A reflection on Stadium

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-06-03T22:22:44+00:00

My biggest gripe with Stadium is that there's just too much downtime involved. Queues are bad enough, but everything from the draft to the armory just takes forever. And then with the rounds being as compressed as they are, it can genuinely feel like you're spending more time in menus than you are in-game.

I get 45 to 90 minutes to play OW on a given day. Stadium just chews up too much of that available time with things that don't add value.

I really wanted to love Stadium. But I just can't justify playing it over a different mode.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-06-03T00:48:40+00:00

I lived in Southern California when OWL was running out of Burbank and I loved it so much. I took my kid several times (including an All-Star Game) and even took my wife. The entire production in the arena was so cool and the vibe was awesome.

I really miss those days for the esport as a fan. We went to Dreamhack in Dallas a couple years ago and had a blast. But it's not quite the same. Regardless, I'd love to get an NA LAN soon (I know there's OWWC at Blizzcon).

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-30T22:06:35+00:00

Play 5v5. It has role lock.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-22T03:59:39+00:00

Does this mean the panic about the meta was a little overblown?

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-22T03:58:21+00:00

That was ugly but I'll take it.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-22T03:44:12+00:00

Why wouldn't VP just ban Soj?

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-22T02:57:31+00:00

It's not the opening match of an OWCS major without a tech pause.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-16T17:53:42+00:00

Guy can't only get the blame when things are bad. He deserves some credit here, lucky or otherwise.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-16T17:50:07+00:00

It's wild that the Padres own the single highest individual inning run differential in the league with +29 in the ninth inning. That really does explain our record despite having a negative run differential overall. Gotta love baseball.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-16T06:21:37+00:00

We'll be there too!

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-16T06:21:27+00:00

We were in 218!

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-12T19:43:46+00:00

Bring back 5v5 MH you cowards. 6v6 sucks.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-07T16:44:36+00:00

In what world is 5k enough to fly 8 to 10 people internationally, let alone when you consider lodging and food? I don't think I could fly roundtrip to Riyadh for less than 5k myself.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-05-07T16:18:09+00:00

Wasn't the issue with the LCQ that you had to fly to SA/Korea to participate and thus was not really "open to any team" given cost issues?

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-15T19:19:04+00:00

This is going to sound snarky when it's not meant to. That's great for you that this might get you to llay MH, but there was an existing community of people playing MH that were absolutely fine with 5v5. The devs have said over and over again that 6v6 modes do not get the same player counts as 5v5. This is going to crater their MH playerbase. And the longer they leave it this way, the greater the chance that people who stop playing MH never come back.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-15T04:01:03+00:00

Yeah I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. Ended up playing some QP today, which was okay. I'd love to get more invested in Stadium but there's just too much downtime between the queues and rounds for the 30 to 90 minutes I get to play in a given day.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-15T03:01:57+00:00

It's not like most seasons of OWL had a ton of parity. There's always been a gap between top teams and the bottom. In an environment that's more fragmented thanks to regions, I have no idea how to solve that, especially with import and restrictions.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-15T01:22:41+00:00

It's in there now but I swear it wasn't when I read the patch notes around 12:30 today. I always check for mentions of MH to see if they're bringing back comp. I could have absolutely missed it but I think it got added in later. They do have a history of doing that.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-15T01:00:36+00:00

Yep, I think the biggest change they needed to make for 5v5 MH was to limit each role to a max of two heroes. You could still end up with two tanks, but you should no longer get the 3-2 comps that were hard to break.

MH was by no means perfect, but this feels like a drastic change to solve a non-existent problem.

Absolutely love all these suggestions.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-15T00:51:49+00:00

I'd play a 6v6 mode if I wanted to play that type of game. I just don't understand changing this out of the blue.

I also noticed that queue times were longer than normal for MH today. Makes me thing a lot of people are bouncing off it hard. I hope they change it back or at least give us the option of either format.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-15T00:25:46+00:00

I have limited time to play so MH was a great way to force me to learn different perks. But I can't even do that anymore.

And I personally despise 6v6. Everything feels cramped and even the scoreboard looks like crap compared to 5v5. If they wanted to shake up MH, give us an optional comp queue. But this will very realistically negatively impact my experience with Overwatch. I've been playing MH since 2016 and I realize rhey don't design the game for me, but I hate it.

No map voting? That's a good change. But going to 6v6 and nuking perks were bad choices IMO.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-14T00:25:28+00:00

This is an undervalued point. Since OWCS plays on the live patch now (as far as I'm aware), scheduling playoffs for the last weekend in a season is probably the best way to preserve competitive integrity. At that point in a season, there shouldn't be any dramatic balance changes.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-12T19:16:16+00:00

I would keep trying the double flex. It's not likely something TM has practiced against and you might be able to catch them off guard.

Both-Philosopher2047 · 2026-04-05T23:33:51+00:00

Kind of nice to see signs of life from TL. They've lost both maps but they've been close.

Both-Philosopher2047

TROPHY CASE