Counterwatch isn’t in the cards for Overwatch 2’s Stadium mode: ‘No hero swapping has been one of the core foundational pillars’

One of the most contentious parts of Overwatch 2 may just be something that players have not so lovingly named Counterwatch. It’s the act of swapping heroes mid-fight to counter strong enemies, and it can be enough to send some players into a swirling rage. It’s pretty fundamental to Overwatch 2, but for Stadium it’s a different story.

“No hero swapping has been one of the core foundational pillars of the mode since day one, like since we started prototyping it,” senior game designer Dylan Snyder tells me. “Part of that is because of how difficult it is to kind of contend with, what if somebody swapped after multiple rounds, and what does that do for the enemy team?”

Stadium works a little differently to Overwatch 2. Instead of just picking a hero, getting to choose a couple of perks as the game progresses, and maybe switching heroes where you see fit, Stadium introduces powers and items. You can select and purchase these over the course of seven short rounds.

Items are purchased with coins that are earned by healing or getting kills or assists, you can also refund them whenever you like. Powers, however, are not refundable and you can only pick one every odd round.

Creating your build takes time in Stadium, so it’s unsurprising that the devs don’t want to let players scrap their hero builds halfway through a match. It would likely give a large advantage to whatever team stuck with their heroes, and would probably make builds needlessly complicated.

“We want [players] to feel a little bit of investment in their build identity,” Snyder says. “We want them to craft on the fly, the version of the hero that they think fits best for that particular match.” Building an identity is all well and good, and is actually a uniquely fun element of Stadium. But not being able to switch heroes mid game can restrict some players and make games harder.

Every hero in Overwatch counters and is countered by another character; that’s just the nature of the beast. In regular Overwatch the solution is just to switch heroes, but that’s not an option in Stadium. There are even a few heroes present in Stadium’s limited roster that have direct counters, like D.Va versus Zarya.

However, there are a few ways to compensate for this issue when making your build. For example, Genji is weak to beam heroes such as Moira or Zarya as his deflect ability only works on projectiles. To avoid this character becoming totally unplayable when there’s one of those counters on the enemy team the devs added in purchasable items that upgrade Genji’s deflect to also include beams. It doesn’t completely solve the issue of competing against counters, but items do make it slightly easier.

All of this may sound complicated, but it’s actually the simplest solution when compared to all the alternatives.”At one point the mode was such that you could come into the next round with an entirely different set of Powers and items equipped,” Snyder says. “It was just as confusing as it sounds.”

There’s a ton of chaos embedded into Stadium as is, so keeping builds as simple as possible by not allowing hero swaps is likely a necessary albeit frustrating step: “We want folks to be able to somewhat predict what they’re getting into from their opponent, but also have enough variety and flexibility to change things round to round.”

The lack of counterswapping available in Stadium should mean that it doesn’t work as an Overwatch 2 mode, with how integral that feature is to the main game. But the devs make it work thanks to a couple of useful items and Powers. If you’re one of those players who don’t enjoy Counterwatch then Stadium is the solution for you.