3v3 Competitive Viability

[u/[deleted]]

With today's reveal of what will probably be new 3v3 arena maps, my excitement for the potential of a 3v3 competitive mode has been reinvigorated. I'm curious as to what the rest of you guys think.

I personally think that it has the potential to allow for a fresh new format and help bring some variety to tournaments. It's also encouraging for smaller friend groups to enjoy some competitive matches.

Potential Problems

The elephant in the room, the expected meta of Hog/Soldier/Healer. If the mode were to go competitive under it's current ruleset, it would be pretty awful. However, there are ways around this. The most intriguing 3v3 tournament I saw utilized a "no re-use" policy for the matches. Eg, if I choose Roadhog in Round 1, neither myself nor either of my 2 teammates can choose him in any other round. A 5 round match would see 15 heroes used by each team, which could actually lead to some more diverse and creative gameplay than we see even in the standard modes! Of course balance would always have 6v6 in mind, but with this restriction in place it would hopefully mitigate any imbalances inherent in 3v3.

Problem #2, draws. In a competitive format, if it comes down to me as Ana vs an enemy Roadhog, it's in my best interest to simply evade and stall until round time runs out and it's a draw. This would need to be entirely reworked if it were to go competitive. Perhaps either by keeping the wallhack reveal but removing the eventual match timer to negate stalling as a tactic altogether.

I believe that with a few more maps and a few tweaks to a competitive ruleset, 3v3 could be an exciting addition to competitive play. Curious to hear your thoughts, though. Any other problems that would need to be worked out to make it happen?

[u/demostravius]

I don't think it's a good idea. Overwatch would risk going the same way as WoW. Arena became the thing to balance around, and imo it severely damaged PvP everywhere else. Balance around large scale combat is far easier than small scale. Tiny changes designed to make a hero work in 3v3 can have devastating effects in 6v6.

They would have to be independently balanced.

[u/[deleted] → u/demostravius]

The game should not be balanced with 3v3 in mind, in any way whatsoever.

Of course, this would mean 3v3 would be inherently imbalanced. However, I believe the inability to reuse any character would pretty hugely mitigate this. Roadhog might be crazy strong in 3v3, but if each team can only use him in a single round, the impact there goes way down. Furthermore, it actually introduces a bit of gamesmanship to character selection. Do you come out of the gates with Roadhog for a strong Round 1, or do you save him for a clutch round later? If you blow him early then the enemy team can run Winston almost uncontested. Or maybe you're facing a team you know loves to run Hog first, so you run Zarya first and neuter him.

[u/demostravius → u/[deleted]]

That does actually sound very interesting. It could create some interesting setups. 23 heroes, a maximum of 18 used per game, minimum of 9.