What principles guide the balance of heroes in Marvel Rivals? How complex is this task, and what hurdles do developers face during the process? These questions came to light in a recent conversation with the development team behind Marvel Rivals at the Game Developers Conference. The insights reveal a mixture of straightforwardness and nuanced technicalities.
“The core philosophy for balancing is pretty uncomplicated: fun,” states Danny Koo, executive producer at Marvel Games. “When it comes to Marvel superheroes, we always emphasize the action. Prior to any balancing, it’s essential to ensure that each character is enjoyable to play. After we balance and test internally, we focus on maintaining that enjoyment… That’s the foundational principle that will remain constant.”
When asked for clarification on what “fun” entails, Koo explains, “Essentially, does this character have the capability to defeat another character within a specific timeframe, and will this character be at risk of being consistently defeated? We also take into account factors like travel time and the pacing of team engagements versus solo encounters. It involves extensive calculations.”
Delving further, I inquire about the biggest challenges encountered during game development.
“From a technical standpoint, that is definitely one of the most significant challenges,” explains Weikang Ruan, lead technical designer for Marvel Rivals. “Given the wide array of Marvel superheroes—each possessing their unique abilities—we often face a variety of visual effects. This leads to numerous visual challenges and performance issues. We often joke that developing a hero or a new map feels like conducting scientific research.”
Ruan highlights Doctor Strange’s portal mechanics as an example, noting the construction of an entire rendering pipeline for it within Unreal Engine 5. After attending a panel dedicated solely to that pipeline—where I grasped the concept but not its intricacies—I’m inclined to agree that it presents a significant challenge. He further mentions that environmental destruction, with levels featuring a lot of interactive elements, poses considerable technical difficulties when focusing on performance optimization.
As someone who regularly encounters Doctor Strange players, it seems the team has indeed calculated the balance well, although I sometimes wish they had miscalculated just a bit. So many defeats…
Eager fans of Marvel Rivals can rejoice with the return of Venom in an exciting new emote.