As a healer in Marvel Rivals, I think the game is crying out for some sort of role queue. I love playing as Rocket Raccoon, but being forced into the Strategist role because everyone else keeps picking DPS does take the fun out of it sometimes. Marvel Rivals team composition doesn’t need to be as rigid as a game like Overwatch, but I can’t shake the feeling that a squad with a more balanced group of heroes is going to win every time. It turns out that a lot of the community agrees, so hopefully NetEase Games is listening.
Marvel Rivals is off to an incredible start. On Steam alone the Overwatch competitor has already peaked at around 444,000 concurrent players, and it’s only been out for a day. The blend of competitive multiplayer games and the Marvel IP is proving to be a winning combination, but if NetEase Games wants the team-based hero shooter to stick around, it still has a lot of work to do. It might not have been long, then, but there’s one feature Marvel Rivals desperately needs, especially with Ranked play about to start.
I’m talking about role queue. This is a feature all Overwatch 2 players will be more than familiar with at this point, and one Marvel Rivals needs to introduce as we start getting into more competitive play. In Overwatch 2, players queue for a role before joining a match to ensure an even spread of tank, healer, and DPS players, but there’s no such system in Marvel Rivals.
NetEase Games has designed each Rivals hero so that most Vanguards (tanks) and Strategists (healers) can also deal a fair amount of damage, but not enough players are picking them still. I adore playing as Strategist Rocket Raccoon. His healing orbs have frankly absurd range, he can climb walls, and even propel himself above the map with his jetpack for a slow descent that gives you a great view of the action. My problem is that I always feel like I’m forced to play him, because everyone else on my team picks a DPS hero.
On paper that’s fine, but as soon as the other team locks in two Vanguard heroes the thought of us winning becomes a distant memory. As a quick trip to the game’s subreddit shows, the wider Marvel Rivals community has also noticed how most players pick DPS.
Almost every post is either about a lack of role queue, or players getting frustrated at not having even one Strategist on their team. It’s not all roses for us healers though, as I’ve been demolished by slick Iron Fist players so many times that I want the character banned from all game modes forever. It doesn’t help that high-mobility heroes zone in on the one healer (me) and destroy them before the rest of their team can do anything.
Role queue would provide a solution to the lack of tanks and healers in most Marvel Rivals matches, but in my opinion, the system wouldn’t need to be as rigid as Overwatch to work. Perhaps every team just needs one tank and healer at minimum, with the rest of your squad reliant on DPS and any other team-up combinations people want to run. There are many ways to win in Marvel Rivals, and I’d be interested to see how NetEase Games adapts matchmaking down the line to suit these options.
The game is still in its infancy right now, with players learning how to play their favorite Marvel Rivals character while understanding every corner of each map, so I’ll give everyone who just sits back as my Rocket dies a pass. In the meantime, we’ve still got to wait for the Marvel Rivals Season 1 release date, so now’s the time to get some practice in.
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