Overwatch 2 to Shrink Team Sizes to 5v5 for PVP Modes

Announced today during Blizzard's Overwatch 2 Developer PVP Livestream, Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller confirmed that the team sizes in the game will be getting an adjustment in the upcoming sequel. Since its launch in 2016 the first Overwatch has been a team-based objective shooter with two teams of six, at a later point forcing players into roles with two DPS, two healers, and two tanks; for Overwatch 2 however teams will shrink down to five for each team. The sequel will have two DPS, two healers, and one tank per team. The developers confirmed that this was due to the changes in how Overwatch is played over the past five years.

"Overwatch has always been played with two teams of six players, Overwatch 2 will be played with two teams of five players," Keller said during the stream. "There are a lot of reasons for why we wanted to make this change. Overwatch has changed over time, we've gone from having no hero limits at all in the game before launch to having a hero limit, we ended up introducing a role lock over the course of the game, and we feel like this is the next step in the way that Overwatch ought to be played."

Keller added, "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 eleven 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 because of it."

Keller promised new details on the changes being made to Tanks and how this will alter the function of teams in the game moving forward. Some changes that were confirmed at the time of press was a change to Winston allowing players to charge up the electrical gun and release it all at once. The previously announced two fire strike from Reinhardt was also shown off.

The 5v5 format that Blizzard confirmed was just one of several different versions that were tested internally, previously testing a 4v4 version and even a 7v7 version, but noted that they never quite hit the sweet spot of game play.

"This is hte king of change that impacts a huge part of the game obviously," Geoff Goodman, Lead hero designer added. "That's the sort of thing about hero design and balance, it's certainly easier to make a single hero change or have a rework like we've done in the past, but to change something so fundamental as 'There's only one Tank allowed' really cascades into a lot of different questions and problems that demand answers."