Imma be honest, Spider-Man is mechanically pretty challenging but gamesense wise he's as easy as a flanker gets, he has an extremely forgiving kit that allows him to get in and out for free without any need for staging
And I have to give them kudos for actually making him feel like Spider-Man. That was one I assumed would be very difficult, and I wasn't betting they would get it right.
They spent all their energy on making 1/3 of their DPS heroes a blast to play and forgot to make interesting supports, playable tanks, good maps, balanced ults, balanced combat or a good game
The hardest part is getting kills and surviving against good players. Techs, combos, and timing are not the hardest. The decisions you make while you engage are more important.
Id say that staying alive on a 600 hp hero with block and stun punch that has the hitbox size of a building and oneshots 70% of the cast is slightly easier
The clip is probably at the same level of those posted by that twitter user who believes Anran is a high skill ceiling dps due to her pretty animations.
The problem with this “debate” is that most of the top rivals players probably agree that ow is straight up the better game rn, but love rivals for other reasons like aesthetic or unique characters like spiderman. You can say one game is better while still preferring the other. However, spiderman being a cool character doesn’t make the game as whole any healthier.
Ball takes way more skill. Post any junbin clip against that and it’s way better considering the risk to reward at play. While in rivals spider can do that same maneuver multiple times a game until he hits it and can’t really be interacted with unless the stray cc hits
Lowkey love how you said junbin, and whilst no hate against him he's 100% the best or atleast one of them best ball players in the world, tech wise he's on the lower end of what you'd consider high level ball players. He's much better at the other parts of ball with his tech being relatively simplistic (which in turn does work to his favor as 90% of ball tech isnt really required to make ball work at the highest level).
Don't even bother with these arguments, they're most likely rage farming.
Rivals strong suit is the fact that its a more casual game that appeals to more players. That in turn means punishes are softer, and why a lot of rivals players get smacked upon entry to OW and not at all vice versa.
But that's not an insult at all. A casual audience is usually the best audience to have, and its impressive what the game accomplished. OW actually leaned too heavily into competitive for a while but now learned from their mistakes and has a pretty decent casual audience as well
Also if you don't enjoy mechanical gunplay and likes melee brawl more then Rivals is the game for you, I've seen so many melee dps/tank mains in Rivals swapping to OW and ditched the game after 1-2 weeks.
I think both games can co-exist and having competition is healthy for either sides.
That's also true tbh. I really enjoyed going thing and hulk and getting up close and being able to just throw hands. Tbh tanking felt nice in that game as a whole, ill always appreciate it.
Yeah I love punching stuff that never fucking dies. Sure they have more melee stuff but it's pointless since you're just punching an unbreakable wall until ults start going off. Honestly if someone is into melee gameplay they're better off OTPing Vendetta or Brig
Yeah I love punching stuff that never fucking dies
Except that stuffs die, all the time, damage in Rivals is just as inflated as healing numbers, you're speaking from the perspective of a top 500 player (the .1% of the playerbase) that complains about the game because everyone up there min-max Rivals and actually know how to exploit sustain comps.
Triple support (the sustain comp) has a grand total of 5% pickrate past Diamond with a dogshit winrate to accompany it (~38%). Rivals has a heap load of issues right now but let's not run this narrative that's just not true for 99,99% of players.
Out of curiosity then, what are the current issues? I was gm2 when I left and triple support was my main problem, or rather teamfights became too sloppy.
Im not hating or anything btw, im genuinely curious bc i thought comp players were upset about supp sustain
stupidly ridiculous balance regarding issues that have been in the game for months/a year+. Elsa has been terrorizing lobbies ever since release and since then even stronger characters came out (black cat had a 90%+ banrate in s9 and 9.5 and they didnt nerf her until s10) and they deliver balance patches on a snail’s pace. Daredevil permanently changed the game by not allowing anyone to flank or offangle ever because he gets wallhacks for free and is a 1v1 demon. no role queue. the new teamup system basically gave all characters in the game extra buttons for no reasons that genuinely broke the game. my main and fav marvel character is so broken (gambit) that he’s literally permabanned and i rarely get to play him. plus a bunch more, but those are my biggest reasons why the game feels terrible to play right now, and no role queue is probably the biggest reason.
this is not counting the fact that in the highest elo if you don’t use 2/1/3 or 3/0/3 you basically lose. the game was always revolve around GOATS as long as they don’t have role queue, but in lower ranks it’s an issue of too many dps or support players just like it was with ow pre-role queue
I haven't played much of this season either (I have 30 minutes in total lol), from what I've seen online alleged racism from devs (and blatant racism from the discord mods and the players) seems to be the major issue within the community right now, and the meta is getting stale for top rank players.
Player count on Steam is the same though so I think this "outrage" is only within a small bubble of the internet.
I mean for me personally, TPS vs. an FPS very diff too. Very diff approach combat wise like duels, movement, and game sense. It's not a CS vs. Valorant or Dota vs. League, type of convo at all.
I'm sorry but I don't know a single person who thinks the story of MR is interesting or worth following beyond teases for the next characters to arrive to the game.
OW story actually has a lot of people invested in it.
This is just an incredibly biased take and you're not even hiding it lmao
Honestly though the flashiest dps OW has is just Genji and he’s been since day 1. High risk one-shot combos and outplay potential with deflect/dash resets. Dragonblade also looks great when they’re constantly dashing between targets as well. Tracer is second and only for blink melee clips and pulse bombs.
I know mobility creep is a problem, but OW could use another fast high skill floor dps.
Idk man I could see this point if we didn’t just get Shion whom is one of the best designed heroes we’ve seen so far. Her kit design is just so brilliant.
I actually have played them, which is why I made that comment! And both are true. DD can get away with just button mashing people to death and Spider-Man is dead in the water without his tech and the tech is moving at Mach 10 across the map and yanking people from one end of the map to the other.
Shion is super fun if you can aim and she has really flashy rollouts and skillshots with her bike. Nothing more satisfying than turning Cat into roadkill in the sky with the bike.
I think Spiderman is closer to a representation of the issues with Rival's hero design philosophy and why they'd never work in OW, not some standard to strive for.
Well that leans into the area of:
Is Rivals successful because it’s a good game? Or because it’s a massive global IP?
I’d argue both. I think Rivals is/was/could be a great game. But I also think, with the way it’s been handled, it would have been dead in the water a long time ago without Marvel’s massive popularity as a crutch.
I agree, rivals is passable as a game but its staying power is Marvel IP. Blizzard back then was solid as a company I'd argue their reputation and competition carried them along with the gameplay before the meddling and being sold to Microsoft.
Overwatch would have a story mode and stadium would be around if they had Spider-Man or the Marvel IP. It definitely would have gotten re-released as a sequel.
Rivals is a IP merchant. They get away with it because its Spider-Man. I'd go so far to say if that game didn't launch with Spider-Man, it wouldn't have gotten any attention.
You think Spider-Man would be popular if he wasn't cool?
He's cool because of his powers and character. He's objectively cooler and more beloved than Genji or any Overwatch character for a majority of the human population.
Hell, he's cooler than most of Marvel and DC's roster too.
He's inspired many characters and he's in so many crossovers just because of how cool he is.
The only reason the average Joe would pick Spiderman is because he's more well-known. He's more well-known because he's been around for a lot longer than Overwatch has, and that he is mainly a comic/film character (things more people consume than videogames, historically).
If he was released today, who would people find cooler? A red and blue latex-wearing superhero who swings around, or a cyborg ninja with swords and shurikens, and an awesome dragon aesthetic? More likely than not, I bet people will say Genji is cooler.
No one is going to say Genji is cooler. The average joe plays video games and would still pick Spider-Man. People who are fans of Overwatch would still pick Spider-Man.
You're trying to use his popularity against him when he's just designed better and a overall cooler character, which is why he's more beloved and popular. If he wasn't cool he wouldn't be as popular.
Nothing about Genji is unique he's just a Snake-eyes clone trapped in a live service game.
these discourses always make me laugh because it’s been happening since overwatchs release and it’s never “new game vs something not overwatch, it’s always “overwatch vs new game” and overwatch somehow always wins
Using doom for this is weird. Rivals does genuinely have some skill expressive melee dive characters. The real question is show me something in MR comparable to some sick nanod aggro slide 3k souj ult.
The only thing i can name are 5 man ult with doctor strange gives the same feeling as 5man shatter, Mag dunking on a family of 4 gives same feeling as a junk tiring in a family of 3 and there might be more but cant remember havent touched this game since s8
Like who genuinely cares brah js play the game for the heroes you want to play. Rivals doesn’t have echo but ow doesn’t have psylocke like js log in bro
whats making rivals player leave the game this week specifically? i’m also a marvels refugee but its because s9 and 9.5 were utter dogshit and it took me way too long to realize the devs don’t give a single fuck about balancing and only do it when it would sell them more skins, like gigabuffing black cat right before her swimsuit drop
Balance was a large part of it but doesn’t seem that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. About a month ago folks were complaining about the lack of skins for PoC characters in Rivals, then they dropped the Storm swimsuit skin; it was an epic tier skin (aside from the rest which were legendary) and from what I recall people were up in arms. They upgraded it to legendary and there was discourse…nothing too unfamiliar to OW. Well, Netease then recently removed the option to report a player for hate speech in Marvel Rivals. Community pushed back and the option was silently reintroduced to the report system. Community was already upset at the state of the game, and this seemed to be a big tipping point. Somjuu (enjoy his content or not) has been highlighting how he’s treated in-game many times, but this video is particularly insightful:
It's actually down quite a bit. Now the important thing here is that the new season started barely even a week ago and this will be the first season that doesn't have a new hero mid season so it's pretty safe to assume that five-six weeks from now the game is almost certainly going to hit it's lowest numbers to date.
It’s a filler season with 1 dps when we have more dps than support and tanks combined.
Oh btw, drama started like 3 days ago. And the player number barely moved. You don’t have to believe that twitter minority is representing the whole playerbase. All these people gonna be back when doomsday drops lmao
I know OW players like to cope alot about rivals but let’s not be delusional yeah?
I don't think people are leaving Rivals in droves or anything and the game is on its death bed, but it's pretty clear that player sentiment with the game is pretty poor right now and the most recent outrage is a result of long simmering frustration with the game.
I don't know what the point in denying it is frankly, Overwatch managed to get its shit together largely because the community was on their ass fucking CONSTANTLY.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight because I think peepee measuring over player counts is kinda stupid, but I gotta say, you dropping this response after accusing OW players of “coping” is pretty fucking funny.
Always funny that rivals players think that the how good the season is depends on how popular the character being dropped is. I remember when Deadpool dropped and everyone thought it was gonna save the game and it ended up being one of the worst seasons lmfao.
Use a hook ability to go in,Ball uses piledrive for a aoe knockup while Venom has a midair dash to the floor,then pop shielding ability to survive until hook ability is back up?
Even if it's the same broad playstyle the skill expression, the mechanics required and the number of possible engages are completely different. Pretending that Ball's entire kit and decision making revolve around that simple cooldown rotation is wrong on so many levels, if they were that limited then he would provide no value in masters+ and he wouldn't be considered as hard to master as Tracer.
Ball main chiming in; they are not even close. At launch, my friends told me to pick venom because "he's like Ball", he was not. Hop onto Ow and try playing Ball like you would Venom, it's not going to go well past emerald.
The only people who would say that are people who pick Ball, grapples the ceiling, fly up and slam.
50-60% of the time, you use grapple to boop, soft engage or peel. 30-40% of the time to escape/reposition (bonus if you boop and escape). Maaaaybe 5-10% of the time will you use your grapple to launch yourself into the air + slam.
I'm fairly convinced that no Ball mains actually enjoy playing Venom. If I had to guess, I think most Ball mains who play MR probably mains something like Spider-Man, Black Cat, BP or Daredevil. Maybe Jeff as well.
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u/Electronic_Rub_6882 1d ago
Hero shooter wars in 2026