As Emma Frost Makes ‘Marvel Rivals’ Debut, Devs Announce New Plan To Have “A New Hero Debuting Each Month”
In a move that could prove to be either one of the best fan-centric decisions of all-time or one of the absolute worst, the Marvel Rivals development team has announced that starting with the arrival of Emma Frost in the game’s next season, they will now plan to release a new playable character every month.
This update to the hero shooter’s development aims was first confirmed to the public on April 3rd as part of that day’s massive reveal of the game’s upcoming Season 2.
Set to release in just 8 days, the next season will ditch the vampire-drowned streets of New York of its predecessor and instead whisk players away to the island of Krakoa, where in honor of a multiversal edition of the Hellfire Gala, they’ll be made privy to a new selection of themed maps and costumes, as well as a brand new character in the White Queen herself, Emma Frost.
Rocking a Hellfire Gala-inspired outfit and rocking a faithfully powerful kit that makes use of both her diamond form and psychic powers, the former White Queen and head of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters will surprisingly slot into the Vanguard role – Thankfully so, as if she was a Strategist like many initially predicted, that would have made three blonde, white-projectile-throwing, white-and-blue clad female healers, and it’s already hard enough to tell the difference between Invisible Woman and Dagger in the heat of battle without another.
In addition to the introduction Emma and Krakoa, the Marvel Rivals dev team also sought to inform players that while Season 2 would remain largely unchanged compared to previous seasons, Season 3 would see significant tweaks made not only to the game itself, but also their handling of its development.
Addressing these changes via a new entry in their ‘Dev Vision’ video update series, game director Guangyun “Guangguang” Chen explained that such changes would include:
- A new set of Weekly Missions, as added in order to allow players more opportunities to acquire Chrono Tokens
- Alternative color palettes for existing costumes (at current, it’s unknown whether these palettes will be made freely available to players who already own a given skin or if they’ll need to be purchased separately)
- A new ‘Special Event’ mode, wherein players can live-test various experimental match formats
- The ability to gift costumes to other players
- And perhaps most notably, a “shift to a two-month [season] format, with a new hero debuting each month.”
(Additionally, Chen also noted that due to network protocol updates in Season 2, past versions of the Marvel Rivals client would soon become unusable, and thus players should save their saved replay videos before the update rolls out.)
Regarding the tweaks to its actual gameplay mechanics, Marvel Rivals Lead Combat Designer Zhiyong Zeng detailed that, on the battlefields of Season 2, players could expect to see:
- Significant modifications made to Team-Up abilities, including the addition of Arcane Order (Doctor Strange anchor, Scarlet Witch), Mental Projection (Emma Frost anchor, Psylocke, Magneto), and Stars Aligned (Captain America anchor, Winter Soldier), as well as the complete removal of Metallic Chaos (Scarlet Witch anchor, Magneto) and Voltaic Union (Thor anchor, Captain America, Storm).
- Further, some existing Team-Ups will have their rosters shuffled, Psylocke being removed from Magik’s Dimensional Shortcut, Winter Soldier from Rocket Raccoon’s Ammo Overload, Doctor Strange from the Hulk’s Gamma Charge, and Namor being moved from Luna Snow’s Chilling Charisma to the new third member of Gamma Charge.
- Buffs to Captain America, Peni Parker, Mr. Fantastic, and Moon Knight
- Nerfs to Doctor Strange as a whole, Loki’s Regeneration Domain move, and Adam Warlock’s Soul Bond ability, the latter two done in order to grant a slight buff to Rocket Raccoon’s viability.
- The removal of the Yggsgard Royal Palace and Tokyo 2099 Shin-Shibuya maps from Competitive rotation, with the new Hellfire Gala Krakoa map set to replace them
In terms of competitive play, Zeng also confirmed that Season 2 will raise the minimum account level to enter ranked mode, give more weight to an individual’s respective performance in calculating post-game point totals, and see every player’s respective standing knocked down by nine divisions.
Per above, Marvel Rivals is presently set to accept Emma Frost’s invitation and hit the Hellfire Gala when Season 2 officially debuts on April 11th.
More About:Video Game News