Marvel Rivalsthe new hero shooter based on Marvel comic book characters, kicks off its first full season later this week. The free game launched Season 0 on December 6 and quickly reached 20 million players.
After the abbreviated Season 0, we begin the first full season (13 weeks). We’ve received a flood of confirmed details, and here’s what we know about Season 1, including the season trailer.
Marvel Rivals Season 1 Start Time
The Eternal Night Falls trailer states that the season begins on Friday, January 10 UTC. The trailer’s YouTube page says it’s 4 a.m. ET/1 a.m. PT.
Learn more: Marvel Rivals: How to choose heroes and roles to play
Sue Storm can lure unsuspecting enemies into your team, allowing for a quick kill.
New Marvel Rivals Heroes and Cards
Monday’s new trailer gave us a brief glimpse of the Fantastic Four — Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch and The Thing. They’re a fitting addition to the game, given that two Doctor Dooms from different timelines are fighting for control. (This also helps create hype for the new Fantastic Four Movie, First Stepscoming this summer.) Invisible Woman will play the role of a strategist and Mr. Fantastic will be a duelist. Although he won’t appear until later in the season, The Thing will be a vanguard, with Johnny Storm adding yet another duelist to the roster.
I had the opportunity to try out the new heroes before the season and I took away two main points. First, Mr. Fantastic is officially a duelist, but his role blends very well with that of the vanguards. His Reflexive Rubber ability allows him to store and reflect damage taken back to enemies, and his ability to generate overhealth makes him much tankier than most duelists. In most games I played with or against him, he absorbed almost as much damage as the team’s tanks.
Second, Invisible Woman has a lot going on. I enjoyed the high-action-per-minute playstyle, but some players might get tired of having to keep track of the limited range of its primary fire, the health of its deployable shields, the multiple inputs for its push/pull ability, and the times recharge. of all his abilities. It has a lot of uses, but managing these different resources effectively is the key to its success.
When enemies spread out too much, you can use Invisible Woman’s ultimate to prevent enemy strategists from healing them while also healing your team in the radius.
The season will be split into two halves, with Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman being added at the start of the season, while Thing and Human Torch join in the second half. We’ll have a new convoy map, Midtown, where players will escort the Fanastic Four’s robotic ally, HERBIE, to Avengers Tower. We’re also getting a brand new arcade game mode, Doom Match, which will take place in Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. A third map, Central Park, will be added mid-season.
Prepare for some portal mayhem in the Sanctum Sanctorum arcade mode.
The developers said that’s double what they had planned for future seasons, so it’s probably safe to expect one new hero at the start of upcoming seasons and another one about six weeks later. late, with one or two new cards per season. This would mean eight new heroes per year and four to eight new cards. That’s an impressive amount of content for a live game.
There have been many other Marvel Rivals leaks recently, including hero models or abilities for characters like Ultron, Emma Frost, and Jean Grey. All of this hasn’t been confirmed yet and won’t appear in Season 1, but they do suggest a healthy content roadmap for the game that’s essential for keeping players engaged throughout the year.
Battle Pass
Season 0 featured an abbreviated battle pass, and the developers said that the Season 1 pass would feature “double the content and excitement”, in the latest version. developer vision video. This includes 10 new costumes, designed around the season’s Eternal Night theme.
The Season 1 Battle Pass will cost 990 Lattice (around $10 in-game currency). You can earn 600 fatigues and 600 units (collectively, about $12 in-game currency) if you complete the battle pass.
Balance changes
The devs saw your posts on Reddit: Hawkeye and Hela are getting nerfs to start Season 1, although the changes seem a bit tame compared to community expectations. Jeff’s ultimate is also being adjusted. And buffs are coming with Captain America, Cloak and Dagger, Storm, Venom and Wolverine, among others.
The developers released full patch notes detailing the changes, and the statistics on the Rivals website will be updated with the new balance numbers. The Rivals site has also been updated with pick and win rate statistics and will receive new updates every half season.
Ranked reset and mouse acceleration
The dev vision video also revealed that player ranks would drop by seven divisions – a platinum rank 1 would start the new season at silver tier 2, in their example. Based on this calculation, anyone at Gold 2 or lower will revert to Bronze 3 to start the season.
Additionally, the game introduces the Celestial Rank, which will feature the three standard tiers and appear after the Grandmaster Rank.
The developers also said that Season 1 will include the much-requested mouse acceleration settings option, meaning no one will have to resort to editing game files if they don’t want this feature .
For more on Marvel Rivals, check out my tips for getting started and my guide to choosing what heroes and roles to play.
