Long-Awaited Comeback of the 6v6 Format in Overwatch 2 is Coming

On July 25, Overwatch Director Aaron Keller published a new Director's Take post, discussing the potential shift back to the 6v6 players format. In the post, the director presented a comprehensive historical insight into the game, talking about how its formats have been changing over time.

Earlier, Overwatch already had a 6v6 format but back in 2021, due to technical issues, the team behind the game decided to shift to a 5v5 playstyle. However, now Blizzard considers switching back. "We want to make the game that players want to play", said Keller in his blog post. The director elaborated that the company hears its community's feedback and, based on it, intends to test team composition formats.

However, the director noted that returning to the 6v6 format is not easy, with several issues complicating the shift. The first challenge is the need for optimized technical performance. The 6v6 team composition can run not as smoothly as usual on older systems because of limitations in frame rate and memory. Keller emphasized that Overwatch 2 is a fast-paced game, and this is crucial for gameplay. According to the director, this technical issue is time-consuming and hard to overcome.

The second issue is associated with long queue times. This problem occurred before and remains unsolved. In the blog post, Aaron Keller published a chart illustrating that after the former shift to 5v5 format average queue times reduced more than two times:

The director also said that the team is inspired by the community's feedback and is about to run tests on implementing the 6v6 format back. Also, although the transition to a long-awaited format is not easy, Blizzard intends to share more plans related to the topic.

Read the original post here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.