Marvel Rivals, the popular third-person hero shooter game, has some upcoming improvements on the way. Players have been clammering for some changes to improve the gameplay experience, and NetEase Games is finally listening. The company is calling the new edition an experimental feature that will be accessible first to PC players. After feedback from the community, the feature could be expanded and improved upon further.

Marvel Rivals Works To Improve Experience

Since Marval Rivals was first released in December 2024, it has grown to over 40 million players. The game is a third-person hero shooter game created in collaboration with Marvel Games. The 6×6 online multiplayer game has a variety of modes to play and maps to choose from. It is free to play, although it makes its money through the season battle pass that provides expanded content, characters, and skins. Unlike many “free-to-play” games in the genre, Marvel Rivals can truly be played at no cost.

Given Marvel Rivals’ popularity and rapid growth, fans have been voicing their opinions on ways to improve the quality of life to make the game more enjoyable and run smoother. Before the launch on April 11, NetEase had already teased most of the expanded content for Season 2. Among the added content is a new map, Krakoa, new costumes for Emma Frost, the ability to gift skins to other players, a brand-new battle pass, and a rank reset. What fans had not known until recently, however, was the settings and quality of life changes coming with the Season 2 patch.

Marvel Rivals has been plagued by quality performance issues since its release. Gamers have reported their game crashing, lagging, and issues with overall performance. NetEase has announced an attempt to fix this with a new “experimental feature” called Switch Shader Compilation mode. This feature is only accessible on PC versions of the game. In short, the mode means that players will only compile shaders upon first load after an update. Meanwhile, console players can enjoy changes to sensitivity, making moving and aiming smoother and more customizable. Minor glitches will also be patched.

Potential Issues

However, the adjustments to Marvel Rivals don’t come without a few concerns. NetEase has admitted that PC Gamers may experience the following issues upon trying the new feature, as reported by comicbook.com:

• In each new match, some materials might initially render abnormally for a few frames before returning to their usual state. Rest assured that rendering will behave normally for the remainder of the match.
• In each new match, you may encounter a slight stutter during the first rendering of certain materials, after which the frames stabilize into a smooth, continuous flow.
• On systems with a limited number of CPU threads (6 or fewer), enabling both the Switch Shader Compilation Mode and AMD FSR3 Frame Generation concurrently might induce additional stutters.

Given that NetEase has admitted to the experimental nature of the new feature, players should expect some growing pains as the developer works out the kinks. It should also be expected that there could still be performance issues, given how much memory and power are required to run the game in full. Nevertheless, it is certainly a step in the right direction for improved performance and gaming experience.

Final Thoughts

The full list of additions and changes to Marvel Rivals coming with Season 2 is extensive. As the game continues to grow, NetEase has plans to offer more new content as frequently as possible. Hopefully, with that content, the company will also continue to listen to fans and work out improvements based on their feedback. Quality of life features may seem minor, but they are critically important for many players’ enjoyment of the title. Season 2 appears to be a step in the right direction for the popular multiplayer game.