After NetEase's best attempt at competitive balance in Marvel Rivals season 8.5, this latest season has done a complete 180, with flamethrowing sharks, lethal dive comps, and ridiculous CC counters. I'm certainly not a fan of chaos comp, but my wishes for NetEase to pick a lane are starting to supersede any desire for actual balance.
The new Team-Up system is as extensive as it is busted. With every character getting to pick between two base abilities and then having a further couple of enhanced effects that they can utilise when the other character is on their team. One of the most ridiculous I've encountered so far was Invisible Woman's team-up with Human Torch, which enlarges her shield and covers it in flame, so that anyone who shoots through it adds flame damage to their shot.
Jeff can become a flamethrower with Invis’ new teamupfrom r/marvelrivals
This is busted in and of itself, but add Jeff the Land Shark into the mix and you get a special kind of terror, as his primary-fire water gun essentially turns into a flamethrower. I actually came across this comp earlier today, and let me tell you that little monster was having a great time flambée-ing my team to a crisp.
There's also Iron Man's new gamma shield, which adds another layer of protection to the billionaire in a killer tech suit with a terrifyingly short ult-time. What can I say? The rich get richer. Plus there's Luna's White Fox ability: it's lethal down chokepoints as she sends a huge fox racing forward which heals allies and pulls enemies in together, so they're like fish in a barrel for your dear teammates to kill.
NetEase has clearly gone for the mantra of 'more is more' in this latest season, which is cool on paper when you have mountains of new abilities to sift through, but in practice it's a right pain.
I can't help but feel that so much of what's been added, like the shield regen or CC counters, is just there to patch over issues that are a result of existing abilities or unbalanced hero behaviour. You wouldn't need so many CC counters if there weren't so many bloody stuns in this godforsaken game.
But this is where I think NetEase finds itself in a tricky predicament. It seems like the devs have been trying to cater to absolutely everyone, and just adding whatever players scream about loudest. In many cases, players don't know what they want, and the loudest group usually doesn't offer the best advice.
Players that say they want wacky abilities for creative kills really just want the space to pull off cool plays, which you can't actually do when you have a billion different abilities being hurled, usually randomly, your way. Likewise, players who claim to want balanced comps usually want tough games with the small caveat that they'll always win them. They also don't tend to like it when their main gets nerfed according to that balance.
Which is why the devs need to make a tough decision. Instead of flopping around from 'sort of balanced' to 'no balance at all', NetEase should draw a line in the sand and decide whether it wants Marvel Rivals to be fun, creative, and casual or tough, balanced, and competitive.
If it's going to be casual and creative, great, have at it and balance for fun, but know that it'll mean there's even less of a competitive scene than there already is. For competitive games to thrive it needs a fair and slightly punishing ranked system that doesn't just reward time played over skill, and consistent comps.
If it's going to be competitive then that's also great, but that'll mean forsaking some of the wackiness that Rivals has at its disposal. Either way you lose out on players and will piss people off, but clarity is kindness and at the very least it won't mean everyone's alienated for different reasons—a game for everyone is a game for no one.
