Well, I disagree with your take on stadium because I don’t think we’ve explored everything yet and I still see some ways to counter certain builds. But we’re not sure until a meta starts to set in.
But I also get where your sentiment comes from. Which usually stems from our assumptions and experiences with games like MOBA’s and other PVE/Talent tree game systems. But I think it’s not right to do a comparison expecting a copy of another game since it’s basically just Overwatch with extra steps and that was clear to me since they announced it.
I think stadium was just an extra little feature to kinda add something new to the game; they put a small team to it, maybe utilize some of the left over ideas and assets and perhaps compete with new competitors in the market, but it’s basically just Overwatch. So, I think if you don’t like the core game as it is now, you’re not going to like anything they ever add now or in the future until it’s a wholly originally new game released.
With regards to PVE, I don’t think there is going to be any ever. That project failed because the company didn’t want to and/or couldn’t develop it. Nothing more to it really.
In my view, there was no cohesive long term plan to follow through with the development properly. Overwatch 2’s idea was oversold, overpromised, overhyped; but they couldn’t do it for various internal reasons.
One of the importantly discussed alleged reasons was that the higher ups in management wanted to change the game into an F2P and sell skins like a Fortnite, and that clashed with how they intended to market OW2 PVE (aside all the other company drama). Maybe they were greedy and wrong, or maybe they were right and OW2’s idea of PVE was just unfeasible, who knows.
They gave out a little monetized demo after the cancelation was revealed to see if people were still interested but it was half-baked and no one really bought it, so it was fully scrapped. That was the end of it.
So, this was clearly discussed and canceled after the event and in my view clarified at their last blizzcon. They apologized and said they are going to focus on the core game PVP. Which is what they have been doing since, and basically what OW always has been and continues to be (heroes, maps, cosmetics, rebalance, reworks, mini events).
To be clear, imo, there is never going to be PVE anymore unless by some miracle they announce it again as a new thing. But I believe it isn’t going to be anything that was promised before nor related to it anymore if that were to happen, and just let that expectation die because it’s gone.