It’s inconceivable to speak about Marvel Rivals with out speaking about Overwatch; the 2 hero shooters share loads of the identical DNA, and the crew at NetEase clearly appeared on the wildly well-liked FPS and cribbed just a few notes. Now that Marvel Rivals is a profitable recreation in its personal proper, attracting its personal fan base, a number of 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, as an illustration, the sport’s three roles. There are the high-damage Duelists, team-defending Vanguards, and supportive Strategists. A typical, and admittedly aggravating, difficulty is to load right into a recreation solely to have everybody instantly lock in Duelists. Vanguards and Strategists merely aren’t as well-liked, perhaps as a result of it’s tougher to get a cool quadra-kill with their talents.
In case 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 taking part in 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 players on-line are not often identified for his or her charity.
Overwatch solved this drawback in 2019 with position queue; gamers would go right into a recreation figuring out every crew needed to have a sure lineup of tanks, healers, or harm characters. In case you performed one of many much less well-liked roles, you’d even get further 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 crew, turning the 6v6 recreation right into a 5v5 as a substitute.
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 capable of pull off game-changing talents like pulling the complete enemy crew into their maw and spitting them off the sting of the map. Because of this whereas queuing up, you might run right into a crew filled with Strategists, or a crew 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 elements that led to the addition of position queue was the GOATS meta, named after the crew 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 in addition 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 best fingers, at the least a bit bit damaged. That may be a large a part of why some followers like the sport a lot; in the event that they needed to play a high-stakes aggressive shooter, they might merely go play one of many current esports-heavy video games available on the market.
Nonetheless, the dialog round whether or not position queue is important or needs to be added continues to be one of many main matters within the Marvel Rivals group, and it has been for months. The Marvel Rivals devs at NetEase advised Dot Esports they don’t have any plans so as to add position queue right now, and so they have the possibility to interrupt aside from the Overwatch path and push what makes Marvel Rivals so distinctive. Till we discover a method to persuade all of the Duelist followers on the market to sometimes flex into tanking or therapeutic, it’s probably the controversy will proceed to rage on fan boards and social media.
