Marvel Rivals is officially a year old and has taken the world by storm. NetEase's PvP hero shooter just released its 6th season and newest character, the game-breaking, triple role, Deadpool, and has cemented itself in both the competitive and casual spaces as a standout title with little to no barrier to entry, engaging gameplay, and unique and interesting characters and lore that builds off its source material in a way that honors it.
But then, why does reception seem so sour?
While the overall reception to the game is positive, a large crowd seems very against it for one reason or another. The gameplay and characters are too complicated and stiff; the game and its developers aren't listening to the players or are "ruining" the game, or saying outright that there are better games out there that deserve more of your time. While I believe that preference is subjective and not everyone has to enjoy the same things, I feel as if a lot of the flak is undeserved and very hypercritical. It's not what you're used to, sure, but maybe that's a good thing.
Characters and Gameplay -
Despite glowing reviews, some of the biggest complaints I've seen for the game are over the gameplay and the characters. Marvel Rivals now has 46 different playable characters, starting with an admittedly overwhelming 33 at launch. They also introduced a difficulty system and Teamup feature for certain characters. This can leave players feeling overwhelmed and frustrated trying to choose who to play, and the Teamups specifically can leave players forced into a certain role or character to balance the team out, rather than playing who they like for fun, and risking icing out the more casual crowd, but Marvel Rivals has solutions for this.
The difficulty setting, for example, is there to help players decide who they want to try to learn. It makes players new to Hero Shooters, or Online PvP in general, feel more comfortable by starting on an easy character like Jeff the Shark or Iron Man, while also showcasing combos and higher risk, higher reward styles for characters like Rogue and Spider-Man. It also helps to make the large number of characters easier to split up into difficulty and skill levels. The Teamups as well keep combat fresh by enhancing characters and promoting team synergy, especially if you're playing with random fills rather than a full team. You also don't need to play with a Teamup if you don't want to. If you were to see only those complaints online without having played the game yourself, you would think it's a necessary mechanic. I've won plenty of games where we've all played what we wanted, so it's not like they're limiting the gameplay, but they're there if you want to play around that specific character composition. It helps to add another layer of strategy before the match starts.
Another issue is that fans are bored with the stale map design and gamemodes standard in other Hero Shooters, like escorting the payload and capturing the point. And while I do understand this, the well of ideas is, unfortunately, not bottomless. Plenty of games use the same mechanics, but they all use them in very different and unique ways to maintain interest. In Rivals' case, they make it feel fresh and exciting with the maps themselves. Not only are they interesting locations from the Marvel Comics canon, but the maps are also fully destructible. It's a unique mechanic, allowing you and your team to adapt by literally breaking the game to your advantage.
Community & Development -
Marvel Rivals is a game that I would consider very in touch with its player base. It is a live service game with frequent updates that feature new events, skins, character balancing, and bug fixes. While these are standard for the genre, what helps to set Rivals apart is the way they go about introducing them.
Live service titles are very demanding for developers. As such, some titles can easily fall victim to cutting corners or focusing more on short-term monetization and temporary fixes for long-term problems, as long as they can keep numbers up. As Jacob Butler puts it in his SMU Journal article, these types of games are designed to monopolize your time and keep you hooked on their titles as much as possible. They also tend to force battlepasses and cosmetics in your face to help earn a profit, since a majority of hero shooters are free-to-play. While Marvel Rivals is not exempt from this, they are keenly aware of it, and NetEase is putting all its power into making the game an enjoyable experience for its players despite these pitfalls. For one, the battlepass and store are not as front and center as in other games. Yes, they do have locked and time-limited cosmetics, but Marvel Rivals takes focus off it rather than centralizing on it, allowing players who want to purchase it do so out of natural desire, rather than letting their FOMO/fear of missing out get the better of them.
NetEase also uploads frequent "Dev Visions" to their YouTube Channel, featuring changes and updates to the game, whether it be about new characters, the latest seasons, or even removing features entirely. The videos typically feature the game's lead combat designer, Zhiyong, or the creative director, Guangyun "Guangguang" Chen, explaining the newest features to the players, very reminiscent of Jeff Kaplan in the early days of Overwatch 1. While this is not an unusual way for live service games to get information out to their players, it feels more grounded, going section by section to easily explain what changed, why it changed, and what players can expect in the future. Rivals is player experience first and game second, and it's to their benefit.
The Overwatch Problem -
The biggest thing I've seen discussed online is how Marvel Rivals stands up to Overwatch 2, with many online opinions claiming that Overwatch is the better of the two games, and I was one of them, for a while. I had played Overwatch 1 competitively, reaching Diamond rank on support, and jumped ship to Overwatch 2 as soon as it became available. However, Overwatch has been slowly declining in quality over time.
Back during the game's announcement, Blizzard made the baffling decision to turn the popular 6v6 format to 5v5, outraging several players, myself included. The game was also unplayable on launch, no thanks to two separate DDoS attacks on Blizzard servers. Launch day difficulties aside, the game just became frustrating to play. From the number of hackers flooding the matches to the impossible team synergy if you weren't playing with a full team of people you knew, and the false promises Blizzard made (PvE being cancelled, for example, although for good reason). I was scared to stop playing, even despite these problems, because of both the sunk cost fallacy, since I had been playing the game since 2020, almost nonstop, and the fear that I would never be able to find another game like it.
I know it seems like I'm treating Overwatch rather harshly after I denounced people for treating Marvel Rivals the same way earlier in this piece, and I'll accept that criticism. Comparison is a killer for a lot of titles, after all. Both games have their pros and cons, but I believe that if we stacked both games against each other, Marvel Rivals easily takes the cake for being able to keep up with the changing tides and maintaining a long-term player base with their balance updates and community-focused development. Overwatch, despite its time in the spotlight, is not the same game it used to be, and there are better options. Despite my personal feelings, Overwatch is still one of the standout titles in the genre and made amazing strides, allowing other games to succeed where it did first. Both of these points can be correct, and we don't need to drag games down to prove either one.
Final Thoughts -
Marvel Rivals does its best to set itself apart from the other live service hero shooters, a genre that currently feels oversaturated and flooded with constant updates to hold your focus and take up as much space as possible on your external hard drives. It does its best to focus on its players first, balancing the gameplay and characters around their comfort and promoting strategy and synergy. And while games will always have their haters and critics, I hope I was able to at least give you a bit of perspective on what makes this game so enticing to players.
I only picked it up again myself after a close friend wanted to learn how to play before Deadpool's release, and even if the game frustrates me or the flaws rear their ugly head from time to time, the time spent with my friends, having mindless fun for hours, makes it all seem worth it in the end.