Marvel Rivalsstill suffers from crashes and disconnects on PCs and consoles. By building the game on Unreal Engine 5, NetEase has made it more unstable without significantly improving the graphics. Mainly for PC owners, the burden of troubleshooting is left to the player base.These issues affect not only the person who crashed but everyone else who remains in the match. Teammates will be punished in several ways, and the winners are likely to have an inflated perception of their skills.
While the match issues arepresent in season zero and into season one, NetEase can make changes toMarvel Rivals' performance and rules. Stability patches will at least help mitigate full-game crashes and locks for more players.It can also help if the in-match auto-disconnects are less aggressive. If 12 players had been matched together in the first place, their connections would have been deemed stable enough already.
Unreal Engine 5 Is Still Unstable
Unreal Engine 4 Would Have Been Fine
Marvel Rivalsis built on Unreal Engine 5, which has only been available for developers since 2022. While it is the latest technology from Epic, it doesn’t mean consumers are ready for the next level. With the game being free, many are flocking to the Marvel brand even if their PC isn’t the best machine for GPU, CPU, or memory.Some might be on minimum spec, closer to the previous console generation of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in terms of power.
The annoyingly longre-launch further exasperates crashes in Marvel Rivals. Opening the game up brings up the launcher instead of loading the full game. You are then greeted by the shader compiler, multiple logos, a health warning, a login screen, and a cinematic intro. If you were mid-match, you are unlikely to get back in.
Many posts on theMarvel RivalsSteam forum concern specific crashes and performance issues directly related to UE5. Many people suggest setting up ultra-performance mode, playing in a bordered window, andlimiting FPS to 60. While this might help reduce the number of crashes, it won’t eliminate them entirely.
Rejoining And Penalties Are Too Strict
You Aren’t Coming Back Even If You Want To
Marvel Rivalshas a short window to get back into a match before being fully kicked out and penalized. It is more lenient in Quickplay compared to Competitive but is still too short to realistically get back into the match. There is also aninconsistency on when matches get canceled instead of being a 6vs5 stomp. This typically depends on if, during the first round, a player is deemed AFK by not dealing damage or even leaving spawn. It can be even more frustrating asno placement systemmakes each fight wildly inconsistent.
Quickplay doesn’t have nearly the level of frustration inMarvel Rivals. At minimum, there will be an attempt to find a new player when there is a disconnection. However, this leads to the new members having to deal with a possible loss and any bugs that may happen mid-match. For example, a match ending during a load screen can lead to soft locks and a need to restart the game.
One Seasonal Marvel Rivals Feature Could Make Balancing The Game Nearly Impossible
With season one of Marvel Rivals coming soon, the current interpretation of how seasonal buffs work could lead to some massive balance difficulties.
Leaving a match due to technical errors can still lead to temporary bans, loss of rank points, and likely other players looking toadd you to their avoided players list. It would be nice if there was some way forMarvel Rivalsto detect a legitimate disconnect rather than a full-on quitter, though that would be tough to discern. A nice compromise would be at least getting rank points back if you shared an actual UE5 crash report with NetEase, though that depends on a diligent Community Management team.
As for real full-on quitters inMarvel Rivals, their remaining team shouldn’t need to surrender and accept the loss. There is no perfect solution in these kinds of situations, but maybe giving the leaver an extremely harsh penalty, the remaining team a wash of no point change, and a small pity amount of bonus points to the “winners”.
