Season 2 of Marvel Rivals brought a fair share of content regarding character balance, events, and quality-of-life additions. However, some of these changes haven’t been well-received, particularly things like how empowered dive-based teams have become, and Competitive’s point system being performance-based. In response to widespread concern and criticism, the game’s developers released a statement outlining their plans for the future.

Mid-season balance adjustments

In Season 1, a composition known as “triple support” was frequently used and involved teams having three strategists. This made it incredibly difficult for the team to die due to how quickly the supports were able to build their Ultimate Abilities, often leading to ultimates being chained together.

This was toned down in Season 2 by making it take longer to charge support ultimates, as well as increasing the power of dive, characters and team compositions that “dive” into the backline to pick off supports and weaker heroes.

Though this did mitigate triple support's viability, it also led to many support players feeling helpless to the point some are outright refusing to play the role now, culminating in what has been dubbed the "support drought." To address this, strategists will be receiving buffs while other characters will see slight adjustments to help balance things out.

In the upcoming patch, we will enhance the damage capabilities of certain Strategists to elevate their threat levels, which in turn, will increase team composition possibilities. Additionally, we will make minor adjustments to a few heroes. For example, Groot and Captain America will see slight reductions in survivability. Spider-Man's Amazing Combo damage range will be slightly decreased, Doctor Strange will require less energy for his ultimate, and Winter Soldier's Tainted Voltage and Team-Up Ability will be slightly buffed.

Tweaks are coming to Competitive Mode's point distribution system

In an effort to reward players for a game well-played, be it for a win or a loss, Season 2 changed the way gaining and losing points works in Competitive mode. At the end of a match, the game calculates point distribution based on a combination of a hero’s in-game usage time and an established baseline of how well they should perform. Because of this, your point gains and losses could radically differ from one match to another.

This system also has an inherent flaw in that certain tanks and duelists are favored more heavily, while other tanks and many strategists have a disadvantage. Support players are already frustrated, so the ranking system working against them has only made things worse.

This system also encourages some heroes to play in a sub-optimal way since the game values certain stats, such as eliminations and damage done, compared to others your role should be focusing more on.

Looking to Season 2.5 and beyond

Marvel Rivals' developers noted that “most heroes remain balanced,” but that they will be looking to optimize the performance rating for season 2.5 when Ultron releases. This verbiage confirms that the performance-based point system is here to stay, but that they are at least working on it internally to fine-tune it. It’s clear they pay close attention to player feedback, so hopefully every character is both fun and fulfilling to play once the next update drops.