The Overwatch 2 community has been conflicted since the game’s release, with the Overwatch 1 faithful claiming that the move away from 6v6 was the wrong one. After a long silence on the topic, the OW2 dev team is finally willing to talk about it.
The Tank role was a big talking point in the first Overwatch game, negatively affectingqueue timesfor other roles. The lack of tanks made finding matches in roles like DPS extremely difficult.
So, when Overwatch 2 was being developed, teams changed to 5v5 with a single tank per team. This fixed queue times but also completely changed the balance for Overwatch without addressing many reasons playersdidn’t like queuing for Tankin the first place.
The team’s Tanks often got blamed for everything and forced into degenerate metas likeDouble Shieldsin Overwatch 1, and Overwatch 2 isn’t much different withcounter-swapping’s prevalence.
ARESGIVE ME BACK 6v6 OVERWATCH, AND MY LIFE IS YOURSpic.twitter.com/jyZVHcsPc6
Similar discussions have occurred before and since, with the only standout factor being the dev team’s deafening silence on the topic—until now, that is.
Aaron Keller announced in a dev blog that the team would focus onbuffing up tanksthrough Seasons 11 and 12, with a focus on keeping them alive longer through individual buffs to each Hero who’s struggling in the role.
However, Keller focusing on tanks with thisdev blograised questions about whether or not he’s considering that two tanks per team could fix the issue. In other words, a return to 6v6.
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The Overwatch 2 director revealed that the team has been talking about it internally, and that he’ll be addressing the issue head-on in an upcoming Director’s Take or Dev Update.
next post gonna ignite a war
“We should have another Director’s Take out in a few weeks’ time,” he claimed. This is likely when we’ll get a more fleshed-out look at what the team is considering and whether or not a return to 6v6 is on the horizon.
Carver Fisher is Dexerto’s Deputy US Editor. His expert coverage areas include Gaming and competitive Esports, where he’s covered League of Legends extensively. He also has bylines at Elo Entertainment and Inven Global. Contact him here: carver.fisher@dexerto.com
