Finally a fresh hero shooter that has a ton of potential.

So far I think it is a breath of fresh air compared to other hero shooters, however there are a lot of issues that I see arising that are issues in said other hero shooters.

It seems Rivals is kind of going for unbalanced gameplay on purpose, which leads to vastly differing gameplay experiences. You either get a balanced match that is really fun, or you get unstable team compositions that make that particular match unfun and more work than it needs to be. I understand needing flexibility to keep players wanting to play and to reduce queue times, but it can be infuriating when there are no strategists or no vanguards on the team and everyone is trying to play duelist lone wolf 1v6 team deathmatch. Within a week the forums and groups on social media are filled with complaining about this and there's no easy fix. You can't make people do things they don't want to do with or without a role queue and I don't understand why people play a game like this without wanting to be flexible and play all roles.

The characters are all fun to play for the most part, though I feel the character balance is that there is next to no balance on how powered they are. Characters have mostly high skill ceilings which leads to the best players making any character feel broken, which leads me to thinking they need to buff and nerf certain characters such as Iron Fist, Hulk, Storm, and Magneto to make them feel more up to par with everyone else's potential, as some seem to go far beyond that and some seem that even at the highest level it's just better to play others, but overall you need to have this level of chaos if you are going to keep it an open queue format where there may only be 1 Vanguard or 1 Strategist amidst a large amount of duelists. I do wish there were more original ideas, as almost every ability in the game I have seen in other games like Overwatch, League of Legends, Pokemon Unite, or even Splatoon.

Having small storylines in the maps themselves, and the game overall is really interesting and adds an extra sense of purpose. I think it allows for a lot of potential within the seasons and it makes the map themes really interesting.

I find toxicity in this game to be beyond annoying. The game is still new as of this writing in mid December 2024, and yet people are treating it like everyone has played hero shooters for years and should be good at the game within the first few days of playing. Some people are still trying for the first time, and I don't get the satisfaction of the level of toxicity. There are also way too many toxic people trying to make people do what they want in quickplay. It's a casual mode! Also, when has being toxic EVER helped your team? Do people ever go "okay ill suddenly be way better". All you do is make them want to spite you and it does you 0 favors. I will never understand all of these high testosterone immature bullies. All competitive games should have perma-ban systems for them where their IP is restricted from entering the game.

Also there are many bugs so far, especially frame rate drops on Doctor Strange's portal or I even get them when making Loki clones. It seems they are slowly fixing them, but haste would be appreciated.

As of early launch, I think there's potential if the developers fix issues and find ways to implement some of these issue fixes that other hero shooters have, but there comes a point where it's not the game that is the problem, it's the player base and the 2020's climate of nothing is ever good enough and no one will ever just enjoy something. That being said, I am personally excited to see where the game goes in terms of balance changes, new characters, and new maps.