Jeff Kaplan teases Mei changes coming in future Overwatch patch

Mei could be the next Overwatch hero on the chopping block as Blizzard Vice President Jeff Kaplan recently teased that the character is being worked on while responding to community questions.

Following the launch of a brand new experimental mode in Overwatch that allows the developers to test all manner of wacky ideas without needing to push out a fresh Public Test Region (PTR) update, Kaplan took to Blizzard’s forums in order to provide feedback and answer the questions of a few curious players.

Throughout his back and forth with the community, the face of the Overwatch team shed light on future plans for the new mode but also let slip a potential tease that Mei could be the next hero to be met with a balance update.

Inquiring on Blizzard’s forums, ‘N7Warrior’ asked a simple question as to how long each experimental mode would be available for testing.

“We’ll probably leave this up for a few days. A week at most,” Kaplan responded before going into detail on their data collection process and just how often the developers expect to push out a new experiment.

Dropping a cheeky tease at the end of his lengthy response however, he indicated that PTR updates could overlap with experimental modes as “there are certain things that can only be tested on PTR and cannot be tested in an experiment.”

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Providing one “purely random example”, he highlighted Mei’s Ice Wall collision and explained how Blizzard “would need a PTR [update]” if they “wanted to make a change.” 

Of all the potential changes that he could have discussed, Kaplan honed in on the most controversial hero in the game today and subtly wrapped up his statement by joking that it was an entirely random thought.

While there’s no indicating when such changes might see the light of day, this comment could be a clear indicator that Mei’s Ice Wall might be tweaked in the next PTR patch.

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Considering hilarious interactions with Reaper of late, there’s a good chance Ice Wall fixes have been in the works behind the scenes for quite some time.

Kaplan has been back in front of the camera a great deal recently, laying out guidelines for the very first ‘Triple Damage’ experiment and explaining just how the new Hero Pools feature will work on the competitive ladder.

While a number of new additions and fresh updates have been rolled out at the start of 2020, it appears as though Blizzard is looking to be in direct communication with the Overwatch community on a much more regular basis than years prior.