Summary
WhenOverwatch 2launched, it swapped 6v6 out with 5v5. This had the immediate effect of making team fights and matches feel much more fast-paced and made it even more important to ensure you were playing to the best of your abilities.
However,not everyone has been a fan of this approach. A common complaint is that Overwatch 2 is steamroll orbesteamrolled, rather than each round feeling like an even fight.
Speaking to TheGamer, Overwatch 2’s game director, Aaron Keller, says this criticism was kept in mind when making recent changes to the game. This includes the all-new Stadium mode, which the team feels will make it much easier for teams to come back from a loss rather than get utterly demolished by their opponents.
Aaron Keller Walks Us Through Balancing Overwatch 2’s Stadium Mode
The team wanted to create a mode with more “down time”.
“Some of the changes of Stadium do come in response to this feeling that not only is Overwatch 2 an incredibly fast-paced game, but the level of intensity can stay really high over almost the entire course of a match,” Keller explains. “When we developed Stadium, one of the goals that we were trying to achieve was to give players some more downtime in an Overwatch match.”
He continues, outlining what we can expect: “So the PvP phases, they do feel like the rest of Overwatch. They’re fast-paced. Sometimes they can even be a little faster paced because of the of all of the abilities that you can you can add to your heroes, but you have this moment of like quiet, where the action is no longer going on, when you’re in the Stadium armoury, and you’re you’re unlocking items and powers in order to put this build together for your hero.
“The gameplay in there is very different. It’s about decision making and strategy, and in like figuring out how you can synergise your build with your team and counter what the enemy team is doing.”
All in all, this is great news for anyone who prefers longer matches or if you find the main competitive mode too intense. The breaks between rounds will also give you time to re-strategise, with the armoury playing a very important role in place of character swapping.
