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Marvel Rivalsthe new hero shooter based on Marvel comics characters, will begin its first full season later this week. The free-to-play game launched in season 0 on December 6 and quickly reached 20 million players.
After the shortened season 0, we will start the first full (13-week) season. We’ve gotten a flood of confirmed details, and here’s what we know about season 1, including the trailer for the season.
Time to start Marvel Rivals season 1
The trailer for Eternal Night Falls says the season begins Friday, January 10. The trailer’s YouTube page specifies it’s 4 am ET/1 am PT.
Read more: Marvel Rivals: How to Choose Which Heroes and Roles to Play
Sue Storm can pull unsuspecting enemies into your team, allowing for a quick takedown.
New heroes and maps in Marvel Rivals
The new trailer on Monday gave us a brief look at the the Fantastic Four — Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch and The Thing. This is a fitting addition to the game, given its premise that two Doctor Dooms from different timelines fight 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 not seen until later in the season, The Thing becomes a vanguard, with Johnny Storm adding another duelist to the roster.
I had a chance to try out the new heroes ahead of time and have two main takeaways. First, Mr. Fantastic is officially a duelist, but his role is very mixed with the vanguards. His Reflexive Rubber ability allows him to store and bounce incoming damage back at enemies, and his ability to generate excess health makes him tankier than most duelists. In most games I’ve played with or against him, he absorbs almost as much damage as the team’s tanks.
Second, Invisible Woman has a lot to track. I enjoy the high-actions-per-minute style of play, but some players may be tired of keeping track of the limited range of his primary fire, the health of his deployable shields, the multiple inputs for his push/pull ability and the cooldowns. with all his abilities. He has many uses, but the effective management of those various resources is the key to his success.
If enemies overextend, you can use Invisible Woman’s ultimate to prevent enemy strategists from healing them while also healing your team within the radius.
The season will be divided into two parts, with Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman will be added at the beginning of the season, while the Thing and the Human Torch will be together in the second half. We get a new convoy map, Midtown, where players will escort the Fanastic Four’s robotic ally HERBIE to the Avengers tower. We also get a new arcade game mode, Doom Match, which takes place in Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. A third map, Central Park, will be added midseason.
Get ready for some portal pandemonium in arcade mode in the Sanctum Sanctorum.
The devs say that this is double what they have planned for the upcoming seasons, so it’s probably safe to expect a new hero at the start of the upcoming seasons and another one about six weeks later, which there are one or two new maps each season. That means eight new heroes every year, and four to eight new maps. That’s an impressive amount of content for a live-service game.
There have been many other Marvel Rivals leaked recently, including hero models or abilities of characters such as Ultron, Emma Frost and Jean Grey. All this has not been confirmed and will not appear in season 1, but they suggest a healthy content roadmap for the game, important for the continuation of players throughout the year.
Pass the war
Season 0 featured an abbreviated battle pass, and the developers say that the season 1 pass will feature “double the content and excitement,” at the latest. dev vision video. That includes 10 new costumes, styled around the season’s Eternal Night theme.
The season 1 battle pass will cost 990 lattice (about $10 worth of in-game currency). You can earn 600 lattices and 600 units (together, about $12 worth of in-game currency) when you complete the battle pass.
Balance changes
The devs saw your posts on Reddit — Hawkeye and Hela are getting nerfs to start season 1, though the changes look minor compared to the community’s expectations. Jeff’s ultimate has been adjusted again. And buffs are coming in the way of Captain America, Cloak and Dagger, Storm, Venom and Wolverine, among others.
The devs have been released full patch notes detailing the changes, and the statistics on the Rivals website will be updated with the new balance figures. The Rivals site has also been updated pick and win rate stats and receive new updates every half-time.
Reset ranking and mouse acceleration
The dev vision video also revealed that player rankings will drop into seven divisions – a platinum 1 ranking will start the new season with silver 2, in their example. By that math, anyone in gold 2 or below will go back to bronze 3 to start the season.
In addition, the game introduces the celestial rank, which will show the standard three levels and appear after the grandmaster rank.
The developers also said that season 1 will include the much-requested mouse acceleration settings option, meaning that no one will have to resort to editing game files if they don’t want that feature.
For more on Marvel Rivals, check out my tips to get started and my selection guide what heroes and roles to play.
