Update: Marvel Rivals Season 2
Is the Party Just Getting Started?
Those of you who read my Marvel Rivals Review will recall that I found it to be one of the only popular shooters on the market right now which I actually enjoyed. Fun character designs that let all kinds of players find their niche and an evident love for the stories of the Marvel universe made it feel like it had more spirit than so many other mainstream games, which increasingly feel like empty frameworks designed to push cosmetic sales. However, you’ll also note that I had the future of this game in mind throughout that whole review. I’ve lived to see games I loved once, like Overwatch, fall victim to an inability to sustain themselves in the long-term. Conversely, some games which came out of the oven wrong like Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) are actually pretty fun after years of updates. In the age of “live service” multiplayer titles, what a game fundamentally is can change from one month to the next; how has Marvel Rivals endured its last few months?
Happily, I can say that the basic feeling of the game remains intact. Heroes still have a lot of personality both in how they play and how they interact with the other characters. Season 2’s new heroes are both excellent additions that bring unique gameplay to the table. Emma Frost can shift between her standard and diamond forms to defend the team at mid-range and brawl with aggressive enemies respectively. Her versatility and focus on staying with the team, either to use her barrier to cover a push or to go diamond form to shake backline threats like Spider-Man and Black Panther off of the team, make her just the character the offense-heavy tank roster was looking for.
Ultron surprisingly makes his entrance as the first flying strategist character, using a drone to heal allies. Not unlike Adam Warlock, though, he trades some healing capability for firepower. His beam can swat away other fliers, and his healing operating on a deploy-and-forget function lets him focus more on dishing out damage even if he can’t usually provide big bursts of health like more dedicated healers can. His ultimate, which fires explosions that hurt enemies and heal allies, stands out among the mass of healers whose ults boil down to keeping everyone around them near-invincible for a little while.
Ultron’s unique characteristics are promising compared to other strategists, a class which generally doesn’t feel as diverse as it should. Those samey ults in particular bother me, especially since Rocket Raccoon had his damage boost reworked to function similarly to that halfway through last season. I maintain that, even if Rocket is better now than he used to be, I don’t enjoy him nearly as much as I did when he was more mobile and worse at providing major burst healing. While the community tends to find off-healers like Ultron useless in comparison to more focused healers like Luna Snow, they bring a lot of interesting things to the table that help in certain team compositions; homogenizing the role is not the solution as far as fun is concerned.
Speaking of which, I think my biggest problem with the current season comes down to balance decisions. In my review, I mentioned that I hoped “seasonal bonuses” for certain characters that improved their stats per-season would be scrapped. This is actually a byproduct of these characters acting as an “anchor” for another character’s team-up; the other character gets a unique ability when the anchor is on their team, while the anchor just gets a stat buff all the time. This is meant to compensate for the anchor not getting anything mechanically interesting out of the team-up. In practice, this is just a wrench that gets thrown in a character’s balance. Captain America has had his base health reduced twice this season because, with his new team-up bonus with Bucky, he had way too much health. Thor, meanwhile, lost his anchor bonus this season but just had his base HP raised to compensate for most of the loss. See how this is kind of farcical?
In the future, I think NetEase should not only scrap anchor bonuses, but widely rework team-ups so that both members get something interesting out of the deal. Some team-ups like this already exist, such as Peni and Rocket’s team-up. Peni gets a second nest to work with to cover more ground with spider-bots, and Rocket’s deployable B.R.B. now also spawns a web and even more spider-bots. They work very well together this season, and both characters get something out of the deal. Designing more team-ups like this would not only stabilize the roster’s stats, but lead to a wider variety of fun interactions for everyone. Balance doesn’t always have to be boring.
Even outside of team-ups, though, I think the balance patches are taking a bit of a questionable direction. A problem Overwatch had from the start was that its patches didn’t feel like it was bringing the game closer to an equilibrium, but just changing what was dominant to something else. I see shades of that with this patch, where “dive” characters - those that jump deep behind enemy lines to pick off vulnerable targets - saw nerfs and ranged specialists got buffs. Even characters who have been very strong for the whole life of the game, namely Hela and Hawkeye, saw some buffs. Generally, the latest balance patch doesn’t feel like it’s addressing real problems or evening things out like it should. Dive wasn’t even that strong at high levels of play, but Hela and Hawkeye definitely were; it seems like NetEase is balancing for bad players sometimes.
There are some smart changes, like increasing the range of Emma’s beam in standard form while slightly toning down her powerful Carbon Crush ability, but most of it had me scratching my head. Thor has bizarrely been reworked to make getting into his Awakening mode repeatedly easier; this is a mode Thor players only used sparingly, and the brawl playstyle the character thrived with was essentially killed in the process. The developers talked about this change like it was something to be excited about, but I haven’t seen a single Thor player with anything good to say about this. Flying characters are popular now with the addition of Ultron, so the problem of tanks being nearly helpless against them is exacerbated. The Thing didn’t receive any nerfs, but he’s a hell of a lot less popular now than he was before due to the nerfs to dive - which he counters - and his weakness to fliers. Dive had it’s day; now it’s ranged poking season. This is not really making things more balanced.
Luckily, the game is still fundamentally enjoyable; I can’t honestly say it’s less balanced than it was in the early days, even if I can’t call it more balanced either. I just don’t think the game is going to do well in the long-term if NetEase can’t find a way to let everything have its place in this game. The meta is a fickle thing, though; the way the community tends to respond to things makes it hard to even know just how strong something is. Average players latch on to new trends, causing certain heroes to infest lobbies regardless of their effectiveness in high-level play. It’s a tough problem to solve, but it’s early enough that I think it can be solved. I point these issues out because they indicate a negative trend that I’d like to see course-corrected ASAP, though.
Alright, enough about boring stats. Thematically, this season hasn’t missed a beat. X-Men fans are eating good with the Hellfire Gala theme. The first new map, Krakoa, has a resplendent natural aesthetic with a fantastical flair. The portals which allow quicker treks back to the point during the latter half of a round are a convenient touch. Domination (King of the Hill, essentially) has the most controversial maps in this game, but luckily Krakoa is one of the better maps for this mode. The second new map, the Ultron-infested Arakko, features tight hallways of cold steel in stark contrast to Krakoa. The homogenous robo-aesthetic makes sense thematically, but also makes the map really hard to navigate your first time around. It’s also tough to tell what walls you can and can’t destroy at a glance, though there is a slight difference. Some of the worst maps, like Yggsgard Domination, have also been removed from the Competitive mode rotation this season, with later seasons set to shuffle the competitive rotation around again. One of my biggest issues with the early days of this game was the fact that it only had a few maps, some of which were just plain bad, so I’m glad that we’re not only getting more maps but that they’re generally good.
As with all free-to-play games, the cosmetic mill keeps on churning. NetEase puts out two new high-quality character skins a week, which is a testament to the size of their staff, the kinds of insane conditions they’re working under, or both. They’ve put a lot of effort into classy outfits for many of the Hellfire Gala’s attendees like Cloak and Dagger and Captain America. On the flipside, other outfits show the Ultron Virus mechanizing characters like Hawkeye and Magneto. Beyond original outfits, NetEase also recently added Wolverine’s iconic Weapon X design, clunky headset and all, and is currently rolling out the much-requested Future Foundation outfits for Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, The Thing, and Spider-Man. I think NetEase has a good sense for making cool cosmetics, though I think the game does generally have a somewhat over-designed feeling familiar in the realm of video games. They seem obsessed in particular with adding glowing accents to everything, which I find mutes the iconic black-and-white contrast of the Future Foundation outfits, for example. Once again, I still wish that a skin, emote, and MVP animation could be earned through each hero’s proficiency track. This would be the perfect place to dole out classic comic designs.
NetEase has also promised to increase the rate at which new seasons release. Seasons will now be split into two month-long halves, whereas seasons one and two were both twelve weeks. This means one new character every month and an even faster rollout of new maps and lore as well. Oddly, it seems like this is in response to how fast gamers can get bored of a game without a steady stream of new content. As shallow as that may be - the fun of a game doesn’t just come from having shiny new things - it is the sort of thing free games like this need to do to survive. NetEase has also introduced even more ways to get cosmetics, including the new “combat chest” which is essentially a second whole battle pass on top of the normal battle passes which have been in the game since launch. I can’t help but worry that promising more frequent everything isn’t going to leave enough time for the things they’re pushing out to be good, but only time will tell. If they can handle such a fast pace, well, that just means I won’t be waiting as long for War Machine, which is nice.
I mean, think about it. The tank roster could really use someone who can fight from the air. Who better than Rhodey to fill the gap? But I digress.
All in all, Marvel Rivals is doing a solid job keeping things alive. I’m not really a fan of how much pressure games feel these days to constantly have something new to jingle in players’ faces, but I’ve hardly seen any games handle that kind of pressure as well as this one does. The future promises more everything even faster than it was coming before, and if NetEase can keep a steady head on its shoulders, I’m excited for what comes next. Multiplayer games seem to be constantly fighting to be the only game on any given player’s mind; I don’t want this game to consume my life, but I sure do want to have it in the rotation with my friends for a long time to come. I’d be very sad to see it fall by the wayside like Overwatch before it, but I can’t really say we’re out of the woods yet.