Overwatch 2 Players Slam Blizzard Over Controversial Character Changes

Overwatch 2 players have been -- and continue to -- slam Blizzard over some controversial character changes that have come to light through the new beta for the game. The biggest talking point has been what the recent patch has done to Symmetra. With the recent update, the character was reworked, and nerfed substantially in the process. Meanwhile, players are also unhappy with recent changes to Mercy. The chatter about these controversial changes has dominated the beta, prompting Blizzard to comment on some of it. 

Over on Blizzard forums, a community manager gave fans a brief update, mentioning the aforementioned characters -- and others -- by name, before confirming there will be a mid-cycle patch releasing soon that will have changes to both Mercy and Moira, but not to Symmetra. 

"We hope everyone has been enjoying themselves playing and keeping up with the Overwatch 2 Beta! We'll have more in-depth updates next week, but there are a few things we wanted to address before then," reads the comment from the Blizzard community manager.  "Symmetra's Teleporter range has not been reduced as stated in the initial patch notes. The decision to keep her range came in pretty close to the beta, but her Teleporter range remains the same as it was prior to the beta at 30. This is now reflected correctly in the patch notes. We've seen some feedback and thoughts on Mercy's Guardian Angel changes, and this is something we plan to address next week. There will be updates to this ability in an upcoming mid-cycle patch. Finally, we wanted to be completely transparent about when we'll be patching the beta. Due to some tech limitations, it's going to take a little longer before we can work in our planned changes across all platforms. However, there will be a mid-cycle patch including changes to Mercy and Moira. In the meantime, we're continuing to look for community feedback, so please keep sharing your thoughts with us."

As you would expect, this update isn't sitting too well with fans of the game over on the forum. For one, players aren't impressed with what's coming, but many believe that Blizzard not recognizing the negative feedback in regards to the recent Symmetra changes in the update is "tone-deaf."

"The Symmetra negative feedback has been far greater than Mercy's... So why are y'all not addressing that as well?! The character is literally unplayable," reads another reply. "It's not placebo, the character feels like complete trash and is even worst than she was... Her gun needs to be buffed... The primary and the alternate fire need so much attention it's not even funny. She deals less dmg than support heroes!"

It remains to be seen where Blizzard goes from here, but one thing is clear, and that's it has a lot of work left to do in terms of character balancing before the game releases in early access later this year.