Same
Yes. Good recovery from a botched situation, imo.
Although it’s not at all what was promised, I do think Stadium’s addition makes the game feel more like an actual sequel. I’m just really surprised people took so well to an early access release from a triple-A studio, let alone one with as terrible of a reputation as Blizzard.
This is a very interesting topic tbh. Stadium highlights a lot of issues with hero design,powerlevel of heroes and shows what kind of players we have in each role and what percentage of those players like the moba aspect more.
As others have said, Stadium appeals to the moba crowd. This makes support immediately the most popular role.
But the problem runs a lot deeper.
Tank will be always a shortage no matter what.
But it dosn’t help, that D.va (who is sadly the only one in the Tank role who is generally considered a waifu and thats another issue itself) provides borderline 0 value against around 2/3 of the other tanks, including Rein who is the other most popular Tank. This is already a serious issue in the main gamemode, but stadium makes it a 100 times worse due to the perks icreasing this gap further and further. Stadium not allowing hero switch is just the cherry on top.
If D.va would get powers that actually help against the other tanks instead of clowning around with passive beam resistance and buffing DM in 900 different ways, more people would play.
DPS que right now is doomed because realistically the heroes who are available in the roster are mostly for the CoD Andies and they generally dont like the moba approach.
Once more moba-like heroes get added like Torb,Sym, Bastion etc (who were chronically gatekept from being strong in the entire lifetime of Overwatch), the que time will increase and you will see these heroes in most of your matches permanently, with the chances of seeing a hitscan DPS in Stadium decreasing by a lot. (RIP D.va even more when that happens, im sounding the alarm bells here Blizzard)
Support is overloaded because not only the Moba players are mostly support players by default, the Moba DPS are also kinda forced into this role due to the issues with the DPS and Tank lineup i mentioned before.
The popular Support heroes are already here, the heroes who are not playable yet wont really make a difference, nobody is really excited about Wifeleaver,Baptiste etc.
Keep in mind, that with the addition of Brig, que will go even higher, because despite what the E-sport Andies are saying Brig is a popular character in the moba crowd .
The unfathomably dumb draft system that will either cause an emergency maintenance removing it from the game within 2 weeks, or kill like 2/3 of the Stadium playerbase will obviously disrupt the status quo tho.
All in all, like i said Stadium Highlights a lot of Deep rooted issues that affects the que times in every gamemode, to summarize:
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DPS heroes are leaning into the FPS genre way too much. CoD heroes being on top of the foodchain obviously keep most of the DPS players happy, but its also a self inflicted wound. They are the largest crowd by default, just like in every game and when most of the DPS are happy, they are all in que, causing high que times for themselves. How to fix that is a whole another can of worms, but keeping the Cod Bois on top is probably not the best idea if you want shorter ques.
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For Tank, We really, i mean really need more appealing tanks. Lets be completely honest for a second, based on whats in the shop, its starting to be obvious even for Blizzard, that Waifus sell. If i was them, i would go full shameless and make the next 10 tanks all waifus and make them all just universally good against everything and not lean into 1 aspect like D.va. Making them more moba oriented is also a good idea because despite what they say, DPS will not move to the tank role, so might as well try to bait the supports into playing it.
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Support. What we can learn from the support category is that they are the most moba oriented crowd by far. They generally dont move to DPS, especially when its a hitscan fest,hero fantasy is mostly everything for them. If they keep adding appealing characters on a decent powerlevel and not cripple their enjoyment by trying to bait DPS players into the role, the support role will have a decent playerbase in every gamemode.
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If its a cool, well-thought-out game mode, any little flaws are considered minor within the larger context of Stadium gameplay. Thats the beauty of Stadium. 
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I am not sure they fully comprehend that yet. It might take them another two years or so, I imagine.
I moved to the tank role as a DPS player. Albeit, I, um, went back to DPS. But that’s because 2 max sucks. That ain’t on me.
Im not checking player profiles, but i take a wild guess and say you didn’t really move to the Tank role to play the types of Tanks that lean into the moba or the traditional Tank mindset tho D:
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I do get that mindset, I’m just surprised that it’s seemingly the one held by the general playerbase. I’m used to gamersTM demanding perfection and having unrealistically high expectations and just generally being unreasonable, so it’s weird to me that most people are so lenient with Stadium 
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I became a Reinhardt one trick and he is level 57 which beats my Reaper at 48. I have Hog at 32 and Mauga at 29. So… You aren’t entirely wrong. Reinhardt was a real departure for me. Hog and Mauga are just big DPS if we are being real. I still have a lot of hours on Doomfist who used to be a DPS (18 on main, but most of my levels are on an alt because I was scared of false reports).
Compare that to my most played DPS in Overwatch Dos… Reaper (48). Genji (32). Soldier (25). Mei (18). Sombra (16). I am thinking about a Symmetra journey next season.
And my healers… Kiriko (20) and Zenyatta (18). I intend to one trick Wuyang for quite a bit.
So, yeah, I definitely play like a DPS. But, like, the level advantage is heavily tank. Soldier and Sombra were pretty much right when the system dropped after they gutted Hog and I got pissy. Just Saiyan.
I really don’t think stadium is as popular as you might think. It has enough players to sustain itself, but the loose matchmaker does a lot to cover up what I suspect is a smaller playerbase.
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Gamers do not really have high standards, thats a cap.
If something is fun they will play it obsessively, thats pretty much it.
If nothing else they play it for the memes (Yasuke simulator for example)
Do you think Expedition 33 would have failed if there was a weapon that was broken or a few animation that was buggy? Hell no.
Its not a coincidence that indie games are on the rise even tho they are not really known for having immaculate graphics for example. AAA games are dying because they are games on a conveyor belt that are put out by soulless corpo.
Stadium is pretty much treated as “i will play it because its fun and janky at times”. Interestingly enough Blizzard started to balance out the fun from the gamemode by removing or nerfing certain powers that made it fun, draft is just the tip of the iceberg.
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Evidently, yeah. Though they certainly act like/say they do, but I guess by now I should’ve learned not to take anything they say seriously :p
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Rein is definitely an outlier there for sure, but the issue is that for every DPS bait like Mauga or Hog, we could have had a D.mon.
You might not have played her if that was the case, but if its a Tank designed as a tank who lean into moba more, it would draw way more people to the role regardless how powerful she actually is.
I do believe that they need to try drawing some DPS players into the Tank role somehow, but i dont think Mauga,Doomfist, Queen or Hazard for that matter in quick succession was the right approach because they do not appeal to the Tank crowd itself.
I for example was a hardcore Rein and D.va enjoyer(before her micro missiles) in OW1 generally speaking, and i have zero desire to play any of the new heroes, as a matter of fact i dont think i played Hazard even for a minute, but them existing makes the more traditional tanks life harder.
Add 5v5 into the mix and the role is dead to me.
Overwatch 2 did not have a single new tank that is truly a tank outside of the Orisa Rework but she is just a walking fortress who might be fun on some maps booping people down to pits and such, but its incredibly sad that this is my only choice since D.va is hard countered so easily and Rein is torture because of whats happening in OW2 in general.
I seriously doubt they attracted as many DPS to the tank role as Tanks they have chased away.
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I’m convinced this mode is a failure, I can que this after only playing two games against a full team of the second highest rank, que times are atrocious, especially for support players which makes sense because they have the most broken builds, and stadium is a casual mode of which pulls in players for the most casual role aka support
I also became a tank otp but then s9 came and made it so dps actually kinda necessary again.
and then s12 and I don’t want blizzard to hold my hand when playing tank.
support is ez since kiriko
a support flanker with lethal dmg.
no dps says no to that.
I actually use her when the dps flanker is to punishing.
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Has it? Do you read these forums? How about reddit? Maybe do some research and not just say what blizz is saying.
I take it you believe it hasn’t been received mostly positively, then? What brings you to that conclusion?
I spend much time reading, while waiting for matches. You have some positive and a lot of negative players points of view of stadium. Personally I don’t play it, don’t care for it. The few matches I did play were so 1 sided it wasn’t even funny.
Same! Stadium removes that readability. It is a cluttered mess of UI particle effects and leans far too heavily into MOBA elements for my taste. I honestly do not know why anyone likes it, but apparently some people do.
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I try it 3 times and never again. I don’t like it for many reasons. Starting with: it’s not OW.
It’s an interesting game mode. The main draw, in my eyes, is the ability to customize heroes to play differently depending on the situation. However, there are many things holding this mode back.
The hero customization justifies the reduced hero pool somewhat but the customization options are uneven across the hero pool. For example, I can build Zenyatta and Soldier in 4 or more different ways with many mid match deviations possible. However, I find that Genji, Reaper, and Kiriko are somewhat limited to 2-3 playstyles and they must be built a specific way. It’s hard to change builds midway through a match.
While the hero customization somewhat allays the reduced hero pool problems, the lack of maps makes playing this mode quite repetitive. It’s anecdotal but individual Stadium matches don’t stand out much in my memory because they all feel the same.
The matches last a long time, usually 15-30 minutes, sometimes more. It’s quite a time sink and if the match itself isn’t enjoyable, you have no option but to put up with it for the rest of the time. Normal competitive is no better nowadays because of map voting but Stadium really suffers from this issue. I don’t know how this can be fixed without taking away the build customization aspects central to this mode. Maybe starting with a completed build right away and then playing a normal competitive match? Something to think about.
The matchmaking is loose. I remember this season, I wanted to unlock the Genji elite skin (and also wanted to avoid first week of the season competitive) so I played a lot of Stadium. I am not experienced at playing him but I was having fun regardless. Something changed after the first week when I started facing players that were two whole ranks ahead of me in normal competitive. I know it’s a separate mode with its own MMR but the experience across Stadium and Competitive was uneven in terms of opponent quality. To be fair, matchmaking this season was much better than the debut season.
I think this mode has potential, but I consider it to still be in beta.