Before Blizzard announced Overwatch’s Stadium last year, Marvel Rivals stole Overwatch’s dominance. Fans thought Overwatch was stale. There were hardly any new characters, few new maps, and a lot of focus on skins.
Some of those perceptions changed when Blizzard dropped Stadium. It felt like an overhaul of how we played the game. Blizzard was impressed. 50% of all play time went to Stadium in the first week. I adored the mode. I even said it should become the default esport for Overwatch. Stadium looked like it would be the next evolution Overwatch needed to stay relevant.
Good God, was I wrong.
Almost a year later, Stadium's future is dull, and the player count is smaller, making queue times longer (Blizzard is trying to increase those times by rewarding more challenge points for playing Stadium). This disinterest comes from a narrow focus on skill to win matches, underutilizing Stadium's biggest difference: builds. Upon seeing player resurgence after Reign of Talon’s launch, if nothing changes, Blizzard should remove Stadium, bring Payload Race to regular Overwatch, and focus those resources on the main game.
Skill is a blessing and a curse in Stadium. It’s good that it takes skill to win matches—utilizing abilities properly, choosing the right builds, and using builds competently. The curse is that skill almost completely overshadows builds—the differentiator between regular Overwatch and Stadium.
At Stadium’s foundation, knowing basic Overwatch concepts leads to winning more matches. If a player doesn’t know the basics, no amount of buffs or augmented abilities will change how well they play. A person who’s bad with money isn’t going to be magically good because they have more money and responsibility for it.
This is most noticeable at lower skill levels where there is increased bad positioning, odd ability and ult usage, and lackluster situational awareness. Once you drop them in Stadium, those insufficiencies are magnified, and now they’re responsible for using builds. They don’t play better because they have new abilities; they play worse.
Even when players know how to navigate team fights, the absurd buffs aren’t significant enough to change how they win. Higher-skilled players hardly get any benefit from builds. Their fights depend on fundamental skills—composition, positioning, ability usage, ult usage, when to engage, etc. Basic Overwatch. Builds at higher levels of play can have more influence because players are more deliberate, but the core of what wins a team fight doesn’t change.
From a competitive perspective, reliance on skill and de-emphasizing builds isn’t bad. But the consequence is that builds don’t influence matches, and they exacerbate poor play. Might as well play regular Overwatch—shorter games, same awful matchmaking.
If Blizzard were committed to Stadium, they could flatten skill to make builds matter more. An exaggerated example: Total Mayhem—almost total skill flattening. The cooldowns are so fast, and health is so high, skill hardly matters. It’s fun, but there’s no real strategy to win. Consequently, it takes forever to finish one match. Stadium has the opposite problem.
Heroes should feel almost broken. If builds flattened skill in a way that’s not as absurd as Total Mayhem, it would make builds a determining factor in why a match was won or lost. It should feel like you need a different skill set to play top-level Stadium versus regular Overwatch, led by adjusting your build.
Overwatch needed Stadium before Reign of Talon, but Overwatch is in a great place now. The roadmap looks good. The future is bright. If Blizzard can’t make demonstrable changes to Stadium, scrap it. Two new characters in one year isn’t worth it for a mode people aren’t playing. Don’t expend the resources. Use them for something else.
