Weekly Recall: Customizing Stadium

Hey, everyone! It's the Stadium team, back for another Weekly Recall. This time, we're taking a deep dive into a feature we recently added that might not be on your radar.

Extensive custom game settings have been one of the Overwatch community's biggest requests for Stadium, and we've spent a full season in the lab concocting options that even the most discerning mad scientist will enjoy. Today, we want to offer insight into why our team loves empowering your endless creativity in Stadium.

Build Your Arena

You already had the ability to make Stadium custom games with very basic parameters, but we've upgraded the experience with a comprehensive set of tools to experiment with. It's extremely important to us that Stadium has the same level of full-featured custom game support you'd find in other Overwatch game modes.

After starting a lobby and selecting the Stadium checkbox atop the roster lists, most of the options can be found by going to the Settings menu, selecting Modes, and hitting the "All" box; if you're only playing one mode, select that box and customize accordingly.

We'd definitely go over the blog word limit if we listed everything you could change in the new Advanced Custom Games settings, but here are the basics:

• You can now add AI Bots as allies or enemies, and they're smarter than the average Practice Range omnic. Not only do they buy from the Armory and create Builds, but they've also been updated to understand the ins and outs of Payload Race! You can make an entire lobby of AI Bots to test out new Builds without the risk of upsetting actual humans. (Or if you just want to play Stadium alone. We won't tell.)
• Modifiers like Draft, Mirrored matchups, and even Hero Bans can be enabled or disabled to create the ultimate strategic test.
• Individual modes and maps can also be enabled or disabled. If you want to play nothing but Payload Race for seven rounds, go for it!
• Quick Play and Ranked win conditions-first-to-three and first-to-four, respectively-are the defaults, but you can tune it down for a super quick game or go all the way up to first-to-ten for a true challenge.
• There are nearly infinite ways to alter Stadium Cash. Heroes can start with up to 50,000 Cash or nothing at all, and you can decide exactly how they earn their keep. Decide if you can only earn money through becoming MVP, clearing bounties, or healing your team.
• The price of Items can be altered to make scaling through rounds much easier or much more difficult. Whether you want to hand items out like Halloween candy or make your lobby pay triple the price, it's up to you.
• You can also change the timing of Power rounds, the numerical Mercy Rule delta, and the amount of time you spend in the Armory.

All these new opportunities in Advanced Custom Games can be a little overwhelming, so we've prepared a few example "builds" for you to try out. You can save these (or any other modes you make) using the standard Save Preset feature in Custom Games, which will also give you a code to share with the world!

• Motherlode: Start the fun immediately by giving every player an instant 50,000 in Stadium Cash as well as Powers on Rounds 1, 2, 3, and 4. Don't say we didn't warn you about the impending chaos.
• Is This Easy Mode?: Great for practice or new players! Use the Quick Play preset and turn Item Price down to 50%, Minimum Round Earnings to 10,000, and Armory Duration Scalar to 150%. This gives you more time to select Powers and Items.
• Professional Stadium Enjoyer: Start with the Competitive Preset, then Enable Draft and Hero Bans and disable Mirrored matchups while kicking it up to a first-to-five game.

If You Give a Stadium Team a Feature...

Our team always knew we wanted to add more custom game options, but we had no idea just how big it would end up being! After we brainstormed all the things we could integrate, the options excited us so much that we kept expanding the Advanced Custom Games project. It snowballed into the dozens of customization options that ended up in the live game with the latest patch.

This would be a great time to shout out the quality assurance (QA) team. They helped us create a functional sandbox for you to play in by (intentionally) breaking things, finding bugs, and testing the system's limits. Turns out a "first-to-20" option wasn't fun for anyone!

Many of us on the Overwatch team are working parents who may not have time to play hours of Stadium. With the Advanced Custom Games system, we can hop into a streamlined game with a lobby of friends on a Saturday night, complete with the benefit of pauses in case of toddler-related interruptions. If you're saddled with homework or have been outside touching grass lately, quicker games might be great for you, too!

These new features also benefit those heading in a different direction: with spectator settings and Draft/Ban options, you can easily set up high-level Stadium lobbies and even run tournaments. Crafty folks out there can even make challenge modes by removing comforts like consistent Stadium Cash or extensive Armory time.

When creating Advanced Custom Games, we kept excitedly asking ourselves what the community would come up with once it was out in the world. We can't wait to see what you do with it. Thanks for reading and be sure to share your favorite custom game creations with us!