As Marvel Rivals has launched its first batch of post-launch heroes with the Fantastic Four, the community remains eager to know who’s waiting in the wings. Dataminers have seemingly revealed much of the future additions not long after the game’s launch, and the obsession over that list has grown to the point developers at NetEase have shared their thoughts on the matter.
Talking to IGN, producer Weicong Wu and Marvel Games executive producer Danny Koo were asked about the leaks, and if there were any truth to speculation that some characters may have been intentionally planted as fakes. The most direct answer came from Koo, who said NetEase “experimented with a lot of play styles and heroes. It was like there’s someone doing scratch paperwork and then just left a notebook there, and someone [a dataminer] decided to open it with no context.” He also confirmed no one at the studio is messing with the community in the bluntest way: “We’d rather spend our time developing the actual game.”
Wu further explained each Marvel Rivals character goes through “a very complicated process,” including concepts and prototypes. “Some information” could be in the game’s code, sure, but he advised players not take that code (or what they learn leakers on social media) as gospel. “It might mean that we’ve tried those directions and they may appear or may not appear in our future plans,” he told IGN. “Whether or not they will appear in our future pipeline is highly depending on what kind of gameplay experience our players would expect in our game.”
In that same interview, Wu and Koo revealed NetEase plans Rivals updates roughly a year in advance, meaning the game will maintain its cadence of new characters every month and a half. As for how characters make the cut, they look at what type of character’s needed for balance the game (like supporting weaker characters or nerfing stronger ones) and refresh the roster. After creating a list of candidates, they pass that on to Marvel Games, and get to work on designs. Community interest factors into their choices, as does whatever Marvel’s got cooking up in the next year—if there’s a potential tie-in opportunity, they’ll try to take it. Be excited by whoever could show up in Marvel Rivals, just don’t expect leaks to tell the whole story.
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