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Recommended reading Third Person Shooter Marvel Rivals reminds players it doesn't use 'EOMM', matchmaking designed to make you feel better about your terrible W/L ratio Third Person Shooter Marvel Rivals is finally giving more competitive compensation to players struck down by rage-quitting teammates or friends with hamster-powered Wi-Fi Third Person Shooter Marvel Rivals ranks: Competitive rewards and rules explained in Season 3.5 Third Person Shooter Marvel Rivals' bloated DPS roster won't be solved 'overnight', creative director says: 'The heroes we are currently deciding on are for a release slot next year' Third Person Shooter If Marvel Rivals doesn't want to reward me with fancy skins for my hard work, then I hope it'll at least give me some of Season 3's new customisation features Third Person Shooter 'Cease this behaviour immediately': Marvel Rivals is finally punishing smurfs by forcing them—and some innocent players—to smurf 'Competition is healthy': Overwatch 2's director sets the record straight about its rivalry with Marvel Rivals Third Person Shooter Marvel Rivals Marvel Rivals dev's transparent, 18-minute breakdown of how ranked isn't rigged fails to placate players who hate losing Tyler Colp 22 August 2025 Some players don't appreciate the math. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: NetEase) To prove to the growing number of players who think Marvel Rivals' ranked mode is rigged or somehow unfair, the official X account dropped a video that reveals a surprising amount of detail about why that's totes not the case. Lead combat designer Zhiyong spends a packed 18 minutes explaining the math that determines how high you climb based on ranked wins and how the matchmaking system tries to create fair games. The gist is that Marvel Rivals works like a lot of other competitive games, but because there are six-player teams and a roster of wildly different heroes it has to do some guesswork that won't always lead to perfectly balanced matches. It's true that you might be put on a team with people who aren't as good as you, but the system takes that into account when calculating how much a win or loss is worth. A player who performs much better than their team and still loses won't be punished as hard, for example. But as you go up in ranks, personal performance isn't weighted as heavily in the calculation. Related Articles Marvel Rivals reminds players it doesn't use 'EOMM', matchmaking designed to make you feel better about your terrible W/L ratio Marvel Rivals is finally giving more competitive compensation to players struck down by rage-quitting teammates or friends with hamster-powered Wi-Fi Marvel Rivals ranks: Competitive rewards and rules explained in Season 3.5 Your individual performance on a hero is compared to every other player on the same hero at the same rank. The system then combines the averages for all your teammates and determines your team's total average skill level. In a match where your team's level is higher than the enemy team's, you'll gain fewer competitive points for winning and drop more points for losing. The matchmaking system tries to match teams with the closest skill levels and will do its best to pit groups of players against other groups rather than people playing solo. But because of the number of variables with server regions and fluctuating skill levels, the teams are rarely perfectly even. We’ve heard your feedback on matchmaking and ranking in Marvel Rivals, and your voices matter! Check out our Lead Combat Designer, Zhiyong, as he shares our developer insights on the matchmaking and ranking system. Watch the full video to see the systems behind the game! pic.twitter.com/OmErw2WMgUAugust 21, 2025 Anyone who has heard Blizzard talk about Overwatch's ranked system will be familiar with a lot of this. Marvel Rivals isn't very different apart from the fact that it doesn't have a way to queue for a specific role you want to play, which Zhiyong says wouldn't actually fix the problem of unbalanced matches. However, Zhiyong doesn't address what would happen if Marvel Rivals introduced placement matches to calibrate your skill level up front instead of gradually over time. Many players believe that this would make matches fairer when ranks are reset every season. It sounds like the studio has considered it, according to a reply from executive producer Danny Koo on X where he said he's "on the placement side of things." The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. There aren't any huge revelations in the video if you're familiar with competitive games. Zhiyong lays out what looks to be a fairly standard system for hero shooters, and he re-confirms that the game doesn't use Engagement Optimized Matchmaking (EOMM) that ignores your skill level and feeds you wins to keep you hooked. Even with the surprisingly in-depth explanation, not everyone is happy. Such is the curse of competitive games, I guess. There will always be players who believe the system is built to punish you with idiot teammates and loss streaks and not that probability plays a larger role than they'd think. Not that there isn't room for improvement, but assuming there's a way to achieve perfectly balanced matches for every single player is wishful thinking. Best gaming rigs 2025All our favorite gear 👉Check out our list of guides👈 1. Best gaming laptop: Razer Blade 16 2. Best gaming PC: HP Omen 35L 3. Best handheld gaming PC: Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS ed. 4. Best mini PC: Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT 5. Best VR headset: Meta Quest 3 Social Links Navigation Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Marvel Rivals reminds players it doesn't use 'EOMM', matchmaking designed to make you feel better about your terrible W/L ratio Marvel Rivals is finally giving more competitive compensation to players struck down by rage-quitting teammates or friends with hamster-powered Wi-Fi Marvel Rivals ranks: Competitive rewards and rules explained in Season 3.5 Marvel Rivals' bloated DPS roster won't be solved 'overnight', creative director says: 'The heroes we are currently deciding on are for a release slot next year' If Marvel Rivals doesn't want to reward me with fancy skins for my hard work, then I hope it'll at least give me some of Season 3's new customisation features 'Cease this behaviour immediately': Marvel Rivals is finally punishing smurfs by forcing them—and some innocent players—to smurf Latest in Third Person Shooter Marvel Rivals devs have been given the go-ahead to make their own characters for the game, and I have literally no idea why they'd do that Marvel Rivals director says its 'gooner game' reputation really just reflects a commitment to authenticity: 'These all come from classic comic designs' Marvel Rivals' bloated DPS roster won't be solved 'overnight', creative director says: 'The heroes we are currently deciding on are for a release slot next year' Helldivers 2's newest trailer basically confirms a Halo 3: ODST crossover with a melancholy saxophone Hmm, Fortnite's new season looks familiar, says Arrowhead: 'It's giving we have Helldivers at home' Marvel Rivals reminds players it doesn't use 'EOMM', matchmaking designed to make you feel better about your terrible W/L ratio Latest in News After stretching the definition of 'beta' for 8 years, Escape From Tarkov is finally hitting 1.0 Even more games are moving out of Silksong's way: 'I feel like a little krill trying not to get eaten by a blue whale' Enshrouded's next big update is bringing way more water to the survival RPG than I expected 'I think the United States should be given 10% of Intel': US president Trump wants a piece of the action, says CEO Lip Bu Tan has already forked over $10 billion because he wants to 'keep his job' Metal Gear Solid Delta still lets you wait two weeks for a boss to die of old age⁠—or mess with your system clock to cheat him out of his final fight Dawn of War 4 developer King Art knows what you all really want: 'Overwhelmingly, it's singleplayer content and the campaign' HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best Hall effect keyboards in 2025: the fastest, most customisable keyboards for competitive gaming Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards Best gaming laptop in 2025: I've put the best of this new generation head-to-head and we have a winner Best gaming chair in 2025: I've tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I'd suggest for any PC gamer Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater review Elgato 4K S review MSI Stealth 18 HX AI review MSI MPG CoreLiquid P13 360 review Asus ROG Falcata PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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