r/MarvelRivalsRants

My ult was turned off, my stone barley worked, and i lost to scarlet witch for the 670th time. this new Game mode is bullshit, it's fcking bullshit on top of bullshit, and i love this game but this mode....this fcking mode.........This new fcking mode Why ? i tried everything as a strange main in this new mode. I hate the infinity gauntlet mode. They should've taken a play on other games books.

I love this game but now I'm tired.

#bringproficiencytoPVAI

Source:

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/marvel-rivals-devs-transparent-18-minute-breakdown-of-how-ranked-isnt-rigged-fails-to-placate-players-who-hate-losing/

I think a huge part of the frustration with Marvel Rivals ranked comes from the way the matchmaker builds teams, and this is not some random conspiracy theory. NetEase already explained that the system weighs player skill, combines teammate averages into a team skill level, and tries to create matches where the two teams have similar total skill levels.

That design is the problem.

On paper, this sounds fair. In reality, it creates awful matches.

The matchmaker can create a lobby where one team looks like this:

Great player
Bad teammate
Bad teammate
Bad teammate
Average teammate

And the other team looks like this:

Solid player
Solid player
Solid player
Solid player
Solid player

The average skill level might be similar, but those teams are not actually equal. The second team is obviously better built for a hero shooter. The first team depends on one player carrying several weak links.

This is the exact reason so many ranked games feel like, “I am dominating, my stats are great, I am winning fights, and I still cannot win because my teammates are terrible.”

That feeling is not imaginary. That is what this matchmaking design creates.

If you drop below your actual skill level, you will naturally start performing much better than the players around you. But instead of that simply helping you climb, the system appears to treat you as the balancing weight for the lobby. You become the player used to compensate for weaker teammates.

So the system creates a reverse incentive:

Play well, get worse teammates.
Play badly, get better teammates.
Drop rank, become an outlier.
Become an outlier, get used as the team equalizer.
Get used as the team equalizer, lose games where you are individually dominating.
Lose those games, stay stuck lower than you should be.

That is bad ranked design.

It makes climbing feel miserable because your reward for playing well is not better match quality. Your reward is being expected to hard carry worse players.

I have over 2,000 hours in this game. I play consistently. I am not talking about one bad night or a couple unlucky games. This pattern becomes painfully obvious when you drop into a rank below your actual skill level. You dominate more often, your individual performance looks great, but the games still feel harder to win because the matchmaker keeps building teams where you are the compensation piece.

And I think this also explains the streakiness.

I cannot prove this part, but after 2,000+ hours, I strongly believe the skill value used for team creation does not update cleanly after every single match within the same session. It feels like the game locks you into a matchmaking profile for that session.

If you log on after a strong previous session, the matchmaker treats you like the hard carry and gives you worse teammates over and over. You can lose multiple games in a row, but the teams keep feeling the same because the system is still treating you as the high-value player in team creation.

Then after a bad session, the opposite happens. The game seems to rate you lower, so suddenly you get more solid teammates, the matches feel easier, and you go on a win streak. Not because you magically became better overnight, but because your team quality changed.

That would explain why Marvel Rivals ranked feels so streaky. It is not just “some games are random.” It feels like the matchmaker is overcorrecting based on performance/rating windows and then repeating the same team-building logic for multiple games.

The result is awful:

Win streak, next session you get punished.
Loss streak, next session you get helped.
Play well, get used as ballast.
Play badly, get compensated for.

That is not competitive integrity. That is spreadsheet matchmaking.

A hero shooter is not just average team skill. A team with one cracked player and several unreliable players is not the same as a team full of competent, stable players. Role coverage matters. Swapping matters. Awareness matters. Ult economy matters. Not feeding matters. Not tilting matters. Not throwing matters.

This system also fuels toxicity. When players constantly feel like their teammates are algorithm-assigned anchors, they get angry faster. They flame faster. They stop trusting the matchmaker, and they stop trusting their team.

Marvel Rivals ranked does not need to be “rigged” in the cartoon sense for the design to be bad. NetEase already confirmed the basic structure: the system balances team skill averages. The problem is that this kind of balancing punishes overperforming players by using them to carry weaker teams.

That makes ranked feel fake.

If the goal is competitive integrity, the matchmaker should not just make the average team number look equal. It should create teams that are similarly stable, similarly competent, and similarly capable of functioning together.

Right now, it does not feel like it does that.

Just wanted to point out something that’s been bothering me personally.

As someone who dislikes Luna, I’m getting really annoyed at being associated with those toxic assholes who send death threats and harass actual human beings over a fictional character.

These people are always going to exist. And this isn’t even something new. I’m willing to bet that one of your favorite TV shows, movies, or games has had an actor or creator get harassed or sent death threats because people couldn’t separate fiction from reality.

My best example and there are loads of them is Peter Blomquist, the actor who played Micah Bell in Red Dead Redemption 2. He played the character incredibly well, but because people hated Micah so much, he ended up receiving death threats himself.
And that’s the fucking point. A lot of awful human being who threaten people over fiction exits unfortunately.

You can absolutely hate a fictional character. You can think Luna is annoying, badly written, overused, whatever. I certainly do.you can even criticize the favoritism because of Danny or whatever connections he has .But none of that means you threaten/harass the actual people behind the character.

So please don’t lump Luna haters and these toxic assholes into the same group.
There are plenty of us who genuinely hate/dislike Luna but would never extend that hatred toward the players, developers, voice actors, creators, or any other actual person.

Hate the fictional character all you want. Just don’t be a fucking psychopath about it.

Every match against Devil Dino feels miserable now. Either tanking or just playing damage that doesn't headshot. I can't play Storm, Fanta or train Blade in qp because otherwise I feel like I'm throwing against this abomination

With tanks I mainly play thing, rogue, hood and strange. I can't frontline well as Thing against him, none of Rogue's combos work well on him, Hood's damage nerf HURTS and not sure about Strange since I didn't play him against Dino yet I think, but I can't imagine it's that much better

Is it possible to get a Sam Wilson variation to captain America?

And before I get all of the “they’re two different characters” comments let’s just realistically think about all the other costumes/variations who aren’t the same as the primary character:
Agent venom (Flash Thompson)
Spider-punk (hobie brown, although the 2099 version is original it could still be hobie)
Chasm (Ben Reilly)
Stone Age BP (Mosi)

And there’s more to name but my point is that it’s possible to do.

Not to mention, they added lady Loki, which showed us that they can add a whole new variation to a character without creating a new character.

So with those examples, is it safe to say that Sam Wilson should be in the game/could be in the game? And if he’s not added does that add to the bias against African American characters?

If you genuinely can't identify the patterns it just has to be natural selection😭

I've never seen anything like this with any other game before. Literally every single day there's always some new bullshit "Marvel Rivals is dying" narrative being perpetuated online and it seems like so many people just want the game to fail for whatever reasons they have and I wanted to know why? Why does MR specifically out of any game have so many ppl that just hate on it and spout this bullshit propaganda of Marvel Rivals "dying" like ffs Rivals has been dying now according to these geniuses for almost 2 years now like damn this has been a pretty slow death if you ask me.

How is it even possible that a game that's consistently within the top 10-20 most daily active users on steam is apparently dying every other fucking day lmao. I'm just so sick of seeing this forced narrative all the time and ppl seriously need to fuck off and find a different game to dogpile on. It's just such a joke and so sad that these ppl don't realize how stupid they are when claiming this game is dead every other fucking day for like 2 years now and yet the game is still going strong like jeez... This has to be the most successful dead game I've ever seen lmao...

I'm not trying to doompost just going to rant about the issues that are compounding on this game we all like.

The reality is:

Matchmaking has always been an issue for many. Balance has been so lackluster on OP characters Elsa and Bucky running rampant for seasons now, whilst being 'careful' on heroes like mr.fanta/blade/stratpool etc. Damage and healing being too high, forcing supports to healbot and if not tanks just immediately explode.

Add to this the fact that after only adding 1 support jubilee in 5.5 months we get a full season with a dps release. By the time a support releases in s11 it will be 1 support in 7 months. There are a plethora of other issues like skin distribution, optimisation,toxicity/throwing, smurfs.

All these things are just compounding and NetEase need to lock in and solve it as fast as possible, not to mention all the competition for the casual playerbase on the horizon.

Ps. I main tank btw 95% of my time is on tanks.