Marvel Rivals’ Most Impressive Feature Might Actually Be Its Worst

It isn’t long until Marvel Rivals‘ launch, and there is a lot of excitement around this particular hero shooter, especially after its successful closed beta playtest. Thanks to the power of the Marvel universe and a mighty budget, it looks to be the first hero shooter to actually challenge Overwatch‘s monopoly on the genre, with stylish visuals, chaotically fun gameplay, and a wealth of popular characters. Something that will help the game move forward is its free-to-play model and how almost everything, besides cosmetics, is completely free to use, going away from the MOBA style model.

Recently, via YouTube, Marvel Rivals has released a content roadmap, revealing what players can expect from the full release on December 6, and there is a lot to enjoy. There are eight maps for both Quick Match and Competitive play, a new Practice Range, a Conquest Map, and thirty-three characters at launch. The closed beta began with an impressive twenty-one characters, with Thor and Jeff the Land Shark being added during the beta to bring the roster to twenty-three characters total, and even this was a big collection of characters for a hero shooter.

Marvel Rivals Has A Ton of Heroes

Not All Of Them Have Been Announced Yet

As of writing, thirty-three characters have been announced, with Moon Knight being one of the latest characters to join the colorful roster. Thanks to the expressive artstyle, the characters often maintain their classic, Marvel designs in spirit, while looking unique, especially compared to their live action appearances. So far, the characters are all fun to play, fit into the different roles well and all have great designs. There’s no reason why this roster is going to stay at thirty-three characters either.

With the Marvel universe as a setting, as well as a hint of multiverses with both a Spiderverse map and two Doctor Dooms from different timelines, there is a wealth of characters that are yet to be announced to the roster. It will likely continue to swell as time goes on, and if the game does as well as many think it will, becoming not only a rival to Overwatch but its usurper, a League of Legends-sized roster might not be too far off. There are enough Marvel characters to do this, from the famous to the obscure.

Interestingly, there are some major omissions thus far in Marvel Rivals‘ roster, despite its size. Of course, a few are yet to be announced, but some of Marvel‘s most famous heroes, like Wolverine, Deadpool, any member of The Fantastic Four, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and many more aren’t in the roster yet, but if Rivals does well, it wouldn’t be surprising to see all of these characters join the cast, eventually. As the roster continues to grow, however, balance will be a problem going forward, especially if the characters are released quickly.

Balancing A Huge Roster Is Way Harder

Overwatch Found This Out The Hard Way

For context, Overwatch 1 launched with twenty-one characters and was reasonably well-balanced at launch. This balance went out the window as more characters were added, leading to the infamous GOATS comp. GOATS comp omitted DPS, running three supports and tanks, becoming so dominant in competitive play that the DPS role became useless. Overwatch then added role queue to try to fix this, but by then, the balance of the game had been irreversibly damaged because of its still growing roster.

With Marvel Rivals launching with a massive roster of thirty-three that eclipses Overwatch‘s launch roster of twenty-one, balance could be a problem at launch, let alone later on, as the game continues to grow. Although the closed beta can be excused due to not being the final product, it had some balancing issues that need to be addressed before the full launch. Marvel Rivals will launch with a competitive mode, and although it is an impossible task, any competitive game massively benefits from adequate balance.

Another hero shooter that has enjoyed prolonged success is Team Fortress 2, with the series being famous for starting the genre. TF2 has nine classes, has a relatively small roster for a modern hero shooter, and doesn’t get much attention at all from Valve, yet it still has some balancing issues. Having a balanced hero shooter experience will help Marvel Rivals shine in a genre known for having poor balance, but that becomes more difficult as the roster gets bigger, and Rivals is starting very big compared to many of its competitors.

How Marvel Rivals Can Avoid Past Hero Shooter Mistakes

Catering To The Many Over The Few Will Certainly Help

As long as Marvel Rivals receives continual updates from NetEase games, it will largely avoid the issues of Team Fortress 2, since a lot of its balancing issues can be attributed to negligence from Valve. It also has the budget and creativity behind it to eclipse many other free-to-play hero shooters by default, such as Paladins and Pixel Gun 3D, along with one of the biggest IPs in the world to maintain interest. If the game is as fun as the playtest suggests, Marvel Rivals will kick off, but maintaining popularity will be the hard part.

Related

10 Characters Marvel Rivals Must Include In Post-Launch Updates

Coming from a franchise with so many beloved characters, Marvel Rivals has at least 10 more unconfirmed heroes that should be added post-launch.

One of the problems that Overwatch had, which Marvel Rivals can avoid, is an over-catering towards the ESports side of the sport. Blizzard pushed Overwatch‘s ESport hard with the now defunct Overwatch League, and the balance of the game began to cater toward the highest level of play, rather than the recreational level where most of the playerbase is. As long as Marvel Rivals caters its balance toward the many rather than the few, who play at a completely different level, and properly tests new heroes, it can avoid this issue.

Unfortunately, balance with a game as expressive and chaotic as Marvel Rivals, especially in the hero shooter genre, is a lot easier said than done. Even with its resources, Blizzard couldn’t properly balance its groundbreaking hero shooter and, ultimately, retreated back to a launch version of the game with Overwatch 2 Classic. With the roster that the game will boast at launch, and what it will grow into, Marvel Rivals will have an extremely difficult task in keeping itself balanced, but if it manages to do this, then it could see itself standing on top of the hero shooter genre.

Source: Marvel Rivals/YouTube

Third-Person Shooter

Action

Multiplayer

Released

December 6, 2024

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer , Online Co-Op

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

ESRB

T For Teen // Violence

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