Marvel Rivals has all the potential in the world to be one of the biggest and most popular shooters on the market, but only if it can avoid big mistakes made by its contemporaries.
Any time a new game enters the live service sector, there’s an air of apprehension surrounding it, but it remains a popular design framework: In 2024 alone, we’ve welcomed Skull and Bones, Kill the Justice League, Foamstars, and Helldivers 2, with plenty more to come.
Marvel Rivals faces truly stiff competition in the form of Call of Duty, Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Overwatch 2—more on that later—and if it wants to stick around and remain popular two or three years from now, there are some key takeaways it will need to bear in mind from all the previous backlash.
6 things Marvel Rivals needs to avoid to succeed
Lack of communication
It really doesn’t take much effort to be transparent with the thousands, maybe millions of players, taking time out of their lives to play your game. A quick social message every couple of days or posts on Reddit—it can’t be hard. I’ve seen Call of Duty and Overwatch fall afoul of this practice by leaving its players in the dark and not communicating issues and discussing community concerns, leading to greater dissension.
If Marvel wants to take a page out of someone’s book, look no further than Multiversus director Tony Huynh who was chatting with players on a daily basis during its open beta. Tekken 8 Katsuhiro Harada is also open to all suggestions and feedback regarding Tekken 8 to make it the best fighting game it can be.
Stupidly expensive skins
This varies from game to game, and I understand microtransactions are sadly never going to go away, but the dialogue for an online game should be about its gameplay and how fun it is—not about its $20-30 and bundles. I’m already getting itchy skin thinking about the number of bills that will need to be dropped just to give Tony Stark a basic color palette swap.
Marvel makes enough money, surely? Give players reasonable bundles and healthy prices for those who want to splash the cash, and you are sure to keep players coming back to the online store. No one wants to waste their month’s budget on a skin, knowing full well they will because they love Marvel.
Slow drip-feed of content
It’s so rare a live service title manages to retain a large portion of its player base. Unless the gameplay loop is unmatched, you need to use smoke and mirrors to maintain player retention. How do you do this? New maps, new game modes, new characters, new items, new events, new weapons.
Live service seasons last anywhere between six weeks and three months, and if the core mechanics have bugs or inconsistencies, then players need other reasons to wade through them over and over again. I can’t tell you how often I’ve gravitated away from a game because I’ve gotten bored while stalwarts like Rocket League and Counter-Strike constantly boast big player counts due to the efficiency and entertainment of their near-perfect gameplay.
The Overwatch 2 comparison sticking
Right now, the Overwatch resemblance and inspiration will be impossible to shake—and will likely remain for a while. But like Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy did following the disastrous Batman & Robin, you can eventually craft and cultivate something that distances and elevates itself above previous works.
Marvel Rivals is currently seen as an Overwatch clone—and that’s a cold, hard truth. But, if Marvel puts the works in and innovates in ways Overwatch can never dream of, then it can be known as more than just an imitation.
Promises you can’t deliver
Staying on the subject, the worst thing a company can do is offer promises and then drop the idea as Thanos did to Gamora. 2023’s Overwatch 2 story controversy speaks volumes about how not to go about future content. One of the biggest justifications for Overwatch 2 was story content that would flesh out the franchise’s lore and allow us to learn even more about our favorite heroes.
We were promised skill trees and fully-fledged missions courtesy of a proper PvE mode. Fast-forward to 2023, and the Invasion PvE mission drop was three short missions, pricey ones at that, and it was a shadow, no, a mouse-sized silhouette of what Blizzard originally outlined. Bitterness is still rife in the OW community about this, and it’s a lesson Marvel needs to learn from.
OP heroes
I can’t imagine how difficult it must be trying to balance an entire meta, making sure to keep things competitive but also making sure there are enough fun reasons to use different characters. It’s an issue as old as time itself, which I’m sure Doctor Strange understands, and perhaps one that can’t be escaped.
But this point ties in directly to “lack of communication.” If Spider-Man is able to stun lock an entire team and wipe them out in a couple of easy moves, whereas Rocket Raccoon needs to unleash the full extent of his arsenal for a few seconds and does half damage to one opponent, then there’s a problem. If this happens, tell players it’s being looked at and assure fans an appropriate tweak is coming for either Spiderman, Rocket Raccoon, or both. An unstable meta is no fun for anyone.
Pay-to-win elements
Skins that unintentionally help you blend into the background and new weapons or attacks that are more powerful than the base gear are examples that have occurred across many of the world’s most beloved live-service titles. The Warzone Roze skin and locking new Overwatch heroes behind paywalls spring to mind.
Microtransactions should be purely cosmetic and nothing more, and they should never give you any advantage over players unwilling to pay.
Marvel Rivals arrives several years after many of the leading live-service titles have established themselves and made mistakes. It could be time for a newcomer to enter the fray. Can it become the live-service hero we didn’t know we needed? The closed alpha test will be the first real measure of the game’s potential.
