r/rivals

Look, im glad Torch is finally getting a new skin (which better be fucking legendary or I swear to god) but cmon, are we seriously getting Invis, Scarlet and Black Cat AGAIN??? Why are we so afraid of variety Netease?

Meanwhile Storm still has yet to receive her promised upgrade, but don worry they’ll squeeze in time for Lunas 8th legendary skin.

edit: THATS NOT EVEN HUMAN TORCH? ARE WE DEADASS?

Labeled from left to right: Devil Dino,Blade, Elsa BloodStone, Deadpool

Rocket, Human Torch,

I have very little certainty on the second pic’s last 3, but given they fall into their default poses I’m making the assumption.

My guesses: Hela, Scarlet Witch, Black Cat

Truly believe Torch hasn’t gotten any skins because they haven’t figured out a way to slap the 4 all over his design to remind you that he is supposed to be in the Fantastic 4.

Genuinely why are they afraid of giving Johnny anything. Are they allergic?

It’s been almost 300 days since his last actual skin, he DESPERATELY needs a new shop skin at LEAST if not a legendary, and you basically catfish us with THIS.

It’s cool that Reed’s getting something related to Sue’s Malice skin, but at the same time Jesus Christ man, at least provide some love to everybody’s second favorite F4 member. He’s already a terrible character to play as, and you really gotta kick him while he’s down like this?

goddamn NetEase.

The Zhiyong Cycle genuinely needs to be studied

1. Drop a patch note that doesn’t address anything problematic in the meta and often times creates an even more problematic meta

2. Community outraged

3. Patch sucks ass to play as expected

4. Appear on dev vision before next patch to talk about how they’re working on the next patch

Repeat.

I get that people make mistakes, we all do, but when mistakes become this frequent they become habits. Elsa and Dino still being meta, Thing for some reason getting a buff after only a half season, and Jubilee of all people getting self sustain?? As a lord Jubilee if your brain cells aren’t as half baked as the plot of Pokemon Sword and Shield you shouldn’t be having self sustainability issues.

I really do not see why Zhiyong or the rest of the balancing team is even still on the netease team. Between Danny “Legendary Takes Time” Koo playing in our face with the missing legendaries for characters in need and now this, when is it going to end with this garbage balancing?

First off, I love the rocket skin, and I'm very happy for mr. Fantastic mains.

Secondly I've seen so much discourse already about those last three skins with who they're supposed to be. So the obvious one is scarlet witch. But I thought the first gal was supposed to be jubilee, it looks like such a good vampire skin, but it's been pointed out that it has the F4 logo on its belt, implying invisible woman. She doesn't need a Gothic Halloween skin, they should've gone classic invisible man movie monster if they wanted sue to have a skin. Then the last one I'm still not convinced is black cat. It is such a generic looking female skin, but the pose and spirit tail looking thing screams white fox to me. I showed it to a buddy and he joked about it being for Luna snow, which I wouldn't be surprised.

This isn't the first time it's happened, this has been a problem for a minute. Like the recolors on the summer skins throw me off and I can't tell what white woman I'm firing at, Emma Frost or Sue Storm, or Tandy (Dagger). Especially with the visual clutter.

Example, I was playing Ultron, and tried to pressure the enemy invisible woman, when all the sudden she turned to diamonds and choke slammed me. They were both wearing white with brown hair, and why was she in the back!?

This is going to be the SLOPPIEST poke season. Dino, Thor, Hulk, Thing, Groot, all lunch meat 🫩

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.

I noticed this yesterday, and I’m genuinely curious what others think the reason is?

Most characters that are in ban jail, you see all the time in qp or 18v18. I started paying attention, and Gambit was seen maybe once or twice.

And imma be honest… I been playing a LOT this weekend trying to get blue coins cuz I’m broke 😅 so I can’t emphasize enough that in a shit ton of matches, only a few Gumbo Guzzlers were out on parol.

Ppl love to abuse meta or easy characters it seems. So wouldn’t you expect Gambit’s everywhere? I woulda thought 18v18 especially would be flooded with Cajuns.

If anyone has the answer and can solve this mystery I’d be very grateful lol

Both Deadlock and Overwatch are releasing a new black character with PEAK designs this month (yes ow2 character with a good design, insane sentence) meanwhile rivals’ last black character release was more than a year ago.

Now I’m not feeding into that “ netease is racist “ topic, but we still need more black people ( and other minorities that aren’t asian ) love in this game.

Also this is not glaze to Blizzard or Valve. Because Blizzard neglects their black characters the same or maybe even worse than Netease. Meanwhile, in deadlock, black characters : Calico and Wraith, are criminals and Sinclair (a black couple ) is trapped in a WHITE mannequin.
( obviously a joke if you can’t tell that they clearly aren’t finished )