In the gaming world, there’s a genre called hero shooters. This genre includes games like “Apex Legends,” “Valorant,” and “Overwatch.” Since Dec. 6, 2024, there has been a major change in the hero shooter world, thanks to “Marvel Rivals.” When “Marvel Rivals” was first released to the public, it gained 650,000 players in one day. On its third day of release, the game officially hit 10 million players. For comparison, when “Overwatch” was released, it took several weeks to reach that amount of players, and it was the most popular hero shooter game at the time.
It’s clear that “Marvel Rivals” would not be where it is if it wasn’t for innovation in the genre by previous titles: “Overwatch” and “Team Fortress 2” have very similar gameplay to “Marvel Rivals.” There is inspiration in many mechanics and characters in the game, so much so that some may call it blatant copying, but there is a good reason why many “Overwatch” players left for “Marvel Rivals.” When “Overwatch 2” came out, fans saw that it was just a ploy for the game to get some more money, since the original and new versions have very few differences.
“Marvel Rivals” took the player base from “Overwatch” by creating a game with interesting and often-unique characters, maps, and game modes. This was something “Overwatch 2” was heavily lacking in, especially for being a sequel. The fans’ patience was overdue, and when they saw a game with what they were expecting in “Overwatch 2,” they switched.
“Overwatch” has lost popularity, not only because it failed to keep players but also because Marvel is already such a big intellectual property. Many heroes in Marvel already have public interest that adds to the popularity of “Marvel Rivals,” while other companies have to come up with new, unheard-of heroes that may be popular or may not be. “Marvel Rivals” has that certainty of who will be popular and who won’t, because the opinions were already made years ago when the heroes were created.
The developers of “Marvel Rivals” also put in niche heroes that only die-hard fans knew about before, characters such as Jeff the Land Shark, Squirrel Girl, Cloak and Dagger, and Luna Snow. They are not stopping there, with Angela, Hit-Monkey, The Hood, and more coming out in future seasons. This ensures there is always something new and fun to do in the game. They even offer a battle pass with free Units and Lattice, which are the in-game currencies. Lattice is used to buy the battle pass or to be converted into Units to buy in-game skins. The skins are usually based on comic styles from the past, but can sometimes be unique to the game. Every hero’s base skin is unique, having either a futuristic design or being somewhere from a different Marvel universe.
Another reason why fans love this game is because it has tons of challenges that offer Units when completed. Very few games do this because it makes the player want to work for the Units, not buy them with real money. This makes every skin essentially free of charge; it just might take time to get enough Units.
When playing “Marvel Rivals,” there are several ways to show your experience, with one being the ranked game mode. Ranked is like a normal match, but played competitively, using all the same maps as the unranked game mode. If the player wins, they go up in rank, but if they lose, they go down in rank. There are also specific ranks for heroes, which are determined by how long you have played a hero. The lowest hero rank is Agent and the highest is Lord. Players get these ranks by doing a hero’s specific challenges many times. A good example of a hero challenge is if a player is ranking up a support, one of the challenges will be to heal a certain amount. If a hero is ranked up to Lord, the player is gifted with a unique icon on their hero every time they pick that hero in-game, showing everyone the time and effort the player has put in.
Many fans believe the game is here to stay due to its rising success in competition with other games. It’s hard to not have a fun time with this game and be immediately hooked. That is how “Marvel Rivals” rose to the top and hopefully keeps its hype for a long time to come.
