I've put a hundred hours into this game since its release. It's fun, exciting, and gets a lot of things right. I wasn't into it at the start since it's a 3rd person game, but I've overcome my bias now. I'll go into what I think the game does right, and what I'm not a fan of yet.

- It's fresh and exciting. The Marvel IP is obviously big, but not sufficient in itself. The skins, battlepass, and events seem fair value and good quality. Sort of a mix of Overwatch at the start and League in its quality.

- Also since it's new and popular, queue times are in the seconds, I've only ever had queue times of three minutes in a full stack.

- The movement feels right. I'm not big on abilities-based movement, but here at least the cooldowns are short and consistent, with long CDs only on especially strong abilities or on champions that have more than one option. Compare Black Panther's resets on marked targets to Genji's resets on kills. Black Widow's sprint and power jump to Widowmaker's one grappling hook. Wolverine RC is on a three seconds timer, with his big shift coming in at 16 seconds.

- Ban system in higher ranks. It's not perfect, but at least it exists.

- Soft counter picking exists, hard counters are barely in the game (and hopefully they tone it down even more). In OW, the moment you play well on Winston you face a Reaper and Bastion and the game becomes unplayable. Tank in general is unplayable if the opposing tank is willing to swap. On the other hand, if the enemy team has a Pharah with hands then you need your DPS to pick to a counter, preferably a long-ranged hitscan champion. Or they have a Widow, congrats you now need to dedicate your game on both sides around her sight lines and picks.
In Rivals, besides maybe Wolverine versus tanks, hard counters don't exist. Peni and Namor can make diving hard, but not impossible to execute. Dare I say that flyers are a non-issue? Virtually every champion has the wherewithal to damage or stun at range. The Tracer equivalent can fly himself. Projectile speeds are sufficiently fast that you can aim and hit frequently enough. Even melee tanks can knock flyers out of the air.

- Some good champion design choices. The Punisher has an assault rifle but also a shotgun. Hell yeah! The Sniper character has a cqc stun tool at her disposal, so she doesn't become completely useless once somebody gap closed on her (or she decides to finish you off in close quarters).

- One shots are laregly conditional and have counter play. The sniper can only one shot you if she is damage boosted, which will not be very often. Hawkeye can one shot you, but he can't spam choke points because he actually needs to charge his shot on you. Assassins can combo you, but there's counter play. The same is true for ultimates, which can one shot you sometimes, but always have ways in which they can be fully negated.


Now my two concerns:

- The performance is still bad. It's gotten a lot more stable lately, but I'd still like to be able to play at a 144fps, pretty please.

- No role queue. I'd really like to be able to play 2-2-2 games as the standard. Match quality goes down the drain when you have more than one fill player, but also when your team ends up forcing four damage dealers. I get that queue times would increase (for DPS and maybe Strategists, let's face it), and that it locks down the meta more stringently, but also, triple DPS/Tank/Support comps are always boring to play and watch, and I'd like to be able to have a serious match as a DPS without soft inting my team because I'm forcing the third DPS in an elo where I shouldn't do that. Open queue leads to worse matches and more smurfing.

I've put a hundred hours into this game since its release. It's fun, exciting, and gets a lot of things right. I wasn't into it at the start since it's a 3rd person game, but I've overcome my bias now. I'll go into what I think the game does right, and what I'm not a fan of yet. - It's fresh and exciting. The Marvel IP is obviously big, but not sufficient in itself. The skins, battlepass, and events seem fair value and good quality. Sort of a mix of Overwatch at the start and League in its quality. - Also since it's new and popular, queue times are in the seconds, I've only ever had queue times of three minutes in a full stack. - The movement feels right. I'm not big on abilities-based movement, but here at least the cooldowns are short and consistent, with long CDs only on especially strong abilities or on champions that have more than one option. Compare Black Panther's resets on marked targets to Genji's resets on kills. Black Widow's sprint and power jump to Widowmaker's one grappling hook. Wolverine RC is on a three seconds timer, with his big shift coming in at 16 seconds. - Ban system in higher ranks. It's not perfect, but at least it exists. - Soft counter picking exists, hard counters are barely in the game (and hopefully they tone it down even more). In OW, the moment you play well on Winston you face a Reaper and Bastion and the game becomes unplayable. Tank in general is unplayable if the opposing tank is willing to swap. On the other hand, if the enemy team has a Pharah with hands then you need your DPS to pick to a counter, preferably a long-ranged hitscan champion. Or they have a Widow, congrats you now need to dedicate your game on both sides around her sight lines and picks. In Rivals, besides maybe Wolverine versus tanks, hard counters don't exist. Peni and Namor can make diving hard, but not impossible to execute. Dare I say that flyers are a non-issue? Virtually every champion has the wherewithal to damage or stun at range. The Tracer equivalent can fly himself. Projectile speeds are sufficiently fast that you can aim and hit frequently enough. Even melee tanks can knock flyers out of the air. - Some good champion design choices. The Punisher has an assault rifle but also a shotgun. Hell yeah! The Sniper character has a cqc stun tool at her disposal, so she doesn't become completely useless once somebody gap closed on her (or she decides to finish you off in close quarters). - One shots are laregly conditional and have counter play. The sniper can only one shot you if she is damage boosted, which will not be very often. Hawkeye can one shot you, but he can't spam choke points because he actually needs to charge his shot on you. Assassins can combo you, but there's counter play. The same is true for ultimates, which can one shot you sometimes, but always have ways in which they can be fully negated. Now my two concerns: - The performance is still bad. It's gotten a lot more stable lately, but I'd still like to be able to play at a 144fps, pretty please. - No role queue. I'd really like to be able to play 2-2-2 games as the standard. Match quality goes down the drain when you have more than one fill player, but also when your team ends up forcing four damage dealers. I get that queue times would increase (for DPS and maybe Strategists, let's face it), and that it locks down the meta more stringently, but also, triple DPS/Tank/Support comps are always boring to play and watch, and I'd like to be able to have a serious match as a DPS without soft inting my team because I'm forcing the third DPS in an elo where I shouldn't do that. Open queue leads to worse matches and more smurfing.