You Might Not Be As Bad At Marvel Rivals As You Think

Published Dec 30, 2024

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Custom image by Katarina Cimbaljevic

Although fun is the name of the game from Marvel Rivals' design perspective, the game does feature a competitive mode that even offers rewards for climbing up the ranks through a golden Moon Knight skin. With only three sub-ranks per rank (i.e. Gold 1, 2, and 3), it might seem easy to climb the ranks, at least compared to other competitive games like Overwatch 2 and League of Legends, especially with the Chrono Shield feature. Unfortunately, the quality of players seen at even the slightly above average ranks is higher than other games.

Where most games have placement matches, where players will play a certain number of competitive games before being allocated a rank based on their wins and general performance (but largely due to last season's rank), Marvel Rivals starts everyone at the lowest rank, Bronze Three. It isn't clear whether this will be the situation going forward or a purely Season 0 ranking, but it does mean that everyone starts at the bottom before their climb up the ranks. It also means that the ranks are skewed toward the bottom.

Marvel Rivals' Rank Distribution Is Skewed

Most Are Sitting In Bronze And Silver

Where most games of a similar nature usually have most ranked players around silver and gold, or their equivalents, most are still in bronze in Marvel Rivals' super-powered multiplayer, and this has caused some interesting results for anything above gold. In pretty much every competitive game, being in the platinum ranks puts a player ahead of the curve where most others find themselves, but as of writing, being a platinum-ranked player in Marvel Rivals will put a you comfortably in the top 5%, according to the game itself. Being above 95% of players isn't usually where platinum-ranked players find themselves.

Compare this to Overwatch 2 and its 12th Season. According to Morgan Maddren (a Blizzard Server Engineer) on X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit bullxbull (who put percentages on Morgan's chart), Platinum players in OW2 are in the top 26.93%, meaning that a platinum player in Marvel Rivals should be relatively a lot better compared to an Overwatch 2 player of the same rank. This doesn't mean that players can pick Spider-man and have zero kills with 15 deaths every game, claiming that they're doing well, but it does mean that being in gold or silver isn't as bad as it seems.

Ranks Should Level Out In Later Seasons

Marvel Rivals Is Still In Season 0

Marvel Rivals is still new and, because everyone has a rank, the ranks will be skewed to the bottom, especially with 20 million players. Its ranking system is generous in Season 0, despite the quality of players found in its above-average ranks, so now is the time to get to the high ranks before Season 1 changes are implemented. That being said, players shouldn't be too harsh on themselves if they can't get to the same ranks they had in Overwatch, because the distribution implies that higher-quality players are found at the same rank.

Moon Knight, Spider-Man, Ironman and Luna Snow from Marvel Rivals

Marvel Rivals Best Team Compositions For Every Map & Mode

Marvel Rivals has various maps and modes that might require a different team combination to ensure victory on the battlefield.

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As time goes on, the ranks should level out and the distribution of these ranks should begin to be skewed toward silver and gold, rather than bronze. Then again, if everyone has a rank, all the players that never touch ranked will stay at bronze and continue to skew Marvel Rival's ranks toward the bottom. It makes for better reading whenever players climb ranks and see that they are better than a certain percentage of players, and with the sheer number of players trying out Marvel Rivals, it feels like it actually means something.