Marvel Rivals proves hero shooters and live service games are alive and well

I'm going to talk about it.

Been playing this game since launch and I'm loving it.

This is the most fun I've had in a MP game in a while, its the most fun with anything Marvel related I've had in a long time.

This game is only gaining more traction, most games peak first week and then tank, this game is gaining. The bones are solid, the mechanics are clean, the character designs are awesome, the move sets are fantastic.

It's got enough complexity for competitive but still simple enough for anyone to learn how to play.

As someone who has played OW since launch, this game is king. I don't see Blizzard competing or winning while this game exists. All my friends who ran OW together have jumped ship, some were hesitant at first but they are now believers.

Hero Shooters are very much still viable, just make it fun, mechanically sound, and make it look cool

This is a live service game done right, F2P, not P2W.

Blizzard really effed up, they had this market on lock for years, they had good mechanics, the fanbase, no competition. They have been very slow with content, OW2 was a joke, it was a bad update that made the game worse, not a sequel..

Anybody else having fun with Rivals, I'm having the most fun I've had in a while running with friends in any game.

My god these Que times are glorious. 2 second QUE times is so damn amazing..

Such a turn on

It shows that well established IPs with a solid game is a winner. Nothing more.

Not entirely true. Marvel's Midnight Suns was a finical flop, even though it was developed by the talented Firaxis Games (X Com team) & was generally considered a solid game. It is however slow paced, and requires patience for its steep learning curve.

Personally think games that are tied to IPs like Marvel cater towards a young audience who have very little interest in a Strategy game. & want something more fast paced/ more reaction based. Those that tend to want Stratagy games don't really look at Marvel what-so-ever; & I note that as someone who enjoys Strategy games.

Marvel avengers was also a flop

Suicide squad (DC) also a flop

Claiming Rivals is only popular because it's marvel isnt true, you don't get this kind of retention with a bad game, Rivals is good both mechanically and aesthetically. They nailed it.

Neither of those are good so why bring them up?

They're the Anthem/ Concord of Super Hero licencing.

Shows the licensing doesn't really matter.

Also hero shooter genre has been talked badly on, after Concord people said it's a dead genre and Concord failed because they were late to the party...

Then Rivals blows TF up

If the argument is that if a game is mechanically solid, has fun abilities, great gameplay, great artstyle, and is giving the fans everything they want.. it will be successful.

Then yeah I'd agree

It’s a really good game. Folks saying it’s only popular because of the Marvel stuff aren’t being genuine. Or they haven’t played Marvel Rivals.

Gaming Journalists stated it is dying, but the only thing really dying is Journalism. They're as reliable as the average Reddit post.

Gaming Journalists also seem to hate Marvel Rivals and make spite articles about the game often.

I wouldn't take them seriously. Heck, Team Fortress 2 still trucks on even today.

Overwatch was the game sinking down, because OW2 sucks, if anything Rivals replaced a dying horse. Now can Rivals keep that momentum like TF2 has all these years? we'll see as time goes on.

Even if the branding for Rivals only aided the game by 5% that's still more an advantage than a new IP without established characters & settings.

@RSM-HQ: I think Rivals will be here for the long haul. Season 1 trailer dropped. 4 new heroes being added.. all 4 of the fantastic four.

Getting 4 new characters season 1 is impressive. They seem to be supporting this game right.

Sure the marvel IP helps some, but it means **** all if the game isn't fun and good. That's really the only point I'm making. Gameplay is great, art style is great, character designs are great, content is great, fast networking, F2P, they are doing all the right things.

@sargentd: I agree on that.

My take away is the average Marvel fan is more likely to play a game like Team Fortress than XCom. That's why MNS didn't succeed.

Midnight Suns is a great game, it just doesn't appeal to the average Marvel fan that a Rivals can.

Heck just look at the amazing sales for the Marvel vs Capcom collection; Marvel fans typically like the dopamine rush of these quick/ faster paced games.

It's generalized assumptions sure but I think it overall checks out. A game being good and Marvel doesn't equal money, it needs to cater towards the overarching audience as well.

& in the bigger picture, a big problem with many American studios is they have zero interest developing games for its target audience; and even flat-out dislike gaming in general. Marvel Rivals is clearly made by people who enjoy video games and have a healthy relationship/ understanding of its customer-base.

heard it's really fun.. i'll give it a try once they add Deadpool.. 😎👍

I even made a thread on it like a month ago and everyone just flat-out ignored Marvel Rivals despite its F2P game. I'm really enjoying it. Everyone's into Helldivers 2 it seems.

But overall, it's amazing that a simple game can have interesting characters, unlike Concord which is saying something.

@RSM-HQ: I agree with all that. I have yet to play midnight suns because I don't have interest in turn based sp game. I'm sure it's great, saw it got positive reception. But I'm just not that into turn based. Truth be told I'm not even a big marvel/super hero fan. I dont go and see any of the movies, last marvel movie I saw was the civil war one.

I am a big fan of the blade movies though. I am a fan of OW though (or was) until they got lazy, slow dripped content, and tried to balance all the fun out of the game. I'm burned out on OW. I dont like the New character designs they have been releasing, it's very pixar/Disney looking. Which is ironic.. Disney owns marvel lol...

I see the character designs of venture.. or junkyard queen.. in OW and they are trying to hard.. it definitely seems to be western developers are struggling with appealing character design lately.. pretty sure NetEase is chineese company..

It's embarrassing how much better a chineese company is handling marvel characters vs us.. but it is what it is..

@sargentd: The way I see it is fans of Xcom 2 are waiting on Xcom 3; when Midnight Suns dropped they had Baldur's Gate III & a new Disgaea game. The genre was doing good and well fed. An average fan of Strategy games isn't going to look at the Marvel brand what-so-ever because Marvel games are typically tied to realtime fighting like a Beat em' Up, Fighter, or a Third Person shooter.

& in truth the common Strategy fan wants deep systems that reward tactical thinking over fast reaction skills. From an average customers perspective I doubt that's what anyone assumes the Marvel brand is offering.

Team Shooters had a slot with Overwatches decline and it was a great time for Rivals to take that spot over Blizzards fall into mediocrity. Midnight Suns as mentioned would be compared to games like Baldur's Gate III; and I think those that want to play a game like BG3 will play that over MNS.

Midnight Suns is just one of those games that will be considered a long-lost classic, Firaxis Games did a great job and I hope that Marvel paycheck paid off for Xcom 3.

What did we do badly with marvel characters? The Spiderman and GotG games were well received, and I think Wolverine and Blade look like they will do well.

Anyway I guess this is good news for companies that want to do live service games... 😒

It shows that people actually care about great character design in hero shooters.

Sorry Concord.

Also, when all these Marvel Projects failed we were blaming super hero fatigue?

Spiderman was fine

Doing a direct comparison of Marvel Rivals to Marvel Avengers it becomes blatantly obvious

Western character designs are horrible . There was a video comparing the character designs of Marvels Avengers vs Marvel Rivals and the Avenger designs were god awful in comparison.

If they continue to do live service with their ( progressive) western designs the games will fail miserably

I admit this is not my genre (not a fan of Overwatch) and I like classes over "heroes", but I just didn't see the appeal. Sorry, not trying to crap on this game or anything, but speaking as objectively as possible I don't see how it excels in any particular way.

Seems like another microtransaction vehicle, though it does seem to be a fairly generous one (plus it is free).

Anyway, I would not hype the success too much; Marvel is a license to print money and be popular, and you don't even have to make a superior product (just good enough).

Rivals seems like it is "good enough".

Happy for folks that are enjoying it, though 👍😊And I did like the whole synergy aspect where different heroes could combine their powers, that was kind of neat.

Pretty much.

While I don't wish for any game to fail, I fear a lot of folks in marketing and such will see this success and we will see even more clones, more crappy hero shooters.

They should look this game's success as an exception, not the rule. I think it is important to see how many games of this vein have been attempted in the last five years and how many have failed.

We've got, what? Overwatch, Rivals, and Valorant? Maybe R6 Siege counts too?

Got to admit I'm surprised how much this took off. Timing was good coming while Overwatch is in decline, and the licence fits the play style as @RSM-HQ: pointed out. But this level of success is still not something I would have predicted.

While I think it is fair to make some comparisons to Concord, don't forget Concord wasn't free to play. That seems to be a mistake nowadays. Qiddich Champions is struggling at $30 despite being good and based on a popular licence. A licence that actually managed to outsell CoD only a couple years ago as a single player ARPG.

@judaspete: Honestly not a Marvel Rivals guy, have zero interest in playing it and was stone cold when I saw it announced. That being stated everyone I know playing it sings its praises and then-some, the love for the game is very similar to when the original Overwatch dropped. Made by people who love video games and is for people who enjoy video games. If you wanted to play a hero shooter? Rivals is the game right now.

I also compare a F2P to Concord because Concord was part of Jim Ryans push to pump out a "Fortnite killer" having various studios work on live service multiplayer shooters, much of this was leaked and pushed out during the whole Activision/ Blizzard case.

While Helldivers saw success. Despite the developers wishes Jim Ryan pushed for a forced PSN account even on Steam Players, and dwarfed the player-base by removing it from regions that don't have PSN. I can't respect that. Jim Ryan is pretty much cancer to gaming honestly, every act he did blows.

& whatever the business model they're all live service games that are designed to eat up the players time over the alternatives. This was what Jim Ryan pushed for, as he didn't see any value in projects such as Astro Bot.

And this isn't even me running my mouth, Sony and Ryan displayed a lot of this thought process and statements in 2023's and 2024's Sony Business Segment Presentations.

Marvel Rivals and Concord always pushed for the same slice of pie left on the table. Rivals was just the game people want to play, while Concord is a mess of bad business/ hiring political activists to make a game/ & hoping spending more money would fix the cracks.

Don't even trash Concord because it was a bad game, I trash it because someone was given a lot of power in a rising and popular gaming company (PlayStation). And he had zero interest in keeping his customer-base happy with the products, with all the money and studios PlayStation had it was wasted on various pointless remakes and ugly as sin Live Service Shooters.

I guess there will continue to be love for both, some really dislike the eastern anime-like androgynous designs and idealize the western design aesthetics. There are arguments all the time on this board about the way things look so I guess there are strong opinions on all sides.

If you think about style and aesthetic, there will always be room for different approaches and it will be very difficult to get universal appeal unless you start to think about content for children where design can be very abstract. It can also be this way with movies and TV.

Maybe the higher the fidelity of graphics in games, the less abstract designs will become, and the more people will have arguments over this.

Like who? Game journalists? I don't know anyone who idolized modern western aesthetics. Even western developers had great designs 10 years ago. It's like they were forced into doing something and do it because they have to... but I don't really see anyone praising it.

@elderlord99: Really? It seems like there's people who get upset whenever anything diverges from it.

yeah, fun game. Even the wife is playing it and she doesn't like competitive games much. She also likes how sexy the women are and how it's a fresh breath from the average looking ones that she's been seeing lately lol

Game developers and game journalists along with activist.

Most consumers hate modern western aesthetics.

@elderlord99: They also hate "waifus" and anything "weeb" in favor of more western aesthetics. I guess consumers are just edgelords who say they hate everything but secretly enjoy it all?

This is a lie... I like to have this chart because it's a mix of the Japanese and Western aesthetic, showing that they're not much different. I suppose I could add Overwatch and Fortnite to the list...

Assuming it's not sexism of racism based, I'd guess the push for realism... It's funny... These same gamers mocked Nintendo for having cartoon like graphics, as they praise the more cartoonish designs...

I almost forgot to mention that NetEase Games knows what their target audience really want out of character designs and it's no wonder why Concord failed to understanding that having fun and cool characters can bring in joy from most audience:

I didn't care much from any of the F4 cast but seeing them now, they made them look way cooler than the upcoming new F4 film that's coming soon. Invisible Woman is THICC👌

@davillain said:

I almost forgot to mention that NetEase Games knows what their target audience really want out of character designs and it's no wonder why Concord failed to understanding that having fun and cool characters can bring in joy from most audience:

I didn't care much from any of the F4 cast but seeing them now, they made them look way cooler than the upcoming new F4 film that's coming soon. Invisible Woman is THICC👌

You say as you simply show an attractive woman in a skin tight suit...

I'd argue otherwise. Most of the gamers complaining don't really want cool and unique designs, or unique art styles. They simply want an attractive woman in a skimpy outfit. Which isn't that creative.

They don't give a shit about creativity. If they did, many of the games that are creative would be well received but instead we get the same thing over and over and over again.

This thread is the perfect example of why Culture Wars discussions should be banned or quarantined.

People were having a totally reasonable conversation about why this game struck gold as opposed to other hero shooters or Marvel games, and then the stupid crept in and strangled the life out of the discussion.

Mods, seriously, can we have a megathread about gender representation, so that all of this crap can go there and people can stop derailing threads?

No!

I just started playing this on Sunday and it's really fun. I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would

Go to reset era you snowflake.

Says the snowflake using an alt account.🤭

@luxuryheart said:

@davillain said:

I almost forgot to mention that NetEase Games knows what their target audience really want out of character designs and it's no wonder why Concord failed to understanding that having fun and cool characters can bring in joy from most audience:

I didn't care much from any of the F4 cast but seeing them now, they made them look way cooler than the upcoming new F4 film that's coming soon. Invisible Woman is THICC👌

You say as you simply show an attractive woman in a skin tight suit...

I'd argue otherwise. Most of the gamers complaining don't really want cool and unique designs, or unique art styles. They simply want an attractive woman in a skimpy outfit. Which isn't that creative.

She looks true to the comics as most characters do. Those who grew up with the comics love it because these designs for the most part accurately represent what they remember.

What would you consider creative that wasn't well received?

@luxuryheart said:

@elderlord99 said:

@girlusocrazy said:

@elderlord99: Really? It seems like there's people who get upset whenever anything diverges from it.

Game developers and game journalists along with activist.

Most consumers hate modern western aesthetics.

This is a lie... I like to have this chart because it's a mix of the Japanese and Western aesthetic, showing that they're not much different. I suppose I could add Overwatch and Fortnite to the list...

I could probably guess which characters are from the west with 95% accuracy.

There is some backlash to the K-pop teenie bopper look if that's what your referring too

AltLord99 going on a spree. 😅

You wish!

You should be blessed I graced this dead forum. I'm guessing crybabies like you tried to ban everyone?

@elderlord99: I have no idea what it refers to, it's just what I hear, but I know it has to do with a dislike of styles from the east. Personally I like a lot of different styles from different regions including the ones that make edgelords angry.

It's called Knowing the target audience if you catch my drift😉 I'm not really a fan of F4 at all. They can be a hit or a miss.

Now now, lets play nice and not go into that Rabbit hole. Would it help if I just say please...?😔

Says the alt that cries when characters are not made with your fragility in mind.😂

I would argue that I am not the problem.😌

@elderlord99 said:

@luxuryheart said:

@elderlord99 said:

@girlusocrazy said:

@elderlord99: Really? It seems like there's people who get upset whenever anything diverges from it.

Game developers and game journalists along with activist.

Most consumers hate modern western aesthetics.

This is a lie... I like to have this chart because it's a mix of the Japanese and Western aesthetic, showing that they're not much different. I suppose I could add Overwatch and Fortnite to the list...

I could probably guess which characters are from the west with 95% accuracy.

Then guess. Red for West and Blue for East.

I would argue you are in fact the problem.

What does bad character designs have to do with fragility? Is that what they tell themselves after they get sent to the unemployment line? 🤣