{"id":7536,"date":"2024-08-30T23:00:16","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T23:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/?p=7536"},"modified":"2024-09-02T20:27:45","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T20:27:45","slug":"marvel-rivals-has-won-the-popular-vote-but-can-it-stick-the-landing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/30\/marvel-rivals-has-won-the-popular-vote-but-can-it-stick-the-landing\/","title":{"rendered":"Marvel Rivals has won the popular vote, but can it stick the landing?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dread it or run from it, but hero shooters arrive all the same. The framework popularized by Team Fortress 2<\/em> has come to dominate competitive multiplayer over the past decade, from Siege<\/em> to Apex Legends<\/em>, Valorant<\/em>, Overwatch, and, most recently, Valve\u2019s experimental MOBA shooter Deadlock<\/em>, which has already cleared 100,000 concurrent players in closed beta.<\/p>\n

Marvel Rivals<\/em> is the latest free-to-play effort trying to break into this challenging, saturated market, but the gambit it\u2019s proposing is hard to ignore. When it drops on Dec. 6, Marvel Rivals<\/em> will feature at least 25 superheroes and villains, all unlocked and playable at launch and beyond. So even if you\u2019re not an early adopter and your friends eventually convince you to play it in mid-2025, you\u2019ll have the same level of access as the rest of the player base, including whichever supes are added to the game by that point.<\/p>\n

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Check out Polygon\u2019s\u00a0Gamescom 2024 hub page<\/a>\u00a0for all our coverage of the world\u2019s biggest games event.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When I sat down to speak to a trio of developers from the Marvel Rivals<\/em> team at Gamescom, it became clear that the team is feeling reassured by the reaction to recent playtests. \u201cWhat was most surprising is that players were asking for another beta\u2026 during the beta,\u201d laughed Marvel executive producer Danny Koo. \u201cWe expected a certain number, but in closed alpha and beta, we exceeded it by, like, a hundredfold. This gave us confidence afterwards, and we looked at the analytics from it, and hence, we announced the release date.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game director Thaddeus Sasser chimed in to add that the Marvel Rivals<\/em> Discord channel cleared 350,000 members. So, a breakfast of statistics consumed, it\u2019s safe to say that Marvel Rivals<\/em> has won the popular vote \u2014 but beyond the stopping power of its behemoth license, can it get (and keep) a seat at the table with other competitive hero shooter stalwarts?<\/p>\n

In the days leading up to my appointment, the shorthand of \u201cthat Marvel Overwatch game\u201d had already been formalized among my fellow journalists \u2014 and with good reason. Marvel Rivals<\/em> looks a lot like Blizzard\u2019s genre-defining hero shooter, down to the typography and user interface effects as you delete another player\u2019s health bar. It plays similarly, too, with plenty of analogous abilities and escort-focused objective play that makes it easy to interpret for genre-seasoned players.<\/p>\n

I had a surprising amount of fun learning Scarlet Witch, a glass cannon duelist who can fly around the battlefield and launch projectiles at typically grounded opposition. Her ultimate, Reality Erasure, is more than capable of a team wipe if deployed with care. It\u2019s an area-of-effect blast similar to D.Va\u2019s Self-Destruct, but it emanates from Scarlet Witch\u2019s body, meaning you\u2019ll need teammates to protect your run-in for a devastating gank. The only concern is readability. The game can get visually busy, especially with the third-person perspective and chaotic blur of team fight ability effects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You can feel Marvel Rivals<\/em> trying to provide every clippable moment a player could ever want from a hero shooter, but bolstering individual agency within that maelstrom is no small task. Balance will undoubtedly be an issue as NetEase throws more ambitious characters into an already complicated \u201canything goes\u201d roster. Another facet to think about here will be the rotating team-up abilities, a concept unique to Marvel Rivals<\/em>, where specific compositions of characters unlock new passive and active skills in combat. \u201cEvery season, we have the notion of who can team up with who, with bonuses,\u201d said Koo.<\/p>\n

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