Blizzard revealed in today’s live broadcast that the PvP of the new game will be changed to 5v5. For the upcoming “Overwatch 2”, the player-to-player battle will undergo major changes. Decreasing the current 6v6 PvP of Overwatch will also bring about changes in team composition, which will be limited to one tank, two DPS and two supports.
“We feel like this is the next step in the way that Overwatch ought to be played,” game director Aaron Keller said. “If you think about it, there is a lot going on in an Overwatch map. It is incredibly fast paced. We have always tried to make our combat easy to read and very understandable, and even with all of the work that we’ve put into that, sometimes it’s just hard to track what 11 other players are doing on the battlefield. Removing two of those simplifies everything, and it allows players to understand everything that’s happening around them, and to be able to make better choices.”
Not surprisingly, the reduction in team size has affected Blizzard’s method of designing new maps, but it has had a greater impact on the role of tanks, which will be limited to one per team. “Tanks can be problematic,” Keller said. “A DPS hero is simple—they’re shooting. But a tank has abilities that can be noisy, or when stacked with other tanks can cause problems for other teams to try to overcome and counter.”
By going to five players on a team and limiting them to a tank, it continued, there is a better chance that individual players can transport teams, because each player “has the opportunity to have a bigger individual impact on his own team.”
Lead hero designer Geoff Goodman said that these tanks will also make some individual changes to “Overwatch 2” in order to make them “more aggressive.” “In terms of gaming, they will be more hybrids, and wall protection will be less.” We have seen some examples in streaming games. Zarya now has two bubble potions that can be used freely on her or her teammates (for example, now you can double bubble yourself), and Winston’s has a new ranged alt-fire on his lightning gun.
The reaction to the changes is mixed at this point: some players are eager to try a more structured shot in OutWatch PVP, while others predict the end of tank relevance.
