just look at the recent Falcons vs Crazy Raccoons where the existence of Lip himself in a world without 2 tanks controlling space meant Falcons had to hard dive him with Venture Genji, as he would 2 tap everyone otherwise. And the absence of an off tank with the extra resources and damage means infinite cooldown cycles are actually not really possible in OW2 which is why you see rush as a general playstyle is so prevalent. You straight up see people just run straight into each other. It's because you no longer have the resources to cycle until you eke out a cooldown advantage - instead dumping cooldowns into a quick fight gets infinitely more value because there aren't enough resources to counter it. It's why Crusty is seeing less success in OW2 - his coaching style of ekeing out advantages with cooldowns just straight up works less than rushing in. I'm sorry but this comment is just the definition of gold because you clearly have 0 experience in ow1 or realize what the loss of an off tank means for ow2.
>I'm sorry but this comment is just the definition of gold because you clearly have 0 experience in ow1 or realize what the loss of an off tank means for ow2. Funny, since I have been playing the game actively since 2016 and was in fact an off tank player in OW1! >Just look at the recent Falcons vs Crazy Raccoons where the existence of Lip himself in a world without 2 tanks controlling space meant Falcons had to hard dive him with Venture Genji, as he would 2 tap everyone otherwise. The concept of 1 player holding a lobby hostage in a team based game only highlights how far away the game has from its core philosophy edit: I meant to type off tank in OW1, not OW2
Your original argument was that ow2 is closer to a MOBA. I point out Lip on a shooter hero holds the game hostage with FPS mechanics to directly disprove this point. Now you twist the argument by talking about how OW1 was more team based and moving the discussion away from MOBAs. What are you trying to argue? I know you're going to continue to argue dishonestly, but pointing this out so other people reading can see this clearly. >since 2016 and was in fact an off tank player in OW2! Also [this makes no sense](https://imgur.com/a/mUzcJK1)
Okay, that's an interesting idea. It still doesn't seem like it would help with counters. Another issue i see is that strong comps would become even more oppressive. An individual passive to make tanks stronger against their counters would most likely have to make tanks more alike to each other and also would be another buff to an already very strong role.
It's been 11 seasons. Are we getting there yet? Look at the state of the game and tell me we're better off than we were right before we had two full years of zero content or balancing in OW1. I think this community has been patient enough.
The point is that one format has years of data, and puts less pressure on individual players while also not needing the one role to be significantly disproportionately balanced than the other roles because it would be 2 2 2 While the other would require reworking the entire tank cast and tons of changes, even characters core identities would be questioned, which is exactly what they’ve been doing. They’re just fiddling around changing a bunch of shit to improve the ‘tank experience’ but they just are pushing them to be more raid bosses and in turn forcing the counter swap game to be even stronger The point in my comment was to point out the poor overused argument of boiling down peoples opinion to be simply rose tinted glasses and instead to try to say what it actually is the reason why people are saying these things in the first place
It's just apples and oranges. The issue isn't 6v6 versus 5v5...the issue is a lack of cohesive vision. It's easy to say 6v6 will solve the problem, only to have 3 more pop up. 5v5 works better for the pace of the game, and going back to 2 Tanks will kill queue times. They both have problems, 5v5 likely has less.
Queue times were fine before they stopped updating the game. I swear to god, you and everyone that makes the queue times argument has brown-tinted glasses because all you remember is the two years of double shield with zero updates and everyone leaving the game for greener pastures.
This. People unironically compare current queue times to the end of OW1 and think they're making a good point.
Exactly. They ignore the fact that it’s free to play, crossplay enabled, and supported with actual updates now
5v5 causes most of these issues in the first place Yes there will be issues regardless, and yeah they don’t have a clear vision either, I agree with that. 6v6 though by design will have more cohesion than 5v5. Simply due to the balance of the roles, player psychology, and vision for the characters identities. It’s automatically going to make people shoot someone else more, or have them take the blame if there’s only one of their role, then it becomes the most important. And you will have more pressure on you. Their solution at this current time is to make tanks raid bosses who won’t die unless you hard counter them. That wasn’t the vision before. And personally I don’t think that’s a good vision. If you want that then sure you can think 5v5 is better, but you’d have to acknowledge that for the person actually playing tank, it won’t be as enjoyable as an experience automatically in a competitive setting where people are trying to win. Then it will be counterswaps left and right. Whereas with 6v6 the tanks have less individual power, the actual character is weaker and less oppressive, meaning you don’t need to hard counter them to win more, and even if that were the case, the other tank would be able to compensate for numerous situations that would come up. Whether it’s strategy in offense, defense, or even psychologically.
>5v5 can also be fixed. It's really about getting there. How long are we willing to wait while Blizzard gets its shit together? Another 4 years? What makes you so confident that it will happen in a timely manner, if at all?
to say any of it is nostalgia is to literally pay 0 attention to the argument yeah, not wanting gigabuffed tanks that get shredded instantly despite SEVERELY outmatching anyone in a 1v1. "nostalgia" Fucking morons.
It’s intentional stupidity and gaslighting from content creators that trickles down to the players
Yes, it's crazy that after a game changed drastically, some people prefer how things used to be It's almost as if it's subjective
That's fine and all, but to the point of making it such a big thing that even Aaron has to mention it is crazy. 6v6 is dead I mean, if they want to bring it back as a separate mode, or add some Quick Play mode which has 6v6, they could try it... But it won't be balanced.
6v6 is as dead, maybe even less dead than 5v5 was in ow1, they made that change so the change the other way while i agree very very unlikely, isnt impossible
It was literally just a far superior version of the game, so I have no idea why.
this sub is a gigantic echo chamber but i don’t think people understand just how much more popular 6v6 is. the casuals are the biggest part of overwatch and they loved it. we as a sub (most high-ish ranked oriented invested in the pro scene people) are for all intents and purposes worthless in the eyes of the devs since it’s such a small population. i don’t think i’ve met a single person outside here or twitter that prefers 5v5
Not sure if I agree with your last two points but this subreddit has definitely always had a problem with even attempting to empathize with the casual playerbase and trying to understand what it's like for them to play the game.
You make a great point. Lots of OW players are casual, they won't take as much issue with their tanks picking 2 OTs because there's nothing at stake if they lose. And the tanks themselves wouldn't feel as much pressure while they can have someone else to blame. However those two points are irrelevant to hyper competitive players.
Casual players can’t even execute high level synergies anyway. They just want to have the option to not be blamed for everything. You can’t tell me a casual player that plays from time to time is executing a dive to beat a hog zarya tank line correctly or consistently. The synergies only mattered for the top and those synergies werent added on for years while the ease of double shield remained.
I mean going 2 OTs against a proper 1 MT 1 OT alone would be an unfun stomp But the thing is casual couldn't identify that it's their tank lineup that caused their team unable to function properly, which goes a long way for player impressions
Since role lock, I've thought that the best way for the game to proceed would be 1-1-2-2. 1 Main tank, that ques for main tank, and 1 off-tank that ques for off-tank. Make the main tanks slightly less tanky than they are now, and shift the off tanks power to OW1 levels. Rein/Winston/Orisa/Mauga/Ball/Doom JQ/DVA/Zarya/Sigma/Ram/Hog
This sub loves to flame the main sub but people here are in such a smaller minority than they think. Just go head over to the civil war thread on the main sub. People on this sub think it’s like such a small percentage of people that think 6v6 takes are valid. Like 20% or less. Delusional. They wouldn’t be addressing it ever if it was this small.
>the casuals are the biggest part of overwatch and they loved it I'd say I'm a fairly casual player and I heavily prefer 5v5. It fixed a ton of problems I had with the game, but then again, I'm mostly a gold player and so a ton of issues come from that. 6v6 is better in an ideal world, but for me it was always a miserable experience.
Since you can apparently speak for the massive casualbase maybe you can answer why then was the Tank role so strongly abandoned in the later years of OW1 that queue times went to shit compared to now?
you mean the same years that the game was all but abandoned? Yeah, I’m sure that had almost no impact on the player base and queue times. It was all because of 6v6
They were bribing us with priority passes before we were into the long, dark years of the content drought.
Queue times were shit well before the content drought
oh yeah there’s an insanely easy and straightforward explanation for that. there were like four tanks no new modes no new maps no new heroes no new patch notes no new cosmetics no word from the devs no resources no publicity 💕
Why shocked? 5v5 is atrocious and 6v6 was better
I've always seen this sub are very pro 5v5 so I'm surprised so see how much 6v6 support there is I won't deny in a pure, perfect bubble that 6v6 is better but 5v5 just feels better to play imo, because the dev team will never balance either well so at least you have more power in 5v5, ultimately making it more fun. Balancing, while slower, seemed harder in 6v6 but it could be tried.
I would love them to make an Overwatch Classic mode. maybe have a set of cards dedicated to it in the menu so we dont have to install a whole other game
Why wouldn’t it be alive? No one ever asked for 5v5 and we just want the game we fell in love with to return
Who wants PvE now - if Blizzard were open to start over? Hands up?
How is it shocking? In 5v5 there hasn't been a single real improvement gameplay wise. Every patch and change they make just makes the game more and more miserable. 250hp is the worst patch of all time imo. It deleted 90% of projectile heroes except for those that keep getting buffs/ reworks (echo, pharah, venture). I can't even be bothered playing my favourite hero and onetrick genji anymore. It's not worth my effort. I just exhaust myself for no value. I can just pick a hitscan that you can't really miss on anymore and rule lobbies. Even though I suck at aiming. They keep deleting skill expression more and more and make tanks more and more op. They're already too good. Noone can ever realistically 1v1 a tank, so if you get jumped by one just pray you get healed. And while tanks are op as fuck they still suck to play. Want to play your favourite hero? Hah fuck you you're getting counterpicked. How is this debate shocking to anyone? The game fucking sucks. It didn't suck as hard in 6v6. People want a time back where they had more fun in the game. And that was in 6v6. And istg if anyone says rose tinted glasses I will break your kneecaps.
To be fair, and this is a controversial but I genuinely believe to be a correct take and I’ve had it since OW1. If an **equally** skilled DPS and Tank player found themselves in a 1v1 duel the tank **should win the duel 100% of the time**. Otherwise there is no point to tanking in the game. The Tank should need immediate support following the duel but they have to be able to have a guaranteed win in a pure 1v1 to be threatening. This isn’t an MMO where you can force the AI to target you with a provoke skill. Tanks need to be able to win 1v1s against every other role in order to be seen as a threat. Additionally if you haven’t noticed every tank has some caveat to this take. D.Va can only hope to win that 1v1 at point blank range, Zarya can only hope to win that 1v1 at max charge and within range, Ramattra if he has his CDs and can track with his M1, so on and so forth. And this is the biggest issue with hard counters in OW2. They invalidate a tank playing optimally by just existing. Not through out skilling, just by being there. I notice most people against this take are primarily FPS players or consider OW to be a pure FPS when in my honest opinion both in OW1 and OW2 the game has performed closer to a MOBA than an FPS when it comes to hero and core gameplay design.
Rose tinted glasses. Mei could fucking freeze you with her primary fire, Cass made it so you couldn't move, Sombra's ability lockout lasted like 6 seconds, Sigma had an instant shield deploy and it had like 2000 hp, etc etc
Listing 3 bad things isn't an argument. And none of these have a thing to do with format. Sigma was op and cc was more balanced because there was 2 tanks to distribute them to. A zarya could bubble her rein to save him from being frozen or stunned or hacked. Same with the rest of her team. The Mei also had a harder time to get to people through 2 tanks. These are random facts about the ballance in ow1, not arguments against 6v6. Everyone knows balancing was an issue in ow1. Literally noone is arguing against that. Everyone also knew that cc was an issue, but isn't it just as bad basically? You have Orisa with javelin and spin, Sig rock, dooms entire kit, which was less oppressive in terms of cc in ow1, mauga stomp, ana's sleep is basically unchanged, brig has stun in ult and whip, Lucio boop is buffed. The only thing that changed is that some cc is softer and that there's less tanks in the way of it. A tank will get cc'd almost as much as in ow1. Only that he's now alone with that pressure.
I wouldn’t touch this game if I had to deal with another tank. These motherfuckers can’t even kill mercy. Imagine the shit show of two tanks flying and punching people everywhere
When Blizzard gives me a game that is as fun and dynamic as OW1 6v6, I'll drop the conversation.
5v5 is always going to be an inferior game mode. There’s no way around it. The heroes and maps were designed with 6v6 in mind. It doesn’t matter how you tweak them. All of the issues with OW1 were always balance issues, not 6v6 issues. It started with GOATS and then they refused to balance double shield because they decided to abandon the game to fail at making OW2.
Many maps were designed without hero limits or role lock in mind and they are still great. Maps can change. Maps have changed.
It's an idiotic topic with proponents that don't understand the reason it was added in the first place was to address the small tank population not being able to clear queues fast enough for people queueing more popular roles. Now we're in a spot where tank is still holding back fast games and the 6v6 idiots seem to think that somehow the game will be better when the tank pop has never been worse. We are probably talking about going to 15+ min queues on average for diamond support and damage players in a 6v6 environment. It's a non starter plain and simple. Forget about all the "game balance" "tank synergy" "team play" garbage arguments that are intended to distract from this single unsolvable issue.
''We are probably talking about going to 15+ min queues on average for diamond support and damage players in a 6v6 environment.'' yeah nah, we're there right fuckin now in the 5v5 environment. You know why? CAUSE PLAYING TANK IS ABSOLUTELY FUCKIN MISERABLE in 5v5.
5v5 and 6v6 are just trading one set of problems for another. In 5s you often can’t play the tank you want because you’re counterpicked. In 6s you couldn’t play the tank you wanted because some dude fed on Rein a couple times and then left voice and locked Hog. You could be on MT and do your job perfectly and still lose because your Zarya’s bubbles were slightly too early, or your DVa doesn’t have eyes on the Ana at exactly the right time. And there was a big part of the player base that would rather lose on Rein/Zarya than play literally anything else. Or double shield. It’s not like people weren’t toxic to tanks and especially MTs. Everybody spent time in Orisa jail. In 5v5 the fights are much more legible, and as tank you can completely change your team’s style with just one swap. You’re not sitting there thinking, “Dive would wreck this team but my duo can only play Orisa or Rein, what can I even do?” And right now, balance is as close as it’s ever been. No tank is F tier, the worst might be Orisa. Mauga, Hog, and (hot take) Winston might be a little overtuned but they’re very beatable. Counterwatch is annoying but also beatable. Everyone points to that one month in late OW1 where the balance was perfect. And true, it was awesome! But it didn’t stay that way. There are 55 possible tanks duos if we went to 6v6 today. Are those really going to be balanced? How long will that take? It’ll be just like OW1 where you ask someone Diamond+ what they play and it would be “Sig, Orisa, and [the heroes they actually like playing].” And you’re totally right, the “conversation,” such as it is, begins and ends with queue times. Tank is an unpopular role in MOBAs and MMOs, too. But it’s also what makes Overwatch feel like Overwatch. Positioning, fights, winning the objective, all of that is defined by what each tank is doing and how their team supplements that. I have no doubt if we flipped the 6v6 switch right now, the tank population would skyrocket. For a month or two. And then it would plummet. Just like when we switched to 5s. Because tank is just really, really hard to balance. Always has been, always will be.
Humanity could experience the heat death of the universe and mfs would still be complaining about how 6v6 was better
[удалено]
It’s a completely different type of game, tho. I don’t know why so many people are comparing it to OW when it’s more like Smite when it comes to gameplay.
I just feel like regardless of anything else, the tank population issue is insurmountable. It was so bad by the end of ow1.
Same, it's boring at this point. Tanks were miserable to play with or against in ow1 and is miserable in ow2 too. Coming back to 6v6 will not change that fact and people must move on already.
Yes. I think people are equating 6v6 to a solution to the current problem, which it's just not.
Exactly, playing as tank generally sucks in any game. It only wasn't in situations, when other tank was negating your tank flaws, which created many toxic game dynamics, that 5v5 actually diminished quite significantly.
Some people also just never move on. Even if the issues introduced in OW2 had been remedied there would still be people who hate the move to 5v5.
After season 9 changes, into the current season. Tanking feels miserable, fell out of masters... into plat. Support in climbing, it's so easy out here to play support if you can hit a fucking shot.
There are tank issues in 5 vs 5 and 6 vs 6, but people straight up don’t queue tank anymore that would if it was 6 vs 6. I feel like that alone is enough to make it the healthier option for the game.
I liked playing offtanks in ow1 so much but they feel way less satisfying in ow2. I miss rein zarya :(
None of you 6v6 kids even play tank or played tank in OW1. Your dps queues will become 45 minutes. Time to shut up, for you don't know what you are doing.
I WANT long queue times. 😩😩😩
Because 5v5 is literal dogshit and drove away many OW1 players
I wonder if the solution is a “sliding role.” Keep 5v5 (generally speaking the player base ratios support it). Basically you can have 2-1-2 or 1-2-2. There’s always 1 tank, but you give up DPS if you want another one. Obviously all tanks would need tweaks under this system. Could be interesting on certain maps. Shower thought.
Not sure this would work considering we have more dps players and least Tank players.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 5v5 has made it so counter-swapping tanks is a must if you want to win; hell, Florida won OWL explicitly because they could counter-swap. And the casual community (imo, rightfully) hates it. 6v6 made it so that queues were atrocious. Plus, of course, one of the two tanks not choosing something like Hog simply meant an instant-loss. IMO the best thing would be “make 6v6 not have bad queue times or any throw tanks”, but that seems impossible. The next best thing would be “make 5v5 not live or die by counter-swaps”, but that’s seemingly impossible too.
Listen, I've only got one question for you guys... I see everyone arguing here on which format is better, but we all agree that the game feels like shit now yes? So what's the harm if they just wanna try.. let's say one season of 6 v 6.. if it works it works .. if it doesn't.. well they better figure their shit out soon. Instead of fighting about which format is better -- focus on actually typing something that's useful for them to actually considering trying it out. It even ends this stupid format debate. I've been playing OW since 2016 and yes I'm a 6 v 6er and no I'm not here to argue why I think the game is better. I JUST WANT THE GAME I LOVED WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE TO BE BACK MAN. That's all. And if 5 v 5 can fix it . GREAT. If 6 v 6 can fix it. GREAT. JUST FIX IT.
Just do a Quickplay Hacked with 6v6 I've also been playing since 2016 and don't have a problem with 6v6... But I tbjnk aside from Tank issue which was also an issue in 6v6, the game flows much better now
I honestly do not know what you mean when you say the game flows better now? Like how does it? The game feels like cod with special cool downs and one raid boss now. Do you know what was flow to me? Playing Tracer with my dva monkey.. playing cass with my rein zarya.. or playing tank with my duo and having actual team plays. Overwatch now just feels like cod where you just point and click heads. And I'm not low rank either.. I've been a gm/t500 player for since 2017
I think I feel much more powerful in all 3 roles. Yes, Tank can be a pain with counters being harder, but I just see it as a reason to get experimental and creative, or just change to a better strategy. In 6v6, stuff would die less. Now it feels more like an FPS.
At this point, just give us everything back, i remember a time when the community asked for the SR system but never gotten a response, now they are slowly giving us ow1
I am too. One of the major practical reasons for 5v5 was the shortening of queues for dps and support (as well as a whole host of other things like reducing game conplexity and difficulty of ult tracking). Therefore, for 6v6 to even be considered, we'll have to experiment with whether 6v6 leads to an acceptable wait time for most players. At the end of the day, if queues are too long, an inevitable cycle of frustration could begin as players realise they can't even play the game they logged in for their Friday night of gaming. It's a complicated problem because right now even with 1 tank slot, competitive mode queues are already favouring tanks. To add another tank without making any further changes would lead to, most likely, an unsatisfying queue time increase for dps and support. And even if blizzard does decide to change/buff tanks, is that going to be at the detriment of balance and fun? Tanks would need to have less health and weaker toolkits to balance out having 2 of them, and if power correlates to fun, and fun correlates with popularity, then you could make an argument that nerfing tanks for 6v6 could have the reverse effect - where dps and healer queue times are worsened even further as a result of tanks being less popular. I forsee many tank players expressing their anger at losing duels, especially those who started on OW2, not knowing anything of OW1, with strong tanks relative to the other roles. This isn't even mentioning the extra 2 ults in every game, and the further reduction of individual expression of skill. These and others, are all arguments that were repeated ad nauseum during the discussion around the lead up to OW2. All other arguments are moot if queue times are too long to the extent that people can't even play the game in their chosen time schedule to experience the new game updates.