It’s inconceivable to speak about Marvel Rivals with out speaking about Overwatch; the 2 hero shooters share a number of the identical DNA, and the workforce at NetEase clearly appeared on the wildly in style FPS and cribbed just a few notes. Now that Marvel Rivals is a profitable sport in its personal proper, attracting its personal fan base, among the previous arguments that plagued Overwatch are recurring — and plenty of gamers are hoping that this time, issues will end up otherwise.
Take, as an example, the sport’s three roles. There are the high-damage Duelists, team-defending Vanguards, and supportive Strategists. A standard, and admittedly aggravating, problem is to load right into a sport solely to have everybody instantly lock in Duelists. Vanguards and Strategists merely aren’t as in style, perhaps as a result of it’s tougher to get a cool quadra-kill with their skills.
If you happen to performed Overwatch again in 2016, this in all probability sounds very acquainted. Gamers from that period bear in mind watching their teammates lock in as Hanzo and Widowmaker, leaving them to reluctantly play as a tank or healer. I bear in mind enjoying Mercy for a lot of video games in a row, hoping within the subsequent sport one in all my teammates would acknowledge my despair and let me lastly play Pharah. They by no means did, as a result of random avid gamers on-line are hardly ever identified for his or her charity.
Overwatch solved this downside in 2019 with position queue; gamers would go right into a sport realizing every workforce needed to have a sure lineup of tanks, healers, or harm characters. If you happen to performed one of many much less in style roles, you’d even get additional rewards. Blizzard additionally spent a number of time tweaking Overwatch’s stability to suit into this construction, with characters receiving stability adjustments and even full reworks to ensure they match into the squad. With Overwatch 2, Blizzard even eliminated an individual from every workforce, turning the 6v6 sport right into a 5v5 as a substitute.
Marvel Rivals doesn’t have a task queue system, neither is it as stringently balanced as Overwatch. Characters like Jeff the Land Shark, whereas they’re potent healers, are additionally in a position to pull off game-changing skills like pulling your entire enemy workforce into their maw and spitting them off the sting of the map. Because of this whereas queuing up, you may run right into a workforce filled with Strategists, or a workforce with a heavy Vanguard entrance line defending only one or two Duelists.
Proper now, Marvel Rivals permits for such flexibility and freedom — and as soon as upon a time, so did Overwatch. One of many elements that led to the addition of position queue was the GOATS meta, named after the workforce that popularized the composition of three tanks, three healers. GOATS dominated high-level Overwatch play for a time, together with professional video games, and it was criticized not only for being irritating to play in opposition to but additionally boring to observe.
However Marvel Rivals isn’t beholden to an expert circuit or aggressive expectations; it’s very a lot a loosey-goosey tackle the style the place most heroes are, in the appropriate fingers, at the least a bit bit damaged. That may be a huge a part of why some followers like the sport a lot; in the event that they wished to play a high-stakes aggressive shooter, they might merely go play one of many current esports-heavy video games in the marketplace.
Nonetheless, the dialog round whether or not position queue is important or must be added continues to be one of many main subjects within the Marvel Rivals group, and it has been for months. The Marvel Rivals devs at NetEase instructed Dot Esports they don’t have any plans so as to add position queue right now, they usually have the prospect to interrupt other than the Overwatch path and push what makes Marvel Rivals so distinctive. Till we discover a approach to persuade all of the Duelist followers on the market to often flex into tanking or therapeutic, it’s possible the controversy will proceed to rage on fan boards and social media.
