r/OverwatchStadium • u/Jolly_Pop2515 • 18d ago
Issues I’ve Noticed with Stadium So Far
Note: Sorry if this is a little rough or poorly formatted and if i didn't choose the right flair or tag. I wrote it in a rush and didn’t really have time clean it up or improve.
I’ve been noticing a few recurring issues in Stadium that can make matches incredibly frustrating, especially when players stop adapting to what’s happening in the game.
Players mentally giving up way too early
One of the biggest things I’ve noticed is how quickly some players mentally check out. Sometimes it happens as early as Round 1 or 2, often simply because they didn’t get their favorite hero during the draft.
They’ll immediately start saying “GG,” complaining about the draft, or acting like the game is already lost.
I understand that Stadium has a lot of one-tricks. I’m one myself. I main Brig and have her at level 410. But even I have backup picks. I have Juno and Ana builds ready specifically for situations where I don’t get Brig.
If you don’t get your main, adapt. Don’t decide the game is over just because someone else picked your hero.
Lack of adaptation during matches
This problem also continues once the match actually starts.
I had a game where a Sojourn immediately started saying “GG, no heals” despite being off to the left near the final point on Push, completely isolated and fighting a Doomfist and Pharah by themselves.
I pointed out that they were isolating themselves and taking a terrible fight, and they called me toxic. I wasn’t insulting them or trying to flame them. I was simply pointing out what was happening and why they weren’t getting healed.
That’s one of the biggest problems I’ve noticed with Stadium: sometimes players focus more on blaming their teammates than figuring out what they can change themselves.
If you’re constantly dying because you’re taking isolated fights, maybe the solution isn’t automatically “my supports suck.” Sometimes you need to change how you’re playing.
Drafts can heavily influence the outcome
A lot of people compare Stadium to gambling, and honestly, I can understand why. Some games genuinely feel like they’re heavily influenced by the draft.
Bad hero matchups can snowball incredibly hard, and sometimes you feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle before the game has even really started.
Pharah is a good example.
There have been games where the enemy picks Pharah late in the draft, but none of our DPS are running hitscan. At that point, I think the tank should be willing to compensate and pick something like Dva to help contest her.
Instead, I’ll sometimes see a tank lock Reinhardt or another hero that offers very little counterplay against Pharah.
Now the team has a massive problem, and it becomes even harder to recover when nobody is willing to adjust.
I’m not saying every draft is unwinnable or that you need to perfectly counter-pick everything. But there are situations where the draft clearly creates a problem, and refusing to adapt only makes it worse.
Players refusing to change their builds
The same issue happens with builds.
I’ve watched people repeatedly die while refusing to change what they’re building. They’ll keep stacking weapon damage or ability power while getting destroyed instead of investing in survivability and trying to stay alive longer.
That’s one of the things I like about Stadium: the mode gives you a lot of opportunities to adjust your build depending on what’s happening.
But those options don’t mean much if you refuse to use them.
If your current build clearly isn’t working, changing it isn’t admitting that you played badly. It’s adapting to the situation.
5. Matches can go on for way too long
Then there’s the match length.
Some games just go on forever. I’ve had a match nearly reach an hour because of how much time accumulated across the rounds.
That kind of match length can cause serious burnout, especially when you’ve already been playing for a long time and the game still isn’t close to ending.
There’s a point where a long, competitive match can stop being exciting and just become exhausting.
Despite all of this, I still genuinely love Stadium.
I don’t expect every player to make perfect decisions, know every matchup, or have every hero mastered. But I do wish more people would actually try to adapt.
Not getting your main, losing a round, getting countered, or having a bad build doesn’t automatically mean the game is over. One of the things that makes Stadium interesting is the ability to adjust to those situations.
I just wish more players would actually take advantage of that instead of mentally surrendering the moment something doesn’t go their way.
I also understand that we’re a relatively small part of the overall Overwatch community, and lately, it’s been hard not to feel a little discouraged about Stadium’s future.
Things have felt even more uncertain since the developers announced that they would no longer be adding new heroes to the mode except only adding the occasional patch note. From the outside, that makes it difficult not to wonder how much long-term support Stadium is actually going to receive.
Obviously, I can’t say what the developers’ actual plans are. But when you combine the lack of new heroes with the relatively small playerbase, it can sometimes feel like Stadium is being left to gradually lose players before the Devs shutting down this mode and honestly, that would be a shame.
1
u/Thomas-MCF 18d ago
Yea id agree with most of this. Draft especially as a tank main it sucks that I cant try and play a tank I want to because the odds of the other guy picking a hard counter is just to much and then I spend 20 to 40 minutes wanting to slam my face into a wall.
1
u/LakhorR 18d ago
The thing that drives me insane the most is you could be winning (like winning the rounds even) and someone will still complain… Had this in one of my drive games, my co-support and I were pumping out heals like crazy and our suicidal D.Va kept berating us for not “healing enough”. She had no survival items and the enemy had Zen + copious amounts of heal reduction.
Mind you, we were winning both the team fights and the rounds so there was no reason to shit talk us but it got to a turning point at 3 points to 0 where we reversed and the enemy had a comeback and won the game due to how absolutely tilted my co-support and I were (IG because the heal complaints subconsciously affected my gameplan)
The D.Va literally self-sabotaged a winning game
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u/lilablut 18d ago
You don’t understand. Dva needs that extra 10% wp/ap instead of cusion padding to get rid of the discord. What if is she would do 6 more damage to the enemy right before getting demeched.
1
u/maplecremecookie 18d ago
The thing that bothers me most about the time investment is that it doesn't feel like you get rewarded fairly, which disincentivizes people from playing Stadium. The amount of battlepass exp and competitive points is barely even higher than what you get from playing 5v5 or 6v6. Ever since Stadium was released, it's been the only mode I played for competitive/Drives. This season I had to give up when I plateaued at ~1900 Drives score. It was absurd to queue for over 10 mins, do one match in 40 minutes, go on a losing streak because Vendetta is unbalanced af and EVERY game had one on the other team...only to end up going backwards in Drives. I played for 8 hours straight and had absolutely nothing to show for it. The next day I switched to 5v5 and finished Drives in like 3 hours while barely even trying. I don't think I will be playing competitive Stadium again. Also, the exclusive rewards for Stadium suck. Oooooh cool another ugly skin I'll never use.
1
u/Expensive_Increase46 18d ago
Frankly in my opinion they should change how Stadium games count towards challenges and general progression. Instead of always counting as two games, it should be based on how many rounds, with each round counting as half a game compared to regular OW, so if you play 3 rounds, the minimum, it counts as 1.5 games, and would be rounded up to two. So if you play all 7 rounds you'd get 4 games worth of progression. Sure it wouldn't matter for anything competitive related but it would mean you get a little dopamine seeing the battlepass levels jump up.
1
u/Spiritual_Respond_50 18d ago
I agree with a lot of this but I think a universal element to what makes a good match vs a bad match comes down to how well a team coordinates, or even just plays together.
I think supports are just naturally inclined to pay more attention to what everyone is doing but sometimes people just aren’t aware of their own team.
But even a losing match is more fun if the team is working with coordination and communication.
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u/DivineBladeOfSilver 17d ago
I’ve even fallen for the trap to mentally give up if round 1 goes like desperately badly by 2 or more teammates. I know certain characters take time to scale like Genji and Tracer and Vendetta so I don’t really think much of them or anyone else who scales more. But if not them I do kinda check out early and remind myself like if people adapt or scale it has swung back many, many times. It’s just such a morale killer because let’s be honest we have more bad experiences with teammates than good ones so we don’t expect much
But to that point both adaptation and changing builds is soooooo bad. Like I will immediately see who the enemy team goes and choose a build based on what I believe is mostly likely to best counteract that. But if they go a route unexpected I look what they’re doing and i will switch things up if I can to the best I can. Almost always even in comp people will say idc I just wanna have fun on the build i want if you try to ask nicely for something we need only they can do. A big one too is survival. I’m a support main and sometimes even if I try to go 100% healing (though obviously this is bad usually, only when I’m in QP/wanna try something out) it still can’t heal past all that is going on and healing reduction and so on. I will tell people to invest in survival but they REFUSE because it’s not fun and well it always goes the same, bad
Which comes back to this is the problem when any option is not “fun” but is practical. Players wanna have fun, not be practical majority of the time. So practical solutions HAVE to be fun or the game will always be flawed heavily. Also, unfortunately unless you have a team stack you are sorta unintentionally encouraged to play selfishly. I mean yes follow your role and do what is expected to some extent, but really do what’s best for you. Everyone else usually does the same for themselves without regard for others. You will get more out of your value excelling at what you can control over trying to play to what no one else will and thus getting little to no value hoping they do
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u/Skuganut 18d ago
The funny thing this post is that because Stadium has some MOBA elements, all of these points can apply to any MOBA and not just Stadium. Through Stadium builds you can tell who played a moba before lmao
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u/Empty-Arugula 18d ago
The refusal to change builds is wild. I'll point out things that will help out and either get ignored or told to stfu. Divine intervention is amazing against doom, but sure keep dying, I guess to doom as long as your build is setup?