You can't profit your way out of Bad Design

I said there might be a build to sort out what 2-2-2 needs-

-specifically what it needs to function both in it's queue times (Open Queue) as well as make it the dominant method of play.

There's a few elements working against one another in this equation; personalized MMR attached to each role for formats like Role Lock, makes hero availability across the board a bit of a mess. Having people on your team switch between heroes/roles, means their ability to play and operate within a given MMR bracket is wildly inconsistent.

This goes double for rank.

A gold Ana, might be a plat Reinhardt, might be a Diamond Soldier.

This discrepancy gets worse for MMR, reaching for a wider audience the further from Competitive you get and the deeper into one of the Devs current guiding philosophies

"Play Overwatch the way you want to play it".

Which, in a team-oriented game (especially for 6v6) is just needless complication.

Competitive sports/games are dependent on several key elements, but probably one of the strongest to maintain integrity of play is Consistency.

Without it, both sides can leverage advantages across a broad set of vectors, from the Environment they are playing in, to the rules they are meant to follow, and on into the positions they are operating in.

Without consistency, the game's sense of fairness falls apart and that can lead to a deep level of frustration that eventually sends your players to the curb, seeking out other games to play.

There's a reason that Pro Overwatch players love Control; it is the fairest and most consistent mission type in the game, with all of it's maps offering mirrored setups from both spawns for the majority of the environmental design.

That doesn't take away from the fact that there are massive differences in the cast of characters, resulting in dynamic shifts in what is possible or capable from one team to the next - a fact that is further complicated by the varied ranks, MMRs, hero pools, and types of players in any given match. Outside of Mirror matches in Team Composition (a rarity outside of Pro Play), there is always going to be a variation in levels of stats, cooldowns, and ultimate availability from moment to moment.

This...is the main reason fixes in previous tests (and the current ones) will more than likely fail:

There is no reasonable way to adjust heroes by stats, at hero select screen, or by cooldowns without making portions of the fundamental game uneven and inconsistent

Players cannot fit neatly into any category, whether Roles, Heroes, Playstyle, or even Mode. Consistency has to be a throughline in the game, that choice, option, and expression branch from; allowing the player to maintain consistent gameplay, while exploring their own path.

A very difficult and, as it currently stands, contradictory philosophy.

So...

What to do?

Among a host of issues in the game (DPS-centred philosophies, Player Role discrepancies, Locked Design Space, a severe lack of Tutorial/Education/On-boarding systems, etc.), consistency cannot find proper footing enough to act as a throughline for players to follow.

Where the above listed issues all have their own builds/answers, the major hurdle closest to the playerbase and, by extension, the developers remains the uneven number of players populating each Role.

Until that structure is re-focused, there can't be meaningful adjustments made elsewhere or

You have to build the stage if the varied performances that can be enacted on it are going to go on.

My current theory revolves around a design concept I'm calling Compositional Gravity.

Without getting too deep into the design weeds, this concept involves finding a simple strategy that any player can apply to their Open Queue matches, in answer to the overwhelming force of more heroes in a given role than a game really needs.

Adding significant gravity to the 2-2-2 composition, such that the entire playerbase will steadily and quickly realize and adapt to it as the standard, even when their experience is on the outer edges of gameplay; they will be incentivized to more closely operate and interact with 2-2-2 both in their own gameplay as well as when facing opponents who opt into 2-2-2 themselves.

If any player (Bronze, Plat, GM, Casual, Average, Beginner, Veteran) can feel/see the gravity of their composition lessen the closer they get to 2-2-2, it will create a path of least resistance and push the playerbase to adjust their gameplay accordingly.

Likewise, if 2-2-2 represents a very clear vector of success at all levels of play, it will achieve that solid state of consistency needed for the Developers to begin earnestly tackling other issues in the design/balance.

So how do we go about adding gravity to 2-2-2 as a composition?

By including Inflation on Ultimate Charge:

For each hero above 2 in a given Role, every member of that Role will now require 20% more Ultimate Charge to gain access to their Ultimate.

Triple Support = 20% more Ult Charge needed for all 3 Support heroes on the team to get their Ultimates

Quad Tank = 40% more Ult Charge needed for all 4 Tanks to get their Ultimates

5 DPS = 60% more Ult Charge needed for all 5 DPS to get their Ultimates

If enemy Supports/Tanks/DPS are taking extra time building up to their Ultimates, enough that your team can get theirs first, it presents a very easy window of play to continuously overwhelm them throughout a match.

What this effectively does is it gives players who opt into 2-2-2, access to a very basic strategy when going up against a non-2-2-2 composition:

Build your Ultimates and dump them onto the enemy before they can build theirs

This will not prevent players from choosing multiple DPS, Tank, or Support outside of the ideal 2 per Role, which maintains Player choice, but it will layer in necessary structure to push any composition that steps outside of 2-2-2, to have to "work against gravity" or put in significantly more effort in achieving victory.

There would need to be some minor updates to the UI to accommodate:

A discolouration of the Ultimate Percentage, to showcase the added penalty, and return to normal if 2-2-2 is activated later in the match.

A simple tool-tip in the hero select screen to let players know what the penalty % is while selecting heroes.

This isn't a perfect solution, by any means:

Control maps are notorious in broad MMR matches for not building Ultimates before a round is over

Beginner players are going to have a harder time navigating which heroes to choose vs. what they want to play

This all but guarantees a loss for teams with Players who opt to throw matches rather than play an alternate role

DPS-Players, the most numerous by far in the game, might not take kindly to their individual playmaking being made more difficult with an Ultimate-handicap

The good news is that each of the above problems is something that already occurs in the game and has alternative solutions and builds waiting once it is implemented.

Lastly, as an Adjacent System (an in-game system that has no direct interaction with the available mechanics of any hero I.E - Zarya's Energy, D.va's Defense Matrix Resource, etc.), Ultimate Charge will not be a noticeable disruption to the moment to moment gameplay when switching heroes in the same way adjusting Stats (Healing, Health, Damage) would.

Players will be able to switch and change heroes in spawn without any first hand impact on their gameplay, as Ultimates take time to come online-

-allowing for the Open Queue format, with it's much more favourable queue times, to take the lead while maintaining it's consistency under 2-2-2 as a preferred method of play.

The above is somewhat technical in it's description, but the implementation would directly interact with how players feel when playing the game, rather than how they operate it.

By creating an environment that incentivizes players to not only gravitate toward 2-2-2, but steadily realize the benefits of it for winning/losing, it would re-train the playerbase for 6v6 toward a much more recognizable centre of gravity and give the developers the focused target needed to begin addressing the many other design problems within the game.

About sums it up, honestly.

The experience is enjoyable, but the caveats ensure there's no long-term viability here. Players will cue into the novelty, mostly for the 6v6 vibes (given it replaced 5v5 quickplay, many of the players will also be 5v5 enjoyers trying out 6v6 for the first time), but eventually grow tired of it without some significant changes to balance and design.

The experiment is worthwhile, don't get me wrong; there is a lot to love about 6v6 as a format and many will see the benefits that go into a proper 2-2-2 composition. Queue times were pretty comfortable across the board over the last few days, with the longest wait in Tank by the second day lasting for 2-3 mins-

-which was the main goal of the test to begin with. Call that a successful execution, but I'm not sure anyone would have expected otherwise.

The real core elements of the mode stem from the Design, Balance, and Player patience problems.

3+ years of 5v5 has bred a lot of reflexive gameplay into the general playerbase, from those who used to play 6v6 to those who have only played 5v5. Everyone is used to playing in a much more individual state:

Supports have learned to peel for themselves/one another, do more damage, while also focusing and looking to heal only a single Tank that is getting into much more obvious trouble.

Tanks have gotten used to barreling in as aggressively as possible with over-stats and long CDs boiling the role down to "can I get picks before they eliminate me?" in many (most) circumstances.

DPS have almost entirely embraced playing deathmatch with only a cursory consideration for what anyone else is doing, most of which is expectation of resources to help them "carry".

This re-configuration of the Triad (Healer/Tank/Damage) has made the older nuances of 6v6, much harder to understand, both cognitively and reflexively, each of which is it's own learning curve within the player-base or-

-it is incredibly difficult to tame overt aggression you are reflexively operating on because the format demands such, making the increased patience requirement of 6v6 a significant hurdle for a large portion of the playerbase.

Unfortunately, this isn't something that can be fixed with a singular test. It would require a dedicated level of effort in design, balance, and Player-willingness (that last one is probably the biggest issue) to overcome and it could not be done instantly. Maybe over a couple of seasons? But the game would probably see some volatility in maintaining numbers during that time.

And none of this addresses the more concrete issues within the Design:

There is way more movement, burst damage/heals, and cooldown turbulence in the game than Overwatch 1 had.

Tank design has largely moved away from pairs that cover one another, to singular self-sufficient designs that, when paired together, can create nigh-immovable walls or terrifying engines of destruction, a fact that would demand multiple re-works to address.

Non-traditional DPS design has moved away from niche characters with opportunistic kits (Torb, Sym, Junk) and deeper into hyper-aggressive play-making that an entire enemy team will need to participate in diminishing (Shion, Venture, Vendetta)

Traditional DPS are long range monsters with easily applied damage that is increasingly difficult to avoid or mitigate (Sierra, Freya, Sojourn)

Support designs have abandoned the priorities of Healer in favour of a more DPS-priority tree; trimming Healing and Utility components to auto-active or full-protection effects, freeing up their time to participate in eliminations and setup. This makes backlines almost as dangerous (and more, in some cases) as a frontline to approach.

Perks, Passives, and Sub-roles all provide a foundation of erasure for any active resource spending; you have to be able to overcome the baseline resistances of Anti-Heal, CC, and Healing passives first before even considering what active effects enemies are applying on top of it all, while also accounting for a Kit changing mid-match with additional mechanics from Perk choice.

Overall, there is a more severe level of Bloat in the game across every system that can make 6v6 as a format feel incredibly overwhelming, especially as the game's sound and visual design has also noticeably fallen off in quality over the years.

It all comes together to make this particular experiment feel exhausting for the playerbase, overall. 6v6 enjoyers will get a lot out of it and there are some very noticeable benefits to this, but after years of 5v5, the lowered responsibility of that format (at the cost of a Tank Playerbase that has largely been replaced with reluctant DPS players) has resulted in those who are probably not keen to want to go back and lose the "freedom" that 5v5 promises.

That said?

This experiment is probably the first time I have seen a significant amount of actual "Tank Players" (not Players willing to play Tank, but those who actually enjoy the Role), return and flourish.

Granted that isn't a very high bar given the experience they have in 5v5, but if there's any part of the Playerbase that understands how to squeeze water from a rock, it's going to be Tanks.

There is still an abundance of Mauga/Roadhog picks that are the easiest tell for DPS players moonlighting in the role? But having a partner to help with those circumstances does make a difference. Frustrating still, but again...water from a rock.

The main issue inside this is that 1, in the 1-3-2 framework: The longer the test ran, the more often I found myself solo-tanking. I chock this up to the same Willingness factor in the playerbase; going from being a Raid boss who's only decision is bombing into the enemy to try and get picks, to having to play a more nuanced, position-heavy experience that demands strategic understanding of resources (yours, your teams, and the enemies), while also being "squishier", is a lot-

-nevermind for a playerbase not used to playing a very different format. This playstyle wasn't terribly popular in Overwatch 1. With all of the above shifts and changes in design and balance?

It's a hurdle. A major one.

I'll also bring up the lack of Tank options in the game. By year's end, we'll have 7 New DPS, 5 new Supports, but only 2 new Tanks, since Mauga's release. The options aren't there for new and interesting content and the content we have gotten, so far, isn't great:

Domina, though an interesting Tank, isn't impressive enough in design to account for the entirety of the Role's attention. If she isn't your cup of tea, that leaves the players in a dry spell for a good long while.

And if the next Tank fits a similar bill, well...

Meanwhile, DPS get to have a plethora of choices that, even if a few of them aren't of any interest, there's a bunch more to capture the attention and maybe add to your hero pool.

Supports, though less than DPS, still have options and their designs in particular, tend to have some very big and loud mechanics that get many players of all the Roles, interested to play and learn in their variety.

Overall, another advent of 5v5 design that does not translate over to 6v6 as a format in any real regard. Considering that many of these Tank designs, old and new, would need to be trimmed/reduced/re-worked to fit the 2 Tank style?

The desertification of the Tank Role across multiple vectors is going to take a long time to repair, to make something like this experiment, at the least, a viable option of play.

And it will be worth it to do so. I will advocate for 6v6 until the break of dawn, so moving these sorts of mountains will result in a stronger, better, game overall.

But there needs to be a frank thought paid to the idea so that changes can be both realistic and ideal in implementation.

The alternative is just...maintaining 5v5 because it's easier to allow Tank Players to accept the lack of care, content, and concern than to put in the hard work.

And that's not viable. It isn't even an option. It's just saying you're ok with some people starving, so that food remains available for others.

So here we are again.

There's a lot of different factors going into how Overwatch is going and what direction it will go in (or, more accurately, how up in the air the direction is):

From recent Microsoft layoffs that could eventually spell tragedy even in the Blizzard teams

On-going issues around Tank player attrition

The skewed numbers getting notably worse with recent hero releases

Stadium's collapse and the giant hole it leaves behind for content (see blogpost here)

More heroes released equating to a watering down of design for all things in the game

A lot of these are recent as well, defining both a willingness to experiment but also a sharp lack of core direction for the game. Stadium's failure in particular, strikes a pretty firm resonance for the developers still struggling to find the pulse of the game.

In spite of that, the game's popularity has levelled off considerably and seems to be maintaining a steady trend upward.

Part of that is worth pointing out their bolder attempts at content release; 10 new heroes and a dedication to the story/lore have done wonders to keep people engaged/invested in the long term. That doesn't just include the story chapters being released, but also the interactions being updated via voicelines between characters. It is easy to overlook that connection and how it bundles the story they are producing, into the gameplay experience for many casual players.

All of that said?

6v6 is getting more tests.

And here we are again.

The previous round of tests a while back had a lot of back-end question marks around it. Overwatch 2 was still a thing and 5v5 was popular enough that those tests felt a lot more indicative of a hand-waving cursory attempt to put the format debate to rest.

We'd get Stadium, Perks, Season 1/Dropping the 2 after those tests, all of which went on to revitalize the game and were in production and development (presumably) while those tests were being run.

But we're back into them running tests again, with 6v6 as an (un)official format having been in the game for a while and maintaining steady numbers-

-significantly more steady than many of the other modes in the game.

All the while, problems with Tanks, both design (1 Tank released for the 3 Supports, and 6 DPS in the same amount of time is absurd) and player-wise (referring to the Tank experience as a "Burden" is telling folks a lot about how you envision Tank players) continue to mount while the game's hero design has grown more shallow or:

A stable format with a steady playerbase, despite a sharp lack of balance patching and content options (the most recent creator patch did not even have a 6v6 option), continuing to perform at a solid pace while everything else around it fluctuates is pretty strong evidence for why these tests are happening.

That said, these continued attempts to shift and change the format to try and account for a lot of these problems is still trying to solve based on the 'Silver Bullet' approach.

Design, without getting too deep in the reeds, is very rarely a singular answer or 'fix' system; often times, there's multiple answers that need to be implemented, sometimes simultaneously to ensure all the other parts work. This can be really frustrating, trying to find the right values, systems, mechanics, or approach that accounts for everything-

-like putting an entire engine together only to look down at the giant bolt left out of the finished block and wondering what the hell it was for. Time-consuming and, in an industry like video games, often unavoidable.

3-2-1 flex queue has some positives attached to it; DPS take on the sole responsibility of deciding if there's going to be 2 Tanks or not in the game, basically defining the role as a permanent place for Flex Players to exist in and help balance the game out.

Taking the stress off Tank Player shoulders is always going to be good for the game and this is a strong point in the format's favour that I hope bares out in the statistics.

There's no guarantee you're going to get a flex player, though, and that means that Solo-Tanking is going to be a recognizably validated method of play, even if it isn't ideal. Open Queue, at least, had the potential to try and move and shift your position across all roles, even if the means weren't ideal. A player could shift between Support, Damage, and Tank, if there were other flexible players available, finding the right match of Role > Player. In this format, the restrictions work against that benefit.

Dynamic Queue appears to operate more toward the matchmaking side, alleviating the pressure of Tanking by 'widening' the pool of players any given match reaches for. The perils of this particular option are obvious and have been debated pretty extensively at this point.

Competitive integrity is always going to be in high demand, while steamrolls/stomps are always going to be unpleasant for many in the playerbase. This format will be expand these two issues and I'm not anticipating it's survival past this initial test.

Above all, though, these are singular attempts to fix a broad range of problems, or at least try and address them and as stated: Design rarely allows for Silver Bullet solutions.

Tank Design needs to be adjusted, as do hero release numbers, especially if there's any consideration for 6v6 becoming a more prominent format in the game at all (a very real possibility now that Stadium isn't going to be demanding so much development time).

Re-works for problematic characters are going to need to be considered alongside the entire balance philosophy (Season 9 health/damage/healing changes, sub-roles, global anti-heal passive, excessively long Tank CDs, etc. are all detrimental to 6v6 gameplay).

I am not sure these tests are going to provide much value for future decisions at the design level; there's some inherent flaws in the way they shape up and operate, but, as an experiment to test the waters of public perception and reception of 6v6?

I'm going to look closely and examine what happens in the tests as they come up and try to formulate some more distinct thoughts but I'm also not anticipating my mind changing much after them. It will be interesting if they release or provide some numbers/stats after the tests as well as see how much better or worse 6v6 as a format does when they are completed.

That said, there is an option, at least for how to make Open Queue, more viable in the long term, that I'm eyeballing in the near future; a solution that's become a lot more clear the further into design theory I get and the more the problems in the game continue to calcify over time.

More on that once the tests are underway.

For now? My preferred format is getting some much needed attention and consideration for play. There's doom in the industry and the potential threat to developers lingering with Microsoft bullshit, so I'm going to stay cautious in my optimism.

Stadium Devs could get ported over to the main game for increased resources (yay!)

....they could also have killed the mode in order to prep for that entire team to get laid off (ugh)

A wholllleee lot of changes. A whole lot of thresholds breached, but also a lot of good directions taken. Hopefully there's some discussion folks can get on board with around what looks good vs. what broken stuff folks want for their favs.

The sheer volume of Mobility+ in this is fairly obvious so plenty of broken across the board.

Some design first glance impressions:

POINTLESS (what...?):

D.va, Reinhardt (:facepalm:), Wrecking Ball, Zarya, Ashe, Junkrat (you'll be hitscan and like it), Mei, Pharah, Soldier 76, Torbjorn, Kiriko, Mercy, Moira (lol),

MIXED BAG (bad + good in disproportion):

Orisa, Sigma, Echo, Freya, Genji, Sojourn, Sombra, Symmetra, Vendetta (mostly pointless), Venture (leans solid), Widowmaker (leans solid), Ana (solid except jetpack), Domina, Hazard (leans Pointless), Brigitte (leans solid), Lucio (mostly pointless), Mizuki (leans solid), Wuyang, Zenyatta (mostly pointless)

SOLID (functional) :

Junkerqueen, Rammatra, Bastion, Hanzo, Baptiste (hesitantly), Juno

BREACH (This is bad):

Doomfist, Mauga (lol wtf?), Winston, Anran, Cassidy (ye fuckin' gods), Emre (just...wha...), Reaper, Sierra, Tracer (lmao), Illari, Jetpack Cat, Lifeweaver (:stares into camera:),

The reasons are varied and plentiful and these are first impressions from reading over patch notes, but there is plenty here to be concerned about making it to baseline. I'm not as fussed about single tank format, but there's stuff here that would brutalize 6v6 in both directions.

Still, these patches make for interesting conversations and have a lot of depth and proof for 'convergent ideation/simultaneous discovery' in gaming. Implementation remains the key factor and is where a bunch of this goes wrong, even if a lot of the ideas have promise.

All that said:

Ngl, it is disappointing there doesn't seem to be a 6v6 version of the latest community creator patch.

It's circumstances specifically like this one that makes it difficult to engage with the game as often as many would like and leads to the chief concerns most 6v6 players have about the mode:

If it isn't being considered beyond some cursory additions once a season, then many players who prefer 6v6 will miss out on a lot of the options and entertainment, proving a self-fulfilling prophecy that the mode isn't as popular just by way of people not bothering when it receives no content.

I can't say this patch is going to be of much interest to play beyond a few games, given the single tank format is just not a format I find enjoyable or entertaining. I know it'll have some impact on how 6v6 plays and operates in the future, if only by the inclusion in base kits and design, but to go without any feedback options beyond just reading the (very obviously 5v5 keyed) patch notes, is a bummer.

I'd rather the mode I (and others) prefer not come under any drastic changes without at least getting a chance to test them out ourselves as well.

There's a weirdness about her that I'm on the fence about.

On the one side: Cyberpunk is really meant to mess with humanity's image of itself, taking steps outside of the usual human presentation to display a truly Transhumanist vibe.

Shion's voice, even mind seems to be more localized in the throat area, a fact emphasized by the weird "this face is an emoji mimicking human expression that constantly returns to an emotion blank while not active" of her head, and it fits the Transhumanist vibe to a degree.

On the other: the move to humanize (even anime-prettify) an Omnic that, as a crime boss, exists outside the standards of human law/society in just about every respect, is a missed opportunity for something truly distinct and unique in her face/head appearance-

-that strikes me as yet another move in the generic category so that her skins can house that distinction for a price.

She's also the, what will be, 6th character from Asia we'll be getting this year (Mizuki, Emre, Domina, Anran and, eventually, D-mon), further cementing that Overwatch is being carried pretty hard off the back of that region.

And it has been said before:

It is where the money is.

Kit-wise, need to see the full expression of it but initial reaction is cautious:

Dual-pistol hitscan with 2 (3 if you count the multi-stack Ult) movement abilities and several major lethality spikes feels like the sort of Assassin they wanted Anran to be.

I think my main concern will be if the Bike affords her a level of CC-immunity/resistance, as it seems like CC might be the best available punishment for this character.

Overall, even if the kit is still relatively simple, a step up from Sierra as the Bike is a fairly unique element to base the kit around. It's not so obvious a central star in the constellation of her kit? But does represent overall access for, what should be?, a limited range.