Marvel Rivals had a good start with its launch and enjoyed over 400,000 simultaneous players on Steam. With Season 1, they are now receiving the first major content update with a wealth of new content.
What’s new in Season 1? Season 1 has the theme Eternal Night Falls and brings a new setting with characters and enemies. The developers announced the following new features in a YouTube video:
- new Battle Pass
- new characters: Fantastic Four
- new game mode: Doom Match
- new Convoy map and two new regular maps
Further down we will explain the new features in detail.
Here you can watch the launch trailer for Marvel Rivals:
These are the new features in Season 1
How long does Season 1 last? Season 1 lasts three months and is divided into two halves, each lasting six to seven weeks. This season is double the size of what a season usually offers in Marvel Rivals.
Characters and Game Mode
In the first half, starting from January 10, 2025, you can look forward to the following:
- Character: Mister Fantastic
- Character: Invisible Woman
- Arcade game mode: Doom Match
- Empire of Eternal Night: Sanctum Sactorum
The contents of the other half will be made public at a later date. The developers also say that at the end of Season 1, there will be a total of 37 characters that you can play.
What new maps are there? In addition to the new map Empire of Eternal Night: Sanctum Sactorum, these two maps will also be added:
- Empire of Eternal Night: Midtown
- Empire of Eternal Night: Central Park
Battle Pass
You can buy the Season 1 luxury battle pass for 990 Lattice and you will receive 600 Lattice and 600 Units back when you complete the battle pass. The best part: The battle pass never expires, so you can take your time completing it.
Leaderboards
At the start of Season 1, the leaderboards will be reset to allow all players a fresh start. The “new” placements will be adjusted to match the placements from Season 0. A player with, for example, Platinum 1 will be downgraded to Silver 2.
With these plans, Marvel Rivals poses a strong competition to Overwatch. Especially with the many additional heroes, Overwatch currently cannot keep up.
In 2023 and 2024, Overwatch has only added three new heroes each year, while Marvel Rivals introduces four new heroes at the beginning of this year in its first season.
Adjustments to Heroes
Some heroes are superior to others, so they need to be adjusted. The exact adjustments will be announced later, but here is a rough summary:
- Hela and Hawkeye will be nerfed, as they are superior to others of the ranged fighters.
- Heroes who play the vanguard, like Captain America and Venom, will receive a boost to protect their allies.
- Strategists like Wolverine and Storm will be strengthened to give individual strategies an advantage in battles.
Additionally, they will adjust Jeff the Land Shark’s ability so that he can probably be discovered faster. The little shark was quite overpowered, as players have discovered: A player discovers that you can annihilate the entire enemy team with a shark in Marvel Rivals in seconds
