'We were literally held hostage': Overwatch 2 players are finding the matchmaking in Stadium tough, but the devs say they're working on a couple of solutions

It's been a couple of weeks since Blizzard launched Stadium in Overwatch 2, and since then, it's been an enjoyable, albeit bumpy ride. Apparently, the new mode only uses internal MMR for matchmaking, but even still, players are encountering a bit of mismatch.

"We were literally held hostage in Stadium," one player says. "Got trapped in Stadium by the enemy team with four randoms against a five-stack. They held us hostage in the match and said: 'We won't finish the game until one of you leaves.'

"When we tried to go for the objective, they killed us, refused to capture it themselves, and just camped us in front of our base to farm us for 10 - 15 minutes. Why the hell is this kind of matchmaking even possible? We all reported them, but as always, nothing happens. Who at Blizzard had the brain fart to match Gold players against Diamonds or even Masters? Who is supposed to enjoy these games? It’s absolutely infuriating."

Overwatch 2 matches have and will always be a coin flip. Most Overwatch 2 players have a 50% win rate, which, besides making the devs really happy, means that the matchmaking is placing players against others at the same skill level, so it's doing its job. It's also quite hard to rank up in Overwatch 2, as you need to improve faster than the rest of the playerbase, who are also constantly learning and changing.

So I was pretty excited to see what Stadium would be like, how its matchmaking would differ from plain old ranked, and whether it would be better or worse with a little less MMR. Turns out it's both. Most matches I've played have either been really great or absolutely dreadful; the old adage "You either roll or get rolled" really applies here. But as I've played more games, the chaos has diminished a tiny bit as the system becomes more attuned with my skill rating.

Developer Update | Season 16: Stadium & Freja - YouTube

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Even so, the majority of players have reported experiencing awful matchmaking over the last few weeks. There have been high-ranked players complaining of getting matched with low ranks, and low-ranked players complaining about fighting high-ranked players. I honestly think this will only improve with time, but the devs are listening to complaints and do have some ideas on how to ease the struggle of Stadium's matchmaking.

"The bounty system and boost system were both implemented to keep matches from being too snowbally," Daniel Duffin, test analyst, says in an AMA recap. "We're reviewing feedback and in-game stats on how it is all working to see about any future adjustments."

The bounty system means that if enemies manage to kill a strong and successful player, they'll be rewarded with extra cash that they can then use to buy better items in the next round. Which is a solid feature, except for the fact that you actually need to be able to kill them to make it work. Oftentimes, those with bounties get them because they are hard to kill, something that won't necessarily become easier as the match goes on and they get more powerful.

Alternatively, the developers are also looking into a way to help players have more control over which heroes they need to face. "We definitely know something like a hero pick/ban system could be a positive addition to Stadium," Conor Kou, senior system designer, says. "It has a lot of interesting implications for team compositions and the meta. It is something we're interested to explore!"

This won't necessarily ease the matchmaking, but it will make dealing with annoyingly strong heroes slightly more bearable. Hero bans have been implemented for the first time in regular ranked games, and so far, so good. While Sombra mains are certainly suffering right now, most players appreciate having more control over who they have to fight. So there's no reason why the same feature couldn't work in Stadium, albeit with fewer ban picks.