Overwatch 2 is going to change more about the way the game works than you might have first anticipated. One of the biggest differences is the size of the teams. Where Overwatch has two 6-person squads fighting, Overwatch 2 will shrink that to 5-person teams. And those squads will have two damage and two support players, and now only one tank.
“There are a lot of reasons we wanted to make this change,” game director Aaron Keller said. “If you think about it, there’s a lot going on in an Overwatch match. And we have always tried to make our combat easy to read and understandable. But even with all the work we’ve done, sometimes it’s just too hard to read what 11 other players are doing on the battlefield. Removing two of them simplifies everything.”
But while this change might simplify the action for players, it is causing a lot of complication for Overwatch 2’s developers right now.
“Something like only allowing one tank cascades into a lot of questions and problems that need answers,” Overwatch 2 designer Geoff Goodman said. “For example, healing can kinda focus on one tank, and does that make them too hard to kill?”
But Goodman says that now is the time to make this change. Blizzard wants to use this sequel as an opportunity to reset Overwatch for the future. It also doesn’t hurt that smaller teams will make it easier to find games as Overwatch 2 gets older, even if you’re not playing with a huge pool of players.