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When I brag that I have about 3,000 hours of experience playing one title, my friends share their amazement with a few choice words. "I can't believe it," and "how can you play that game for so long," come out often enough.

I can't explain why, but Overwatch happened at a defining moment in my life. I was in my sophomore year of college. I landed an internship with a law office thanks to a family friend from church.

Most importantly, I was made aware of the world waiting for the one industrious enough to build it. To have a personal computer made sense; even now I have hundreds of gigabytes of photography saved that I had nowhere to put in 2017.

So when I say I care about what I share next, consider that the truth.

One of the most contentious changes in Overwatch 2 was its shift to a 5v5 format. The loss of a tank hero on each team fundamentally changed how it's played, and debates over whether or not it should go back to 6v6 have gone on since its release. In a new blog post, game director Aaron Keller laid out plans to try 6v6 again, along with other format changes, in a series of experimental modes coming later this year.

^{Image Creds: Activision Blizzard}

Overwatch's Biggest Problem

I could write in a roundabout way, but it wouldn't serve you, the reader, the community who plays this game, or personal integrity.

Overwatch's past problem, according to Aaron Keller, this PC Gamer article, and some of my gaming crew was the long queue times because nobody wanted to play the Tank role.

I could see how they bought that, too. Surely, the fault lay with the game, for introducing so many imbalanced mechanics.

Surely not. The real problem with the team-based first-person shooter was a lawless land of anonymous voices slinging seldom a kind word. More often than not, voice chats boasted voices screaming expletives, sexist, racist and other discriminatory remarks alongside poor communication about objectives, if any.

Of course, skeptics will come out in droves to echo the same sentiments. "They were toxic because the game was bad." "They weren't even that bad." I couldn't agree less. "If they fixed the game, people wouldn't throw as much."

From my perspective, a pair of characters per role had more than enough potential and capability to complete most objectives with some effort. Yet, the player base perpetually mocked support roles, reducing (typically female gamers, distinguished only by the sound of their voices) them to Mercy or Moira "mains" as if the shallow assessment correctly assessed the depth of an individual's ability. Put plainly, folks acted like if you were a girl, you played support, and if both those were true, you actually did the team a disservice by not submitting to the yoke of playing a specific character, namely Mercy.

Any other gameplay would be identified as a willful "throw" of the game, a suggestion that one's only capability could be determined by another equally untested individual.

All the roles were subject to their own stereotypes and had diminutive rhetoric hurled at them.

Tanks were all "dog", an abbreviation of the expletive referring to canine waste.
"Only women play support", which also emphasized the only character which ought to be played- Mercy.
If you performed well in the Damage role, you could be called a hacker. If you didn't impress, however, you were lucky to get away only being called "trash" once or twice.

Every player in the entire base can testify to at least one instance of cyberbullying. Sadly, the worst cases highlight the extremes to which others may behave thanks to deindividuation.

Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is generally thought of as the loss of self-awareness in groups, although this is a matter of contention.

I would argue that the loss of self-awareness comes from the relative anonymity, thanks to usernames and profile changes.

With no accountability, as no one knows who you truly are, the same effects noted of people in groups, could be observed online playing games.

^{Tyler C. / Activision Blizzard}

One Less Tank: Incomplete Puzzle

I could go much further into the dark side of the Overwatch community. That story would come through best on its own, though.

To the matter at hand, to remove a tank, was to take off a limb from the team. 'To make the role more desirable, we reduced how many people are required to play it.'

Along those lines, Overwatch would be the perfect game without tanks at all, right?

I hope you understand that I disagree entirely with this basis. The solution doesn't address the elephant in the room: the behavioral issues of an online community. There is no compensation for a foundation. Build on sand, and watch the castle wash away. People who sought to escape through games only met a playground of some punks pushing pure vitriol, criticism for every action, even the natural sounds of one's voice.

Tackling Toxicity

A gamer so familiar with the dark side of the gaming platform should know what to do, you might argue. I won't claim to have all the answers. Let me hazard an attempt.

If monitoring the gameplay exists, then tailor solutions for the different offenses. I could see a progressive penalty system where dedicated admins actually reach out to offenders differently.

"Why did you say something like that?"

Even surveys aimed at understanding a general picture of the player base's psyche could give insights to improvements. "Are you struggling with personal matters?" "Do you use games as an outlet for stress?"

If value truly comes from the creation of goods, both public and private, then entire careers could be made from linking therapy to troubled gamers. Then, people might enjoy the game more as a whole, share it with their friends, while those under stressful circumstances could find help as soon as they show signs while playing.

If it wasn't clear up until this sentence, I believe that the problem with Overwatch was social, not mechanical. Six or five players don't matter if they bicker because they have the collective mental state of a child, regardless of age.

Some of the more surprising anecdotes come from those who were well into adulthood but were brought down by the goading of folks a quarter their age.

So, if performance of the game's backend suffers from six players per team, so be it. I won't ever accept the argument that the fix was to reduce the number of players per team, even if empiricism says the least played role was tank.

The least addressed issue was players' mental wellness. Let's hope we see social progress before any more gameplay.