Marvel Rivals has been given a lot of shit for its unapologetic poaching of Overwatch’s ideas. From the overall format down to individual hero’s kits, NetEase copiedBlizzard’s homework and didn’t try to change it much. That being said, it’s nice that Overwatch 2 has a direct competitor to put its feet to the fire, and if both of these games must co-exist, they both can learn a lot from each other. Here are six things Marvel Rivals and Overwatch 2 should steal from each other.
NetEase got off to a good start making Marvel Rivals cross-play compatible, meaning no matter if you’re playing the shooter on PC, PlayStation 5, or Xbox Series X/S, you can play with your friends on different systems. However, one major difference between it and Overwatch 2 is that the game has no form of cross-progression. It took Blizzard years to implement it into Overwatch and Marvel Rivals does have it coming in the near future, but for the moment it’s still missing so I will complain. Marvel Rivals is free-to-play so people can readily download it to play ranked matches on PC or console with their friends, but they can’t take their rewards and skins with them.
There are only a handful of heroes in Overwatch 2 that don’t use firearms or some kind of ranged weapon. Yeah, the “hero shooter” genre seems synonymous with shooting, but Marvel Rivals proves that differentiating your characters gives people more choice and playstyles for skill expression. Mister Fantastic and Captain America are two of my favorite heroes in Marvel Rivals and both are tanky melee heroes who get in close and brawl without a gun. I’d love to see more Overwatch heroes that don’t primarily point and shoot.
Hold your fire. I’m not saying that Marvel Rivals should give up the chaotic, unbalanced mayhem for a polished competitive esport like Overwatch did. But having an option that lets you guarantee there will be some healing Strategists on your team separate from the free-for-all mode we have now hurts no one. It doesn’t even have to be a team-wide 2-2-2 role queue like Overwatch 2 has, but maybe one that at least requires two healers so the team can comfortably experiment elsewhere in their composition. I don’t care what the Duelist one-tricks say, you cannot out-damage a team that has good healers when you have no one keeping you alive. So just give us some way to ensure there’s a Strategist on the team without having to berate each other to switch in the chat.
I could write another dozen paragraphs about how disappointing it is that Overwatch 2 seemingly abandoned its long-awaited story campaign. Instead, I’m going to shout out how Marvel Rivals has been integrating lore and forward narrative momentum into a genre that has historically struggled with it. On top of explicitly telling short stories within each map and match, Marvel Rivals is adding lore drops, even if they’re just in text form at the moment, as part of its seasonal events. Each season’s theme plays into an actual story development occurring in the game’s multiverse, while Overwatch mainly uses its seasons to explore an aesthetic idea for skins. Blizzard has yet to publicly acknowledge the reported cancelation of Overwatch 2’s story missions, but if there’s any hope of us seeing that story play out, integrating it into each season would be a great start.
A small quality-of-life change I’d like to see in Marvel Rivals is the ability to immediately leave a game when it’s over, rather than having to sit through all the debriefing that follows. In Overwatch 2, you can quit out of a match the second a team completes an objective and is declared the winner, allowing you to skip past the victory animation and play of the game clip and hop right back into the queue. This shaves off minutes of downtime between playing, and after years of being able to jump right out in Overwatch 2, I feel my momentum screech to a halt in Marvel Rivals as I’m forced to sit through the post-match breakdown. It’s a little thing, but I notice it every time I finish a match.
This has been my biggest takeaway while comparing Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals. NetEase’s game feels like Overwatch 2 without all the baggage and expectations that come with being a competitive game with esports aspirations. It’s pretty unbalanced by most live-service standards, has more heroes than it knows what to do with just a month after release, and half the roster feels “broken.” But who gives a fuck? Overwatch 2 has lost so much of its sauce, cutting off big plays at the knees by reworking and flattening its characters, while Marvel Rivals’ heroes make it feel like the Overwatch of old. Adam Warlock’s ability to revive his whole team like Mercy used to be able to in Overwatch echoes a simpler time. I like to believe Overwatch 2 isn’t so far gone that it can’t be like that again. They’re exploring going back to the 6v6 structure; hopefully that’s a sign that the old Overwatch spirit isn’t out of reach.
