NetEase have made an interesting decision as they have taken a hard stance on not providing a Role Queue system for Marvel Rivals. If you don’t know, Role Queue is something that many hero shooters tend to gravitate towards as a way of spreading out the player base and allowing more chances to play as the hero you truly want.
How it works is when searching for a match you can choose which role you wish to play as, either DPS, Tank or Healer. You are then placed in a respective queue to find a match where your role is needed. Following this, you’re placed into a match and you can only pick from characters in that role, and no others. It’s an interesting idea that has allowed many in other games to get around the issue of too many people playing a certain role leading to imbalanced teams and unfun games. However, it has 2 distinct downsides with the first being most obvious that it leads to games in which you can ONLY play as a certain role when a match may require teams of different compositions such as only one tank or additional healers. If you’re stuck in a system like this there’s no flexibility which can be extremely frustrating. The other downside is that DPS is usually the most popular role, and so the queue times for playing as a DPS can take a long time, especially if player numbers begin to dwindle. As such, while Role Queue is an important decision for a company to make it’s not always the best choice.
So what do I think about the decision to note have this for Marvel Rivals? Honestly, with the more casual-focus the game has I think it’s ultimately a good thing, but I woudln’t be particularly hurt if they decided to change their mind down the line. That said, I DO think it should be included as part of the Competitive mode, though you should be communicating with your teammates in that mode especially so it would be more about policing players rather than letting them just make correct competitive decisions. I’d be curious to know what your thoughts are for such a system, so please do let us know in the comments!
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.