Marvel Rivals’ Combat Chests Could Be a Savoury Mid-Season…

Marvel Rivals has evolved a lot in three seasons so far and has shown admirable transparency in terms of its development and overall reception to player feedback. BattlePass content has also been agreeable in every season so far: Season 0, Chronovium; Season 1, Darkhold; and Season 2, Flowers of Krakoa. Season 2.5 has now launched, introducing Marvel Rivals’ Ultron as a flying strategist, alongside a Combat Chest event, and the latter’s impact could have a huge aftershock depending on how well it’s received.

Marvel Rivals soft-launched the idea of miniature BattlePasses by way of the Pick-Up Bundle featuring Venom’s Hyper Orange skin and Galacta’s Gift, both of which include rare Costume Coins.

Adamant or dedicated players who have already swept through a season’s BattlePass and are left converting leftover Chrono Tokens into Units may find the Combat Chest to their liking. Having a second, truncated ‘battle pass’ arrive halfway through a season could be a phenomenal way to reinvigorate the playerbase and incite progression through it by simply playing matches, ushering in the back half of a season and ensuring there is more than enough to absorb players with until the season ends. However, Marvel Rivals announced a monumental change to its seasonal structure for the future that might disrupt this logic.

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By Jared Stewart

Marvel Rivals’ Combat Chests May Be a Great Halftime Snack

Marvel Rivals’ Season 2.5 Combat Chest introduces an Ultimate Black Panther comic book-inspired skin for Storm, a Future Foundation-inspired skin for Mister Fantastic, and an Ultron-themed skin for Magneto. Notably, none of these three characters have costumes in the Flowers of Krakoa BattlePass, which presents Combat Chests with a unique advantage since players who don’t have the fortune of their favorite characters being represented in a BattlePass could get lucky and receive a skin for them in a Combat Chest. Either way, having a supplementary ‘battle pass’ like this may be a decent means of supplying more content, even if a Premium purchase is required for the Chest to permanently belong to players so they can avoid FOMO and progress through it at their own pace, much less gain access to the ‘Advanced’ cosmetics it possesses.

The Season 2.5 Combat Chest also features MVPs, sprays, nameplates, emotes, and a collectible, as well as a mood bundle and an emoji bundle.

The Combat Chest may only be a celebratory mid-season event for this season. Still, there’s a possibility that Combat Chests become the new norm as another optional purchase players can make for additional cosmetics (some of which are free, even, such as Mister Fantastic’s Future Foundation skin), and the price for this Combat Chest’s enticing Premium option being 690 Lattice—$7 USD—seems fairly agreeable.

Marvel Rivals’ Upcoming Seasonal Landscape May Affect Combat Chests

Rather, an obvious downside and counter to this concept is that, from Season 3 onward, Marvel Rivals’ seasons will last a month instead of three months. Seasonal battle passes will supposedly be appropriately shorter, too, but likely still provide more than enough content for players to earn in a mere month. A span of three months has proven to be incredibly excessive for the number of BattlePass rewards players receive and stretches seasons too thinly, though one-month seasons also seem ludicrously short considering how much consecutive content Marvel Rivals will need to produce in the future.

Adamant or dedicated players who have already swept through a season’s BattlePass and are left converting leftover Chrono Tokens into Units may find the Combat Chest to their liking.

It’ll be interesting to see how much content is digestible in a month before a brand-new season and Marvel Rivals BattlePass are debuted, and Combat Chests might be an every-now-and-then sort of indulgence, not a mid-season balm, if monthly seasons and BattlePasses persist. That said, shorter seasons with shorter BattlePasses may further encourage Combat Chests for that same reason, and implementing them regularly could be a terrific way of embracing a season’s aesthetic for themed costumes, so long as everything is justifiably priced.

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