The last two Seasons of Marvel Rivals have left fans frustrated, both at the state of the game’s competitive balance and diminishing quality-of-life compared to other hero shooters. The revival of Overwatch and Deadlock‘s ongoing success seems to have put pressure on Marvel Rivals to institute big adjustments with its Season 7 content drop. Based on words from the development team behind one of the biggest games right now, it seems that community feedback will alter much of what players know about this Marvel hero shooter.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The biggest complaint surrounding Marvel Rivals prior to Season 7 is its character balance, which has grown out of hand quickly with the introduction of characters like Elsa Bloodstone and Deadpool. As the roster gets closer to having a massive 50 characters, players have called out the game for releasing “broken” characters, only for them to be fixed later through multiple patches. Despite emergency patches responding to this type of backlash more frequently since Season 6, large discourses about the game’s core systems have also dominated conversations.
Season 7 Sees Several Universal System Changes For Marvel Rivals’ Entire Roster
The Dev Vision video for Marvel Rivals Season 7 sees a breakdown of core system changes for the game, with universal adjustments echoing across the whole roster. This sort of widespread patch has never been done for the game before, not since it launched in December 2024 almost two years ago. This comes after the Dev Vision explained several statistics behind the game, including the prevalence of certain team comps in various modes and the nuanced interactions between the playstyles of different heroes.
Alongside the usual list of buffs and nerfs in Marvel Rivals for Season 7, every character has at least one big modification from the universal changes that impacts their usual gameplan. For example, Moon Knight will have a harder time charging up his strongest Ultimate ability, slowing down a character who tends to ramp up their DPS quickly. Whether you play a poke, dive, flying, or other unique type of hero, there is no escape from Season 7’s overhaul.
Less Overall Ultimate Energy Charge Means That Team Fights Are Less Reliant On Explosive Moments
Perhaps the biggest universal change is that Ultimate charge rates for every character has been reduced by about 20% going into Season 7. This means that each hero, regardless of role, has a harder time gaining their Ultimate than before. In past Seasons, characters were defined by using damage or healing to convert into Ultimate energy, with around 80% of all Ultimates from players coming from those two sources alone. This patch seeks to make players less reliant on Ultimate skills, encouraging careful planning and more strategy for those extremely powerful techniques.
To reach this 20% Ultimate charge reduction rate, the three roles in Marvel Rivals go about this change in different ways. For Vanguards and Duelists, their damage-to-energy conversion rate has been reduced from 90% to around 70%. At the same time, these two roles receive less passive Ultimate ability energy regeneration over time. For Strategists, their healing-to-energy conversions have been reduced from 90% to 75%, with the same scores matching their damage-to-energy ratios too. Unlike Vanguards and Duelists, though, Strategists have far less passive Ultimate generation over time than before.
For many, this is an incredibly positive change, especially considering the strength of Ultimate abilities in Marvel Rivals. With the skills of Elsa Bloodstone and Gambit in particular running rampant in the last two Seasons, players don’t have to worry as much about Ultimates being the defining feature of each match. Many players have already predicted that Season 7 will be more “neutral heavy” as heroes have to rely on wise uses of their core skills more often to win.
Other Tweaks To Different Mechanics Might Eliminate The Hero Shooter’s Most Frustrating Moments
Ultimate abilities aren’t the only big shake-ups in the game, as other systems have been adjusted due to community feedback. The existence of Crowd Control (CC) abilities has been prevalent on various characters from Marvel Rivals‘ early days, much like how other hero shooters have mechanics that induce stun to other heroes. These skills are to help curb over-aggressive characters, allowing for new strategies, but they often are frustrating to deal with.
Marvel Rivals has some of the most CC abilities of any hero shooter, to the point where players could stack their effects to keep an enemy player stunned for a very long period of time. In Season 7, this has changed, as CC effects now diminish in length the closer they are used together. As an example, a Luna Snow who uses her Freeze ability on an enemy can keep them CC’d, but a Mantis that uses her Sleep ability right after the Freeze ends will not see it last very long. This is opposed to the past, where the Sleep would have lasted its normal length of time despite being used to stack onto the Freeze’s stun effect.
This response to long-help player concerns comes with extra ban slots in competitive Ranked matches, adding to the list of included systems that fans have been asking for. Hopefully, the detailed integration of these changes in Marvel Rivals can provide the game a healthier future, as greater character buffs and nerfs make the hero shooter feel fresher than it has in a long time.
What do you think of the universal Season 7 changes in Marvel Rivals? Leave a comment below or join the conversation in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Courtesy of Shueisha / Kadokawa / Square Enix / Shogakukan
