Hey everyone, in this edition of the Weekly Recall, let’s talk Stadium! Our team has been having a blast watching you all experiment and enjoy Stadium. It’s a big, bold adventure for all of us and we’re happy you’re along for the ride. Thanks to your feedback, and millions of additional data points, we've been able to tune up some pain points and make Stadium more fun for everyone. Now let’s dive into some ways we’ll be improving Stadium today, tomorrow, and beyond.
Making Better Matches
Matchmaking is a delicate process that takes constant improvement and tweaking on our end, especially for a brand-new game mode. We’ve heard your frustrations and are happy to share some ways we’ll be making better, more balanced matches in the future!
To help folks settle into their matchmaking rating (MMR), we shipped Stadium with an internal modifier that helps calibrate the MMR for new players. The problem is that it was being applied to all Stadium players, not just new players, which caused matches to be wider than initially expected. We’ll be patching this out on June 3 alongside a standard balance patch. We expect matches in Stadium to even out over the next few weeks.
Last week, we deployed a hotfix that bumped the Stadium Ranked Skill Bonus from 25 to 50 for Pro, All-Star, and Legend ranks. We want to make sure players who work hard toward reaching the All-Star tier have a fair chance to reach it and the bonus increase should allow you to more easily hit the top ranks and earn the All-Star Legendary Juno skin. To give everyone enough time to earn the skin, we’ve also extended that challenge through the end of Season 17 to give you more time to climb.
Finally, our team is paying close attention to how Heroes are performing within Stadium and planning measured changes to make a more even playing field. Our newest addition, Freja, made quite an entrance; we understand she can be frustrating to play against, so a new anti-air Item will be added in Season 17. We’ve recently clipped her wings this week with a few more adjustments that should make her easier to handle in the trenches of Stadium.
Builds, Builds, Builds
We’re super excited about a feature shipping with Season 17—Stadium Forge!
If you’ve cooked up the best Build for Soldier: 76 or Reinhardt, you’ll be able to put that confidence to the test with the Stadium Forge system. Builds can be saved in the Stadium Practice Range and accessed during any Stadium match in the Armory. You’ll be able to share your Builds with other players and import exciting (or chaotic) Builds from teammates, content creators, or anyone whose strategy is worth a try.
Additionally, there will also be more example Builds included to guide you on the right path, and we'll suggest Items for early and late game strategies catered to every Hero. Newer Stadium players will get more direct guidance with these Builds while seasoned pros might even try a new Item or two! Whether you’re using a premade Build or crafting your own, we hope you have fun experimenting with all the options out there.
Stadium Forge was far and away the most-requested feature you asked for once Stadium launched and we’re psyched about it, too. Stadium is designed to be a social experience, so the concept of sharing Builds with friends (or the internet) is a hugely important factor for us. As a bonus, content creators and highly-skilled players get a valuable outlet to help others!
Expect a deeper dive into Stadium Forge—full of tips, tricks, and example Builds—in the upcoming weeks.
New Ways to Play
Tons of great content will be heading to Stadium next season, but we want to give you a sneak peek of some changes we’re looking forward to in the not-so-distant future.
An Unranked mode for Stadium will be headed your way soon, so you’ll be able to queue up with friends of all skill tiers! You’ll play a best-of-5 series instead of a best-of-7, resulting in quicker matches with no mercy rule necessary. Powers are given on rounds 1, 3, 4, and 5 and the economy will grant more cash so you can flesh out your usual strategies within a shorter game. This is intended to be a more casual Stadium experience, great for learning the ropes or getting a few games in with friends.
With a more casual version of Stadium comes the unfortunate reality of more leavers, so we’ll also be adding a Backfill feature with Unranked. This will operate in a similar way to Backfill in standard Quick Play. Backfilled players will be given a stack of Stadium Cash equal to the progression of the game and will be able to shop before joining the match.
As the MMR curve evens out, we’ll be enacting more restrictions on grouping in Stadium in a future update. This will be very similar to the system we have in place for Overwatch’s core Competitive Mode, where there are limitations on who you’ll play with (and against) based on skill divisions. High-ranked players and those dealing with long queues should see improvements.
Thanks for playing, and we’ll see you in the Stadium!
- Stadium Developer Team