A few weeks ago, after yet another frustrating match of Marvel Rivals caused me to power off my console and loudly deride the game and its players, my boyfriend asked how many hours I had played. The game launched shortly after my segue into the world of freelancing, and I had a lot of spare time on my hands. When my boyfriend, who often plays when I do, told me he had logged 16 hours so far, I conservatively guessed “at least double that.”
When I looked at my stats, I nearly threw up. I had spent more than 16 days in the NetEase hero shooter’s ranked mode (I don’t play anything else) since its December 2024 launch. That’s over 400 hours, and for most of that time, I was frustrated, annoyed, or “tilted,” as the kids say–desperate to reach an arbitrary goal I had set for myself before I could properly take a break from the game.
Those shocking gameplay numbers, coupled with an unceremonious rank tumble after the Season 3 rank reset a few weeks ago, made me realize something.
I have a problem, and it’s competitive matchmaking.
So I quit.
Marvel Rivals isn’t the first game I played competitively. As a high schooler, I would play round after round of SWAT in Halo 3 to try and reach the coveted level 50. I did the same thing years later with Gears of War 3, grinding matches to reach level 100. Later, I spent time on ranked Apex Legends, preferring it to the casual modes.
But for years, my game of choice was competitive Overwatch. Of the nearly 1,500 hours I’ve dedicated to the sequel alone, almost all of that time has been spent in competitive play. For a while, I was a globally ranked Moira player on console. I only stopped playing Overwatch 2 when I had grown too tired of the grind and Rivals glittered on the horizon.
Every game that I play competitively, I play alone, queueing up for ranked matches solo and, in hero shooters, as a support character. This is widely considered a Bad Idea: Solo queuing means you get a new team every match, which means no squad chemistry–and support players are often the least appreciated and the first to get yelled at when something goes awry.
With Rivals, my quality as a support player never felt like enough to carry a team to victory, and my fruitless efforts to rank up while playing the most thankless role began weighing on me.
So when I caught wind of a rumor that suggested NetEase’s hero shooter is baking the bad experience into the game with its matchmaking system, I perked up. Maybe the problem isn’t me…maybe it’s the game.
Matchmaking is a confusing and hotly contested topic in the world of competitive gaming. I’ve written extensively about skill-based matchmaking (or SBMM), a system used by games like Call of Duty and Apex Legends to determine which players populate in-game lobbies. Though the actual numbers that go into these systems usually vary by game or developer, the core logic is simple: Players are matched with similarly skilled players, whether that’s based on kill/death ratio, hours logged, or total wins.
Since implementation of these systems varies from game to game, there are instances in which players have grown increasingly more frustrated with a specific studio’s take on SBMM. In January 2023, Overwatch 2 addressed “community pain points with competitive matchmaking” and made adjustments. Later that year, Call of Duty fans flooded a Reddit AMA for Modern Warfare III, begging and/or demanding that Activision rework its SBMM system.
But SBMM isn’t the only system multiplayer games use to create matches. A 2017 paper from a former Electronic Arts intern discusses EOMM, or engagement optimized matchmaking, laying out a framework for an ideology that prioritizes engagement over fairness. EA patented this concept, but as far as I know, there isn’t a game in its portfolio (which includes Apex Legends and the Battlefield franchise) that uses it.
Marvel Rivals players are convinced, however, that NetEase is using EOMM in its matches. Though the company did publish a 2020 academic paper about a matchmaking system called OptMatch, which emphasizes player engagement, the system does not appear to value engagement more than fairness.
But I get it. Rivals using EOMM (or some version of it) would certainly make so many of us frustrated by the rank climb grind feel a bit better about our abilities, right? I’m not stuck in Platinum because I suck; I’m stuck in Platinum because the Rivals matchmaking system determined I needed to go on a losing streak, get completely tilted, and then hand me a win to keep me from embedding my controller in the television.
It just doesn’t seem to be the case, guys. In response to the rumors, NetEase just released a statement on X on August 12, stating, “We want to reiterate that Marvel Rivals does not use EOMM. We are currently working on a video to demonstrate our developer insights on the matchmaking and ranking system, which is expected to be released next week.”
Though the matchmaking debate piqued my interest again for a bit, no matter what NetEase tells us about their matchmaking system, it won’t bring me back. The embarrassing knowledge of the time I’ve invested in Marvel Rivals is now forever a part of me, embedded in the sinews of my muscles like an ever-present ache.
Those numbers helped me realize that so much of my time as a gamer has been spent trying to excel in first-person shooters, which are largely male-dominated spaces that are consistently and persistently hostile for people like me. I think, subconsciously, I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to be good at competitive games as a way to undeniably prove that I deserve to be in this space, that I’m just as much of a “gamer” as the men screaming slurs at me.
Rivals broke that spell, snapping me out of my single-minded quest to be the best. Even if my bad time is because of a questionable matchmaking mechanic, does that negate all the frustration I’ve felt? Confirmation that there’s some kind of mathematical formula ensuring carrot-and-sticking me so I stay around longer doesn’t change the reality: These kinds of games are bad for me.
Do you know what’s way more fun than trying to heal a raging DPS player who just demanded I fellate him? Dropping into Fortnite as Lady Gaga, head-shotting Peely, and popping the A$AP Ferg “Socks” emote before driving away in a yellow Corvette blasting “Juno” by Sabrina Carpenter.
Goodbye, competitive gaming. I’d say I’ll miss you, but I won’t.
