Craving how playing Overwatch felt for the first time? Then Netease Games has just the thing for you. Marvel Rivals is one of the latest hero-shooter titles that has been slowly but surely taking over and dominating the entire genre. It seems it will continue doing so given that it ticks off every box on the checklist.
The game first came out two months ago in December and became an instant hit, mainly due to the fact that it had already popular heroes and villains as characters in the game. This, combined with polished maps and refined gameplay mechanics, ensured that once the player stepped into the world of Rivals, it was hard to leave again.
Basics of Marvel Rivals: What to expect
Developed by Netease Games, Marvel Rivals, in a nutshell, is a 6v6 fast-paced PvP experience that brings over dozens of heroes and villains from across Marvel’s multiverse, offering unique abilities and skill sets for all of them to be used by the player.
As is with any other multiplayer game, Marvel Rivals is not easy if you don’t coordinate and play with your teammates correctly. There are many diverse roles in the title with different purposes that help decide what strategy your team is going to apply in the spur of the moment; we will be diving more into those later.
Lastly, one of the standout features of Marvel Rivals is its destructible environments, enabling players to destroy the battlefield during the chaos of the combat. Additionally, characters can combine their powers with the help of various team-up abilities.
Marvel Rivals characters and role distribution
As said before, the game has a long list of characters, including both heroes and villains from the Marvel universe that help reel the player in. The list is too long to be read out here, but Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, Doctor Strange, The Hulk, and Thor are just a few of the names out of the many popular faces you will face in the game.
Furthermore, these characters are further divided into three different roles. These are Vanguards (Tanks), Duelists (DPS), and Strategists (Support). These three classes of characters and a balanced pick of characters out of them is what ensures the win for any team in the game.
Vanguards are essentially the ones that tank the main damage and maintain dominance on the site as the team fends off the enemies. Duelists, on the other hand, are those who rush in to create space on the objective area, with strategists usually healing the rest of the team.
Different Marvel Rivals game modes and maps
For now, there are three different core game modes in Marvel Rivals that players get to enjoy in quick play as well as competitive play. These are Domination, Convoy, and Convergence, based on maps such as Yggsgard, Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, Hydra Charteris Base, Tokyo 2099, Empire of Eternal Night, and Klyntar.
Throughout the different game modes, players get to observe different variations of the maps that help better fit with the objective of the ongoing mode. This can be observed on maps like Yggsgard and the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda maps, where the different versions of the same map vary between the domination and the convergence game modes.
Dominance
If you are coming over to Marvel Rivals from another multiplayer title, you will recognize Dominance, or rather the simple concept of the game mode, easily.
In the game mode, played in the best of three format, two teams compete to control a central point on the map, known as the objective area. The match begins with both teams racing to capture this point. If members of both teams occupy the area simultaneously, it becomes contested, stopping capture progress until only one of the teams gains control.
Convoy
In Convoy, the two different teams are assigned to offensive and defensive roles. The attacking team’s objective is to escort a vehicle to its end point within the time limit.
The defender’s objective, on the other hand, will always be to contest the moving convoy and eliminate the attackers to make it go backwards and make sure it does not reach its end point before the time runs down, which would grant an automatic win to the defenders.
Covergence
Convergence is a game mode in Marvel Rivals that can be ultimately called a mix of both dominance and convoy. In the game mode, the attackers will again have to escort a moving convoy to its end point before the time runs out.
However, the difference is that the attacking team will have to capture a mission area first before bringing on the convoy to the map and taking it forward towards completing the objective.
Doom Match and Practice mode
Apart from these core game modes, Marvel Rivals also offers Doom Match as well as a practice range, which, as the name suggests, is a dedicated area built for players to test out heroes and their abilities.
Doom Match, on the other hand, is the latest addition to the game, arriving in the latest Season 1 of the game. It is a free-for-all deathmatch for up to 12 players, where the objective is to eliminate 16 opponents or get the most of them before time runs out.
Marvel Rivals and its constant struggle with EOMM
Unfortunately, Rivals is not all sunshine and rainbows that it seems from the outside. Dropping in for the first time, the dopamine hit the player gets from playing the game is enough to have them stick around for another match or two, and that’s where the EOMM trap sets in.
For those who are clueless, EOMM stands for Engagement Optimized Match Making, and it practically rigs your matches, deciding synthetically which ones you are going to win and the ones that you are not with the involvement of in-game bots.
This practice is essentially done to get the player hooked to the game and even works on delivering an excellent experience in the first few hours, so a game like Marvel Rivals would seem worthy enough for the gamer to invest in and buy skins for the long term.
What more could Netease Games do with future seasons, characters, and game modes?
There is essentially an endless list of things that Netease Games can do in the future with Marvel Rivals. The game is just in its first season, and if the studio plays its cards right, it can stick around for way longer than Overwatch did.
Collaborating with Marvel was like the ultimate cheat code for the studio, as it grants them access to the biggest portfolio of supernatural characters in the world to choose from. It also further grants them the ability to make use of iconic moments from the MCU and make them into playable experiences for the players.
Overall, while the game has just been out for 2 months, it has blown up way out of proportion, but at the same time, it is managing to hold its player base tightly knit. It still has a long way to go, but it can undoubtedly become the best hero-shooter of all time if Netease is able to maintain the pace at which the game is growing right now.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
