Marvel Rivals creative director Guangyun Chen has revealed that the developers at NetEase Games will be releasing a video outlining how the game’s matchmaking works and the plans for it going forward. Citing the fact that “Matchmaking is a complex system,” Chen spoke in an interview with Rivals Assembled about various topics, including matchmaking.
The question about matchmaking in Marvel Rivals came about thanks to there being a growing suspicion among the title’s player base that the competitive shooter made use of a system called Engagement Oriented Matchmaking – or EOMM – rather than skill-based matchmaking – or SBMM. While SBMM focuses on matching players up with others of equivalent skill levels, EOMM instead focuses on “optimising” a player’s “engagement” metrics during their play time.
For example, where most games with SBMM tend to have players sit at a roughly 50-50 win-loss record, EOMM will let players go on losing streaks before matching them against a few incredibly weak teams to ensure that their losing streak is broken and they spend more time with the game.
In the interview, Chen also spoke about how NetEase Games balances Marvel Rivals between more casual players and those that might prefer more competitive playing grounds with stricter rules for game balance.
“Maybe let me introduce our approach to balance adjustments,” said Chen. “When we work on balancing, we don’t just focus on casual players, nor do we only focus on competitive players. We take a holistic look at the entire game environment across different modes, including quick play, competitive play, and tournaments. We pay close attention to each hero’s pick rate, win rate, and ban rate.”
“Yes, we comprehensively analyze these data points. Our design team also has many skilled colleagues. We constantly experience the game environment ourselves. By combining all this information, we make adjustments to the game balance.”
Since its release, Marvel Rivals has been getting continuous support from NetEase through the consistent release of updates, including major mid-season ones. One such update from back in July essentially involved the developers rebuilding the game’s shader system from the ground up to improve performance of the PC version of the competitive shooter. Since the update, the loading times in Marvel Rivals have gotten quicker, while the game also uses less memory.
The same update also brought with it the newest Duelist-class character to Marvel Rivals – the shotgun-totting vampire-hunting vampire Blade. Along with this, the update also brought with it new Team-Ups, and a new map. Existing Team-Ups have also seen some changes.
Chen has confirmed earlier this month that the developers will be collaborating with other Marvel titles for more content in Marvel Rivals down the line. However, he didn’t outright confirm whether we’ll see a collaboration event for future titles like Arkane Lyon’s Marvel’s Blade or Insomniac’s games, or even the upcoming fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls.
Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play game available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details about the game, check out our report from last month back when Season 3 went live.
