On 2CP, Payload or Hybrid: would you rather attack first or defend first? Well, there’s a psychological element to it, but other than that, it’s SYMMETRAcal, right?
Actually, it’s not. When you’re defending, you have to leave your spawn room about 20 seconds earlier than the opposing team, giving you less time to figure out your composition. For most players, there’s little difference - they’re in the game immediately, pick their one-trick and rush out. But it really does help to talk about party composition beforehand, and with the time it takes for everyone to be in the game, join the voice chat and actually start discussing it, it’s not the difference between 80sec and 60sec, but rather between 40sec and 20sec of discussion. It’s huge an can often lead to a bad first engagement, which can take a very long time to recover from. In the second round, a team will already have established, who plays which role, making the decisions easier.
I always groan when I have to defend first. I tend to fill, but in order to know how I have to fill, I need to know what others play. In order to know what others play, I have to wait for them to join the game and pick someone. Most of the times in gold and below, only half the team will join voice chat, making coordination about the comp even harder.
And then there’s the people who 10sec before the round starts still don’t have a hero. You have to leave them in spawn, take a 5v6 in the first fight and hope you can hold out long enough for them to join. If they eventually join, they may pick a bad hero, meaning that someone else should swap back, but obviously can’t anymore. It’s really bad for moral and has quite large REAPERcussions on the outcome of games, solely due to pure luck who attacks first. Is it a 90:10 difference? No, but it’s not 50:50 either.
Also, let’s be clear: there are certain approaches that deal with the psychology of attacking first (and playing to finish everything as fast as possible) vs attacking second (and knowing where the goalposts are), but those aren’t really palpable. A good first attack is generally good for morale and makes defending easier, a bad first attack make defending harder. Yes, the attackers know, where the goalposts are, but so do the defenders, helping them out. Ultimately, there is no objective measurement, whereas my argument outlines a clear situation.
How can it be solved? Just put a Symmetra teleporter in spawn and on point that vanishes exactly once the game starts. This also saves the annoying “let’s run from spawn to the point for 20 seconds, because that’s so engaging”. There’s no way it can be exploited (if you think about Sonic Arrow, remember that the attackers know about that possibility and can react accordingly, which would actually add another dimension to the game), it balances out the time teams have to coordinate and it does away with an irrelevant part of the game.
Is it aesthetically pleasing? Probably not, but you could for example pop out of the fountain in Temple of Anubis or something.