Outside of the occasional versus-AI game every six months or so, I’ve largely ignored Overwatch 2 since Blizzard abandoned the idea of adding further PvE content. However, the addition of the new stadium mode and its third person camera caught my interest, so I decided to give it a shot, expecting an hour or two of novelty before I once again remembered I don’t like PvP shooters.
To my great surprise, though, it’s really grabbed me. Although on paper it’s still mostly the same Overwatch experience, the changes the devs have made in stadium make it far more approachable for someone who normally struggles with the gameplay of games like this.
Stadium is a new game mode in which two teams of five face off in a best of seven match where each round is played on a different map from the standard Overwatch map pool.
There’s no hero swapping in this mode, but as you progress through the match, you unlock powers that can customize and enhance your character’s abilities. You also earn “stadium cash” as you play, which can be spent on items to further power up your hero.
There’s quite a lot of variety of items and powers, and it can be a bit overwhelming at first, but I enjoy the customization it provides. High-end players will undoubtedly develop a deep meta around picking the right builds to counter each other, while casuals like me can just focus on building out their characters in a way that feels fun.
What I didn’t see coming — and I’m not even sure was intended or not — is that all the changes made to the experience in stadium add a great deal of accessibility to the game.
The most impactful change for me is of course the third person camera (you do still have the option to return to first person if you prefer). I’ve always known I preferred third person cameras, but only after being able to compare and contrast both in the same game did I realize just what a huge difference it makes. For me, Overwatch in third person is a completely different game.
I don’t know if it’s from growing up playing RTS games or some other quirk of my brain, but first person cameras feel claustrophobic to me. I feel as if I’m looking at the game through a straw. In a single-player or co-op setting, where the movements of AI enemies are relatively predictable, I can manage, but in the chaos of a fast-paced PvP game like Overwatch, I get hopelessly overwhelmed. I genuinely have no idea how anyone maintains any kind of situational awareness in a game like this with a first person camera.
In third person, though, the broader view of the battlefield and what’s happening around my character makes it a lot easier for me to parse my circumstances and respond accordingly. Almost immediately upon loading into my first stadium match, I realized that I know longer felt overwhelmed and anxious like I have when playing Overwatch PvP in the past. Instead, I felt in control.
I still sucked, of course, and I think it took me at least five or six stadium matches before I actually won any, but I felt as if I was able to learn where I was going wrong in a way I never could before, and most importantly, I was actually having fun, even if I was getting my ass beat.
The items and powers can also help add to accessibility. Another barrier to entry for me in these kind of games has been the fact I’m not very good at aiming at moving targets, but at least some heroes have ways around this in stadium.
Mei, for example, can use the “Coulder” power to turn her ice block ability into a rolling boulder that knock backs and damages enemies. If you build around it, it can become your main source of damage, with no precision aiming needed.
Soldier: 76, meanwhile, has a power that triggers a split second of his auto-aiming ultimate after he uses his rocket launcher. Stack cooldown reduction gear, and you can have very high uptime on this.
Some might argue that this all goes against the spirit of a competitive shooter, and honestly, that’s not totally unfair. I won’t argue that this isn’t Overwatch on easy mode. But that’s why it’s a separate game mode with separate rankings.
I’m not heavily involved in the Overwatch community, but I’ve taken a few peeks onto its subreddit, and my general impression is that stadium is something you either love or hate. That doesn’t really surprise me. It’s quite different from traditional Overwatch gameplay, and it’s definitely not going to be for everyone.
It’s a very new mode, and I’m sure it will need a lot of tweaking and balancing over time. A common criticism is that matches are too long with too much waiting. It’s a tricky balance to strike because when you’re first starting out in the mode or learning a new character, you definitely need plenty of time between rounds to read up on all your build options, but once you know what upgrades you want, it is a lot of sitting on your hands.
The timer is supposed to count down faster once everyone has locked in their builds, so maybe the problem of waiting between matches will solve itself as people get more experienced. I would also like to see them remove the separate ~10 second countdown timer that happens after the armory phase has ended. That seems redundant.
I don’t really have a problem with the overall match length, but I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to bringing it down to a best of five format, as I have seen many people suggest. That would have the advantage of letting you get your best powers and gear sooner, too.
I also agree with the criticism that it’s odd stadium is available for ranked play only (which means there’s no crossplay, as that’s disabled in all of Overwatch‘s ranked modes). This really seems like a mode that’s more suited for casual play. Stadium quick match would be a welcome development.
The one really big problem with stadium that I do think needs to be fixed ASAP is that right now there’s no back-filling if someone leaves or DCs. I assume this is due to the technical difficulty of catching someone up in terms of gears and powers, but come on, Blizzard, a 4v5 just isn’t winnable with two teams of even remotely similar skill-levels. A character with no gear, even a bot, would be better than just being down a player permanently.
That’s a big issue, and there will undoubtedly be much fine-tuning of the mode needed, but nonetheless I think stadium is off to a solid start otherwise. If my experience is any guide, it has the potential to open up Overwatch to a whole host of people who have previously found the game too hard to get into. Ultimately, PvP shooters are never going to be my favourite, so it’s still going to be a bit of a back-burner game for me, but there are definitely more stadium matches in the future for me.
The world of online gaming is changing. As the gray area between single-player and MMO becomes ever wider, Massively OP’s Tyler Edwards delves into this new and expanding frontier biweekly in Not So Massively, our column on battle royales, OARPGs, looter-shooters, and other multiplayer online titles that aren’t quite MMORPGs.
