While there are many video games out there that are trying to maintain a strong gaming presence, titles like Marvel Rivals aren’t having any trouble with that at all. Ever since the game made its debut in beta last year, gamers have been hooked. The team at NetEase has been doing its best to not only have a roster full of unique Marvel characters to have fun with, but has balanced the game to a degree that anyone can pretty much jump in, find a character that fits their playstyle, and then go have fun with others. Even since launch, though, the team has been focused on another thing, too: New Characters.
Stunningly, the NetEase team has been incredibly consistent with its seasonal content. It arrives every few months, and within each season, new characters come to play. For example, the first season brought the entire Fantastic Four roster to the mix, and things have been growing ever since. The most recent additions included The Phoenix and Blade, while also bringing Knull into the story a bit more.
As Insider Gaming noted during a chat with one of the game’s leaders, while it may seem like these new characters come together easily, it’s actually quite a process. According to them, trying to get everything to come together for a single character can take almost a year, so now imagine doing two characters at the same time.
“A bit much?” It might seem that way, but you need to remember that these characters aren’t just something to be modeled and animated. Instead, they need to be designed, have their specific story made, and then tested repeatedly so that they properly interact with other characters, see how their moves impact others, find out if the new character is “broken” or not, and so on. For team shooters like Marvel Rivals, you have a lot to test before you can throw another character out there.
What this also highlights is that the NetEase team has been putting in a lot of work into the game before it ever reached beta. After all, this would mean that they were working on the new additions well before the beta ever came out, and then never stopped working as they started up the next batch of characters.
As a tease of what’s coming next, the NetEase head stated that the team was already working on the characters that would drop next year. Who are those characters? We’ll have to wait and find out!
