Overwatch 2 It’s been a few days since launching radical new stadium mode. Along with a competitive, quick play mode, gameplay innovation and reworking abilities looks great, with the aim of becoming the new core pillar of hero shooters, but there is a price with a limited hero pool. Now, Blizzard has lifted the lid on how he decided on the lineup of launch heroes for the stadium, and why certain characters like Tracer, Widowmaker, Hanzo, and others are left on the bystanders, at least for now.
Overwatch 2 Stadium Mode is the biggest shakeup of FPS games in a long time. A new permanent core experience that allows players to dive into the Best of Seven series with shorter condensed matches, post-round purchase phases where players can equip items and new abilities, and options to play third person. It’s an appetizing proposition, but once the stadium drops next week, only 17 of the game’s heroes will appear. This is less than half of the main roster. Iconic and highly selected characters like Mercy, D.Va, Genji will become available, but there are not many other popular names.
A recent roundtable attended by PCGamesn, along with Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller, senior game designer Dylan Snyder, and lead-level designer Ryan Smith, light shined at the way Blizzard chose his first 17.
“The reason we chose the heroes we went to at the stadium has a lot to do with what we thought we could do with their kit,” explains Keller. “The first hero we chose was one that had an immediate idea about how we could create a truly unique, exciting and transformative build for them. Really Characters with heavy movement abilities (if brought into the stadium) just because their movement abilities are likely to be amplified. ”
Speaking specifically about Tracer, an Overwatch “poster girl” who wasn’t featured in the stadium at the time of release, Blizzard’s team says they love her as a character, but Maud says “you need to start your format as sane as possible before you start having a hero with really crazy mobility.” Keller assures that the tracer will eventually be added to the hero pool, and that when she does, “she’s just going to destroy people.”
Snyder then says there are other factors that make certain heroes very difficult to balance the stadium and leave them away from the movement that only makes the unnatural choice of mode’s starting lineup. Because of its compact and desperate nature, the stadium will feel “more brawl-focused.” “We have Ash there (the starting hero pool) and that’s great,” he adds. “We’ve found some really cool ways to make ash (certainly) and even Cassidy had a lot of variety and options, but that was difficult.
Smith also points out that certain mechanisms and abilities, such as the widow’s charged sniper shot, are extremely difficult to port and communicate from the perspective of a third-person stadium.
Blizzard seems willing to really innovate and find ways to fit these more problematic characters into the context of the stadium, but time doesn’t seem right for some of these more complicated or high mobility heroes. Keller repeatedly promises that more heroes (and maps and game modes) will be added every two Overwatch seasons, so the first team of 17 will steadily expand.
Overwatch 2 Stadium Mode arrives at the start of Season 16 on Tuesday, April 22nd.
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