Marvel Rivals is still rolling along and showing no signs of slowing down, especially given the most recent batch of videos detailing the game’s future. The Season 11 trailer just dropped and not only does it treat players to 90 seconds of stylish animation, it also reveals the next two characters coming to the team-based, free-to-play Marvel game: Nightcrawler and Dracula.
Season 11 will kick off on November 13th with a big update and Nightcrawler. He’ll be the season’s debut hero, while Dracula will join in the mid-season update.
While Dracula was only teased in the above trailer, NetEase Games delved into Nightcrawler’s style and kit with a separate gameplay-rich montage. Nightcrawler will be a Strategist and, unsurprisingly, built around teleporting. He can blink allies out of danger, zap them into the fray, or just teleport in there himself to offer support. His Ultimate revolves around this power, as he can “BAMF” his allies one by one to a location and pull enemies in the area to him for a team brawl on his terms. As for offensive abilities, Nightcrawler can stab opponents with a trio of sabers or throw bombs that heal teammates and hurt foes.
Dracula looks to be a relatively standard version of the vampiric character, but it’s unclear what role he will play and when exactly he’ll be playable. However, given past trends, Dracula should come out on December 11th.
Season 11 won’t just bring new heroes. The game’s anniversary event will kick off on November 19th and contain challenges and reward players with free currency, cosmetics, and a free Deadpool costume that puts the Merc With a Mouth in a shiny, white suit complete with a top hat. There will also be anniversary-exclusive skins, which can be seen in the slideshow below. On November 26th, a new 18 vs. 18 Chrono-Annihilation Mode with its own map will go live alongside a retro mini-game arcade in Times Square. Times Square will also be host to an “old friend” on December 5th at 4:00 p.m. PT, according to creative director Guangyun Chen in a developer update. This mystery character will help celebrate the game’s actual second anniversary.
Chen also spoke more about the game’s future in the aforementioned developer update. Despite the huge roster that has grown at a rapid pace since launch, he said he heard calls for more characters in every season after Season 10 “only” had one character, Gorr the God Butcher. The game’s roadmap is planned out all the way until the end of 2027, and Chen said he gets “so hyped” when testing out the new characters in said roadmap. He even noted how the community was disappointed that certain characters were not getting enough costumes and others had Legendary skins with not enough flair. Chen explained that the team recently started working on addressing these complaints, while also noting how it will take some time to actually see these changes in action. Cloak & Dagger, Human Torch, and Storm were brought up as examples as characters that will be effected by such changes.
Combat designer Zhiyong then went on to detail the game’s meta and how it is shifting this season. To combat stale metas of the past seasons, the team nerfed Strategists and Vanguards in order to make Duelists more effective. Essentially, Vanguards and Strategists were being used in ways that made them tanky and offensive powerhouses, which made the offensive-focused Duelist class a bit redundant.
Team-Ups will also be tuned over the next few seasons for better balance. Crowd control moves — abilities that stun or slow opponents — from Strategists will also be nerfed to focus more on “raw, mechanical skill.” Squirrel Girl will even be overhauled to make players more deftly use her abilities and cooldowns and not just lean on holding down the primary fire button. There will be a lot of tweaks, and Zhiyong said the team will be monitoring the game to see how it all shakes out.
Are you excited to jump back into Marvel Rivals? And what character are you looking forward to playing more? Tell us in the comments.
