Update: NetEase has now rescinded plans to release a mid-season rank reset after an overwhelmingly negative response from fans.
Original story: NetEase has announced that the remaining members of the Fantastic Four—the Human Torch and the Thing—as well as a mid-season rank reset will arrive in Marvel Rivals on February 21. The two superheroes will be joining their Fantastic coworkers, Reed Richards and the Invisible Woman, who were added to the game in the first half of the season.
As you might expect, the Thing and the Human Torch are set to be a tank and a DPS respectively—sorry, I meant a “Vanguard” and a “Duelist” to borrow the game’s parlance. I mean that just makes sense though, how else are you supposed to videogamify the fantasies of “big rock guy” and “fire blast man?” Mr. Fantastic, meanwhile, is also a Duelist (albeit with tanky upside), while Sue Storm is the lone healer-Strategist of the family.
The mid-season update will also come with a rank reset, knocking each player down four divisions, the numbered Marvel Rivals ranks. If you’re a Gold I, you’ll be bumped down to Silver II and have to climb your way back up. If that sounds harsh, NetEase has also said that future resets will instead be expanded to a six division drop, which makes me think that NetEase is using rank resets to generate player engagement as much as anything else.
Potentially controversial rank reset mechanics aside, the Quicksilver pace of Marvel Rivals’ content updates has kept it steadily in Steam’s top three games by concurrent player count since release, alongside perennials Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2. Since launching in December, the game will have added four new heroes and at least three new maps by the February 21 mid-season update. That’s better than a lot of games manage for a full season. NetEase has taken a far more hands-off approach to the game’s balancing: The studio seems more interested in the average user’s experience of Marvel Rivals than its viability as a potential esport, and we’ll have to see how the strategy pans out in the long run.