Marvel Rivals’ Game Director, Lead Combat Designer and Marvel Games Executive Producer Tell Us What’s to Come, What to Expect and Why The Roster Is So Varied (INTERVIEW)

We were lucky enough to grab a hands-on demo with Marvel Rivals at Gamescom 2024, as well as an interview with the devs involved in bringing the highly hyped Marvel game to consoles and PCs around the world.

It may still be going through rigorous testing and multiple Beta Tests, but what we have so far is an incredibly polished 6v6 hero shooter that does a lot to stand apart from others on the market, that’s for sure. During a short interview with the Game Director, Executive Producer, and Combat Director of Marvel Rivals, they explained how they’re doing that, and much more besides.

[Some answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.]

Marvel Rivals Developers Tease More to Come, and More to See

So, first and foremost, for some FandomWire readers who may not be aware of who you are, Who are you? What do you do with Marvel Rivals?

I’m Thad Sasser, Game Director on Marvel Rivals. I am Danny Koo, Executive Producer for Marvel Games, and I’m Zhiyong Feng, and I’m the Lead Combat Designer.

How has Marvel Rivals established itself so it offers something different to Overwatch, Valorant, and the others?

Danny Koo: What makes it stand out, other than the IP? So, yeah, from the Marvel perspective, a fan has been asking for a player versus player. I’ve been playing the game for the longest time. Right. So, the opportunity arose when the team was passionate about making something of the shooter hero genre. And then, of course, there are a lot of competitors out there in the market.

And how do we be unique playing in this space on top of the Marvel IP? And then the team has been working quite hard to figure it out. You know, being a superhero, obviously, there will be competition. There will be collateral damage, which is the environmental damage. So, with that in mind, what can we play creatively in the destruction? Whether we use it strategically to block the path create new open paths or help the teammates to achieve their objective.

And secondly, because it’s Marvel Super Heroes, from the comic pages, you see a lot of team-up happening. So, why not? This game has the notion of team-up abilities. And playing hard with each other.

With regards to the heroes, obviously, you just introduced Cap and Bucky last night. And there’s no doubt countless many more that you’re going to be surprising us with, but how do you go about selecting what heroes to introduce, when to introduce them, and how to balance them against what you’ve already introduced so that you don’t end up with needless nerfs in the future?

Danny Koo: So, for the roster, we work closely with the NetEase team to roughly about 70-75% of the greatest hits of people that know them. And then we try to throw in some curveball with the remaining 20%, like Jeff the Landshark. Pretty cool. And then we have deep-cut characters, right? Surprisingly, not a lot of people know about Magic. Which baffles me.

Yeah. But through the introduction of this game. players learn more about those heroes who are new to them and begin falling in love with them. So, we work with the NetEase team to, when we pick a character, it’s like, what makes this hero who they are? For example, Captain America and Winter Soldier, who are they?

So, how to differentiate between Winter Soldier and… The Punisher, let’s say. They’re both gun-based, right? And when you just look at them. But Punisher is all about a one-man army.

Right? How many weapons you can carry with you from one guy? Now, Bucky, it’s about his mechanical arm. And it’s more combo-based. It’s like, what can we do with his mechanical arm that chains right into all his actions, so, we focus heavily on his arm instead of his gun.

Team-ups are a big part of the game. Have you got any plans to implement huge team up, six v six, massive, like, I can’t think of the word, massive move, for lack of a better word, where everyone plays off of everybody else? Like a total wipeout, or a Call of Duty nuke sort of thing. Yeah, where it’s like an instant win, but it looks amazing on screen.

Zhiyong Feng: So, currently, we don’t have a plan for six heroes, because the complexity of the design of the hero is very high, and the team-up skill is an additional skill for a hero, but we don’t want to make this extra difficulty or complexity to the hero. So, basically, our design is like a team-up for two to three heroes. Sometimes, there are a few cases of four, but basically, two to three.

Why do we do this? We just want to let players not to have this pressure on them, like we have to remember how many team-up skills are or who their allies are, and so, basically, to let the player easily understand and memorize.

We’re in this business too, making sure that each character is fun to play, fun comes first. Even when you lose, you still lose in style, that’s the fun part.

Danny Koo: So, for more context, these heroes are already superheroes in their own skills and abilities. Now, if you think about it, a team of six, if you execute in the right order, it gives you a memorable moment, akin to all six doing the same thing at once. You get that feeling. So, the journey to reach there is much more satisfying than everyone doing it all in one second.

Like the long shot in the first Avengers, where they were all doing their own thing, but it looked incredible. You get that moment. So, you can do that without necessarily having to rely on a move.

Are you planning on bringing many, if any, Marvel Cinematic Universe skins? Or specifically, characters that only appeared in the Cinematic Universe?

Thad Sasser: You know, that’s always something. There’s 85 years of Marvel history that we draw from, so there’s a ton of content and we’re always looking for player feedback. What are players excited about? What are they interested in? I know Danny has a lot of great thoughts on how we can incorporate these different skins and so on into our game, what’s appropriate, and what really fits.

What’s our vision for delivering on these? Which ones fit with our gameplay? Which ones fit with the narrative over time? We’ve got a really strong story, and as we go forward that story will change, and that would influence what kind of characters we would bring in as well, and how they tie in with the content.

Good thing this is a multiverse. We get inspired by TV shows and movies, and if you look at the Marvel Games portfolio, there’s a ton of Marvel rivals. What is it, 9,000 characters, Danny? It’s over 9,000. So we can’t bring them all. I don’t know, if you’ve got a good few years in, there’s plenty of time.

I mean, I could sit here all day and speak to you and ask you questions, unfortunately, we’re out of time, but is there anything that I’ve not asked, or you just simply don’t get to tell people usually that you’d like to share?

Danny Koo: The main point that we announce is all heroes are unlocked for free, from the beginning, and that applies to heroes beyond the launch date as well. So that’s a big deal, we want the player to come in, pick their favorite, or the most hated one if they want, and just enjoy playing with other heroes.

We’re in this business too, making sure that each character is fun to play, fun comes first. Even when you lose, you still lose in style, that’s the fun part.

There’s a lot of feedback that we try to see what’s happening in all our beta tests, and we are relieved that every time the players will tell us, yeah we’re having fun even though we lose, that’s a great story. We work closely with the community, and we say, “What would you like to see, what is the current status, what do you guys see, what can we do better?”.

And how do we be unique playing in this space on top of the Marvel IP?

So the team is very passionate, we constantly have this feedback loop and iterations, and we’re getting ready to launch it. And will that continue past the launch? Oh for sure, yeah. So we have a strong community, even on Discord, and players tell us what they would like to do with the heroes that don’t even exist yet.

You mentioned all the heroes are free from the get-go, and that continues past launch, will you be introducing any micro-transactions, be it skins, unique weapons, maps, etc, or any other part of the game?

Thad Sasser: Certainly a game has to be profitable to run it, it’s not a free thing to run. So of course there’ll be some monetization aspect, but we’re not going to sell power. One of the big things Stanley pointed out is, that because all the heroes are free, you’re not going to buy a hero that’s maybe more powerful or out of power. It’s not a play to win.