When Overwatch 2 announced it would feature a change in team size from 6v6 to 5v5 in 2021, it was presented as a fundamental shift to gameplay, teamwork, and the shooter’s overall design, which in turn caused a lot of pro players to have some reservations. It’s now been a couple of years since the pseudo-sequel launched and director Aaron Keller is now poised to revisit the 6v6 format – but only after a lot of testing and considerations.
In what’s easily the longest Director’s Take dev blog yet, Keller explains the rationale for the 5v5 format, including performance, balance, queue times, and ease of following the action; at least half of the post is arguably attempting to defend the 5v5 format. Still, Keller does concede that player input is what matters. “[B]ecause we operate as a service to our players, we always remain open-minded to re-evaluating our decisions based on your actions and feedback, to give you the best game experience we can,” he writes.
However, 6v6 isn’t just being dropped back in: The team is planning to run a series of events to try out different team composition formats. These planned tests would focus on seeing whether the game is performative enough for a 6v6 return (especially in the case of console versions), whether the change would lengthen queue times, and how it would affect on other game modes. Timing for the tests hasn’t been locked down, but Keller says they will run for a few weeks, after which the devs will take some time for some promised careful analysis. “Whether that’s a world of 5v5, 6v6 or even both, is for future us to figure out,” Keller says.
The post closes out with one last attempt at arguing in favor of 5v5, as Keller believes that the feedback of matches feeling same-y isn’t entirely the fault of team makeup, which leads to a planned quick play mode that would let players put a team together with rules that aren’t quite as rigid as a set composition but not quite as freeform as open queue; that mode is planned for Season 13.
