Overwatch/YMMV

Or worst, the radical feminists and the mainstream game journalists, who have an infamous reputation for hating gamers and hardly play the games that they are "concern" about.
 * Alas, Poor Scrappy: When she was first released, Brigitte was hated thanks to her fighting style being obnoxious to play against. She was way too good at healing, tanking, and attacking, so naturally she'd eventually get nerfed... only she was nerfed so hard that she became borderline unplayable due to her shield turning into a flimsy piece of cardboard and the loss of the extra armor provided by her health packs. That, and her already-existing struggles of fighting ranged opponents made her viability plummet to the point where even her biggest haters genuinely feel bad for her and criticize Blizzard for going way too far to overcorrect their mistakes.
 * Alternative Character Interpretation: Thanks to all the vagueness surrounding him, there are a lot of ways to interpret Reaper. Why did Gabriel Reyes join forces with Talon, when the Retribution event showed how much he hated them after Antonio killed dozens of young Overwatch agents in a terrorist attack? Does he hate Jack Morrison so much that he'd sell out to terrorists out of spite and jealousy? Did he come to agree with Talon's social darwinist philosophy and views Overwatch as the biggest threat to his new world view? Given that a recent short story mentions him having a family, was he coerced into joining to protect them? Or is he like Widowmaker, a brainwashed puppet who had his life ruined and mind twisted against his will? There are even those who theorize that he's actually a full-on good guy working to sabotage Talon from the inside, and that all the Overwatch agents he's killed over the years were corrupt or evil in some way. Given that plot developments happen at a snail's pace, only time will tell when, or if we'll finally find out just what his deal is.
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced: The role queue update was met with praise from players who were screwed over in competitive and quick play one too many times by teams with horrible attack/tank/healer balance. Since it mandates for each team to have two damage heroes, two tanks, and two healers, nightmares like all damage teams, or one healer and five highly mobile damage dealers are a thing of the past. Role queue would end up introducing its own problems, but it certainly made a vocal part of the fanbase very happy.
 * Any time a new tank or healer is introduced is a cause for celebration: even before offense/defense heroes got lumped together under the "damage" banner, healer and tank players had a pitifully small amount of heroes to choose from while players obsessed with DPS had an entire arsenal of damage-dealing heroes to choose from. Starting with Orisa's introduction, similar defensive heroes like Sigma, Moira, and Baptiste would be met with resounding applause from tank/healer players for giving them new options to play with. Brigitte was also a godsend for healers sick of being jumped and killed by Tracer and Genji since she was specifically meant to counter them... and then she turned out to be way too good at her job and things went south from there.
 * While general excitement for seasonal events has gone down since 2019, hype for new event skins still remains. Whether it's something as goofy as Surf 'N Splash Torbjorn and Grillmaster 76, badass as Lu Bu Reaper and Toxic Roadhog, or sexy as Cote D' Azur Widowmaker and Lifeguard McCree, there's always at least one skin bound to excite players.
 * Badass Decay: After being introduced as a master hacker who effortlessly manipulated everyone around her, later comics would go on to make Sombra look way less competent than she should be. Reaper reveals in Masquerade that he's fully aware that Sombra's scheming behind his back and only lets her get away with it because she's valuable to Talon, and in Searching, Zarya effortlessly tracks her down and even learns her name in the process, something she supposedly erased all traces of in the past. Understandably, fans who fell in love with her for being a smooth master planner weren't exactly thrilled by Blizzard's handling of the character.
 * Broken Base: The way heroes are balanced will always be hotly contested with the fanbase. Whether it's something as small as adding or taking away 25 health (Widowmaker, McCree) or something as major as completely overhauling how a character plays (Torbjorn, Mercy), there will always be fans happy with the changes and unhappy detractors claiming that Blizzard doesn't know how to balance the game.
 * Catharsis Factor: It always feels good to kill any of the Heroes when they're really being annoying, but special mention goes to Mei. Her freezing mechanics and tankiness make her an absolute pain in the ass to deal with, and fewer things are more frustrating than helplessly watching her corner you and slowly freeze you before killing you with an icicle to the face. So when you finally kill that annoying Mei who's been a menace to your team, even if it doesn't do much to change the flow of battle it's still satisfying as hell. Many fans would agree, because there's actually a subreddit dedicated to gifs and clips of Mei dying in various ways.
 * Complacent Gaming Syndrome: While there's a good selection of healers to choose from, Mercy's always been a favorite pick since day one. While her healing output and damage boosting can be outdone by a few of her fellow heroes, she has one key tool to keep her viable: Resurrection. In a game where dying is painful due to how long it takes to get back to fighting, being unable to undo deaths and keep players in the fight is insanely good. In the original release, Mercy could even reverse a team wipe with it! It eventually got demoted from her ultimate to a normal ability and nerfed to where it could only revive one player a pop, but it's just too good of an ability not to have.
 * Creator Worship: While Overwatch's dev team attracts lots of controversy when it comes to lore and gameplay decisions, even its biggest critics have a soft spot for lead designer Jeff Kaplan. While people look forward to seeing video updates so they can see what all's being changed in the game, a lot of it also stems from wanting to see the unfailingly nice, humble Jeff in all his Adorkable glory.
 * Demonic Spiders: In Junkenstein's Revenge, Zombardiers go from mildly annoying enemies to this when they all decide to exclusively target one specific player. Their grenades track your movement and do 30 damage, and since every character approved for Junkenstein's Revenge has a health pool ranging from 150 HP to 250, it adds up fast and can completely ruin the targeted player's flow when they're forced to run around and avoid their relentless volleys of pain. It's especially bad for Hanzo and Widowmaker, who as snipers need breathing room to aim if they want to get those valued headshots.
 * Discredited Meme: While there was originally a lot of fans petitioning Blizzard to let big-name Overwatch fan Terry Crews voice Doomfist, that sentiment wore out its welcome when a lot of those same fans began to grow annoyed with it, saying that Doomfist should be voiced by someone who'd be able to put on a fitting performance for such a dangerous and serious character. While Terry's a fine actor in his own right, it's clear that people wanted him to voice Doomfist for the sake of memes more than anything. Once Doomfist was properly revealed and voiced to perfection by Sahr Ngaujah the sentiment practically died overnight, with Terry's praise for Sahr serving as the double tap.
 * Lots of fandom memes in general tend to annoy people as time goes on: Mercy mains being held back by stupid DPS players, Genjis being reckless and stupid, D.va being a mountain dew and dorito addict, Pharmercy in general...
 * Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The Console players that used mouse and keyboard to play Overwatch on their consoles, are upset about Blizzard objecting on this method of playing.
 * Slightly averted. The reason why Blizzard did this, was because console companies don't like the idea of the M+K fooling the console into thinking it's using a controller.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: A surprising amount of fans really like to downplay how malicious Moira is, and paint her as a truly neutral figure siding with Talon only because they were sympathetic to her research. While she was shafted by the scientific community, all signs point to it being her own damn fault for tossing ethics out the window. And aside from that, she's hardly a neutral player in Talon's hierarchy: she's one of the top dogs approving of and organizing their terrorist attacks in the first place! She also laughs evilly while slowly draining the life out of people in the actual game, and goes out of her way to make Mei cry to boot.
 * Yeah, they're funny, badass, and a joy to play as and watch, but if you listened to obsessive Junkrat and Roadhog fangirls you'd think that they were mischievous Australian hotties who are totes in love with each other instead of dangerous criminals with a love of mayhem and murder.
 * Dueling Games: Overwatch has stiff competition with other similar games, like Paladins and Team Fortress 2.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: From a lore standpoint, Junkrat and Roadhog don't bring much to the table in terms of plot progression. But thanks to their hilarious antics, the dynamic duo is among the most popular Overwatch characters period, right up there with more plot-important characters like Soldier 76, Reaper, and Doomfist.
 * Doomfist himself owes being playable to this: he was supposed to be a background character mentioned as a blurb in the game's background lore, but fans fell madly in love with the thought of a man being able to level entire buildings with a single punch. And so after more than a year later, the devs changed their mind and added Doomfist to the roster, and even though his playstyle's proven contentious he's been very well-received as far as his characterization and plot importance goes.
 * Maximilien's cool design and status as a truly evil Omnic made him a hit when he first appeared in the Masquerade comic. It helps that he looks good in a suit, and carries himself with dignity even when stabbing his comrades in the back.
 * Fio, the Blackwatch pilot who serves as your mission control in the Retribution event got a lot of fan attention with her snarky attitude and great back-and-forth with McCree and Reyes.
 * Evil Is Cool: While Reaper really plays up his edginess to silly degrees, there's no denying that a dual shotgun-toting phantom in a skull mask who can teleport is still pretty badass. The same goes for the rest of Talon, whose most prominent members include a man who can level buildings with his enormous metal arm, a brilliant hacker and infiltration expert who has played entire corporations like a bunch of fiddles, and a mad scientist who can drain the life out of people and melt them with what's basically a Kamehameha wave.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Widowmaker's got an excellent figure and a skintight jumpsuit that flatters it, a shapely rear, and a husky French accent on top of that. It's safe to say that the devs really had fun invoking this with her: one of her skins is even a bikini!
 * Moira also invokes this in a beautifully androgynous Tilda Swinton/David Bowie sort of way. Her outfits tend to be a lot more conservative, but her eerie beauty and dry wit make up for it and then some.
 * She's mostly attractive thanks to her playful attitude and sexy voice, but Sombra still gets quite a few costumes that show off her amazing bod.
 * For the ladies, there's the perpetually shirtless and muscular Doomfist, who's got charisma in spades. Maximilien has also earned this status among those who love robots due to his smooth voice and the fact that he looks sharp in a suit.
 * And for the non-Talon affiliated villains, there's the curvaceous Vishkar-affilited Symmetra as well as outlaw cowgirl Ashe. Neither are as morally bad as the ladies of Talon, but are still drop-dead gorgeous.
 * Even Mercy flirts with this trope during the Junkenstein's Revenge event, where she appears as the true power behind Dr. Junkenstein as a beautiful bombshell of a witch whose outfit shows off quite a bit of thigh. Her Devil and Imp skins are more conservative, but still very flattering.
 * Fandom Rivalry: See the dueling games example.
 * Fanon Discontinuity: It's by no means universal, but compared to Tracer's generally well-received reveal as a lesbian, Soldier 76 being revealed as gay caught a lot more flack from some parts of the fandom. Compared to the reveal of Tracer's sexuality, detractors found it a lot more forced due to its suspicious timing where it was revealed right when Blizzard was hit with a number of controversies and came off as a distraction tactic to earn good-boy points from the media. And as such those people prefer to ignore it, especially those who like female-centric Soldier 76 ships such as the classic Mercy76 pairing or the surprisingly common D.va76 pairing that appears in a lot of... well, dirtier animations.
 * Similarly, there are plenty of people who simply refer to Wrecking Ball as Hammond since that's the name they knew him as for a year before he made the cut as a playable character. It doesn't help that Hammond rolls off the tongue better.
 * Fan-Preferred Couple: Certainly not as a whole, but a surprising amount of LGBT fans and yaoi/yuri fans have been able to find common ground on same-sex ships: Pharah/Mercy, Tracer/Widowmaker, and Reaper/Soldier 76, are just a few of these.
 * Goddamned Bats: Devastators in the Uprising event. They aren't much more dangerous than Null Sector's rank-and-file troops, but their bulky health pools and shields make them a slog to take down, and if you want to scrap them in a timely manner you'll often have to divert your attention from the easier-killed, but way more dangerous Slicers constantly trying to melt the payload.
 * Hate Dumb: In Overwatch's early days, some of Team Fortress 2's fans also accused Overwatch of being an inferior copy.
 * To a degree, some of the League of Legends fans also harp the same "they stole character X/ character Z's abilities" accusations towards OW, too.
 * Idiot Programming: In some players' eyes Blizzard is absolutely guilty of this, mainly when it comes to nerfing certain characters (like with Mercy and Brigitte), neglecting others (Bastion and Reinhardt), overpowering them with buffs (the case with most DPS characters, such as Doomfist), and not adding/or being slow with adding new features and updates like more maps, as well as not fixing certain bugs.
 * Moral Event Horizon: As far as McCree is concerned, Reyes crossed this by murdering Antonio in cold blood when they were supposed to extract him. Players might be willing to forgive him for giving a leader of a terrorist group responsible for mass murder what he deserved, so for us, there's Reyes' transformation into the murderous Reaper and betrayal of Overwatch, which led to him hunting down and murdering Overwatch agents out of what's hinted to be for little more than spite.
 * Most Annoying Sound: When you're on the receiving end, "TEAM KILL!" is probably one of the most humiliating sound bytes in the game.
 * Enemy Ultimate callouts, especially if the same player is constantly popping one off. Standouts are Reaper, Mei, Tracer, Reinhardt, and Genji since hearing their Ultimate voice lines usually herald at least one guaranteed kill on their end.
 * Voice line spam can be awful to deal with. Standouts include...
 * "Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry!" from a "friendly" Mei who has screwed over her own team with deliberately awful Ice Wall positioning.
 * "Stupidity is not a right," and most of Moira's other brutally condescending quotes, usually after a death.
 * "HAPPY HALLOWEEN!" and "LOL, tee hee!" from D.va due to how spammable they are.
 * Pharah's "I'm not scared," for similar reasons.
 * "Thanks" and "I need healing" are often spammed by annoying teammates, the first is done sarcastically if they're salty about a match not going their way, while the second is usually done by entitled players who demand for a healer to be at their beck and call 24/7, get into dangerous situations where a smart healer won't follow them, or simply could be trolling with full health and thus waste the healer's time by making them look for the spammer.
 * Most Wonderful Sound: If you're the one responsible for it, "TEAM KILL!" is one of the most satisfying sound bytes in the game.
 * While a lot of voice lines get annoying when spammed, Doomfist's "AND THEY SAY- AND THEY SAY- AND THEY SAY CHIVALRY IS DEAD" is weirdly hilarious and a joy to hear due to his voice actor's delivery.
 * Pandering to the Base: Kind of played straight, since Blizzard Entertainment listens to their player base to the point of occasionally mingling with them in the official forums and listening to their suggestions, feedback, constructive criticism, and ideas. Of course, whether those ideas are good or not is another matter of debate in and of itself and have led to plenty of accusations of devs favoring certain characters over others (Particularly Damage heroes) when it comes to the characters they balance or change.
 * Political Correctness Gone Mad: Some gamers regard the "Play Nice, Play Fair" update as Blizzard going to war against jokes, memes, and other stuff that is regarded as offensive, doing more harm than good and not what the US company intended. Instead of allowing the community to police themselves to get rid of the "bad fate actors" and trolls, which past games have done.
 * Some gamers even regard the "Play Nice, Play Fair" update as coddling those that refuse to listen to blunt criticism or won't use the mute and report buttons when actual bullying happens.
 * To them, it also means that the Overwatch team will be wasting thousands of money, resources, and time instead of fixing and making the game better.
 * Other gamers regard the "Play Nice, Play Fair" as a much needed update to help root out troublemakers.
 * Some gamers see the "Play Nice, Play Fair" update as the Overwatch dev team trying to be very Quixotic of them and fighting a Hydra, since toxicity and other multiplayer problems have been plaguing games like this since day one of gaming.
 * Some gamers regard the story writing team for Overwatch's lore as getting gung on political correctness, making "safe characters" (that are made by a committee), and checking off a diversity check list to pander to Tumblr, who are ONLY concern with their shipping and political correctness, game balance, GOATS, and proper lore be damn. Instead of making well thought of and believable characters, like Samantha Traynor and Augustus Cole, in an awesome story.
 * It doesn't help that these gamers regard that a five-year old can write better than the whote story team, especially the head writer, Michael Chu.
 * Other gamers even criticize the writing team for putting minor genders and minorities as a way to stick it to political groups, like the North American Republicans, but there's not a peep out of Blizzard when it comes to certain countries, like China and the Middle East, were homophobia, racism, and sexism is the law of the land or part of the cultural landscape.
 * Ruined FOREVER: Blizzard nerfing, buffing, and reworking certain characters is always met with this, because die-hard fans of these characters don't like having their playstyles messed with. Nerfs in particular really get this kind of reaction like the ones given to Bastion, Mercy, and Brigitte with old guard fans complaining that they're useless (Albeit Mercy less than the others since she still has a lot of useful mobility/utility, though she doesn't compare to the days where she could rez her entire team if they were wiped out).
 * Overwatch became ruined forever with the introduction of certain characters, like Doomfist and Brigitte according to the same old guard fans. In Doomfist's case, it's because his kit revolves around instant-kills which were hotly contested with the Widowmaker and Hanzo to begin with, and Brigitte had her infamous pre-nerf Shield Bash and insane survivability which made her eclipse Mei in terms of being irritating to play against. This reaction is why Brigitte would be mercilessly nerfed into oblivion as the years went by, and Doomfist remains as divisive as ever.
 * The meta. Casual fans really hate the way meta team comps tend to bleed into Quick Play, since whatever comp is dominant at the time gets favored heavily at the expense of just unwinding and having fun with whatever hero you want to play as.
 * "Hero X was buffed too hard and now they're broken, time to uninstall the game!"
 * Overwatch was ruined due to GOATs, an entirely tank/healer-based team comp that just won't DIE that had a heavy impact on the meta and game balance going forward. Not only did fans come to hate playing against it because of how tedious and boring it was, but the adjustments that Blizzard made specifically to kill it (rebalancing tanks and healers, forced 2-2-2 teams in quick play/competitive) destroyed the game according to diehard fans.
 * "I can't play my Hero anymore because recent updates DESTROYED him/her, time to uninstall!"
 * The Overwatch League caught a lot of flack too, with critics accusing Blizzard of focusing on balancing the game for top level players and screwing over their casual base. Then, there are the people that blame Blizzard's focus on it for the agonizingly slow lore progression.
 * Like in any competitive game, "casuals ruin everything!"
 * Stuns. Thanks to Brigitte and her shield bash of doom, stuns became heavily criticized for taking control away from the player in a game where the slightest lull in movement can lead to death.
 * Rule 34: Fan artists went wild drawing porn of the characters...Even the hamster!
 * Slightly averted, Blizzard did a ceased and desist on these family unfriendly fan art sites. As if that's gonna stop the NSFW artists.
 * Scapegoat Creator: Fans assumes that Michael Chu and his writer team can't write if their lives depended on it.
 * Him and the writing team doing Retcons and lore trickles at a slow pace just confirms it for these fans.
 * Jeff Kaplan, due to him being the face of the Overwatch dev team, so he gets blame for whatever nerfs, buffs, and tweaks that renders Heroes weak and useless or insanely Over 9000 powerful. Whether its true or misblame.
 * The Scrappy: What is regarded as the off-meta Heroes.
 * Stop Having Fun Guys: Some of the devs handling of Overwatch, down to the famous Esports pros/competitive players, and such are seen as this.
 * That One Boss: In the original release of the Retribution event, Talon's Heavy Assault Troopers were a pain in the ass. Even in the easiest difficulty their machinegun fire was powerful enough to melt you in seconds, and when you combine that with their tanky health pools and surprisingly fast charges that they close the distance with, the result is a lot of team wipes. Their attack power got hit hard with the nerf hammer just in time for the release of Storm Rising, but they still qualify as this in higher levels of difficulty.
 * They Copied It, So It Sucks: The fan dumb community of Overwatch accuses Team Fortress 2 of this, despite that the older game is part of Jeff Kaplan (and many of the Blizzard devs)'s top favorites and was one of the inspirations for Overwatch.
 * Paladins is in a similar boat as TF2, being accused of ripping off the Blizzard Entertainment game.
 * They also bash other fps MOBA hybrids of copycatting Overwatch.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The minute gamers saw B.O.B. they're wondering why on earth did Blizzard not make him into an actual playerable character rather than a being Ashe's Ultimate.
 * Blizzard not getting Terry Crews to voiced Akande Ogundimu/Doomfist, instead of Sahr Ngaujah.
 * Tier-Induced Scrappy: Mei, Mercy, Brigitte, Doomfist and the Shimada brothers. It's basically due to how over-powered they are.
 * To a degree, any new Hero that Blizzard introduces will begin as this.
 * Toy Ship: Some shippers taken to shipping Alejandra with Brian.
 * Tutorial Failure: Some Overwatch fans see the tutorial as this, outside of learning basic mechanics (i.e. shooting, how to do Ultimates, and walking/running), it fails to teach vital stuff, like pushing the payload and capture the points. Worst, is that those vital stuff's hidden in the Play Vs. AI and other modes most gamers won't bother clicking.
 * Unfortunate Implications: Pharah's Thunderbird skins made some fans worried that Blizzard was yanking some clothes and plastering it on a character, because it's Rule of Cool material. Because it comes across as disrespectful to Native Americans, who had a sad history and that the North American company taking advantage of something that's ceremonial to the Indian tribes. Blizzard were prepared for this, since they wanted to make her biracial and with Indian blood.
 * This didn't convinced some of the fans though, who still view it and Blizzard adding more backstory on Fareeha Amari and the Thunderbird skins' existence as still careless and disrespectful.
 * Other fans argue that Blizzard wasn't being disrespectful to the Pacific Northwest indians, but rather is trying to bring them to the spotlight and jump starting people to go off and study more about them.