It’s unimaginable to speak about Marvel Rivals with out speaking about Overwatch; the 2 hero shooters share loads of the identical DNA, and the group at NetEase clearly regarded on the wildly fashionable FPS and cribbed a number of notes. Now that Marvel Rivals is a profitable recreation 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 in a different way.
Take, for 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 recreation solely to have everybody instantly lock in Duelists. Vanguards and Strategists merely aren’t as fashionable, possibly as a result of it’s tougher to get a cool quadra-kill with their skills.
In the event you performed Overwatch again in 2016, this most likely sounds very acquainted. Gamers from that period keep in mind watching their teammates lock in as Hanzo and Widowmaker, leaving them to reluctantly play as a tank or healer. I keep in mind enjoying Mercy for a lot of video games in a row, hoping within the subsequent recreation considered one of 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 not often identified for his or her charity.
Overwatch solved this drawback in 2019 with function queue; gamers would go right into a recreation realizing every group needed to have a sure lineup of tanks, healers, or harm characters. In the event you performed one of many much less fashionable roles, you’d even get additional rewards. Blizzard additionally spent loads of time tweaking Overwatch’s steadiness to suit into this construction, with characters receiving steadiness modifications and even full reworks to verify they match into the squad. With Overwatch 2, Blizzard even eliminated an individual from every group, turning the 6v6 recreation right into a 5v5 as an alternative.
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 the complete enemy group into their maw and spitting them off the sting of the map. Because of this whereas queuing up, you would run right into a group stuffed with Strategists, or a group 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 components that led to the addition of function queue was the GOATS meta, named after the group 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 knowledgeable circuit or aggressive expectations; it’s very a lot a loosey-goosey tackle the style the place most heroes are, in the proper arms, at the least somewhat bit damaged. That could 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’d merely go play one of many present esports-heavy video games in the marketplace.
Nonetheless, the dialog round whether or not function queue is critical or must be added continues to be one of many main matters within the Marvel Rivals neighborhood, 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 function queue at the moment, they usually have the prospect to interrupt aside from the Overwatch path and push what makes Marvel Rivals so distinctive. Till we discover a solution to persuade all of the Duelist followers on the market to sometimes flex into tanking or therapeutic, it’s possible the controversy will proceed to rage on fan boards and social media.
