Season 6 of Marvel Rivals launched final week, lastly introducing Deadpool to the hero roster, in addition to a brand new battle cross and numerous gameplay tweaks. A part of the replace features a main remodeling of the hero proficiency system. It added new rewards for gamers to earn however unintentionally promoted a brand new epidemic of “lord farming” within the course of.
The up to date system adjustments how gamers earn proficiency. Reasonably than a tiered system the place gamers earn proficiency by means of common and hero-specific challenges, there may be now a linear system that gamers progress by means of through solely common challenges, so every hero progresses identically no matter position. There at the moment are 70 ranges for gamers to progress by means of, with rewards throughout numerous milestones. Gamers now additionally earn extra proficiency per minute spent taking part in. You will discover a full breakdown of the adjustments here.
The overhaul has led to a spike in gamers farming for cosmetics by staying in spawn and spamming talents with a purpose to rapidly progress by means of the up to date system. Gamers who have interaction on this habits are sometimes referred to as lord farmers, who create deeply unbalanced matches by basically being AFK the entire time.
The phenomenon calls to thoughts Civilization designer Soren Johnson’s 2011 blog post, the place he writes, “Many gamers can not assist approaching a recreation as an optimization puzzle. What offers essentially the most reward for the least threat? What technique offers the best likelihood—or perhaps a assured likelihood—of success? Given the chance, gamers will optimize the enjoyable out of a recreation.”
A brand new habits detection system is on the way in which
Luckily, NetEase is conscious of the habits and already working to handle it. “Lately, we’ve seen that some gamers are exploiting matches by remaining stationary and repeatedly farming stats to realize hero proficiency factors. This habits disrupts regular gameplay and significantly impacts the match expertise of different gamers,” the Marvel Rivals group wrote on X on January 19. “To deal with this, we’re planning to introduce a fight habits detection system. Gamers discovered partaking in such habits could face penalties together with, however not restricted to: warnings, short-term suspensions, long-term suspensions, or everlasting account bans.”
NetEase has not but acknowledged when the countermeasure will go reside, or if any efforts will probably be made to forestall lord farmers from creating new accounts within the free-to-play recreation as soon as the previous ones are banned. Within the meantime, some vigilante players are messing with lord farmers.
Whereas a fight habits detection system will hopefully assist deter lord farming going ahead, it doesn’t deal with the basic recreation design choices which are encouraging the habits within the first place. Solely time will inform if the hero proficiency system receives further remodeling.
