A series of experimental format changes will run starting later this year.
One of the most contentious changes in Overwatch 2 was its shift to a 5v5 format. The loss of a tank hero on each team fundamentally changed how it's played, and debates over whether or not it should go back to 6v6 have gone on since its release. In a new blog post, game director Aaron Keller laid out plans to try 6v6 again, along with other format changes, in a series of experimental modes coming later this year.
A 6v6 mode won't happen immediately though because 12-player games could "underperform on older systems," Keller says. Blizzard will need "at least several seasons" to ready the game for that, so it's going to try other format changes first.
"When you look at the changes to Overwatch since its inception, it’s clear that many of those have reduced some of the variety within an Overwatch match," Keller said. "We get feedback from some players that Overwatch can feel 'the same' from game to game. While much of this gets attributed to 5v5, we feel that there is more at play here."
Later this year, in season 13, Overwatch will have a limited-time 'Quick Play: Hacked' mode that will let you bend the current one tank, two damage dealers, and two healers team composition restriction. The goal is to bring "some of the freedom back to an Overwatch match without the severity of issues that accompanied [6v6]", namely long queue times due to a lack of tank players.
One of the original goals with Overwatch 2's 5v5 format was to significantly reduce the amount of time you'd have to wait to find a match, and Keller includes a graph in the blog post that illustrates just how effective it was at fixing that. By kicking a tank off of each team—the least played role—wait times were more than halved. A return to 6v6 could mean you'd be waiting longer to find a match than it would take to finish it, a risk that "still gives me anxiety," Keller says.
But the debates over Overwatch 2's current format were too persistent to ignore, so Blizzard wants to try stuff out and see what sticks. Each test will last for a few weeks as the studio collects feedback and analyzes how it impacts the game. "We would reflect carefully on the learnings from whatever test we run and explore how to best give players what's being asked for," Keller says. "Whether that’s a world of 5v5, 6v6 or even both, is for future us to figure out."
One would think a cleaner solution to Overwatch's tank problem is to increase the popularity of the role, but that hasn't panned out either. When Overwatch 2 released, several Tanks received reworks that encouraged more action and less standing behind shields. The two Tanks released since launch, Rammatra and Mauga, are mobile, mid-to-close range damage dealers. Even still, Tanks are the black sheep of the Overwatch roster.
Overwatch 2 has never managed to escape the shadow of Overwatch 1 and I think there are many reasons for that. I've never been a fan of 5v5 and the way it's drained a lot of the teamwork out of the game, but I can respect Blizzard's reasoning for the change. The sheer amount of excitement over Juno, the game's newest support hero, suggests that there are plenty of people who wish Overwatch would slow down enough to allow for more strategic, team-focused play.
Even if these experiments don't end with a return to Overwatch 1's glory days, it would be nice to finally know what 6v6 is like in modern Overwatch instead of just talking about it. Maybe the results will be a total surprise or maybe they won't, but Overwatch 2 is long overdue for some fresh ideas.
