Overwatch launched a new game mode, stadium last week as part of his 16th season. After Playing the mode before launch for a weekI have called it “the first thing that has been felt really new since it was published”. “
Okay, it looks like the players are enjoying the new taste. A Take the director’s blog postBlizard announced Thursday that in the first week after the introduction, almost half of all overwatch played hours were spent at the stadium. The game developer says, “When we often see a big spike at the time of the launch of a Sparkle new event, the time to play in the stadium is a bit stickyer,” the game developer said.
This is the good news for a game facing strict competition since December, mainly in the form of Marvel rivals, which was a hit hit a hero shooter just outside the gate. Earlier this year, overwatch launched a new parks system that provided further progress in each match, which felt like a major change at that time. Although it transferred the gameplay for the original fast game and competitive mode of the game, it was not almost extremist exit for overwatch 2 like stadium.
Blizard said that the popularity of the overwatch classic, led by 2.5 million stadiums in the first week of launch (which translated 1.5 million hours), is more than double the popularity of the classic.
Game director Aaron Keller said in the interview before the Stadium Launch that the Overwatch is investing a lot in the team stadium, which has its own separate resources, and new heroes and maps have a new arrival every season. We have already seen a number of hotfix patches to address the extra powerful buildings and heroes.
When Fraza joins the chaos in the midseed patch, we will get the first big taste of that promise to the stadium. But it is just the beginning.
After a while at the stadium, I noticed that some team techniques had a different efficiency than the original line overwatch. Specifically, Rush compositions felt a bit upside down, thanks to the combination of basically available heroes (especially the tank) and the more compressed map. I hoped that the heroic additions of the future would prioritize various macro techniques, “enable more than heroes such as dip compositions with Sigma and Zeniata or Winston.”
It turns out that Sigma and Zeniata are joining the Junkrat in 17 season mode. This is a significant enthusiasm for the loss of the range. Then in 18 seasons, the stadium will connect the Winston, Sajurn and Bridget, which should be completed the existing heroes of modes like Ganji and ANA for more powerful dive setups.
Of course, it is still just matchmaking, so most people are just choosing to play like any hero, perhaps without thinking too much about the coordination of the overall team, but I like that Daves is giving us the ability to follow such strategies, even if it is rare to combine. And the new heroes are coming along with the new map and mode, the Arnaranked crossplay and the next several seasons.
Overall, it is good news for a mode that seems to be a hit. I have been playing the mode half-shy since the launch (don’t want to neglect standard modes so I can play Fraza, who has felt like the most fun new hero after Kiriko) -Mod from thrilling to wrath, it is certainly not boring. The updates announced on Thursday are a strong signal that is ready to maintain overwatch speed.