If you've been paying any attention to Overwatch 2 throughout the past year, you're probably well aware of how prevalent 6v6 has been as a topic of conversation. And it's really no surprise since it was one of the more controversial parts of Overwatch 2's launch, and one that required the most drastic changes in order to facilitate - changes that, depending on who you ask, made the gameplay worse.

So in order to check if this is just people looking at Overwatch 1 through rose-tinted glasses, or if 6v6 is actually something that would benefit the game, Blizzard will be running two different experimental 'formats' throughout Season 14. Here's a brief rundown of what to expect:

"The first, launching a week into the season, will look a little different than the standard 2-2-2 role-queued from Overwatch. Part of this series of tests is to not only judge our player’s appetite for larger team sizes, but for us to explore different ways that we might implement a change without running into the same problems we had previously. With that in mind, our first test will be a variation of Open Queue, which we’re internally referring to as 'Min 1, Max 3' each team of 6 must have at least 1 of each role, and no more than 3.

There are a few different combinations here that you will be able to try, but this opens up many different team compositions that we haven’t seen before in Overwatch 2. You will be able to switch roles on the fly during a match as long as that switch doesn’t break the 'Min 1, Max 3' limit.

The second 6v6 test, during Season 14 midcycle, will be the classic 2-2-2 composition but will incorporate some new principles we introduced with Overwatch 2 (like less CC and hero reworks)."

Personally, I'm the most interested in the first variant as I very clearly remember being forced to play the singular tank back in Overwatch 1 while the rest of the team seemed more interested in doing cool sniper trick shots than actually winning the game. Perhaps now that there's only three DPS max the team compositions will be at least somewhat sensible, and with it the experience of playing a tank or healer less harrowing.

Once these tests go live with Season 14 in December I'll make sure to let you know as I'm quite eager to give them a try myself. Until then, you can read a little bit more about Season 14 and what Blizzard is trying to achieve with these tests over at the official website.