Game-breaking Marvel Rivals bug puts players with bad PCs at a huge disadvantage
NetEase GamesMarvel Rivals players have discovered that several aspects of the game are tied to framerate, putting those on weaker PCs at a disadvantage while those with high FPS have a huge leg up.
It’s true that players with higher framerates have a generally easy time playing the game due to it being clearer to see and smoother to play, but that’s not what’s being referred to here.
No, there are core mechanics of Marvel Rivals that break down at lower framerates and don’t work as intended. The right PC settings help, but that only goes so far.
Some heroes don’t dash quite as far as they’re supposed to, others melee slower than intended, many heroes can’t jump to the heights their abilities would normally allow. The differences between the experience of playing at high FPS and below 30 frames are night and day.
Bad PCs make Marvel Rivals much harder to play
It’s no secret that Marvel Rivals has some optimization issues. When reviewing the game in both its early access and full release states, I struggled to keep a consistent frame rate even with a 3080TI and a high-end AMD processor. This game is heavy in terms of PC performance.
What’s more, abilities like Doctor Strange’s portal are prone to nuking your FPS if there’s a lot happening on-screen. It’s at the point where some of the game’s most popular mods are to boost FPS, which is impressive considering how many of Marvel Rivals’ mods are used for… other things.
However, when purposely putting an FPS limit on their game, users on Reddit have made some shocking discoveries about how much framerate affects certain abilities.
User nyin_ did several side-by-side comparisons, showing that some heroes genuinely move slower and do less damage at lower frame rates. This phenomenon arises from issues in the way Rivals calculates Delta Time.
In game development terms, Delta Time is the method in which a game calculates and predicts what a player is doing between frames to avoid inconsistencies for players with lower-end PCs or bad internet connections. You’ll often hear this concept referred to as lag compensation, though that’s a gross oversimplification of the concept and is only a small part of how Delta Timing works.
If every ability was made properly, they would all move at a constant rate of speed for all players. Setting a constant time for things to start and end allows the server to predict what’s happening for a player even if their game is reporting data to the server at a slower rate. In Marvel Rivals, activity between those frames gets lost because those timings aren’t properly tuned and are reliant on frame rate.
In short, Marvel Rivals doesn’t properly communicate what’s happening for the player to the server. This is due to the game’s calculation on distance and damage ticks being tied to frame rate rather than the server.
This isn’t exactly an easy issue to fix.
For now, your best bet is to turn down your settings, lower your resolution a bit, and strive to get your FPS as high as possible for your PC. This will give you a genuine competitive advantage with most heroes until this issue gets fixed.