Marvel Rivals’ Team-Up System Should Only Be the Beginning

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 18, 2025 3 Views 7 Min Read
Marvel Rivals' Team-Up System Should Only Be the Beginning

Marvel Rivals has a massive leg up on other hero shooters in that it has a massive backcatalog of characters to work with. Spider-Man’s supporting cast alone would easily fill up a roster, and NetEase has access to all of them, plus beloved IPs like X-Men, the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and more. These characters, their history, and the fans’ attachment to them are all huge parts of why the game has been rocketing up the Steam and Twitch charts with no signs of slowing down.

One of the best ways NetEase has capitalized on these characters’ long, storied, histories is through the Marvel Rivals team-up system, where two or more characters with a relationship in the comics can activate a special ability to radically alter gameplay. Hulk can pick up and throw Wolverine, Venom can give Spider-Man and Peni Parker bits of his symbiote to activate new attacks, and Rocket Raccoon can climb up on Groot’s shoulders just like in the movies. While these moves are for sure fun and invite team composition synergy, there’s even more NetEase can do to make the experience more faithful to the source material.

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Marvel Rivals’ Season 1 Content will be a Tough Act to Follow, By Design

Marvel Rivals has hit the ground running, building on its successful Season 0 with an ambitious and content-packed Season 1. This update introduces a wealth of new features, beginning with The Fantastic Four as central protagonists. Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman are already available, while The Thing and The Human Torch will join later, pushing the game’s roster to 37 heroes—nearly rivaling Overwatch 2. Adding four heroes in one season sets a high bar for future updates, though developers have clarified that Season 1’s size is intentionally double that of future seasons.

Marvel Rivals Should Add a Nemesis System to Supplement Team-Ups

Since Marvel Rivals‘ team-up system only works with players on the same side, there’s plenty of opportunity to expand the system to include the enemy team. Provide players with certain bonuses for eliminating champions their chosen hero has a history with. Obviously, given the context, this wouldn’t be positive history, but Marvel has plenty of storied rivalries the team can pull from to make this happen.

Thor could get a health buff after eliminating Loki. Spider-Man could get increased movement after he takes down Venom. Wolverine could get some damage resistance after killing Magneto. Even the greenest of comic book novices can attest that all of these pairings have some level of bad blood to them and that taking out their respective arch-nemesis does something to complete the power fantasy of playing as these characters.

Though the members of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four may all work together as one big dysfunctional family, plenty of characters in Marvel Rivals hate one another. Magneto and the X-Men, Thor and Loki, and even Spider-Man and Venom (depending on where the two are in their relationship). There’s a lot of bad blood between these characters after decades of comic, movie, and cartoon antagonism, and when one considers the potential for characters that can be added, there’s almost limitless room for Marvel Rivals to have even more, well, Marvel rivals.

Rivalries NetEase Should Add to Marvel Rivals

  • Dr. Doom and Mr. Fantastic
  • Magneto and Red Skull
  • Venom and Carnage
  • Iron Man and the Mandarin
  • Captain America and Red Skull
  • Spider-Man and Green Goblin
  • Wolverine and Sabertooth
  • Black Panther and Killmonger
  • Antman and Ultron

Balancing a Nemesis System in Marvel Rivals

Marvel Rivals Venom-3

The team-up mechanics of Marvel Rivals are unique in that players can actively control whether or not they wish to take advantage of them via their hero picks and gameplay choices. A nemesis system, while thematically fitting and very similar, would be very different from the team-ups currently in the game, because neither side would ultimately have any say in whether these bonuses ever really come into play. Not only do players on separate teams have to coincidentally pick the corresponding characters, they have to kill each other to engage with the bonus system.

With the game’s current design, this isn’t always guaranteed to happen. While Wolverine is built to take on tanks like Magneto, Spider-Man and Venom are backline dive heroes and realistically aren’t the best picks to be dealing with each other consistently. The nemesis system buffs, whatever they end up being, could still be enticing enough to encourage players to approach the game differently than they would have before.

Ultimately, this isn’t a necessary addition to the game by any means. The title’s massive popularity means it’s already got mass appeal just as NetEase designed it. Adding a pinch of lore-accurate flavor could bring just a little more zest to an already great dish. Besides, any Marvel fan will attest that if the likes of Dr. Doom and Reed Richards stepped into a fight on opposite sides. There’s no denying they’d be locked onto each other instantly.

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