Marvel Rivals producer says 'it's not the time' for original heroes, the devs are more concerned with it's UI
Marvel Rivals' roster is growing rapidly, and with two heroes per season, one for each half, NetEase is quickly running through the list of fan-favourite superheroes. Luckily, Marvel has more than enough to go around, which means NetEase can hold off on making any original heroes for the time being.
While NetEase does have the greenlight to make original heroes for Marvel Rivals, producer Danny Koo simply says that "it's not the time" for that right now as they already have "so many" known heroes lined up at least until season 8 (via IGN).
"The game comes first,” Koo says, . reassuring fans that the priority for the time being is how the game itself functions rather than original character designs: "We have so many characters in Marvel, [we’re] not looking outside of Marvel. We do have collaborations with other Marvel games, let's say. At this point, we have so much content.”
Each new hero added brings a whole host of issues for the development team to deal with, ranging from community reaction to hero selection to balancing them fairly against other characters in the roster. It's a situation that becomes more complex with every new hero, and Marvel Rivals players haven't been too happy with the balancing thus far. Major complaints have included nerfs that target anyone but Strategists, and balance patches that players can't really make sense of.
Aside from balance issues NetEase has also recently dealt with the "Incentivised throwing epidemic" that saw bounties for streamers put up online, which encouraged players to sabotage games for cash. Since then NetEase has enacted a "Victim Compensation Protocol" to try and help as many innocent parties as possible, but it seemed like a headache nonetheless. Amid all of this Koo reiterates: “I don't think heroes will be a problem."
In fact, what NetEase seems most concerned about right now is the UI. With so many heroes, events, and whatnot going on it can sometimes be hard to navigate Marvel Rivals' UI. And obviously the goal is to make this game as easy to play as possible.
“It's more about UI optimization," Koo says. "It's like, ‘Who's your favorite heroes that you want to play, so you can have them at any time at your disposal? What are new characters that you want to play?’ And this is every season, and you have to solve that problem. And then, if the matter changes, it's like, ‘How am I going to pick those characters?’ Certainly, we'll work together on how we present that to the players."
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