(Image credit: NetEase)

The Thing and the Human Torch are both finally in Marvel Rivals, and with their addition comes a whole host of new skills and abilities to be terrified of. While The Thing has the really quite useful power of immobility, meaning he can’t be thrown around by Winter Soldier, Spider-Man, or Hulk, Human Torch has the more explosive and terrifying power of fire. The only problem is, players can’t really tell the difference between their allies’ and enemies’ flames.

“How am I supposed to distinguish between this fire and that fire during a team fight,” maydaymayes says. “How do I know which fire is hot if both teams have a Human Torch??? Petition for easier distinction.” Marvel Rivals’ team fights are chaotic enough, with the map falling apart and godlike powers spewing every which-way, so glueing your eyes to the screen to avoid unfriendly fire feels like a good way to hurt them.

Your teammate’s fire is slightly lighter than your enemy’s, which will actually hurt you, but deciphering that mid-fight isn’t really working out for players. If you’re playing Human Torch, it’s pretty clear to see which flames are yours and which aren’t (having a working memory also helps), but even if you aren’t colourblind, the red and orange flames still kind of all blend together.

“I feel like a little kid again trying to see if the fire will hurt me or not,” one player says. A few others point out that NetEase could easily avoid this confusion simply by changing the colour of enemy fire to something like blue or green, anything that can blatantly stand out to other players. But as that’s not a feature right now, you may need to find other solutions.

An easy solution to this problem should be simply using the red colour blind setting to change the colour of enemy fire. There is an option to manually change the colour for things like enemy heroes, HP bar colour, shield HP colour, and warning colour. While this does change the shade of the fire slightly, most players are finding that it’s not much help: “Colorblind here. Their colorblind mode is absolutely useless. This, unfortunately, is industry standard.”

This is just a small issue at the moment, but it’s indicative of something bigger: fights in Marvel Rivals are way too chaotic. This can be fun, especially in quick play, but as soon as you get to a serious level in ranked, it can quickly become frustrating. The cluttered UI, confusing damage signals, and increasingly complex and destructive hero abilities all contribute to a feeling that Marvel Rivals is beginning to snowball out of control. But I’ll carry on enjoying the ride until it becomes too hot to handle.