controversy from Marvel Rivals players, many of whom accused the game of pay-to-win practices. The game's official social media channels later released a statement of clarification claiming that Chrono Shield Cards wouldn't be available for purchase.

Chrono Shield Cards are just the latest attempt to patch up a more significant problem with how rankings work in Marvel Rivals, though, and they're no better than their predecessor. Prior to the Galacta's Gift event, the only way to avoid losing points after taking a tumble in Competitive was to use Chrono Shield Tokens, which are easier to earn, but have much more restrictive cooldowns. But even those are just a band-aid solution that doesn't fully address the inherent issues created by the way Marvel Rivals places players into ranks.

Bronze Is A Mess In Marvel Rivals

Bronze Puts Everyone At A Disadvantage

The problem begins with everyone's first Competitive match in Marvel Rivals. You've probably been there: you've played your first few Quick Play matches, and are starting to feel comfortable enough with your skills to pursue a greater challenge. So you queue into Competitive mode, beginning at Bronze III along with everyone else. The result is abject chaos. Players who have spent time honing their skills in Quick Play are paired with players who just ed the game five minutes ago.

In short, the issues are twofold: the first part of the problem is that everybody is automatically sorted into Bronze as soon as they start playing Competitive. That creates a huge skill gap, which makes it harder to climb the ranks because of another related issue: the fact that ranking up is too dependent on your teammates. Couple that with Marvel Rivals' overzealous rank resets, and Competitive becomes a bit of a mess.

Since you rank up based on your wins and losses, you have to win several games in sequence in order to make any meaningful progress towards the next rank. As a result, you're beholden to your teammates' skill level, unless you're good enough to carry. If you're paired up with less experienced players who rush into combat without consideration for positioning or their heroes' unique skills, they'll leave you in the lurch. This could easily happen to you several times in a row, leaving you languishing at a lower rank than you deserve.

Chrono Shield Tokens May Help Stuck Players

But Are They Good Enough?

Chrono Shield Tokens and Cards are ostensibly aimed at solving these ranked woes. Ideally, the goal is to prevent players who earn them from losing points (and therefore risking rank demotion) if their teammates fail to perform, and they suffer a string of losses. They're easy to earn by simply playing ranked matches, so everyone has access to them. But there are a limited number of Cards and Tokens to be earned and used; lower-skill-level players should burn through theirs more quickly, eventually running out of ways to preserve their rank and falling through the tiers to an appropriate placement.

Chrono Shield Cards can only be used at Gold ranks and below, to ensure no one reaches the upper strata of Marvel Rivals Competitive play by using them alone.

In short, it appears these items were introduced to throw struggling Gold and Silver players a bone. That's not a bad idea on its face: lots of players face similar issues, where they're having a difficult time ranking up because of a bad-luck run of inexperienced teammates. But they don't address the root of the problem, which actually begins before players even get close to Gold or Silver, and actually starts with an imbalance at the lowest of all ranks.

Marvel Rivals Placement Matches Would Be A Better Fix

& Other Ways To Keep Competitive Balanced

What Rivals really needs is a better system for ranking players initially that doesn't throw everyone into Bronze III without question. There are many ways to address this, but one would be the introduction of placement matches at the beginning of each player's ranked career, and then again at the beginning of every season. You could also have the option to take on a placement match any time you like, if you feel like your skill has advanced significantly to the point you've earned another shot.

Placement matches wouldn't count directly towards your Competitive points, and wouldn't just measure your progress based on wins and losses. They'd consider your individual performance in the match, weighted against your role and the rest of the team. If you played a duelist, how much damage did you deal? If you played a strategist, how much healing? If you played a vanguard, how was your mitigation? These could be compared to global rankings - in essence, where you stand compared to other players choosing the same role.

Then, your next placement match could be at a higher ranking to see how you perform against ostensibly more skilled players. If you can keep pace with your role's requirements, then you might be allowed to stay at that rank. Ideally, each player could be more accurately sorted into a rank in a series of three placement matches, with a lot less frustration and confusion than comes from simply being thrown into Bronze 3.

As an alternative, any kind of system that allows players to be sorted into ranks based on individual performance instead of overall win-loss record would be better than the current system. The Chrono Shield Tokens and Cards will help for now, but they're ultimately a temporary solution to a much bigger problem. If Marvel Rivals wants to solve the issues with its ranked mode, it needs to start by finding an alternative to sorting every player into Bronze at the beginning of their careers.