The game director of Blizzard’s free-to-play shooter Overwatch 2 has announced that Tracer won’t be removed from the character selection after players discover a serious bug with her damage fall-off. Fellow heroes Bastion and Torbjorn, and the map Junkertown were temporarily removed from Overwatch 2 last month while Blizzard fixed exploits and balance issues with the characters and map.
Despite being one of the most highly anticipated games of the year following the ongoing success of its 2016 predecessor, Overwatch 2 has been the subject of fan backlash since launch due to a variety of technical and gameplay issues. From unbalanced characters to requiring years of gameplay and thousands of dollars to unlock all of Overwatch 2’s cosmetics, many fans of the original game have been vocal about their displeasure with the free-to-play sequel. For players already disappointed with Blizzard’s response to the game’s many problems, this Tracer bug may seem like just one more symptom of a larger problem.
Following the latest Overwatch 2 patch, many players noticed something was strange with Tracer’s damage output. Rather than her damage decreasing as she moved further from a target, now Tracer has no damage fall-off under 20 meters followed by a drastic drop in damage when further away. In response to a post on the Overwatch subReddit pointing out this glaring issue with Tracer’s fall-off damage, Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller stated that Blizzard was aware of the issue and currently had no plans to disable Tracer in response to the problem.
Keller agreed with players upset over the changes to Tracer that the fall-off issue was “definitely a bug,” but remarked that “her overall power level has been ok.” Rather than disabling Tracer to deal with the bug, Blizzard appears to be considering possible buffs to the character to compensate. Some Overwatch 2 players may welcome future Tracer buffs after the character was significantly nerfed for her appearance in the game. While Tracer’s pulse bombs can still make her a deadly foe when wielded by a skilled player, many Overwatch 2 fans feel that she remains underpowered when compared to the original Overwatch.
As just the latest of the many issues causing frustration for Overwatch 2 players, this Tracer bug, and Blizzard’s nonchalant response to it, paints a picture of a game seemingly in disarray. As Overwatch 2’s player count continues to grow, it appears that so do the frustrations of many of the game’s players. Moving to a free-to-play model with Overwatch 2 helped Blizzard attract new fans to the franchise, but it may have come at the cost of being able to deliver the sorts of polished experiences the company built its brand on.
Overwatch 2 is out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.