Yes, Overwatch 2 Will Finally Experiment With 6v6 Formats, But You'll Need To Be Patient

Two weeks ago, Overwatch 2 Game Director Aaron Keller opened a bit of a can of worms on X when he mentioned that a "Director's Take" on 6v6 in Overwatch 2 was coming. The hero shooter's players took to social media to speculate on his thoughts right away with many thinking he fell on the "pro 6v6" side of things.

Today we finally see some of his thoughts and man was he right, the post is lengthy.

I'll skip over some of the preamble here just to save you some time, but the post starts with both a "you can like whatever version you like and that's ok" message, and a look back at some key changes to Overwatch through the years. Changes like hero limiting and the shift to role queue, while aimed at creating an environment that was easier to balance, obviously impacted player freedom and queue times.

This led to the big change to 5v5 and Keller talks about a few reasons for that initial change. The first big point made is the impact it had on making players feel more important to a team's success and helping to mitigate some of the stalemates that a 6v6 match caused until Ultimates could be combo-ed off. As Keller says, "The world of 6v6 could have really high, highs, but reaaaally low, lows," and 5v5 attempted to raise that floor.

Making damage players feel more valuable as Overwatch 2 became more about shooting than crowd control was also a factor in this decision. 5v5 allowed healers to do more than just heal, too. Tanks get a special callout here as the main cause of some more "dragging" moments in gameplay when a defensive blockade grinds the game to a halt. 

Player tracking of 9 other players versus 11 other players also gets a nod.

But has it all improved queue times as intended? In short, yes, particularly for damage classes (the most populated group). Check out the comparison below. A key aspect to this analysis, though, is the ratio of people queuing for tank, healer or dps. Keller says it is much closer to 1-2-2 than it was 2-2-2.

Great, but what does the team think about 6v6? They do think the 6v6 version of the game had its merits. Sure it was harder to balance and two tanks made for some dull moments sometimes, but when things got chaotic, they were amazing to watch. 

Where does the team go from here then? Well, they don't want to make any large-scale disruptive changes to 5v5 and they continue to balance for it, but they also recognize that Overwatch is a live service game that needs to cater to its players. In that spirit, the team will be adding limited-time events that play with the composition of teams. 

Yes, you will be getting 6v6 back in Overwatch 2 in some capacity, even if its just for some testing and feedback gathering. It may take a while as the team needs to consider the game's performance (tech-wise) given enhancements made to Overwatch 2 that might kill framerates and speed if 12 players were in a match. There's also the impact to other core game modes that needs to be assessed. They have ideas on fixing queue times with a 6v6 mode in Overwatch 2, but they may not work.

Could Overwatch 2 roll back to a 6v6 standard format? Maybe. "Whether that’s (the future) a world of 5v5, 6v6 or even both, is for future us to figure out," says Keller.

Certainly great news for many of you, I'm sure. Let us know if this approach meets with your approval below.