Wouldn't team ups make more sense for stadium?

General Discussion
1

I see a lot of people speculate that the upcoming halloween masquerade mode is a trial run for MR-style teamup abilities, and I don’t entirely disagree, they’ve done some rather unsubtle testing for perks and stadium in events last year. However, I think if it were to happen, it would be in stadium and not the base game

Why? I think it’s simple, instead of just having the team up being a straight buff, you can instead make it unlock a new balanced (though tempting) item or power for both heroes involved that still costs cash and/or a slot. Some examples (I admit these aren’t the best, just wanted to give an idea of how it’d work)

  • Pharah + mercy: gives pharah a power where her jet dash can lock-on to players like GA for extra distance and ramming damage, mercy gets a power that gives splash damage to pistol shots
  • Winston + tracer: Gives winston a power where his bubble contains a bullet-time field that lingers a bit after destruction, tracer gets an rare item that gives her a 1 hp personal-bubble after recalling
  • Brig + torb: grants both of them a rare gadget that spawns and oldschool torb armor pack

Having more options and flexibility is an advantage, but nowhere near the level of a raw buff. This along with some other elements of the stadium format solves a lot of problems with teammups in rivals while offering some extra advantages

  1. No more straddling the fine line where teammups have to be borderline unimpactful or else they quickly become OP must picks,
  2. You wouldn’t have to retire teammups often, you could have a hero with 4 teammups available in a single match and it wouldn’t be an issue since they’d have to sacrifice 4 slots to use them all. This both means that your favorite won’t be removed and it’d be nice not having your hero’s only teammup in jail for half a year because its stuck on someone never played
  3. You could give both ends of the teammup a new item since it wouldn’t be OP making 2 new items available to the same team. This would get rid of the clumsy need for an anchor system
  4. No hero swapping gets rid of the awkward interactions where you lose your teammup midfight you pick a hero just for the teammup and the anchor bails after the first fight
  5. No bans means that your hero doesn’t become a ban target because of another hero
  6. The draft screen gives a good opportunity to plan out teammups. It’d also just make the draft phase more fun in general
  7. stadium now has the gadget slot which will be really good for adding on new abilities in a fair manner

Stadium also has just been more willing to do more targetted, less competitive interactions like this, such as mei having a fire extinguisher ability that 99% exists as an anti-ashe ability, so it just seems more feasible there

3 Likes
2

It definitely makes the most sense in Stadium, especially since Stadium is most similar to MR. To me, these “hero mask” abilities are a temporary mode but could be a trial-run for a Stadium addition like Mirrorwatch or Junkenstein’s Lab.

3

I think having team-ups in Stadium would actually make less sense and would be better off in the main modes.

Stadium is already full of customization as is, with more to come with gadgets. There might be more in the future too for all we know, that they haven’t announced. More items, powers, gadgets will obviously expand etc.

Having team ups then also brings in the added confusion and complexity of how those abilities interact and scale with items/powers that may affect them. Balancing will be very difficult.

I love the idea of team-ups and definitely want them in the game, but Stadium? I think might be just too much…

4

This, especially without hero swapping. I would love team ups in OW.

5

Felt like they’ve been kind of thinking about team ups since “Zero Hour” cinematic. With rein and brig interlocking shields and maybe with the mei and tracer combo. Maybe now that they’re being more willing to take risks like with the perks and they’ll get around to doing it

6

I really think the mask mode is slowly testing team ups and I wouldn’t be mad at it. I’d love for armor packs to come back too in some way too.

1 Like
7

You and me both, I feel like less of a torb without them… Maybe hero 45 will have something like it?

1 Like
8

I just realized that D.Va already has some “Team-Up” abilities. The best example is the Nano Cola ability under Survival → Epic. When she ejects out of her MEKA, she gets “Nano’d” by her MEKA and it lasts 4 seconds. The other one is her Lava spewing Ability where when she is flying her MEKA, lava drops out of her ummm exhaust port. This is essentially Torb’s Ult re-fitted for D.Va’s MEKA.

So they have been experimenting with “Team Up” ideas in Stadium and they might do more of it in the future Im guessing, especially with the Tanks.

9

I’m already having nightmares over the potential nano blade team ups :dizzy_face:

1 Like
10

I can’t wait for : X swap to my partner hero! stop throwing!

x: Pick MY partner hero or I throw!

mercy: Someone please go phara.

meanwhile you have mercy lucio tracer widow and ball.

gg synergy diff.

a game that doesn’t even allow role q in every mode. I wouldn’t expect much that makes sense. since team ups make no sense they certainly are comming. and it will be the day the game gets uninstalled. :face_with_hand_over_mouth: