So…I am part of the closed alpha test and I have a few thoughts. The main takeaway so far is that Marvel Rivals is sort of in the same genre as Overwatch - a team-based hero shooter. Heroes are diverse, have abilities on cooldown, ultimates, passives. Graphics and music are very good for this early stage of development, but there are some technical issues with the servers as well as overall performance.
Without further ado, key takeaways and Team 4 if you’re reading this please take notes:
Heroes have a per-hero passive specific only to that hero, as well as a passive that requires you to combine your powers with those of a compatible hero. Very cool concept, definitely more thoughtful that the blanket passives in Overwatch which IMHO need to be cut out of the game and designed per-hero to give every character a fair shot at being able to make plays.
There’s no sustain in this game, by that I mean characters that are out of position or at great risk trying to make a play can be punished and killed. This makes Marvel Rivals feel fluid, and it allows you to feel like you can have some impact instead of waiting for someone to just use a specific cooldown in order to act. It does lead to more chaos, but that chaos is fun and I personally don’t feel bad when I lose the fight. In Overwatch I feel like I’m being punished by design and I have to just accept that things don’t die unless we use a debuff or two debuff abilities to make things killable.
There is some CC in Marvel Rivals, but it lasts so little that you don’t feel completely powerless. You’re rarely in a situation where chain CC usage makes your life miserable, and to even get in a position to be chain CC’ed you really need to throw yourself at the entire enemy team with no plan. By comparison, Overwatch makes CC feel really really unfun and on top of that forces you to switch heroes instead of allowing you to play around a hero’s disadvantages through timing, avoiding or baiting abilities, etc… The implementation in Marvel Rivals isn’t perfect, but at least it doesn’t erode your ability to have fun in a way that makes you stressed. Games are about having fun, rewarding experiences where you can hone your skills without constant stress that this counters that, or that you have to wait forever for that tiny window of opportunity. You can make tiny windows of opportunity at any time through your decision making. Player agency, something that Blizzard promised on multiple occasions while with each patch delivering a blow to player agency. All the purported fixes they’ve tossed at the game are just restricting the fun of many for the fun of the few. It should be the other way around, so that the majority of heroes is playable in a variety of situations.
6v6, no role lock. Absolutely amazing, but depending on heroes chosen by you and your teammates this can greatly increase the difficulty of winning fights or coordinating around engages and disengages.
Queue times. OMG, in a game with a few thousand players (5.1K at the time I’m writing this) the queues are short. You spend more time playing than in queue, and Quickplay is exactly that: quick games, lots of fun, even though you might lose quite a few matches based on the randomness of it all.
No explicit leaver penalties. Instead, there’s a badge of honor that establishes how “reliable” you are in completing your games even when things are rough. This is good game design, as it’s implied that you want to do onto others as you’d want others to do for you. So don’t be a leaver, stick with your team and the more people think that way, the better as fewer leavers means a better experience in general for everyone. The badge resets every season, except in one case: if you are a chronic leaver, you’ll taint yourself for one season until you demonstrate a change in your behavior. And…don’t quote me on this but the matchmaker will take that badge into consideration and you’ll gradually be matched more and more with people just like you. Are you a player that respects others’ time? Good, the matchmaker will ensure you get the long end of the stick. Are you the one that leaves after one fight or sits in spawn angry and flaming your team? You’ll soon get a taste of your own medicine, and hopefully you’ll change your behavior.
Chat is recorded, but there’s nothing clear on how you’re punished when being toxic. You can also report people for toxicity or cheating and all of that, but we’ll have to wait and see what that translates into for the offenders getting reported. I assume it’ll be an automated system, as the era of human moderation is at an end.
Map design. There aren’t many maps and that’s a given for a closed alpha, but oh boy are they good. Destructible environments, way better than Overwatch. Easy to navigate, although spawn points really need more work. I’ve seen spawn camping in Marvel Rivals, and it ain’t pretty. So far I’ve been the one doing the spawn camping, but I’ll say I don’t think the enemies were happy to not make it to 10 meters away from spawn without getting lasered.
Not one singular player said “diff” or “gg ez”. I’ve seen one player laugh at the fact that a teammate was 1 and 5. But the rest of us were 20-30 kills to 1 death each so it was fine. I really hope there will be less toxicity than Overwatch but to those at Team 4, do note this down: bad game design will almost inevitably amplify toxicity. There’s no better weapon than prevention, so the focus should be on improving game design so that toxicity is at natural levels instead of amplified 5x because of game design by commitee where no one actually plays the game outside of work assignments. Jared, if you’re reading this, the fact that you said in that interview that you don’t trust your company’s ranked system and that you don’t play competitive for fear of going stressed to bed…Look, you’re supposed to listen to your players and make the game fun. If you don’t believe in your own product, why should gamers?
Visibility. As we all know, Overwatch can get pretty chaotic and during intese fights with lots of abilities your ability to track what’s going on and who’s where is diminished. It’s not something that can be completely solved, but you can make it so that you don’t spin your head trying to assess the situation at hand. Lots of effects blowing up on your screen at once is almost as much a problem in Marvel Rivals, but you can tone down said effects to where it’s quite easy to see through the chaos and be able to make plays even when things look like a hurricane is about to sweep your entire team.
Hero kits. Each hero has a complex kit but some are easier to pick up than others and the game does show you what the devs think is the difficulty of playing a particular character you’re looking at. The abilities are explained to you via a separate screen, and you’ll find familiar design cues from heroes in Overwatch throughout the Marvel Rivals hero roster. I’ve yet to try them all, but one thing I’ve noticed is that easier heroes are not the best, at least not for every situation. In Overwatch a lot of the easier heroes have such a huge impact you are left wondering “why bother learning this difficult character if there’s no reward unless you play perfectly and even then you can just lose by virtue of game design”.
Third-person perspective. It’s not as bad as I imagined, and I do have experience in playing in this mode.
Hitboxes. I don’t have a complete image but they seem similar to what Overwatch had before Team 4 decided to make misses hits and vice-versa. I’d say they’re fair for this type of game, it’s not all about the aim so you don’t need to be pixel-perfect.
Countering. Well, the heroes have strengths and weaknesses, and the game does tell you to be mindful of what character you pick. So far I don’t feel like there’s any clear hard counters, but it’s too early to tell.
Fun factor. The game does feel fresh and fun to play, and not for one second did I feel like losses were some curse from the Gamer Gods. You get challenges, dailies, weeklies, seasonal. There will be events where you can earn special rewards, though you can also grind for a lot of the cosmetics by simply playing the game. This is an alpha, so some features may be missing, but I do hope they don’t do any FOMO as that just isn’t pro-consumer. Wet dream, I know, but maybe there’s hope for a game that breaks the mold.
I have more thoughts on Marvel Rivals but I want to say this: it’s not an Overwatch clone. It does, however, have the potential to steal some thunder from Overwatch as there’s enough overlap in its design. I’ll also say this: it’s a game that will significantly impact my engagement with Overwatch. The current stewards at Team 4 aren’t really doing enough to address the game and they’re just doing the bare minimum to keep it alive. Marvel Rivals is without a shred of doubt on Team 4’s radar, and I do think it’ll provide enough of an incentive for some real changes to Overwatch and a potential return to greatness. It’s either that or Overwatch will just become a relic like Team Fortress, full of aimbots and broken in so many ways that it’s better left alone and not touched ever again.
Will return with more thoughts next week. And Team 4, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re cooking something because I honestly think you can do a lot better than just patching a corpse of a game so it sells a few more battle passes and skins here and there. Overwatch can have a future, one where it can have a competitive scene bigger than ever before, but it needs some serious TLC.
I don’t think there’s that much going on with it, but you never know.
