Marvel Rivals Is Off to a Heroic Start with 10 Million Players in First Three Days

Main differences between this and Concord:
1) Established IP
2) Likable characters
3) F2P

How long until Mike Ybarra claims that "10 million players in 72 hours" was actually stolen from Overwatch?

I gave it a couple of hours over the weekend and enjoyed what I played for the most part. There seems to be some balance issues and for me, having no cross platform progression is a bit of a missed opportunity. I’d be a bit more into it if I could pick up on Steamdeck where I left off on PS5.

@Max_the_German a big difference its Marvel.

@Max_the_German
4) Gameplay is actually fun with interesting powers. Even the abilities in Concord felt super generic and uninteresting.

5) The maps are a lot cooler with better level design and the map destruction really changes things up. Destroying certain parts of maps even trigger story events in the match

It’s good fun. A bit too hectic and readability is a major problem but the variety’s great.

i’m enjoying it so i’m really happy about that , finally another multiplayer game to play that isn’t battle royale or a generic fps! this filled the concord & overwatch void for me , but idk how long it’ll last . i love using my man black panther & im so glad he fits my playstyle & reminds me of doomfist from overwatch who was my most played character .

game just needs better maps and a few nerfs to cheap a** projectile and coward snipers though . snipers just HAVE to be in every game huh ?

@Max_the_German 4) 6v6

@nessisonett you mean legibility, or is that too difficult to read? 😄

Tried it during the weekend, it was interesting.
Pros:

• 6v6
• Good characters with nice designs
• huge variability
• it runs acceptable on my potato laptop (was very surprised by that)
  Cons:
• 3rd person view (understandable but still feels off)
• a bit more of the same compared to ow
• gameplay feels a bit worse than ow1

Once i update my pc i will try it again, looking forward to it.

The test of time will be the ultimate judge.They could easily pull the plug in the next months especially if people doesn't spend enough. Me personally i wouldn't touch this.

I understand the hate here, but is more fun than Overwatch.

I don't usually play F2P, I'm too addicted to Hell Let Loose, but if the monetization is right, the game won't die.

It's decent. I uninstalled it yesterday though. I just don't have the time or level of effort required for a live service PvP game. I wish it all the luck in the future. Hopefully the player base will stick around.

Is it just me or is that Wolverine design awful?

"Hopefully it can retain that momentum and find a spot for itself in the crowded live service space." Why hopefully? Don't you mean "It will be interesting to see if it can retain that momentum and find a spot for itself in the crowded live service space?

Honestly, thats pretty sickening, just slap marvel on it and the respective skins and it does these numbers, for what is basically Concord. No wonder we're treated like cattle by the powers that be, sheep springs to mind 🤦‍♂️

@riceNpea I think he was right, you know... legible would be pertaining to words, but I don't think there's an equivalent for 'ease of reading character attack animations', so- readability it is! 😉

@Perturbator I thought so, too!

@J2theEzzo visual acuity 😊

@riceNpea That's how good your eyes are, though? Your eyesight could be perfect, (admittedly, mine isn't) but if you're playing a game, and an enemy comes windmilling at you, full of bright lights and mad colours that present a visual mess, and the question is then- "how am I supposed to see through all that to know when to dodge?" That isn't an issue of visual acuity, so much as it is of poor game design, right? So it isn't about legibility, or your own acuity- it's about how easy it is to read/ deconstruct another's movement, or if you will; hitbox data to frame analysis.
Unless you're just joking, and suggesting the game's easy to read, and we're all blind. Which could be true- I haven't played it... 🤔

Typically, I completely ignore free-to-play games. The quality is generally lower and they are microtransaction hellscapes. However, I was convinced to not ignore Rivals because, at first glance, they appear to have done the monetization correctly. I was thinking you would have to pay for characters. That is not the case. All microtransactions I've heard of so far are cosmetic only. There is no "free selection" of characters that you can play as but need to spend money to have access to a character you like permanently. I think that is good.

It's still not my kind of game, but I'll at least pop in every once in a while to play it, which is more than I ever expected when the game was revealed.

@J2theEzzo I was joking 🙃

its ok for now im going back and fourth between this and overwatch. the one thing i love in this game is the option to select console cross play only every game should have that!

@Shakybeeves pretty terrible take. If you like hero shooters this is pretty good from a gameplay perspective. Balancing is a little off, but its early days and overwatch launched with some broken abilities and heroes. If you like marvel, that’s just the icing on the cake. It has some interesting mechanics with destructible environments and heroes that can compliment each other with extra passive team up abilities. It’s also f2p so other than owing the appropriate hardware there’s very little in the way of entry barriers. The monetization isn’t particularly egregious - in fact the season pass can be completed at your leisure and isn’t timed like in ow so it’s actually slightly more consumer friendly.

I don’t bitch about fifa because it isn’t my type of game, let people have fun with the games they want to play. I’m not salty because millions of people spend hundreds of hours playing and it stays in the top 10 sales charts for the entirety of the year. It’s a decent football game if that’s your jam, rivals is a decent hero shooter if that’s your jam too.

@J2theEzzo Readability is essentially how easy it is to parse exactly what’s going on from a visual standpoint. Overwatch is the main one I played for years and that game worked hard to improve it over several updates, outlines, colour schemes for enemy teams and the like. The third person camera makes it difficult to spot certain smaller heroes anyway, Jeff is a bloody nightmare to spot especially when diving. They just need to tone down certain particle effects and add heavier outlines around the enemy teams I’d say.

I didn't think this would be for me, and I was right. Just a chaotic multiplayer mess, and I really hate multiplayer games. I love comics, so I thought I'd try it, but I played it for like 10 minutes before deleting it. That said, I hope that everyone who is enjoying it has a great time! It just wasn't for me.

It’s quite impressive from what I’ve tried and it’s even enhanced for the PS5 Pro, characters have amazing designs and unique moves, mechanics for each of them are neatly done and it feels different to play with each one of them, best thing imo however it’s not even close to being as predatory as Overwatch is which is a huge W.

But I remember some author here saying that it sucked but Concord somehow left him great impressions… needless to say more lol.

@Flaming_Kaiser Not really, just look at Marvel’s Avengers which back in 2020 was in the peak popularity for that IP and it flopped, they key is making a good game, and Rivals definitely feels good so far.

Haven't had time to actually play a match yet. I did try out most of the heroes in the practice range, though. And I thought they all had really boring movesets, and none of them felt powerful enough.

Some were so basic, I think I would get bored of them after one match (Wolverine). Others had that Smash-clone problem of feeling like a random assortment of source characters' moves (Star Lord). And others yet just didn't have anything that felt particularly satisfying or effective (Venom). I thought Squirrel Girl, Moon Knight, Loki, and Rocket were decent, but still were either a tad too simple or were built around gimmicks that seemed like a bother to capitalize on in a real match. They just generally felt okay to play, not fantastic.

Compared to Overwatch, where most characters feel immediately satisfying to play and there are gimmicks with fascinating strategic options, it definitely feels like a lesser. Still decent, but I'll probably just go back to Overwatch after a month of messing around with Rivals.

It's 3rd Person Overwatch, which is pretty cool as I prefer 3rd Person to First Person perspectives in video games.

And all characters are available to you from the get go like OG Overwatch, the battlepass/store seems to be exclusively for cosmetics that don't really affect the actual gameplay in anyway.

I don't play anything ftp or online only, but I can't hate it yet. Yet. Cause as soon as that number starts to diminish, the "Fleece Loyal Players" crank will be pulled. It seems like a good time though. Just an inevitability with these things.

Good for those that enjoy F2P games. Not my cup of tea but enjoy it those of you that do

I'm not interested in playing an Overwatch clone with a Marvel skin, and I'm staying away from Marvel Rivals for that reason. However, I think the player count won't hold up once people realize it's just another Overwatch-style game, and it will shut down.

Fun game but the progression system is awful. Leveling up feels like nothing at all. I've played for about 7 hours but would still only be on the first page of the battle pass. The battle pass has no free rewards.

Seems like a mistake since getting hooked on unlockables is where they should be making their money!

@nessisonett No, I know what it is, really. I was engaging with the other commentor just about language, and the suggested differences between legibility/ readability. But I get ya! 😉

@riceNpea 😮

@Markatron84 lol man he embarrassed the hell out of himself with his comments 🤣

@Shrek_Realista

I love comics, DC, Marvel and Overwatch. This should be a home run for me. But at the moment it’s nowhere near Overwatch 2, on several levels. No ”oomph” in anything you do, the third person animations feel floaty and a little off. The verticality of a lot of the characters makes it a ***** show when you’re playing a bunch of the ground characters. There’s a lot of things that just aren’t there yet.

I understand that if you aren’t actively playing OW, then this feels great. But it needs a lot of patches still. But hey, it’s been out a few days. So I have hope. I’m not giving up on it. But OW was way more polished from the start.

If Marvel Rivals didn’t have the Marvel characters then this game wouldn’t have had 10 million players this fast..

I hope they bombard it with balance fixes and patches though.

@RoomWithaMoose Venom is a bit rubbish imo, Doctor Strange, Magneto and Peni Parker feel a lot better as tanks to me.

Push square commenters told me this is saturated genre nobody wants