Marvel Rivals, the new hero shooter based on Marvel comics characters, starts its first full season later this week. The free-to-play game launched season 0 on Dec. 6 and quickly reached 20 million players.
After the abbreviated season 0, we’re starting the first full (13-week) season. We’re gotten a flood of confirmed details, and here’s what we know about season 1, including the trailer for the season.
Marvel Rivals season 1 start time
The Eternal Night Falls trailer says the season begins Friday, Jan. 10 UTC. The trailer’s YouTube page specifies that it’s 4 a.m. ET/1 a.m. PT.
Read more: Marvel Rivals: How to Choose Which Heroes and Roles to Play
New Marvel Rivals heroes and maps
The new trailer on Monday gave us brief glimpses of the Fantastic Four — Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch and The Thing. They’re a fitting addition to the game, given its premise that two Doctor Dooms from different timelines are warring for control. (It also helps build hype for the new Fantastic Four movie, First Steps, coming this summer.) Invisible Woman will take the role of a strategist, and Mr. Fantastic will be a duelist. Though not appearing until later in the season, The Thing will be a vanguard, with Johnny Storm adding yet another duelist to the roster.
I had a chance to try out the new heroes before the season and had two main takeaways. First, Mr. Fantastic is officially a duelist, but his role very much blends with vanguards. His Reflexive Rubber ability lets him store and bounce incoming damage back at enemies, and his ability to generate overhealth makes him far tankier than most duelists. In most of the games I played with or against him, he was absorbing almost as much damage as the team’s tanks.
Second, Invisible Woman has a lot to keep track of. I enjoyed the high-actions-per-minute play style, but some players might be fatigued by having to track the limited range of her primary fire, the health of her deployable shields, the multiple inputs for her push/pull ability and the cooldowns of all her abilities. She has a lot of utility, but effectively managing those various resources is the key to her success.
The season will be divided into two halves, with Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman being added at the start of the season, while Thing and the Human Torch join up in the second half. We’ll get one new convoy map, Midtown, where players will escort the Fanastic Four’s robotic ally H.E.R.B.I.E. to Avengers tower. We’re also getting an all-new arcade game mode, Doom Match, which will take place in Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. A third map, Central Park, will be added midseason.
Prepare for some portal pandemonium in the Sanctum Sanctorum’s arcade mode.
The devs said this is twice what they have planned for future seasons, so it’s probably safe to expect one new hero at the start of future seasons and another about six weeks later, with one or two new maps per season. That would mean eight new heroes per year, and four to eight new maps. That’s an impressive amount of content for a live-service game.
There have been many other Marvel Rivals leaks recently, including hero models or abilities for characters like Ultron, Emma Frost and Jean Grey. These all have yet to be confirmed and won’t show up in season 1, but they do suggest a healthy content roadmap for the game, essential for keeping players engaged over the year.
Battle pass
Marvel/Screenshot by CNET
Season 0 featured an abbreviated battle pass, and developers have said the season 1 pass will feature “double the content and excitement,” in the latest dev vision video. That includes 10 new costumes, styled around the season’s Eternal Night theme.
The season 1 battle pass will cost 990 lattice (about $10 worth of in-game currency). You can earn 600 lattice and 600 units (collectively, about $12 worth of in-game currency) if you complete the battle pass.
Balance changes
The devs have seen your Reddit posts — Hawkeye and Hela are getting nerfs to start season 1, although the changes look a little tame compared to community expectations. Jeff’s ultimate is also being adjusted. And buffs are coming the way of Captain America, Cloak and Dagger, Storm, Venom and Wolverine, among others.
The devs have released full patch notes detailing the changes, and the stats on the Rivals website will be updated with new balance numbers. The Rivals site has also been updated with pick and win rate stats and will receive new updates every half season.
Ranked reset and mouse acceleration
The dev vision video also revealed that players’ ranks will drop seven divisions — a platinum 1 rank will start the new season at silver 2, in their example. By that math, anyone in gold 2 or lower will be back at bronze 3 to start the season.
Additionally, the game is introducing the celestial rank, which will feature the standard three tiers and appear after the grandmaster rank.
The developers also said that season 1 will include the much-requested mouse acceleration settings option, meaning no one will have to resort to editing game files if they don’t want that feature.