Marvel Rivalsthe new superhero shooter based on Marvel's comic book characters begins its first full season later this week. The free-to-play game launched Season 0 on December 6 and quickly reached 20 million players.
After the abbreviated Season 0, we begin the first full (13-week) season. We've received a flood of confirmed details, and here's what we know about season 1, including the season trailer.
Start of Marvel Rivals Season 1
The Eternal Night Falls trailer says the season starts Friday, January 10 UTC. The YouTube trailer page says it's 4am ET/1am.
Read more: Marvel Rivals: How to choose which heroes and roles to play
Sue Storm can draw trusted enemies into your team, allowing for quick elimination.
New Marvel Rivals heroes and maps
A new trailer on Monday gave us glimpses of the fantastic four — Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch and the Thing. They're a fitting addition to the game, given its premise of two Doctor Dooms from different timelines fighting for control. (It also helps build excitement for the new The movie Fantastic Four, First Stepscoming this summer.) Invisible Woman will take on the role of strategist and Mr. Fantastic will be the duelist. Although he will appear later in the season, The Thing will be the vanguard, and Johnny Storm will add another duel to the list.
I had a chance to try out the new heroes before the season and had two main cashes. First, Mr. Fantastic is officially a Duelist, but his role fits in very well with the Vanguards. His reflective rubber ability allows him to store and bounce incoming damage off enemies, and his ability to generate excessive health makes him much thinner than most duelists. In most matchups I played with or against him, he absorbed almost as much damage as the team's tanks.
Second, Invisible Woman has a lot to follow. I enjoyed the high-action-per-minute playstyle, but some players may be tired of having to keep track of the limited range of her primary fire, the health of her deployable shields, the multiple inputs for her push ability /pull and cooldowns from all her abilities. She has a lot of utility, but managing those various resources efficiently is the key to her success.
When enemies overextend, you can use Invisible Woman's ultimate to prevent enemy strategists from healing them while also healing your team in the radius.
The season will be split into two halves, with Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible Woman added at the beginning of the season, while the Thing and Human Torch join in the second half. We're getting a new convoy map, Midtown, where players will accompany the Fantastic Four's robotic ally, HERBY, to the Avengers tower. We're also getting an all-new arcade game mode, Doom Match, which will take place in Doctor Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum. A third map, Central Park, will be added mid-season.
Prepare for portal pandemonium in the Sanctum Sanctorum arcade mode.
The developers said this is double what they had planned for future seasons, so it's probably safe to expect one new hero at the start of future seasons and another about six weeks later, with one or two new maps per season. That would mean eight new heroes per year and four to eight new maps. That's an impressive amount of live game content.
There have been many other Marvel Rivals leaks recently, including hero models or abilities for characters like Ultron, Emma Frost, and Jean Grey. All of these have yet to be confirmed and won't appear in Season 1, but they suggest a healthy content roadmap for the game, essential to keep players engaged throughout the year.
Battle pass
Season 0 features an abbreviated Battle Pass, and the developers said that the Season 1 Pass will feature “dual content and excitement,” in the latest dev vision video. It includes 10 new costumes, styled around the season's “Eternal Night” theme.
The Season 1 Battle Pass will cost 990 bars (about $10 worth of in-game currency). You can earn 600 grids and 600 units (collectively, about $12 worth of in-game currency) if you complete the battle pass.
The balance is changing
The devs saw your posts on Reddit — Hawkeye and Hela are getting a nerf to kick off Season 1, though the changes seem a little tame compared to community expectations. Jeff's ultimate is also being adjusted. And fans come by way of Captain America, Cloak and Dagger, Storm, Venom and Wolverine, among others.
The developers announced full patch notes with details of the changes, and the statistics on the Rivals website will be updated with new balance numbers. The Rivals site has also been updated with election and win rate statistics and will receive new updates every half-season.
Ranked reset and mouse acceleration
The dev vision video also revealed that player ranks will fall into seven divisions — a platinum 1 rank will start the new season with a silver 2, in their example. According to that math, anyone with Gold 2 or lower will drop back to Bronze 3 to start the season.
In addition, the game introduces the sky rank, which will contain the standard three levels and appear after the grandmaster rank.
The developers also said that season 1 will include the much-requested mouse acceleration settings option, meaning no one will have to resort to editing game files if they don't want that feature.
For more on Marvel Rivals, check out my tips for getting started and my selection guide which heroes and roles to play.