Marvel Rivals Season 1: Start Time, New Content & Everything We Know
Marvel Rivalsthe new character shooter based on Marvel comic book characters begins its first full season later this week. The free-to-play game launched Season 0 on December 6 and quickly reached 20 million players.
After the abbreviated Season 0, we begin the first full (13-week) season. We’ve had a flood of confirmed details, and here’s what we know about Season 1, including the season trailer.
Marvel Rivals Season 1 Start Time
The trailer for Eternal Night Falls says the season starts on Friday, January 10. The trailer’s YouTube page specifies that it’s 4am ET/1am PT.
Read more: Marvel Rivals: How to choose which characters and roles to play
Sue Storm can draw unsuspecting enemies onto your team, allowing for quick elimination.
New Marvel Rivals characters and cards
Monday’s new trailer gave us a sneak peek at The Fantastic Four — Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch and The Thing. They’re a fitting addition to the game given its premise of two Doctor Dooms from different timelines fighting for control. (It also helps build publicity for the new Movie Fantastic Four Getting Startedcoming this summer.) Invisible Woman will step into the role of strategist, and Mr. Fantastic will be a duelist. Although he won’t appear until later in the season, The Thing will be the vanguard, with Johnny Storm adding another duelist to the roster.
I had a chance to try out the new characters before the season, and I had two main takeaways. First, Mr. Fantastic is officially a duelist, but his role is very mixed with vanguards. His Reflexive Rubber ability allows him to store and bounce incoming damage back at enemies, and his ability to generate super health makes him far tankier than most duelists. In most games I played with or against him, he took almost as much damage as the team’s tanks.
Second, Invisible Woman has a lot to keep track of. I enjoyed the high-APM playstyle, but some players may be tired of having to keep track of the limited range of her primary fire, the health of her deployable shields, the multiple inputs to her push/pull ability, and her cooldowns. all her abilities. She has a lot of utility, but managing these various resources effectively is the key to her success.
When enemies go overboard, you can use Invisible Woman’s ultimate to prevent enemy strategists from healing them while still healing your team in the radius.
The season will be split into two halves, with Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman will be added early in the season, while the Thing and Human Torch join in the second half. We’re getting a new convoy map, Midtown, where players will escort the Fantastic Four’s robotic ally HERBY to the Avengers tower. We’re also getting an all-new arcade game mode, Doom Match, which will take place in Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. A third map, Central Park, will be added mid-season.
Get ready for some portal mayhem in the Sanctum Sanctorum arcade mode.
The developers have said that this is twice what they have planned for future seasons, so it’s probably safe to expect one new character at the start of future seasons and another about six weeks later, with one or two new maps on season. That would mean eight new characters per year and four to eight new maps. That’s an impressive amount of content for a live service game.
There have been many other Marvel Rivals leaks recently, including character models or abilities for characters like Ultron, Emma Frost, and Jean Grey. All of these have yet to be confirmed and won’t appear in Season 1, but they offer a healthy content roadmap for the game that’s essential to keep players engaged throughout the year.
Battle pass
Season 0 featured an abbreviated Battle Pass, and the developers said the Season 1 Pass will feature “double the content and excitement” of the latter dev vision video. This includes 10 new costumes styled around the Eternal Night theme of the season.
The Season 1 Battle Pass will cost 990 grids (about $10 in game currency). You can earn 600 grids and 600 units (together, about $12 in game currency) if you complete the battle pass.
Balance changes
The developers have seen your posts on Reddit – Hawkeye and Hela are starting Season 1, although the changes seem a bit modest compared to the community’s expectations. Jeff’s ultimate is also being adjusted. And buffs come the way of Captain America, Cloak and Dagger, Storm, Venom and Wolverine, among others.
The developers have released full patch notes with details of the changes, and the stats on the Rivals website will be updated with new balance numbers. The Rivals site has also been updated with opt-in and win rate statistics and will receive new updates every half season.
Ranked reset and mouse acceleration
Dev Vision’s video also revealed that player ranks will drop by seven divisions – a platinum 1 rank will start the new season with a silver 2, in their example. By this math, anyone with Gold 2 or lower will drop back to Bronze 3 to start the season.
The game is also introducing the Sky Rank, which will include the standard three levels and will appear after the grandmaster rank.
The developers also said that Season 1 will include the much-requested mouse acceleration settings option, meaning that no one will have to resort to editing game files if they don’t want the feature.
For more on Marvel Rivals, check out my tips for getting started and my selection guide which characters and roles to play.
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