Figuring out a way to balance your characters properly has always been a big challenge when it comes to developing a competitive game. Only a few titles out there are able to do it right, and the recent Marvel Rivals just so happen to be one of them.
The secret to the perfect balance is not endless nerfs or buffs to a few particular characters but rather making sure they remain fun to play. That’s exactly what Marvel Rivals is doing, and it’s something Diablo 4 should pay close attention to.
Marvel Rival’s balances for fun, not for meta shifts
If one particular hero is made a bit stronger than the other, the whole meta of the game would change, forcing weaker players to either adapt or leave the game forever. Marvel Rivals combats this by making sure every hero is highlighted properly and has a unique ability set that is seemingly fun but also is as powerful as everybody else’s.
While NetEase Games hasn’t been perfect with this formula, they have almost nailed it. Talking about the balancing done in the game, the creators revealed the following in the Game Developers Conference, as noted by Games Radar.
The philosophy on balancing is actually quite simple: fun,- With Marvel superheroes, we always highlight the action part. With any balancing, like even before balancing, you have to understand that each individual character, when you play them first and foremost, is fun. After balancing and you playtest it internally, making sure that you preserve that fun… That’s the pillar across the board and it won’t change anytime soon.
The brains behind Rivals have spilled out how even when adjustments happen, they don’t take away what makes a character unique and fun. This philosophy makes sure that while no hero is overwhelmingly overpowered, none of them is completely useless either.
Marvel Rivals gets it right, and Diablo 4 can soon, too
When compared to Marvel Rivals, one of Blizzard’s Diablo 4‘s biggest issues is that it often removes what makes playing a class satisfying to play. Blizzard consistently nerfed some of the best builds into the ground, along with other inconsistent changes, all in an attempt to get the balancing right.
The game’s character balancing is undoubtedly skewed, and perhaps taking after NetEase Games’ formula might be the life jacket they had been waiting for, making sure their character balancing crisis would at last come to an end.
In a nutshell, Marvel Rivals has cracked the code. Game balancing should always be a thing, but never at the cost of fun. By giving their best efforts to keep the characters across the board fair and square, the studio has managed to create one of the most successful hero-shooter games of recent times.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
