Marvel Rivals

I have been playing this game called Marvel Rivals a lot recently. Since it came out, I've already logged ~120 hours, so I've obviously been enjoying it.

There's a lot of discourse online about toxicity and how to deal with it. Most of the toxicity seems to center around the hero roles (Vanguard, Duelist, and Strategist) and people not playing them right. This toxicity is even present in quick play matches, which are meant to be casual, "for fun" games, in contrast to the competitive format. Yet, people still complain about their random team mates not knowing how to play well. Even I complain to myself about team mates not knowing what their doing, even though I use quick play as a place to learn new characters.

I think toxicity is unavoidable in a game like this. With any sport or game, people are going to become frustrated when they don't perform well. On top of that, there's the fact that people say things online that they normally wouldn't say to others in real life. I've faced trash talk in competitive and quick play games, but only via text (I always have voice chat muted). The most I'll ever say in a game is "gg." I don't think it's worth it to discuss anything with randoms at this point.

I was in a competitive game a couple days ago. I was playing a Strategist (Mantis), which I'm most comfortable playing. One of my team mates locks in Black Widow (one of the objectively worst duelists in the game). I have also played Black Widow, so I'm not too worried about it since it's possible to actually be good at that character. Unfortunately, it becomes evident that our team isn't working so well once the enemy team pushes their cart all the way across the map, giving them 3 points.

I send a message in the team text chat, trying to convince the Widow player to switch to a hero with more consistent damage output. They don't respond at all. In my opinion, that's fair. I have no idea if I was correct to ask for the Widow to switch, but I was fairly confident that with a different Duelist we might do better. But who was I to say anything? Perhaps I, the Strategist, was simply not timing my ultimate ability correctly. Perhaps the other Duelist on the team wasn't dishing out enough damage, either. The Black Widow player did have a positive kill/death ratio by the end of the match, after all.

In the end, I don't think it matters which hero anyone picks. I've watched games online where teams only have 1 Strategist and they still pummel the enemy team. Eventually, when they were stopped, they switched to a different hero composition. They still didn't win the game.

All it really seems to come down to is how confident the team is in their plays. After a weak push and everyone is respawning at different times, will the team regroup and try pushing a different lane? Will they try to coordinate their ultimate abilities together to wipe out a certain enemy player? It's those questions I think players should be asking themselves, not how good someone is at a certain character. Attacking anyone based on their personal skill is inherently hypocritical, because no one is ever at the best they can possibly be. The team as a whole must come together to accomplish something above themselves, regardless of their personal performance.