Marvel Rivals hasn’t even been out for a week, but many fans have already wondered when the first patch update will drop. After all, the game is getting great reviews, but it’s not entirely perfect.
Interestingly, NetEase has already released its first update, which fixes some problems players have noticed since launch.
Marvel Rivals First Patch Update
Unfortunately, no significant character changes have been made, so even if some players were expecting buffs and nerfs, the latest patch seems to have done nothing.
Instead, the team has fixed many cosmetic bugs related to specific maps and some hero skins that affect the game experience in unexpected ways. Here’s the dev note from the official update:
“We noticed that some spots on the edge of the new map would cause characters to become stuck. We've looked at the entire map and tried to fix this bug. However, further adjustments may still be needed to resolve the issue fully, so we ask for your understanding while we continue looking into it and working on a way to prevent this from happening again.”
The patch notes show that most of the fixes can be considered bugs, and nothing was altered regarding the characters’ final kits. However, problems like ultimates not ending properly or characters getting stuck at certain points in a map have been addressed.
It seems that the developers were already aware of these problems at launch, but the fixes didn’t make it to launch day. Either way, the game was still completely playable, so the delay was understandable.
The detailed list of patches is available here.
What Kind of Fixes Do Players Want?
Directly upon launch, a lot of characters have been reported as ‘broken’ or unbalanced, with some saying that they deal too much damage or some tank heroes don’t deal enough.
One character specifically called out is Iron Fist, who is ridiculously mobile and powerful. He can take out a flying Iron Man even if he’s already zooming through the map—Iron Fist will be stuck to him and punching him till he drops.
Meanwhile, Vanguard characters like Thor and Captain America were expected to be heavy hitters in the game, but some say they are pretty weak despite being among the strongest characters in the lore.
With these notes in mind, some expect NetEase to drop a patch that eventually rebalances the heroes’ abilities, but some also think that the heroes feel as powerful as they do as part of the design to make the game feel much more fun.
With Marvel Rivals expected to have an official league, a balanced roster eventually is probably a non-question. However, with this still being Season 0, players may still be giving the devs a chance to work out the kinks for the official start of Season 1.
Marvel Rivals is now playable for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC.