NetEase Games’ free-to-play game Marvel Rivals is getting a hugely requested feature in the coming weeks with the arrival of cross-progression.
Creative Director Guangguang confirmed on Tuesday that cross-progression has been a “top priority” for the team, and that it has been “frantically cooking in development” until now. While cross-progression is now ready, the developers want to ensure that it launches smoothly.
In order to make sure nothing goes wrong, a handful of players are being invited to test cross-progression with the launch of Season 4.5 on October 10. If things go according to plan, cross-progression will then be rolled out to everybody with Season 5.
Guangguang explains that player ranks and leaderboards will remain separate by platform. To use cross-progression, players will go to Settings, then Other, then Account Linking, and choose a primary account.
This main account can be changed, but there’ll be a (yet-undisclosed) cooldown period between changes.
Cross-progression takes things a step further, meaning players can take all their unlocked and purchased skins and emotes across platforms, providing flexibility for anyone who frequently plays games on more than one system.
What else is coming to Marvel Rivals soon?
As previously revealed, Marvel Rivals Season 4.5 is bringing Daredevil to the game as the next playable character. Daredevil is a Duelist, which isn’t too surprising, even if some players were holding out hopes for a second Vanguard after the sorely-needed reprieve brought by Angela at the start of the season.
I can only pray that the next character added in Season 5 is a Strategist, as the last one brought to the game was Ultron all the way back in Season 2.5.
Elsewhere, Guangguang confirmed that Marvel Rivals is getting a Halloween-themed event, with spooky skins for characters like Blade, Jeff the Land Shark, Peni Parker, and others. We’ll have to wait and see what the final designs look like, but the concept art is promising.
Balance changes for Season 4.5 are still on the way, so hang tight. We do know that Ragnarok Rebirth is being removed (sigh, I knew Thor having two team-ups was too good to last a whole season), with Hela getting a new team-up with Namor.
The lord of the deep is also being removed from his team-up with the Hulk, so no more gamma laser squids sniping across the map.
Finally, a new game mode is also on the way. We don’t know much else about it, but we can expect a full reveal on October 12 as part of the Thailand Game Show.
I’m thrilled more and more games are embracing cross-progression
I’ve spoken to numerous game developers about cross-progression in the past, and no matter their proximity to the technical pipeline and actual process for getting it working, they’ve all said the same thing: It’s far harder than you’d think.
I totally understand and respect that, so it’s really nice to see more and more games getting cross-progression working. I play a lot on my Xbox Series X, but I also play a fair bit on my PC. Being able to just go back and forth between titles and have all my stuff is great.
It’s a significant reason I’m a fan of Xbox Play Anywhere, even if that’s far less relevant for free-to-play multiplayer titles.
Marvel Rivals is currently free-to-play on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4.
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