It’s inconceivable to speak about Marvel Rivals with out speaking about Overwatch; the 2 hero shooters share a whole lot of the identical DNA, and the staff at NetEase clearly appeared on the wildly standard FPS and cribbed a number of notes. Now that Marvel Rivals is a profitable recreation in its personal proper, attracting its personal fan base, a few of the previous arguments that plagued Overwatch are recurring — and lots of gamers are hoping that this time, issues will prove otherwise.
Take, as an example, the sport’s three roles. There are the high-damage Duelists, team-defending Vanguards, and supportive Strategists. A typical, and admittedly aggravating, concern is to load right into a recreation solely to have everybody instantly lock in Duelists. Vanguards and Strategists merely aren’t as standard, perhaps as a result of it’s tougher to get a cool quadra-kill with their talents.
If you happen to performed Overwatch again in 2016, this in all probability 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 certainly 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 hardly ever recognized for his or her charity.
Overwatch solved this downside in 2019 with function queue; gamers would go right into a recreation figuring out every staff needed to have a sure lineup of tanks, healers, or harm characters. If you happen to performed one of many much less standard roles, you’d even get further rewards. Blizzard additionally spent a whole lot of time tweaking Overwatch’s stability to suit into this construction, with characters receiving stability adjustments and even full reworks to verify they match into the squad. With Overwatch 2, Blizzard even eliminated an individual from every staff, 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 in a position to pull off game-changing talents like pulling the whole enemy staff into their maw and spitting them off the sting of the map. Which means whereas queuing up, you possibly can run right into a staff stuffed with Strategists, or a staff 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 function queue was the GOATS meta, named after the staff 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 towards but in addition boring to look at.
However Marvel Rivals isn’t beholden to an expert circuit or aggressive expectations; it’s very a lot a loosey-goosey tackle the style the place most heroes are, in the precise arms, at the very least a bit bit damaged. That could be a massive 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 might merely go play one of many current esports-heavy video games available on the market.
Nonetheless, the dialog round whether or not function queue is important 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 informed Dot Esports they don’t have any plans so as to add function queue presently, and so they have the prospect to interrupt other than 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 often flex into tanking or therapeutic, it’s possible the controversy will proceed to rage on fan boards and social media.
