The first match I played of Stadium in Overwatch 2 was a miserable experience. I was stuck in a third-person view that felt terrible and had to scramble to understand the different items you can get and how they impact your abilities. The enemy Soldier 76, however, was able to make his Helix Rocket one-shot me as Juno by the third round; he then proceeded to spend the rest of the match doing just that, while my allies spammed me in chat for not healing more.
By the end of the match, I was ready to dismiss Stadium as another unremarkable side mode for the hero shooter--one I planned to never touch again. Yet I continued to queue, as I wanted to better understand the mode. As I played more matches, I found that the new item builds and faster rounds are quite enjoyable, even if this mode needs far more polish.
Stadium has a few issues out of the gate that make the onboarding experience feel bad. The first is that the mode is currently only available in competitive mode. On top of that, it doesn't offer placement matches, instead having everyone start at the same rank and work upwards. As such, initial matchmaking is wildly inconsistent, which is especially concerning in a mode that can snowball. Since you earn currency by playing well, which lets you buy better items, the team that's winning can quickly start to dominate.
In addition to the mismatched skill levels, it being competitive means the matches are longer and can't be backfilled if someone quits, and people have been quitting. In the three dozen or so matches I have played, someone has quit in about half of them. In a normal Overwatch competitive match, when someone quits and fails to return in two minutes, everyone on their team can quit without penalty and the match will conclude. If someone leaves prior to the match starting, or before a certain time, it cancels the match.
All of that is true, on paper at least, in Stadium, but the mode is quite buggy, leading to situations where the game fails to recognize when a game should be called off. For example, I had a match where our tank player picked Junker Queen, but never left the spawn area. The game waited too long to boot them, resulting in the match not being canceled, despite us never having a tank. The timer is also buggy too, as it resets at the end of round, and won't restart until after the Armory buy phase, which lasts over a minute. More often than not, if you don't want to get punished for leaving, you just have to play it out, as there is no surrender-vote option.
There is a mercy rule, where a team leading 3-0 with a currency lead of 15K or more will automatically win without having to play a fourth round. This also doesn't always work, as I've had matches where the requirements for a mercy rule were met, the in-between rounds loading screen stated that the requirements were met, and yet, a fourth round was played.
The final issue for onboarding is the third-person perspective. According to Blizzard, it defaults to third-person to make it easier to see everything happening in Stadium. Yet Stadium does not feel like it requires being able to see more than regular Overwatch 2, and the third-person shooting feels stiff and strange. Fortunately, you can go into the settings and swap it back; I did and had a much better time. You can also establish Stadium-specific settings, allowing you to pick and choose which characters use which perspectives, and tweak your settings to better fit its third-person perspective. However, without a casual mode, all this adjusting will have to be done during competitive matches or in the training grounds.
So after all that, what makes Stadium worth pushing through to experience? For starters, it provides enough new and exciting experiences to be worth playing. The new building system is great, easy to understand once you spend some time with it, and there are tons of options. I appreciate that each hero has powers specific to them that can fit your playstyle.
For example, I enjoy building Ashe to deal high primary-attack damage. This means getting the powers that boost primary-fire damage, like Incendiary Rounds, which provides an extra 30 fire damage if you hit two scoped shots consecutively. After that, I can purchase items that further boost my primary-attack power to really increase the damage my shots do. However, you can also build Ashe to focus on dynamite explosion damage, or to buff B.O.B., Ashe's robot bodyguard and ultimate ability, so that you can use him more often and he does more damage.
This build system pairs well with heroes being locked from the start of the match. Unlike other modes, you cannot switch heroes during the game. This means that if you get stuck in a bad matchup, like Zarya against D.Va, instead of counter-swapping to a different hero, you must instead focus on building D.Va in a way to make it a more even fight. Swapping heroes mid-match is a huge part of the strategy of the game--even if Blizzard has seemingly taken steps to try and discourage it--but Stadium completely removing this is a breath of fresh air.
Lastly, the shortened versions of each game mode make some of the more tedious ones actually feel fairer and more fun. In Stadium, each round is essentially an abridged version of another mode. Instead of Clash being best of five, it's best of three, while Push maps are about half the size, and Control is narrowed down to just a single round. The overall match is longer, but you get more variety, and modes that can feel like a stalemate--like Push and Clash--feel better suited to these shorter experiences.
Overwatch 2 Stadium needs a ton of polish and bug fixes before it can be a truly great experience, but the core aspects of the mode are there. The hero-building offers a ton of flexibility and options, the shorter rounds feel better, and having locked-in heroes removes one of the more frustrating aspects of the game. Fewer bugs and a casual playlist for Stadium could make the experience of learning the new mode less miserable, which would encourage more of the playerbase to try it out without having people constantly quitting from matches. The mode also should just default to first-person, with an option to swap to third-person, to make that first match feel less jarring. Stadium feels like it could be a staple of the hero shooter moving forward, if it gets the love and care it needs.
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By the end of the match, I was ready to dismiss Stadium as another unremarkable side mode for the hero shooter--one I planned to never touch again. Yet I continued to queue, as I wanted to better understand the mode. As I played more matches, I found that the new item builds and faster rounds are quite enjoyable, even if this mode needs far more polish.
What doesn't work in Stadium
Stadium defaults to a third-person perspective, but you can--and should--swap it back to first-person.Stadium has a few issues out of the gate that make the onboarding experience feel bad. The first is that the mode is currently only available in competitive mode. On top of that, it doesn't offer placement matches, instead having everyone start at the same rank and work upwards. As such, initial matchmaking is wildly inconsistent, which is especially concerning in a mode that can snowball. Since you earn currency by playing well, which lets you buy better items, the team that's winning can quickly start to dominate.
In addition to the mismatched skill levels, it being competitive means the matches are longer and can't be backfilled if someone quits, and people have been quitting. In the three dozen or so matches I have played, someone has quit in about half of them. In a normal Overwatch competitive match, when someone quits and fails to return in two minutes, everyone on their team can quit without penalty and the match will conclude. If someone leaves prior to the match starting, or before a certain time, it cancels the match.
All of that is true, on paper at least, in Stadium, but the mode is quite buggy, leading to situations where the game fails to recognize when a game should be called off. For example, I had a match where our tank player picked Junker Queen, but never left the spawn area. The game waited too long to boot them, resulting in the match not being canceled, despite us never having a tank. The timer is also buggy too, as it resets at the end of round, and won't restart until after the Armory buy phase, which lasts over a minute. More often than not, if you don't want to get punished for leaving, you just have to play it out, as there is no surrender-vote option.
There is a mercy rule, where a team leading 3-0 with a currency lead of 15K or more will automatically win without having to play a fourth round. This also doesn't always work, as I've had matches where the requirements for a mercy rule were met, the in-between rounds loading screen stated that the requirements were met, and yet, a fourth round was played.
The final issue for onboarding is the third-person perspective. According to Blizzard, it defaults to third-person to make it easier to see everything happening in Stadium. Yet Stadium does not feel like it requires being able to see more than regular Overwatch 2, and the third-person shooting feels stiff and strange. Fortunately, you can go into the settings and swap it back; I did and had a much better time. You can also establish Stadium-specific settings, allowing you to pick and choose which characters use which perspectives, and tweak your settings to better fit its third-person perspective. However, without a casual mode, all this adjusting will have to be done during competitive matches or in the training grounds.
What works in Stadium
Stadium features smaller versions of existing maps, and a few new maps like the Gladius Control map.So after all that, what makes Stadium worth pushing through to experience? For starters, it provides enough new and exciting experiences to be worth playing. The new building system is great, easy to understand once you spend some time with it, and there are tons of options. I appreciate that each hero has powers specific to them that can fit your playstyle.
For example, I enjoy building Ashe to deal high primary-attack damage. This means getting the powers that boost primary-fire damage, like Incendiary Rounds, which provides an extra 30 fire damage if you hit two scoped shots consecutively. After that, I can purchase items that further boost my primary-attack power to really increase the damage my shots do. However, you can also build Ashe to focus on dynamite explosion damage, or to buff B.O.B., Ashe's robot bodyguard and ultimate ability, so that you can use him more often and he does more damage.
This build system pairs well with heroes being locked from the start of the match. Unlike other modes, you cannot switch heroes during the game. This means that if you get stuck in a bad matchup, like Zarya against D.Va, instead of counter-swapping to a different hero, you must instead focus on building D.Va in a way to make it a more even fight. Swapping heroes mid-match is a huge part of the strategy of the game--even if Blizzard has seemingly taken steps to try and discourage it--but Stadium completely removing this is a breath of fresh air.
Lastly, the shortened versions of each game mode make some of the more tedious ones actually feel fairer and more fun. In Stadium, each round is essentially an abridged version of another mode. Instead of Clash being best of five, it's best of three, while Push maps are about half the size, and Control is narrowed down to just a single round. The overall match is longer, but you get more variety, and modes that can feel like a stalemate--like Push and Clash--feel better suited to these shorter experiences.
Overwatch 2 Stadium needs a ton of polish and bug fixes before it can be a truly great experience, but the core aspects of the mode are there. The hero-building offers a ton of flexibility and options, the shorter rounds feel better, and having locked-in heroes removes one of the more frustrating aspects of the game. Fewer bugs and a casual playlist for Stadium could make the experience of learning the new mode less miserable, which would encourage more of the playerbase to try it out without having people constantly quitting from matches. The mode also should just default to first-person, with an option to swap to third-person, to make that first match feel less jarring. Stadium feels like it could be a staple of the hero shooter moving forward, if it gets the love and care it needs.
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