Marvel Rivals has been out for over a month now and continues to captivate thousands of players every day. For many gamers, the comparison to Blizzard’s Overwatch is obvious, but it has been struggling for months. Now the developers of Marvel Rivals have presented an ambitious plan to retain players and ultimately surpass Blizzard’s competitor.
What is this plan? The developers of Marvel Rivals revealed in an interview that they want to release a new season every 3 months, which will bring new seasonal stories, maps, and of course new heroes (via MetroUK).
Each season is supposed to include 2 new heroes, one at the start of the season and another 1.5 months later for the mid-season update. So there is a new hero every 1.5 months. You can look forward to at least 8 new heroes a year. Season 1 of Marvel Rivals even brings 4 heroes along.
Most games of this kind, especially shooters like Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Valorant, bring at most 4–5 new heroes per year. A frequently seen model is one hero per season/3 months. Ubisoft’s tactical shooter Rainbow Six: Siege is one of the few counterexamples, having also introduced 8 new operators per year in its early years, although it has long since reduced this rhythm.
No restrictions for superheroes
What do the developers say about the future of the shooter? A much-discussed topic in the community is the composition of teams, which is why one of the interview questions aimed at the potential introduction of a role lock.
A role lock means, for example, in the ranked mode of Overwatch 2, that you cannot play a supporter if your team already has 2 supporters. Marvel Rivals has no role lock, meaning there is no restriction on how often a role (tank, DPS, support) can be present in a team – and that should remain the case.
The developers want to give players more opportunities to form teams without restrictions, explains Marvel Rivals game director Guangyun Chen. The team is convinced that the absence of a role queue – where you can only play one of the roles you previously selected – leads to a better gaming experience.
How is Marvel Rivals doing right now? Really well! On Steam, the hero shooter celebrated a new peak of 644,000 concurrent players on January 10th. On January 14th, Marvel Rivals peaked at 468,000 players. Similar numbers have been recorded daily since January 4th (via SteamDB). The players on PlayStation, Xbox, and through the Epic Games Store are in addition to this.
In December, the developers announced that the game had 20 million players. This strong player count is likely to be secured by the release plan for new heroes. You can check which heroes are already in Marvel Rivals here: Marvel Rivals: All characters – Which playable heroes are in the game?
