My experience with stadium thus far has been convoluted and difficult. My thoughts are it’s way too much to roll out all at once, the only experience the gen public have of stadium is watching streamers and content creators. So throwing yourself into these games with loadouts of 50 different options, new map layouts, and all the heroes having game changing abilities and mechanics, plus the nightmare that is 3rd person. It was overwhelming. On my second game of stadium my team decided to hurl insults at me and blame/flame me as if I had the audacity to try and learn this new mode that came out only a few hours prior. I find it strange you can toggle between 1st and 3rd person, as you have people trying to learn and take in this new mode in 3rd person, and people abusing busted characters such as Cassidy in the 1st person. In my opinion a slower rollout of loadouts in a casual mode would’ve helped ease people into this better, and locking it into a 3rd person experience would make things more balanced. A casual mode would also allow those with cross-play friend groups to play together, as I’ve seen a lot of people are heavily disappointed they can’t play with cross-platform friends. All the people trying to learn this new 3rd person loadout heavy mode have the weight of ranks, divisions, and tilted teammates over their heads. It’s just un-fun. Also a lot of things streamers and content creators flagged to be problems in the initial play throughs of stadium made it into the live game. First day of stadium and it just feels like the blind leading the blind on my teams and yet somehow the enemy teams feel as if they’ve had months of practice in this mode already. It’s been overall a difficult and confusing experience.
Feel free to also share your thoughts in this topic, acknowledging that my above statements are my own personal thoughts and experiences with the mode and you may have differing ideas and experiences and that’s great and I would love to hear about it below.
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It’s fine to throw players in the deep end. They’ll figure it out. No need to hand hold. You don’t lose rank in the bottom two, so you’re free to figure it out. People flame in QP too. Just ignore them. I think it sucks you can’t play with console friends, but mixing the two ruins the integrity of the game. I enjoyed the mode and had no issues with picking skills. I just follow the recommended builds so far and deviate a little.
Edit: don’t worry about winning and losing too much. It’s time to learn. Some will learn faster than others. Personally, I‘be played 3 other hero shooters in 3rd person as well as Helldivers. That might be why some players are learning faster than others. I was already used to 3rd person. Blizz nailed it. It feels the most polished and fluid to me.
2 Likes
My favorite part of Stadium so far has been the fact you don’t actually have to play the game to win. Whatever mechanics they have to keep it from being a stomp make it so you literally don’t have to play your hero and you can still win. You can sit in spawn and still win.
my biggest improvement was turning on 1st person view. 
Great fun, absolutely love it!
It’s not perfect, it has faults and I can also see it not being for everyone since it adds layers of complexity.
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I’d say my only gripes so far would be time it takes between rounds. Although for now I’m fine with that since it’s new and there is a lot to read and figure out. But as time goes on and we all get used to it it would be nice if time between games was lowered.
I also think comp only was a bad move. Cross play being an obvious issue but also just having the chiller environment to experiment would be nice. Some not too many but some people are already sweating and are just Letting loose on teammates for not being good enough. Just had a game where the enemy rein would not stop calling out the Ashe.
But the abilities and different builds and just building them up is crazy fun. It’s so good for now at least. Maybe it’s a honeymoon thing and that will all fade away. But my god I am having fun on every single character I’ve played so far. I hope this mode is big for them and I hope it gets more support. Because it’s very fun.
The mode is AWFUL. What a terrible half baked mess. There is so many things wrong I can’t even type it all out. I dont think they even tested it out. Also forcing comp was a bad idea when trying to roll out a new mode.
The pacing, not being able to counter swap (which was fundamental to Overwatch), the camera, the balance, the builds, the bounty bull, unbalanced funds to purchase, the TTK, the match length (7 rounds…come on)… I could go on and on about things that are just trash.
The only good thing to come out of this mode honestly is a few new maps or variations of maps.
4 Likes
My main issue with this mode is HP buffs.
No more consistency when it comes to killing a target or no is really frustrating.
Like usually 2 mcree HS in a row on a support is enough to kill.
But when the support has 700 hp…and they tank 3hs…sometimes they dont because they didnt increased their hp that much …
Its so inconsistent its infuriating (also his ult takes 10 business day to lock on anybody in this mode lmao)
And reaper…i litteraly used a whole ult on a mercy and she casually walked towards a health pack and went back to full hp lmao.
Huge Hp increases should be tank only.
Weapon dmg should be dps only
And supports should have healing bonus only.
But currently…its just a mess.
Also if your team has dva and the ennemy picked zarya
Just grab your phone and watch yt videos it would be more productive.
2 Likes
The mode definitely needs a few changes, character tuning aside.
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Matches are too long. Needs to be a best of 5 that ramps up faster imo.
Right now games feel very snowbally and you feel trapped in clearly lost matches for a long time.
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Weapon damage needs to scale less with headshots.
Damage feels like it outscales health pools way too fast if anyone on a hitscan can hit heads.
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Add crossplay. Why can’t I play with friends in a silly unbalanced mode?
2 Likes
yeah I usually do try to just ignore flamers but it just particularly disappointed and upset me on this occasion that people are doing it in a brand new mode that completely overhauled the way we play and it honestly discouraged me from using and learning the 3rd person perspective (I’ve played ow since release so it’s definitely a difficult transition for me, 4k+ hours in 1st person). If it were made more obvious that you don’t lose any rank/sr by losing in the first two divisions this might make it easier on people. If you have any tips about playing in 3rd person myself and probably others in this thread would find them greatly helpful!
I don’t mind the steep learning curve. From my experience so far, most people are giving their teammates plenty slack (as they should be).
Maybe it’ll take time but I feel like there are some hard counters that no matter your build, once you are locked in it’s very hard to turn around (haven’t seen Dva beat Zarya once). Perhaps there could be a 1 hero swap per game rule?
Finally, I’ve really struggled with 3rd person. To the point where I’m now just playing 1st person. The advantage I should gain by seeing around walls is completely negated by my absolute lack of mechanical skill playing this way! I’m just playing 1st person and hoping I’m not putting my team at a major disadvantage (I think 1st and 3rd person should be separate queues but I can’t imagine they’ll do that)
For me this whole stadium feels like an extended april fools mode.
It might be fun for a few times.
But let’s be honest it’s not what Overwatch is about. The whole gameplay aspect of working as a team has been deleted by every single new OW2 update.
And quite frankly I feel Overwatch has a big identity crisis so they want to try loads of different things.
While they refuse to make the mode that made Overwatch popular.
1 Like
Yeah, sometimes it gets to you. It took me getting used to 3rd person in other games when I first played it in a shooter.
I did it in a game. I got destroyed in the first round. After that I rolled her. I put everything in health and armor starting with the second round. I also got POTG and MVP several rounds.
You probably should get better with 3rd person and not use what you’re used to as a crutch. Just give it some time.
I’m getting tired of getting in a match only to have multiple players throw the match intentionally.
I feel stadium should take the best 5 off both teams and promote them. Maybe then some would try harder to not be carried. It is too easy for me to beat out the comp in cash and then just lose because of the wonderful matchmaking they have. Also, if you end at a certain rank in one season, you should not have to start from scratch.