I do not possess the required amount of brain cells to digest and discern whatever happens in a Marvel Rivals team fight. I’ve tried, but anytime I get caught up in the middle while waves of crowd control abilities, ultimates, and everything in between are thrown at me, my brain just turns off. Which is why I’m happy to hear NetEase is trying to dial it all down.
As part of its latest patch NetEase has included some fixes and optimisations which include softening the blinding glow of its hero abilities: “We’ve dialled back the visual effects for a lineup of heroes to cut down on battlefield chaos and keep your superhero clashes crisp and clear.”
All of Jubilee’s base abilities have been tuned down alongside most of the new Team-Up abilities: “The list is extensive, so we won’t detail every single one here; just know the battlefield is looking clean! We’ll keep the scanner running and make ongoing optimizations.”
After hearing the news that my eyes will no longer burn mid-game, I decided to check the changes out. While I can’t say I noticed any huge changes for hero abilities—there were still frequent moments of blackout when every hero popped their ult at the same time—having a Jubilee on my team didn’t actually give me a headache this time—so that’s something.
Marvel Rivals’ visual creep is a hard aspect to manage, especially considering how many characters NetEase has added over such a short period of time. With so many heroes, abilities, and now Team-Up abilities, things are bound to look messy. Especially considering many luxury skins add even more visual confusion into the mix with unique VFX which change how some abilities look.
It’s also not helped by the fact that Marvel Rivals has always had a pretty bad UI and that the maps add yet another layer of clutter onto everything else. Seriously, some are so bad I find it hard to distinguish what’s part of the map and what’s a hero ability.
Starting off from such a poor place means it’ll be increasingly difficult for NetEase to manage the visual aspect of Marvel Rivals. I don’t think we’ll ever achieve a ‘clean’ looking game—part of the appeal is also apparently the chaos—but hopefully it’ll be managed just a little bit with frequent checks and balances such as this latest patch.
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