Marvel Rivals has a game-breaking bug that punishes high FPS
NetEase GamesMarvel Rivals’ devs promised to fix an issue that negatively affected players at low FPS, and many aspects of that bug have been fixed with the Season 1 patch. However, a new bug was discovered that has the opposite effect.
Having high FPS in a competitive game like Marvel Rivals is absolutely essential, so much so that Season 1 added a new setting to lower graphics even more for people with lower end specs.
Now more players than ever on PC can access the high framerates they’re looking for from a competitive game if they’re willing to sacrifice some graphical quality. Or, at least, that’s what you’d think.
As it turns out, high FPS isn’t good, either. Although the reason for it is much less apparent than the low FPS bug, though you may have felt the impact of this issue even if you didn’t know it was happening.
High framerates make you lag in Marvel Rivals
While high FPS will give you a smoother gameplay experience on the surface, the reality is that high FPS in the game makes you lag. No, seriously, it makes your ping worse.
As you get more and more FPS, your ping will start to climb in a way that’s directly proportional to your FPS. If you’ve ever been sitting in lobby and wondering why your connection drops to yellow from green when selecting a server to connect to, this is why: It’s your framerate.
This screenshot was making the rounds before the Season 1 update, and, after hopping into game and looking for ourselves, it’s indeed real. You can notice your ping going up as the FPS rises.
If you’re like me, you’ll have seen this tweet and will have been skeptical that this is real. So, I ran some independent testing both in the practice range and in actual matches to see if there was a difference. In both cases, there was a noticeable rise in ping that made the game considerably more laggy.
The last image in the square looks a bit off because I lowered my resolution in-game to push that FPS as high as it could go, and my ping had a noticeable upward trend as the framerate went up.
What’s more, this isn’t an issue with a small gain across all connections; the problem is directly proportional to how high your ping is.
So, if you’re someone who would normally have 100 ping at 30 FPS, your ping will go up to 160-170 if you can manage FPS in the 200s. The issue is exacerbated for people who have a less-than-stellar connection.
This could be due to the game having to push more information to the server as your framerate rises and may be tied to the same issue that was causing oddities at lower framerates.
And, though some aspects of the low FPS bug have been fixed, there are still some quirks like Wolverine’s damage output and other select interactions that haven’t been fixed. So, you have to choose between high FPS and laggy or suffer the problems that come with low framerate.
That said, there is a happy medium right around the 90-100 FPS mark where you’re minimally affected by either issue. So, if you’re looking to change your settings, that’s the current sweet spot in terms of where you should cap your framerate to avoid both issues.
If you’re someone who plays with your FPS uncapped and you’re hitting the 200-300 FPS range, cap your FPS and thank me later. Your gameplay will be much more consistent.