"Free Fire has been ruined": Players call game unbalanced and frustrating due to massive roster

It wouldn't be a true esport without some complaining and Free Fire is experiencing some community backlash as of late. 

Despite announcing a Jujitsu Kaisen collaboration, competitive players are expressing frustration with the state of the game itself. And no amount of anime will distract them (this isn't PUBG Mobile, alright?). 

Free Fire players frustrated with amount of characters, abilities, weapons

On Reddit, one gamer pointed to the massive number of characters that have left the game unbalanced and frustrating. They wrote: "Applying Glow Wall does not feel safe anymore, as there are a lot of characters and weapons which can destroy it in a matter of seconds. So what's the point of Glow Wall now?

"It just has become so unbalanced with this many characters with insane, irritating abilities." 

They went on to point out some pretty crazy abilities that have appeared on the roster over the years, like one character who can dash instantly and another who can stay alive after losing their health for a few seconds. And, of course, Garena has plans to add more. 

"The game has lost its simplicity," they wrote. 

A handful of gamers echoed the OP's sentiments, clearly feeling similarly frustrated with the state of the game. 

Unfortunately, this is a common issue with live service games. It's difficult to balance games that continue to add new characters to the roster. Ensuring all of the abilities work well together and each character still has a place in the meta is near impossible. We've seen it happen to Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, and Marvel Rivals. Any game that plans to keep adding characters is basically at risk. 

There are currently over 50 playable characters in Free Fire. Keeping all of these characters distinct from one another and able to synergize against all existing abilities is nearly impossible. It's not an excuse for devs - it's a problem that no dev team seems capable of fully figuring it out. 

I don't see this getting better any time soon. Blizzard had to create an entirely new version of Overwatch to ensure the roster was balanced, nerfing, buffing, and re-working every single hero's kit. It's a big task, and I'm not sure Free Fire is up for the challenge right now.