With an explosive start to Season 2 through Emma Frost's introduction, Marvel Rivals has hit players with another rank reset, as people have begun to expect. The system is somewhat unique in the hero shooter scene, making climbing out of ranks relatively easy compared to other games but pushing players back at the start of a new season. While it is refreshing for those that have played something like Overwatch, it introduces an issue when it comes to labeling the skill level of players in ranks, which seems to depend on when in the season it is.

At the start of every season, players have their ranks reset, although the amount a rank is reset seems to be something NetEase has been experimenting with. In Season 1, ranks were reset by around two and a half full tiers, while the start of Season 2 puts players a full three tiers below where they ended the season before. For example, in Season 2, a Grandmaster 3 player will begin in Gold 3, and while this helps give players a fresh start, it also introduces an issue where the ranks don't always seem to properly represent a player's skill level.

Marvel Rivals' Ranks Are More Fluid Than Other Hero Shooters

And The Ranks Don't Seem To Have Much Meaning

While Marvel Rivals uses a rank reset system at the start of every season, other hero shooters tend to use the tried-and-tested MOBA ranked system, which tends to keep players roughly where they have been for most of their time with the game. This system uses placement games, and depending on how well these games go, players end up a little higher or a little lower than when they were last season. While this is the theory behind the system, many have complained that it doesn't encourage climbing, having the opposite issue to Marvel Rivals.

Season 2 starts with adding Emma Frost, and will see Ultron's addition later on.

Players are more likely to get hard stuck with the more typical rank system, although this system tends to allow the ranks to be properly representative of a player's skill. On the one hand, it doesn't allow for much climbing or dropping out of rank tiers. On the other hand, if a player is at a rank like Diamond, they're probably pretty good. This isn't the same case with Marvel Rivals because of the rank reset. Sure, at the start of Season 2, Diamond players are probably the world's best, but the system rewards time played, not skill.

Those who have the time to pile into Marvel Rivals will climb quickly, even with a less than 50% win rate, and this means the ranks quickly diversify with their skill level. For instance, at the start of a season, players will find both ex-Grandmaster players and those climbing from lower ranks who have put a lot of time into the first few days in Gold. This makes matchmaking often uneven and leads to many games where one side loses quickly, rather than a tough match between two evenly sided teams. The ranks don't represent a player's level of skill.

Rank Resets Stop Ranks From Properly Representing A Player's Quality

An Issue Indicative Of The System As A Whole

After the discourse about the mid-season rank reset, NetEase chose not to implement the reset, but as the season dragged on toward its end, some players began to change their minds about its lack of implementation. Ranks like Diamond and Grandmaster, which would typically be high in other games, began to suffer from the uneven matchmaking of highly populated ranks in other games, usually Silver and Gold. The problem is that this was the case throughout Marvel Rivals' ranks until Celestial, where players can't climb with a win rate below 50%.

Celestial was added between Grandmaster and Eternity in Season 1 to make the jump between ranks feel more manageable.

Right now, a rank like Platinum is considered quite good, but in a couple of weeks, it will be considered a lot worse, and people can see this in the percentages Marvel Rivals gives its players when they rank up. The system encourages growth, allowing players to constantly go up until they eventually hit a ceiling, then come back down to start afresh. It's an interesting system that has resulted in messy matchmaking, but it does help alleviate the stagnant feeling of other competitive rank systems, where players can spend years on the same rank.

Because players are constantly moving up and down, there's no way of knowing how good a player actually is based on their rank alone. Ranks almost don't mean anything until Celestial, and while the average Diamond player is better than the average Gold player, there's so much skill variation, especially with the reset at the start of the season, that matchmaking starts feeling like a lottery. It begins to settle as people start hitting their ranks ceilings, but at that point, ranks like Grandmaster are far more populated than they would be in other titles.

Rivals' Ranks Require Constant Recontextualization

Gold Doesn't Automatically Mean A Player Is Bad And GM Doesn't Make Them Good

Trying to tell how good a player is requires some digging. At the start, a Gold-ranked player is pretty good, filled with Grandmaster players from the seasons before, but at the end it tends to be quite average. Another is how much time a player has put into the game to get to that rank. Someone who has played hundreds of games to get to Grandmaster could have a less than 50% win rate and probably isn't as good as someone who has managed it in a few dozen games, assuming they started at the same rank.

Marvel Rivals has introduced a performance-based algorithm to the points players can gain and lose in competitive to somewhat offset this issue.

Of course, players can also be analyzed by their profile, although many have this hidden. Still, this is different to other rank systems where Silver and Gold are average, Platinum is above average, Diamond is good, and so on. Players tend to spend a lot longer in a rank tier in Overwatch than Marvel Rivals, which encourages the ranks to be fluid. It makes matchmaking at a rank impossible and the rank itself doesn't necessarily mean a player is the level that many perceive, until they start getting to the upper echelon of Celestial and above.

Some may prefer this issue to feeling in a state of constant stagnancy, like with the MOBA-style rank system, which had matchmaking issues as well. It seems Marvel Rivals has introduced a performance-based algorithm to the points players can gain and lose in competitive to somewhat offset this issue, but ultimately, it's just a problem that Rivals is going to have. Enough people will be addicted to the grind to continue on, but with the landsliding nature of many games, it sometimes feels like player skill is all over the place despite the rank.