Marvel Rivals Wants Esports to "Coexist" With Casual Play
Marvel Rivals is going to have a dedicated approach to esports but won’t risk focusing too much on the competitive side if it is going to hurt the game’s casual experience.
In an interview with Metro, Marvel Rivals director Guangyun “Guangguang” Chen mentioned that the team strives to make the game balanced for players just looking to play for fun, but hopes that the competitive modes can grow and be enjoyed alongside the more casual queues.
“We really hope that when we do the competitive modes or tournaments, they will co-exist with our quick play,” Guangguang said to Metro. “That’s because we’ve been seeing a lot of other successful titles being able to pull off a competitive environment and a quick play environment both healthily at the same time. We’ll be taking a lot of references from them to ultimately let both player pools thrive.”
While Guangguang did not specify additional competitive or esports plans for the game, we already have the baked-in tournament mode that supports Marvel Rivals Championship regional events and Factions. With that, it looks like the team will focus on proper game balance and listening to player feedback to keep both sides of Marvel Rivals thriving.
As such, Guangguang addressed the community’s discussion on role lock, once again reiterating that there are no plans to implement it because the team believes letting players have more freedom leads to “a richer gaming experience for everyone.”
“At its core, it’s really about the game balance. So, what we want to offer is more line-up or more team comp possibilities through our hero design and our team-up mechanic,” Guangguang said. “So, we’ll be taking a little bit more of a Marvel-inspired approach. It’s all about giving the players the freedom to experiment and find their unique strategies, as we’ve seen in many games and streams.
Along with that approach, the team is closely monitoring community feedback and data to analyze and consider changes for future patches. The devs aren’t just going to focus on something like tournament results or quickplay with that data either, and will instead focus on “overall balance data on all the heroes in all the modes” when planning adjustments.
Related Article: Full Marvel Rivals Season 1 Jan. 10 Patch Notes and Balance Adjustments
Balance adjustments won’t be coming out on set intervals, but necessary changes will be addressed as the devs run into them, however, Guangguang did reveal how often NetEase Games plans to release new Marvel Rivals heroes.