About a month after the release of Marvel Rivals, Game Director Kazuto Sekine announced that more fixes would be made to this 2v2 team-based fighting game.
Sekine posted on Steam acknowledging performance issues with the PC version, stating that Arc System Works is "currently working hard to improve the PC version so that all players can fully enjoy the game." Although Marvel Rivals has released several patches that slightly improved frame rates for some players, many are still experiencing problems.
In addition to technical issues, Sekine promised significant gameplay changes to address a major complaint from PC and PS5 players: the abuse of assist attacks. He stated that the studio will increase the cooldown time for assist attacks.
Currently, once players have collected all their assist attacks (which can be done as early as the first round), they tend to quickly summon them to pressure opponents, filling the screen with projectiles and chaos. The only cost of summoning an assist attack during a match is a very short cooldown for the summoned character, a negligible penalty. This also allows players to easily perform long, oppressive combos. As a result, many players feel the game is overly "abusive" and chaotic. Changes to the cooldown may help improve this situation.
Sekine also promised that the team would update the game's input system, allowing players to buffer attacks without holding down buttons. Refreshingly different from many other fighting games, he also revealed that they would avoid rushing balance adjustments for specific characters, as the win rates for all characters currently fall between 48% and 52%.
Marvel Rivals had a rocky start. The game launched on Windows PC with numerous issues, and severe performance flaws led to a poor online experience. Although multiple patches have improved the game's stability, its performance still lags behind cracked versions.
As a result, Marvel Rivals has performed quite poorly on the Windows PC platform. According to SteamDB statistics, the current number of active players in Marvel Rivals is even lower than older titles with longer release histories, such as Mortal Kombat 11, with a peak concurrent player count of only 1,157 in the past 24 hours.
In comparison, Street Fighter 6 had a peak concurrent player count of 34,855 over the past day, Tekken 8 had 6,516, and Mortal Kombat 11 (released in 2019) had 2,278.
According to data from Alinea Analytics, Marvel Rivals sold approximately 500,000 copies in its first week. While the mandatory PSN linkage prevented players in many countries worldwide from purchasing the game, undoubtedly adding fuel to the fire, the various issues at launch were the key problem.
