Marvel Rivals has been out for a month now, and with its new season kicking off this weekend, it’s still as popular as ever. A month can be a long time in video games. It’s longer than Concord was alive. A few days ago I was singing Rivals’ praises, noting that even when someone has had something bad to say about it, it’s been more of a joke than a serious complaint. Jeff being OP can’t be a bad thing, he’s too adorable.
I should have known better as hours later, conversations surrounding what would happen to chrono tokens once the new season began started to make their way onto my timeline. The in-game currency used to unlock battle pass items resets to nothing at the start of each new season, the rumor went. Since I had completed season zero’s battle pass and there was nothing left for me to spend my tokens on, I assumed the rumors couldn’t be true.
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I assumed wrong. I fired up Rivals this morning to check out the new characters and lo and behold, my chrono token total has indeed been reset to zero. I’m more confused than annoyed by this. Why provide me with ways to keep earning a currency that was going to be deleted before I had anything to spend it on?
My Marvel Rivals Time Has Been Dictated By Earning Chrono Tokens
My first month with Rivals revolved around earning something that has now disappeared. Missions that required you to use certain characters to complete them meant I used members of the roster I would have otherwise avoided, just so I could complete those missions and have more tokens at my disposal.
Those missions have resulted in me trying out all 33 characters on the Rivals roster during season zero rather than exclusively sticking with Peni Parker, so there is a slim silver lining.
Had I known those tokens were exclusively for items in the season zero battle pass, and that I’d have an abundance of them come the end of the season that I couldn’t take with me, I’d have stopped completing challenges to earn them. At the very least, a clearer message from the developers would have been nice. Turns out the team did reveal that earned tokens would expire at the end of the season, but it was tucked away in a dev diary published on Christmas Eve. That’ll explain why I missed it.
Even better would have been the opportunity to exchange them for something else. Like so many live-service games, Rivals has a few currencies to get your head around: tokens, lattice, and units. Lattice is bought and can be used to buy the luxury battle pass, while units will get you cosmetics from the in-game store. Exchanging chrono tokens for units at the end of the season, even for a reduced exchange rate, would have made collecting them through season zero worth it.
First My Tokens, Now My Hourglasses Too?
Rivals taking my tokens is hitting harder than it might normally have done due to the added news that I probably won’t be able to use my Pokemon TCG Pocket hourglasses to load up on packs when set two launches later this month. There is some speculation that the new set will have its own hourglasses which means the current ones, of which I currently have 346, will be useless.
Similarly to Marvel Rivals, I’ve been saving a currency that might eventually become obsolete. Sure, there are a few cards I still don’t have in Pokemon Pocket’s first set, but once I get them, and I still have hourglasses left over, what am I supposed to do with them? Nothing worthwhile to spend them on and likely nothing to exchange them for – despite Pocket having an even more confusing currency system than Rivals.
Seriously, don’t try to get your head around Pocket’s currencies. Just open your two packs a day, maybe have a little battle, and get out.
Rivals and Pocket aren’t the only live-service games guilty of this. They’re just the ones annoying me right now. Not only because they’re new, but because I’m being afforded opportunities to save up currencies only to find out they’re being taken away or can’t be used past a certain point.
Rivals has done everything else so well during its launch month, it’s equal parts surprising and disappointing that I’m now feeling a little let down by it. I understand that the team won’t want players like me who have – sorry, had – thousands of chrono tokens buying everything on the new battle pass right away, but a clearer, in-game warning of some sort that they don’t carry over would have been nice. The chance to exchange them for units during season one would be even better, but unfortunately, that seems like an unlikely charity to expect.
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Marvel Rivals is a Super Hero Team-Based PVP Shooter! Assemble an all-star Marvel squad, devise countless strategies by combining powers to form unique Team-Up skills and fight in destructible, ever-changing battlefields across the continually evolving Marvel universe!
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Experience the fun of collecting Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) cards with Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, an upcoming game for iOS and Android devices from Creatures Inc., the original developers of the Pokémon TCG, and DeNA Co., Ltd.
