The devs have been hyping up their next big update, saying they want to go “even bigger than perks” and whatever. People have speculated that it’s some sort of team-up mechanic, because Marvel Rivals has it, and last season we had a mode with something similar, but personally, I just really, really do not see team-ups as a thing in the main game that’s ever happening. So much so that I’m willing to bet on it;
If the big update for 2026 is team-ups, I will onetrick a hero of your choosing for 2 seasons straight in competitive.
There are methods of torture I’d rather be subjected to than play competitive, but I am so confident that team-ups is not the big update for 2026 that I’m willing to stand by that bet. If I end up being wrong (I won’t, but if), I’ll make another thread here or something so you can choose which hero I have to onetrick.
That all said, I actually have no idea what the big update could be, and I would be interested to hear your predictions. Feel free to place your own bets on it as well, if you’d like :p
That seems like a really bad reason to bet against something, OP. If I bet against all the things I didn’t want to happen then I’m sure I’d be penniless.
My speculation is adding skill trees. Where you can change some heroes so much that they can fit into different roles. For example you can actually build a support Sombra. Or a dps version of dva. Or a tank version of mei.
Maybe you can even build an exact copy of OW1 bastion
I’m not betting against team-ups happening because I don’t want them to happen, though. I’ve nothing against such a mechanic existing, honestly. There are many reasons I think they’re unlikely to add team-ups, but just to name one, they would not have had enough time after Marvel Rivals, allegedly and hypothetically, gave them the idea to fully develop it by now.
I don’t think it’s team-ups either. But I do think they were trialing team-ups. I just think the feedback they got was so negative that they abandoned the idea in favor of whatever we end up getting. I don’t think they are going to go with team-ups but regardless I do think that is what that mode was testing.
Just get Linux. Linux gaming is already light years ahead of Mac gaming. Apple is getting left in the dust. If Apple wanted to, they could solve the problem through compatibility layers the way Linux is doing it, but they don’t really care about gamers.
Personally I’m against the idea because it causes characters to be balanced around other characters in a match. It already happens to some extent due to natural synergies and that’s inevitable, but not something that the game should really go out of its way to encourage. We can’t choose our teammates’ characters so I don’t want my characters to only be fun when characters X, Y, or Z happen to be around.
As for it not being long enough to implement - maybe? I think it might be possible by simply implementing a whole bunch of filler team-ups. Junkrat reduced to 225 HP baseline. Junkrat gains 25 HP when Roadhog is present on the team. That kind of rubbish.
I think I might just catch a season-ban within the first day if I tried that, lol.
I don’t think they’d hype up the update as much as they have if much of it was just that kind of rubbish... though it would be on brand with how much Blizzard likes to over-promise and then under-deliver stuff… and now you’ve actually made me slightly more worried, thanks -_-
Oh sorry I meant this is a big update for stadium . The current system for stadium is fun but I imagine they could make it far more expansive! At that point though they might as well just make stadium it’s own separate game since it would be different enough from normal modes.
They didn’t describe adding bans as their big game changing update last year, so removing it is definitely not their big game changing update this year.
. The current system for stadium is fun but I imagine they could make it far more expansive! At that point though they might as well just make stadium it’s own separate game since it would be different enough from normal modes.
But load-out skill trees sounds very plausible, maybe something like Stadium-lite.