Overwatch 2’s Latest Season Has Had Its Big Stadium Changes Partially Removed Already

The latest season of Overwatch 2 is live, bringing with it a new water wizard and some girthy changes to the game’s nascent Stadium mode.

With these changes came a pretty involved shuffle to the stadium format – introducing a hero drafting system where players nominate and then lock in the characters they want.

The only issue is that it also came with the curious change to hero mirrors within a match: in the sense that they were no longer allowed. Once one team had locked in a particular face from the Overwatch cast, they were now locked out from the second team.

You want to play Moira? Better hope you get in fast – if not first.

This puzzled many, because the nature of Stadium is one of infinitely deep character gameplay customisation. Purchasing perks and powers round to round would shift and change the kit of a character considerably, with some of the changes outright replacing an iconic part of a characters moveset.

Meaning that even if two Moira’s are in the game, by the time the second round rolls around they may well have bought vastly different perks and upgrades – and thus will be very different from each other on the battlefield.

While some saw it as a fine idea, the execution more alienated players that had a clear favourite for the gamemode – with comments and social media erupting with people speaking to the slowness of the process, the amount of players that would leave when their character was no longer available and a healthy report of the system bugging out and not working at all.

And so the Game Director of Overwatch, Aaron Keller, hit up social media to announce the hero restriction had been disabled.

Considering the season launched only three days ago, this is a colossal example of rapid developer action. Sure, part of it may be attributed to the hilarious bugs that were occurring, but it is no less impressive that it is able to be turned off with little issue.

In the interest of transparency, Aaron even continued his thread to speak a little to the process – and how sometimes experimentation doesn’t lead where you think it might:

And so, Stadium relegates itself to a regular draft mode – with its mirror matches returned to all. Now the discussion can shift to what people think of the draft mode in general, without the distraction of people missing their favourite hero.

Which is good, because I need my Moira fix y’know?

Did you get impacted by the hero restriction within Stadium’s draft mode? Did it force you to play someone outside of your comfort zone? Let us know in the comments or on our social media.