Overwatch

Hi everyone! I had a great time last week answering your questions on Emongg’s stream and hearing your feedback about Stadium. Today we’re pulling back the curtain on some important (and interesting) Stadium statistics!

Game balance is something that’s always at the forefront of our minds. Heroes, Items, and Powers have to regularly be tuned up or dialed back to create a more even playing field for everyone. Prior to launch, we’re always testing and ideating internally, but there is one very important aspect to the mix that we can’t test for: you!

Player data is an invaluable tool we use to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what could use a little more attention. To better show you how that process happens, our data analyst Ben Trautman is here to deep dive into how the team uses data on Builds to influence balance changes.

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Hello hello! Ben the analyst here to chat about Builds, one of the trickier (but very fun) things we get to think about with Stadium. In our Stadium Reddit AMA I went deeper about how we discover Builds in the first place, but in short, it’s useful to think about Builds as a combination of Powers and Items that are distinct enough from one another to alter how you play a specific Hero. Thinking of Builds allows us to consider whether an individual Power or Item—or a combination of many of them—is the engine behind a player’s success in a match of Stadium.

Let's take Juno as an example of how Build data feeds into balance changes. Our first balance patch for Juno nerfed one of her Powers, Cosmic Coolant, which gives a shorter cooldown for Pulsar Torpedoes.

Our data shows that Juno's most successful Power by win rate is Pulsar Plus—giving Juno an extra charge of her Torpedoes—and Cosmic Coolant follows by a small margin. The synergy between these two Powers means that many of Juno's Builds, by our model's estimation, have both Powers as a must-pick.


The dominant Build variant (let's call this Variant 1) from a usage perspective takes a trio of Powers: Pulsar Plus, Cosmic Coolant, and Medicinal Missiles. A second variant (Variant 2) notably takes Pulsar Plus, Cosmic Coolant, and Torpedo Glide. A final variant (Variant 3) takes the usual duo of Pulsar Plus and Cosmic Coolant but hybridizes more by choosing Weapon Powers like Stinger and MediMaster.

The win rates of these three variants diverge strongly: Variant 2 leads the way with 55%, followed by Variant 1 with 52%, and Variant 3 with 48%.

The difference in the success rates of these Builds gives us more specific information about exact balance changes to make. Variant 2, with Torpedo Glide as its standout difference, suggests that the cooldown reduction of Pulsar Torpedoes (enabled by Cosmic Coolant) was the main driver of success. By tuning down Cosmic Coolant, other Builds have a chance to succeed.

I also pulled some additional Stadium stats on May 5 to better illustrate how things changed—or didn’t change—after the May 1 hotfix patch.

Across all platforms and ranks, Soldier: 76 has been the most-played damage Hero and Reinhardt was the most-played tank by a decent margin. Juno is still the most-picked support, but Mercy and Moira are nipping at her heals (get it?) thanks to the hotfix patch.

For those Heroes, certain Powers are your clear favorites: Juno’s Pulsar Plus has a whopping 78.1% pick rate while Soldier’s Super Visor has a 75.4% pick rate, even after minor nerfs in the latest balance patch. Reinhardt players are making slightly more diverse Builds, choosing either Magma Strike or Smashing! 32.8% of the time.


Being popular isn’t everything, though! Lúcio continues to have the highest Hero win rate on both PC (58%) and console (57%); however, Mei is matching that win rate in higher skill divisions on console. Until her recent adjustments in Stadium balance patches, D.Va had the highest tank win rate on console by a wide margin. Nerfs allowed other tanks to taste success on console and D.Va is now second place in high skill divisions.

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It’s me, Aaron again. Thanks, Ben!

We also have an update to share on leaver rates in Stadium. Initially we reported a 7% leaver rate, but after some tweaks in how we collected data, we are seeing that leaver rate is closer to 12% (on PC). This seems to be largely coming from first-time players, with leaver rates dropping the more matches one has under their belt. Since Stadium is still so new, we expect the leaver rate to drop and settle at a much lower rate in the coming weeks.

The philosophy around Stadium balance is a bit different from the rest of Overwatch 2. We want you to feel as though you can have MVP moments in a match—riding the cusp of feeling overpowered—while also seeing the mode as something that rewards skill in both combat and Armory strategy. While we want players to feel OP at times, we’ve already started to see some builds that have high burst potential with a relatively low skill floor. We believe that some of these have gone too far and will be looking into adjustments to them.

Variety is still deeply important for Stadium, too. We want you to feel like your Hero’s strength grows and morphs in different ways depending on the match. Sometimes you’ll be the carry and sometimes you’ll take a supporting role. Stadium won’t be as delicately balanced as our Core competitive modes, but our goal is to keep it “casually competitive.”

Thanks for all the excellent feedback about Stadium and we hope you keep on climbing the ranks! As always, let’s make a great game.

Hi everyone! We've loved hearing your enthusiasm for Stadium and most of all, we've loved watching you all play it. There’s already been so much creativity with builds. Not that we were surprised by that—we knew you wouldn’t disappoint!

Before I get into current changes and future developments, I'd like to give a little history of Stadium in hopes that it will give you some context as to where it’s headed. Plus, I like the title "Past, Present, and Future”!

Past

Stadium emerged as an idea before Overwatch 2 launched. In fact, before it was presented to the team, one of my kids created the first pitch document with a sample level and presented it to me! Stadium has come a long way since then, but I always think of my son when playing.

Early versions looked a little different from the mode you’re playing today. Stadium was initially focused on providing as much variety as possible. It was set up as an eight-team tournament. Each round, players picked from random upgrades to use in combat phases of Team Deathmatch or versus AI, losing health if they lost the round. But it was difficult to create a coherent strategy or builds to counter opponents when the decisions were made through random selection.

This change into the format you see today reflects a shift in our thinking: we still want there to be variety from match to match in Stadium, but variety is no longer the highest priority. We want you to feel balanced and competitive, while making epic builds through strategic choices based on the performance and Hero compositions of everyone in the match.

Present

Speaking of keeping things balanced and competitive, the team is already planning tweaks based on the feedback and data we’ve received since launch.

While we often see a big spike in play time shortly after a sparkly new event launches, play time in Stadium has been a bit stickier. In its first week, roughly 50% of all play hours in Overwatch 2 were devoted to Stadium!

When it comes to builds and Hero balance, we’ll be collecting data over the next few weeks to see what changes need to be made for the midseason balance patch, if not earlier.

There are many gears turning behind the scenes when it comes to Stadium. The development team answered some of your burning questions in a Reddit AMA earlier this week and we’ll be sharing more insights and Stadium data in a special Director’s Take next week!

Future

If you like playing Stadium, you'll be happy to know that we have a lot of big plans for it. There will be seasonal updates to Stadium which will include the release of new Heroes, maps, game modes, systems and features, as well as the usual care we put into other modes of Overwatch.

What’s coming to Stadium over the next two seasons? A lot!

The team just put out an extensive roadmap for Stadium that shows more of our future plans for the mode.


Heroes: Our newest addition to the Overwatch roster will also be the first new Hero added Freja is headed to Stadium and she'll arrive with the Season 16 midseason patch. But she's not the only Hero on the way! We'll have new Heroes added every Season, since we think adding new heroes is critically important for Stadium. Each time we've released a new addition internally, they’ve totally shifted the meta and the way we thought about putting together a build. Over Seasons 17 and 18, you’ll have seven new Heroes to play!

Game Modes: We’re planning on releasing a new game mode within Stadium named Payload Race and two brand-new maps will launch with it. On top of that, we’ll be integrating a new mechanic that we’ve been calling “Quests” internally. At the start of each match, players will select from a random set of quests that will dole out rewards once objectives are completed.

Systems: While we're really excited for new content in Stadium, we think systems that influence the way you put a build together can have an even greater impact. In Season 17, we’ll be releasing a build importer and exporter. This will not only allow players to put together builds outside of a Stadium match and then select them inside a match, it will also allow players to select from community builds as well.

You’ve also made your voices heard on a topic that’s very important to all of us: Cross-Play! Since Stadium has a competitive system, it follows the rules of our core competitive mode, which doesn’t allow PC and Console players to group. Since this is the only way to play the mode, we agree, and we’d like to do something about it. We’re currently investigating what it would take to make an unranked version of the mode. This would allow groups of friends to play together and would give us the ability to make other changes as well, possibly introducing a best-of-5 format to the mode.

Before signing off, I'd like to reiterate the team’s commitment to the other core modes of Overwatch. We’re still pouring as much time, energy and passion into these as we always have. Stadium isn't competing for those resources: it’s giving us more opportunities to deliver Overwatch in a new, exciting way.

We can't wait for you to see what's coming there, especially Season 18. It's going to be a banger! Have fun with Stadium and, as always, let’s make a great game.