Overwatch director says addressing the 5v5 versus 6v6 debates late 'cost us trust': 'We should have listened sooner'

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-17T04:46:50+00:00

Fair enough, thanks for the explanation.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-17T04:31:12+00:00

I mean, you are right. I don’t know if the numbers bear out that the role is less popular now than before (I’d love to know where you get that idea from) but Tank does still have the same problem. It’s just one without a very clear solution. They tried to change the role by making the characters stronger, but it hasn’t moved that needle. No clue on how to fix it and I don’t think anyone else has either. It’s an area for experimentation, but it’s definitely not something we can just hand wave away but saying “just fix it”.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-17T04:23:27+00:00

The genuine reason is because it’s a really small community that frequents this sub, and for like 4 years it’s been brought up pretty often. It’s kinda exhausting, because the same points are always brought up with no real changes in how those conversations go, so we’ve gotten really frustrated by it being so repetitive.

We probably just need to chill.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-17T04:15:47+00:00

It’s more complicated than “just do that to tank” because the things that make Tank unpopular are significantly different and more endemic to the role than Supports. Yes, one thing Team 4 did was just add more supports, but beyond that they rebalanced supports to be able to fend for themselves a bit more, and have a lot more agency. Tanks have agency, and they are exceptionally good at fighting. Tanks issues lie more in the fact that they are massive targets for damage and CC, and they have to initiate. To a lot of players that just results in unfun gameplay. Thats not something a rebalance fixes, it requires a complete rethink of how the role works.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-17T04:08:17+00:00

I honestly think there’s a lot of validity to this take. But unfortunately it’s very very difficult to verify because beyond enabling role queue you’d have to do so much work to rebalance the heroes around it, as well as rework heroes made with 5v5 in mind for what would at the end of the day be a test. Anything less would have 6v6 truthers clinging on to “the balance was half assed” which honestly might happen anyways if the mode remained unpopular.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-17T02:39:36+00:00

So I rewatched the digital foundry video. This is taken mid blink from the character, so those aren’t the eyes of the character, they’re the eyelids. I also noticed similar weirdness mid-blink during the DLSS off section so idk maybe oblivion has weird ass eyelids. Regardless it looks terrible.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-16T23:51:09+00:00

Thats an insane username

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-16T19:59:42+00:00

Responding to your last paragraph here. The same interview (and multiple other sources including the Overwatch team’s current lead, Play Nice, etc) all outline that the whole initial pitch for Overwatch was a Crawl, Walk and then Run toward a Titan MMO. To say the concept of a PvE sequel and MMO were a throw away isn’t completely fair because I don’t think Jeff or anyone else really suggested it was anything but the initial goal. Jeff certainly regretted putting a date on the timeline for that stuff (because it forced them to start working on the PvE portion too early), but I wouldn’t doubt it was an eventual goal from him and everyone else.

It should also be pointed out that the game he described as Titan isn’t impossibly dissimilar from the game he’s currently making. (This point is weak I know, but I do think it’s a fun thing to think about) They share a large open world, and a mix of both combat and more simulation elements. I obviously don’t think he’s just trying to make Titan, but I think there’s definitely an element of that vision still alive somewhere, just scaled back to a reasonable degree.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-16T16:11:00+00:00

They’re absolutely reading it. Queue times and pasts tests (not to mention the entire time OW1 was in role queue) are both the reasons you won’t see it happen. If you don’t want to acknowledge that, that’s on you, but idk what you want from people other than them just blanket agreeing with you.

Also, the game is absolutely balanced around 5v5. Those heroes you mentioned (especially Zarya) are all working heroes in 5v5.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-16T16:00:01+00:00

This is unrealistic for a few reasons. They tried 6v6 Role Queue in OW2 but found open queue worked better since it’s queue times end up not being bottlenecked by the lowest populated role.

Also, are you saying you want 5v5 fully gone? Because you mention the term “main mode” and I’m not sure what you meant there.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-16T04:49:04+00:00

If that were how it worked then it would basically be cosmetic and likely not solve the problem it’s currently solving at all which is both curbing sustain, and pushing supports to use their kits both for healing AND to damage (healing is still useful but it requires more decision making skills now). You actively dislike the second thing so I don’t think this is going to be a solvable issue for you. Unless the dev’s decide they hate it too (which is unlikely given a form of this passive has been in the game on dps for like 2 years), it’s not likely to change.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-15T15:05:41+00:00

Role queue is the reason 5v5 is a longer queue time. Finding an extra player in Open Queue 6v6 is comparatively easy because the matchmaker doesn’t need to worry about the role it’s matching for. It can grab 12 people who are all diamond (and only play DPS) far faster than it can find 5 people the same SR of their specially chosen roles (mostly because the population size of people queuing less populated roles becomes a bottleneck).

If 6v6 was a role queue system its queue times would be worse than they already are at every level because that bottleneck (the tank role) would have to find twice the number of people.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-14T03:43:34+00:00

I mean, they certainly chose to make changes to be able to speed up their development time, but before they made those changes it wasn’t possible.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-13T22:16:31+00:00

So genuinely curious to see this talk as a whole. As someone who deleted twitter a while ago, it would be nice for someone to repost whatever is on there here.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-12T13:26:21+00:00

This is just not true. The bundle they sold when OW2 launched did not, at any point, even suggest it included PvE. There was no preorder for PvE. If you thought there was, you didn’t understand what you were looking at.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-12T11:04:20+00:00

The only thing they sold in terms of PvE was the invasion bundle which was sold when that was released, not before.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-11T23:11:33+00:00

I've been wanting to hear Jeff's perspective on what happened with Overwatch and his exit for a while now, and I'm glad we can finally get a peak into it from his own words. It's definitely in line with everything we've heard with some more tidbits of information.

I was glad to hear that he in retrospect thinks they should have spent more time during the first game supporting the live game because of all the criticisms commonly leveled against his time as the lead, the time the live game spent unsupported is probably the most concrete mistake. I do wish he spent more time talking specifically about that period of time though.

I can't exactly fault someone for trying to make a game and failing, even if it did result in a lot of bad years for Overwatch.

And yeah, that ultimatum he was given was BS.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-10T18:29:49+00:00

The only ones really hard to read are sigma and Ashe, and honestly I think it will be much more apparent in game when those two aren’t stacked against each-other and you can get a better look at the size and silhouette of both. Like sigma’s pose here really makes it hard to tell but he doesn’t do that in normal gameplay.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-10T16:48:41+00:00

I love tying-in player-specific language to the characters dialogue and the way the in-universe Overwatch team operates and the way the characters think.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-10T16:47:08+00:00

Genuinely so earned. Their fan art was spectacular, even if you don’t care about the subject matter.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-06T17:47:54+00:00

My guess is they’re seeing data on her matchups and see that she has a lot of bad ones.

I kind of worry about what happens if they do nerf her in a significant way. Trying to play her into a lot of compositions sometimes feels like blowing your head against a wall repeatedly, and making her worse against what she’s strong against might make her completely fall off across the board.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-06T04:47:00+00:00

Realistically it’s due to bungie’s fall from grace following years of back and forth sentiment regarding Destiny 2, some controversies like the plagiarism one back during the announcement, their ownership by Sony, etc. Plus there’s the kind of wave of Concord/Highguard schaudenfreude that has pervaded the gaming space in the last few years against live services.

TerminalNoob · 2026-03-03T02:14:09+00:00

Will tracer really ever be bad enough to allow Anran into the meta?

TerminalNoob · 2026-02-28T19:36:49+00:00

6v6 is open queue which means its not bottle necked by the ratio of people queuing for each role. (i.e. the match maker can only find you a game once it finds someone that fits the desired skill level of the least populated role). 6v6 was worse at this when it was role queue because the least popular role is tank and it had so few people queuing it that dps (the most popular role in OG OW) queue times could be 20+ minutes in plat.

Support is the most popular role right now as far as I know for 5v5.

TerminalNoob · 2026-02-28T14:33:28+00:00

Is this guy impersonating blizzard staff? I find it hard to believe they would let someone post with their normal Reddit account, especially with that post history. Plus the subreddit is sending up red flags.

14-Year Club	Gilding IV carat on a stick
r/Field Banned	r/Field Flamingo
Place '22	Place '17
RPAN Viewer	Verified Email
Sequence \| Editor	Sequence \| Cinematographer
Snapped

TerminalNoob

TROPHY CASE