I am a bit of a Marvel fanboy. I won’t deny that. I consume and enjoy all things Marvel, from movies, to TV shows, to comics, and everything in between.
But honestly, I also won’t blindly defend it when there’s an issue with something. For example, many recent MCU projects have been lackluster or just plain bad. I’ll always be emotionally connected to the franchise and its heroes (Spider-Man has been everything to me since I was a boy), but I will call out problematic things when I see them.
Marvel Rivals is a game that should be a no-brainer for me, and it is. It’s got all of the Marvel heroes and villains I love, with more on the way, set to the tune of one of my most-played games of all time, Overwatch. When it was announced, I couldn’t hold in my excitement, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the alpha and beta tests. But even back then, one thing stuck in my mind: “Boy, I’d really love it if there was a role queue or role lock.”
And less than two weeks after launch, I feel that way now more than ever.
For the most part, the lack of a role lock doesn’t bother me in a good amount of my games. You win some, you lose some, right? But after a while, it really grates on me when people insta-lock three or four Duelists and refuse to switch or communicate, especially in Competitive mode.
Normally, I am all for people playing what they want and how they want. It’s a video game, after all, and they’re meant to be fun. But when your choices come at the expense of your team in a team-based game, it’s just being selfish.
And for now, in the game’s earliest days, perhaps it’s not a problem for most. I feel like the majority of players are trying out the free-to-play game, because, hey, it’s free and it’s Marvel, so why not? Everyone knows Marvel and most people like Marvel, but continuously getting matched with players who have no interest in playing the team-based hero shooter as a team-based hero shooter is going to get old rather quickly.
Already, I feel myself getting annoyed or bored after a few games of being forced to play Strategist or Vanguard because no one else wants to. I finish my daily missions and challenges and then log off to do something else. That’s not good.
“From the data we’re seeing in our back end, things are going pretty solid,” Chen said, though. “We want people to have a Marvel experience where they’re free to select what they want.”
Playing what you want is fun until it comes at the expense of other players and the overall team experience. Constantly losing games because players refuse to adapt or switch up team compositions because they want to play Spider-Man or The Punisher when there are already two or three Duelists on the team is a recipe for absolute catastrophe when it comes to tilting. We’ll see how long the back end looks “pretty solid” if this is to continue.
NetEase likes to think that its three roles (Vanguard/Tank, Duelist/DPS, Strategist/Healer) don’t have to be pigeon-holed into traditional hero shooter roles. But they are, and while it’s possible to succeed with a variety of compositions, in the end, I think a role queue would win out.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a restrictive 2-2-2 role lock. What if it’s 1-1-1, with three flex positions, or two Strategists and four flex positions? I think experimentation is necessary to find out what could work, and I hope that NetEase considers it in the future.
I’m not alone in my assessment. Many others are hoping for a role queue or role lock, and have been since the alpha and beta. This has been an issue for months, especially now considering that the game’s roster is so heavily laden with Duelists compared to the other two roles.
For now, I think the Marvel Rivals base experience is extraordinary. The game looks and feels amazing to play, it already has an awesome roster of recognizable fan-favorite characters, and the monetization is fair.
But for the game to take the next steps in the future, especially after the honeymoon period of the weeks following release comes to an end, things may have to change.
