Marvel Rivals’ new Chrono Shield Cards item has divided players and reminded me that some people should just stay in Bronze

To mark the anniversary of Marvel Rivals’ first release into Early Access, the devs cooked up a couple of prizes and events for players. Most are just harmless trinkets, but there’s one new item that is wreaking havoc in the low-ranked elos.

Chrono Shield cards are a new item introduced in Galacta’s Gift, a challenge board that gives you rewards in exchange for playing games. Activating these cards protects players in Gold rank and below from losing ranked points after a defeat. So your competitive rank won’t be affected no matter how badly you (or your team) play.

This isn’t a new concept as Chrono Shields have been used in ranked play before. The first time you lose in a competitive match, you’ll be protected from deranking by a Chrono Shield. After this, the shield resets and then recharges a quarter for every loss, so after four defeats, you get your shield back, and the process goes on from there.

But now there are also two sets of four Chrono Shield cards available in Galacta’s Gift, and as far as most players are concerned, that’s eight too many.

“So, in short, the devs saw all the hard stuck Bronze and Silver players and elected to throw them a crutch?” one player says, with others who are self-admitted hard-stuck bronze players actually agreeing that these cards make it too easy for low rank players to fudge results and inflate their rank.

Official statement on Chrono Shield Cards from r/marvelrivals

Others point out how incentivising players is already difficult in competitive play. I’ve come across more throwers in Marvel Rivals than in any other competitive shooter. It’s painfully common to get someone on your team or the opposing team who gives up before the outcome is decided, and writes the match off as a loss, dragging you down with them. I can only imagine that this will get worse when players have Chrono Shield cards to fall back on; some players are even planning to do so as we speak.

“I can see myself doing that, there’ve been tons of matches I’ve been upset or annoyed, but I keep playing and trying cause I don’t want to lose points, now what’s the point?” KeyAcid says. “I’ll just coast, ignore chat, and gg go next.”

It may be frustrating, but you can’t blame players for taking advantage of existing features for their own benefit. But you can blame the developers for adding said features, and not actually addressing the real issues at hand.

“We balance for fun”

From the beginning, Marvel Rivals’ defining feature, and what set it apart from other team shooters, was its ability to be chaotic and fun. This blissful chaos seemed to ignore balancing issues in favour of creating overpowered, creative, and fun heroes that would all merge together in team fights to create some truly memorable superhero moments.

While this was great fun at the beginning, the joy began to seep out as the seasons progressed and players found new ways to break characters and take full advantage of some unfairly strong abilities. This may not be an issue in casual play, where most players are just trying out new heroes and messing around, but it’s a serious problem in ranked.

Storm terrorised competitive play in Season 1 after the devs created a tornado-yeeting monster just to improve her pick rate, instead of tweaking her design and, perhaps, buffing and nerfing some of her counters to create a better and balanced hero ecosystem.

So Storm became part of the meta of Marvel Rivals, and there wasn’t much players could do about it. But instead of learning from this mistake, the devs doubled down and exacerbated the problem when they added Human Torch.

On top of this, Marvel Rivals’ ranked play is already quite forgiving. Yes, you can encounter some pretty horrendous loss streaks as the matchmaking isn’t all there, but if you play enough games, you will rank up as you always gain more points than you lose. This rank inflation issue saw players who shouldn’t have left Plat rank all the way up to Grand Master in Season 0.

It’s not like the developers aren’t aware of the chaotic mess that is competitive, but by their own admission, it just isn’t a priority. “We balance for fun, first and foremost,” Marvel Games’ executive producer Danny Koo told us at GDC a couple of months ago. Koo then followed up by explaining how balancing is essential, but creating a fun and casual environment for players trumps everything else.

At the end of the day, losing in ranked isn’t fun, so creating a feature that somewhat negates this is very much in keeping with Marvel Rivals’ outlook. Having some kind of safety net in competitive play is pretty normal, and in its original form, Chrono Shields would protect players from unlucky losing streaks while not preventing people who aren’t that good at the game from ranking down.

But, and I’m sorry I have to say this, some players just shouldn’t rank up. That’s not an issue, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve spent plenty of time down in bronze, and I’ve been down there for a reason, only ranking up when I began improving faster than others in my elo.

Preventing players from deranking or even helping boost them above their skill level may be fun for a short while, but it won’t last. It’ll just suck even more when they inevitably can’t keep up with team fights in higher ranks, and it’ll be incredibly frustrating for their teammates who will have to carry someone who is out of their depth.

Coddling people in ranked play won’t help anyone get better, and it won’t make it any more fun. If the developers want to improve things in competitive play, then they should take a serious approach to improving matchmaking and hero balance.