Hey everyone! Welcome to another Weekly Recall with us, the Stadium development team. We’ve absolutely loved all the feedback about Stadium and we’re glad you’ve been having fun climbing the ranks and racking up rewards. In the spirit of keeping more open communication rolling, we have some updates about future features to share as well as some exclusive peeks at Season 17’s upcoming offerings. Let’s get moving!
Roadmap Rerouting
If you’ve ever set out on a big summer road trip, questionable gas station snacks in hand, you know that construction and detours are a guaranteed part of any grand adventure. We recently updated our Stadium roadmap and wanted to chat about why we’ve rerouted a few pathways.
Unranked Stadium is now slated for release in Season 18 instead of Season 17. We know some of you were looking forward to queueing up with friends across platforms or Stadium skill tiers.
But that's exactly why we’re taking extra time to launch Unranked: we want to do things right and deliver a comprehensive version that everyone can enjoy, complete with all the bells and whistles. Cross-Play will be fully enabled with Unranked so your whole squad can finally dive in together.
The Backfill feature we mentioned in the last Weekly Recall Stadium blog will also ship with Unranked and we’re working to make it even better. Instead of just heating up Quick Play’s leftovers, we’re building a Backfill system unique to Stadium that will empower late arrivals to help their new teammates. You’ll be given Stadium Cash appropriate for that point of the match and get time to shop and set up your Builds. Beyond that, we're calibrating this system to avoid throwing you in for the last few minutes of the game.
Rerouting doesn’t always mean delays; sometimes it leads to a quicker trip! We previously forecasted that Stadium Trials would release in Season 18, offering Quests to complete for bonus rewards. Instead, we’ve bumped Competitive Drafts up to Season 18 and moved Stadium Trials to Season 19. Though we can’t share too many details yet, Competitive Drafts will bring a new level of strategy to hero picking in Stadium, giving you more agency over Heroes you want (or don’t want) to play against.
Hero release orders have also been shifted. Pharah will be joining the Stadium roster in Season 18, alongside Winston and Brigitte, to offer a new gameplay style to Stadium. Sojourn needs a bit more tuning, so she’ll now be added in Season 19 and we may use a future Weekly Recall to share exactly what the process of bringing Sojourn to Stadium looks like. You’ll also notice a speedy new addition on the updated roadmap: Tracer will zip into the lineup with the Season 18 midseason patch! Your feedback that she should be a part of the Stadium crew as soon as possible was heard loud and clear.
Season 17 Tidbits
One of your most-requested features is the ability to create custom Stadium games, either to perfect your Builds or run lobbies with your friends. We’re happy to say that custom games will be enabled in Season 17! Not only can you set up custom parameters within lobbies, but you can choose which game modes to run. Custom games will gain more functionality in Season 18, like the option to add bots and play with the Unranked ruleset.
And there’s even more!
- Two maps — Esperança and Samoa—got Stadium makeovers and will be added to the map rotation in their respective modes.
- The team put in extensive work to improve the aiming down sights (ADS) function on heroes like Ashe, Ana, and Freja. Expect a smoother transition from third-person perspective to scopes that’ll have you sniping Supports in no time.
- Competitive Drives will be heading to Stadium in the latter half of Season 17! We can’t share much yet, but some fancy name card bling is guaranteed.
Build Bonuses
Most of our discussions about Stadium Forge have been about your ability to create and share Builds. You will be able to add creative names, long descriptions, and categorize items by early, late and flex categories. But a lesser-known feature of Stadium Forge is the ability to easily steal Build ideas from other players.
If a player on the enemy team is dominating the lobby, you'll have the option to save their Build to assess (or use it to exact revenge) later. Each Build will be accessible with a five-character code, just like Workshop codes, so they’re easy to share and easy to swipe.
As a token of thanks for joining us on this roadmap adventure, we’ve asked some of our developers to share personal Stadium Forge codes that you can use to test the import feature. Your mileage may vary as far as guaranteed Stadium domination is concerned, but we can at least promise they’re fun.
| Overflowing Healing Orbs - Moira | Overheat-sa - Orisa |
|---|---|
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Create tons of healing Biotic Orbs by utilizing the synergy between Attack Speed and Optimal Overflow. Ability Power will empower those Orbs. Use Fade to restore your Biotic Energy. Your secondary fire still does reasonable damage thanks to hybrid items. FFHRJ |
Lots of heat generation and cooldown reduction so you can Overheat often, spawning barriers and dealing Burn to enemies. Flex in some survivability or more AP as needed! TNDQ3 |
Thank you for supporting and enjoying Stadium! See you in the Coliseum.