Marvel Rivals

Community problems appear in 21% of substantive reviews and 27% of the negative ones, rising to 34% among negative reviewers with 200+ hours. Players describe teammates who instalock duelists and never swap, leaving someone to solo tank or solo heal; players who throw or go AFK when their hero is banned or a fight is lost; Quick Play treated as sweatier than ranked; smurf accounts farming lower ranks; and voice and text chat full of blame, slurs and harassment, and some reviewers warn players of color and LGBTQ+ players that slurs go unpunished. Some positive reviews give the same warning and advise muting chat. Players blame the community, and they also blame weak enforcement: a 15-minute timeout for throwing, a 15-minute mute for slurs, reports that change nothing, and an avoid list with only a few slots.

Balance comes up in 17% of substantive reviews and 23% of negatives. Sustain is the complaint that comes up most: healing output and support ultimates are so strong that fights become a wait for whoever runs out of ults first, and triple-support comps stall everything. Reviewers also say each new hero (Black Cat, Elsa Bloodstone, Gorr and others) launches overtuned while older heroes fall behind, the same handful of picks dominate or get permanently banned, and a few see Luna Snow as a protected favorite. Some tank players feel neglected, and the roster's tilt toward duelists feeds the instalock problem. Players also say promised mid-season hotfixes rarely arrive. A minority of positive veterans defend the balance as intentionally chaotic and fun, and some called the Season 10 changes a real improvement.

Matchmaking appears in 16% of substantive reviews and 23% of negatives. Players say matches are rarely close: one team stomps the other, win streaks are followed by long loss streaks, and a strong performance seems to earn weaker teammates next game. About 3% of substantive reviews explicitly accuse the game of engagement-optimized matchmaking (EOMM) and say the developers' denials don't match what they see. Ranked draws specific complaints: players with negative win rates reach high ranks by volume, placements don't place, ranks reset, full stacks meet solo players, and Quick Play regularly pits returning or casual players against top-ranked opponents.

Performance comes up in 12% of substantive reviews and 16% of negatives, and among negative reviews written in the first ten hours it is the complaint raised most. Players report frame drops from well over 100 to single digits in team fights or near Doctor Strange portals, stutter, memory leaks, crashes and GPU driver failures, and shader compilation that can take ten minutes to an hour after each update. Some say the game ran better at launch and has degraded patch by patch, even on high-end hardware, and a few say 16 GB of RAM is not enough. Install size divides people: some note it was cut to roughly 60 to 65 GB once high-resolution textures became optional, while others still cite 85 GB or more. Players with low-end PCs object that the performance config files they relied on now get accounts banned.

Complaints about the penalty system come mostly from long-time players. Quick Play leave penalties escalate to hours and no longer reset quickly; penalties land on players whose game crashed, whose internet dropped or who never finished loading; and backfilled players get reported for joining lost matches. Groups can mass-report a solo player into a ban for "throwing" when they were simply learning a hero, and appeals are handled by what players describe as AI support that closes tickets instantly. The chat filter is seen as both too strict (voice mutes for swearing, banned usernames) and too weak (slurs and threats met with brief mutes), and some reviewers read a September report-menu change as removing a proper category for hate speech.

Monetization comes up in about 3% of substantive reviews. Several players call the balloon-pop gacha events rigged, saying they never win the featured skin early. Others object to $15 to $20 skins padded into bundles, multiple overlapping passes and currencies, old battle-pass skins that can no longer be obtained, a menu full of pop-ups and red dots, and skins concentrated on a few heroes while fan favorites like Human Torch and Hulk wait for a legendary. A few positive reviewers counter that nothing is pay-to-win and that free players earn plenty.

Around 3% of substantive reviews, mostly from long-time players, complain that losing a Quick Play match or two sends them into a match against bots presented as real players. They call it a waste of time, insulting, and useless for practicing a hero, and they object that leaving a bot match brings a penalty and requeuing brings another bot match. They ask, repeatedly, for bot matches to be labeled or made optional, even at the cost of longer queues.

About 2% of substantive reviews report aimbots, lag-switching and Cronus-style devices, especially in metal ranks and on console crossplay, and say cheaters return on fresh accounts after bans. A few positive reviewers counter that reported cheaters do get banned.

About 2% say team fights are unreadable: overlapping ultimates, particle effects, screen shake that can't be turned off, and skins that disguise silhouettes. Some mention eye strain or epilepsy concerns, and the complaint grew after the team-up rework added more abilities.

About 1% ask directly for role queue or role limits, tying it to four- and five-duelist teams and solo tanks. A handful of reviewers argue the game works better without it.

About 1% protest a late-summer patch that broke cosmetic and interface mods and bans for config files, saying mods were a big part of the PC appeal and, for some, an accessibility tool.

A small group objects that PC and console friends can't queue ranked together, while PC players can't opt out of console crossplay in Quick Play, and that the menu and reward-claiming screens feel like a mobile game.