As Marvel Rivals unveils five more characters to bring its launch roster up to 33 heroes, some shooter fans are worried that the list might be a tad too saturated with DPS characters. However, the devs seem confident that that’s not the case, because DPS, Tank, and Support roles aren’t being integrated in the same, traditional sort of way in the first place.
As Eurogamer reports, Marvel Rivals’ launch trailer has confirmed the addition of five new faces – Black Widow, Iron Fist, Squirrel Girl, Wolverine, and Cloak and Dagger (as one character). Although Marvel Games and NetEase Games haven’t confirmed the roles for all of them, we know that at least two (Iron Fist and Squirrel Girl) are Duelists, which is, in a basic sense, the hero shooter’s equivalent of a DPS character. This also brings the number of Duelists in the game up to at least 16, which is rather a lot compared to just six known Strategists (Support) and eight known Vanguard (Tank) characters.Â
Some fans are already concerned about this, with one on Reddit saying that there are just “too many Duelist” heroes, which they claim “is a huge issue that was one of the main problems that killed [Overwatch].” However, the situation might not be quite so simple. Over in the official Discord server, Marvel Games creative development manager Dakota Maysonet recently asked the community their thoughts on the gameplay for Iron Fist, with one responding that he seems like “a full on dive tank with the amount of sustain he has.” This, it seems, is a good example of Marvel Rivals’ roles not being directly comparable with the traditional trio.
“Yes! As we said before ages ago, we’ve wanted to move away from Vanguard, Duelist, and Strategist just being names for the quintessential understanding of Tanks, DPS, and Support,” Maysonet says. “So our vision of Duelists is to really be able to duel and handle themselves, much like Iron Fist!”
With that in mind, it sounds like the usual team composition that’d consist of a variety of DPS, Tank, and Support characters might not be quite so important in Marvel Rivals. There’s only a few more days to go before everyone can figure out what works best, anyway, because the shooter has gone gold, and is set to release on December 6 across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.