Marvel Rivals already has a large and mixed roster of characters spanning the entire Marvel catalog. While the game features most of the characters that are the most popular in Marvel’s pantheon of heroes and villains, NetEase is not letting up with adding new characters to the game.

While there is still room for popular characters to join the roster, fans should prepare to get some surprise additions to the cast as well. There are obvious omissions from the game’s current roster, such as many X-Men characters being notably absent, but NetEase has a process for choosing characters that have many other factors that determine who gets to join Marvel Rivals as a playable character.

NetEase Has a Serious Process For Adding Characters

New Characters Aren’t Added Simply For Popularity

In an interview with PC Gamer, the executive producer of Marvel Games, Danny Koo, spoke about what the process is like for adding characters to Marvel Rivals; “Roughly 70% [of the roster] is made up of your greatest hits, like well-known heroes: Iron Man, Cap, etc. And then we throw in some curveballs; you might not even know who they are, to make the roster more interesting.”

It is true that Marvel Rivals features some curveball heroes that many players might not have known about prior to Marvel Rivals. Marvel spans such a wide range of media with comic books, TV shows and movies, there are many casual Marvel fans who may not know a lot of the characters outside of the most popular heroes like Iron Man, Spider-Man or Captain America.

Additions like Cloak & Dagger, Magik or Iron Fist are a great way for fans to learn more about Marvel’s expansive character catalog. NetEase does not seem to add characters just for the shock value, as creating a character that is fun to play is just as important. Koo says:

What we do is, whenever we have a character, we’ll come up with a character background, who they are, and the comic references that appear in what they do, and we’ll hand it over to the design team… Then the marketing team is like, ‘Okay, how do we present this to new players that might not know whose world this is? Do we need to explain it?’ We have a comic historian come in. We focus on making sure the characters are distinct from each other.

For example, Hulk and Red Hulk roughly have the same silhouette, so we may not want to do that one. Their [abilities] have to be as distinct as well because we have all kinds of players. Some players love to be Strategists. Some players like to dive into the action. Some players just like to watch other people play. So we have to tailor to every kind of player.

This dynamic works incredibly well with the synergy between Marvel Rivals and the greater Marvel universe. Players may find that they enjoy a specific style of play, and a new character could be exactly the type of playstyle to get a player interested in the character as a whole.

For example, someone who is unfamiliar with Magik may love how the character plays so much, it makes them want to learn more about the character in other media. This could also work in reverse where a highly anticipated character causes players to learn a new role or playstyle they otherwise would not have.

This constant cycle of excitement over new characters will continue on for the foreseeable future, with Danny Koo saying, “there’s no sign of slowing down.” NetEase has confirmed that every season will see the addition of two new characters, there is plenty of room for some surprise inclusions, and for even the most encyclopedic of Marvel fans to learn about some lesser-known characters.