Marvel Rivals Players Say Season 9 Is Too Loud to Look At

Marvel Rivals reached Season 9 about 18 months after launch, and its newest update has drawn heavy criticism for on-screen chaos. The season, built around Apocalypse and timed to coincide with X-Men '97's second season, added fireworks-throwing mutant Jubilee a few days ago. Many players like the hero, but the update that brought her has become the target.

The core complaint is readability. Clips across social media show players buried under bright, colorful effects thrown off by the growing roster's passive abilities and active skills. In any team fight with more than a few characters, tracking what is happening has become difficult. One veteran player put the irony plainly:

"Not defending it, frankly my eyes hurt looking at this. But it is funny and ironic that the clutter slop got amplified tenfold in a Jubilee season."

— Marvel Rivals player

That user wrote on subreddit threads where similar posts keep surfacing. Another player said people will tell them to get good, but they have no idea what is going on. A Peni Parker main said it was insane that most of the sub treated the state of things as fine. On the main Season 9 feedback thread, one user said the game is almost nauseating now despite having no photosensitivity issues, and another said they were genuinely miserable after a few matches.

The effects are hitting performance, not just perception. Players report that the overabundance of visual effects tanks the framerate on decent PC builds, which raises questions about how the console versions hold up, especially the PlayStation 4 port. The complaints stack a rendering cost on top of the readability problem, so the same update that is hard to parse is also harder to run.

These synergies add new abilities and passives between characters, and Season 9's additions and reworks drew direct criticism. One player called them really frustrating. Another, in a long post on the state of the game, said the constant ability spam had turned it into "MMO Rivals."

The frustration has moved the numbers. Marvel Rivals' recent reviews rating on Steam has dropped to Mixed, and the game's Steam forums carry complaints about crashes, performance, and shaky balance. The pattern reads as too much added too fast at the expense of the player experience. The mid-season refresh is planned for 7th August, and players are hoping the team handles it with more restraint.

I think the visual clutter is the symptom and the roster pace is the disease, because a game that adds a hero every few weeks without pruning old effects was always going to reach a point where the screen stops making sense. Season 9 is where that math caught up with Marvel Rivals rather than a one-off misstep.

NetEase confirmed Jubilee as a Strategist, its 52nd hero, in a July 7 trailer, and tied her to the plot rather than treating her as a reskin. A Timestream Entanglement traps her son, Shogo, in dragon form, and she strikes a deal with Apocalypse in Thebes to save him, becoming his Horseman of Famine. Her kit shapes bursts of pyrotechnic plasma into projectiles, pairs them with vampiric powers, and includes an air jump with hover, healing bubbles, and a knockback ultimate. Those fireworks are a large part of what players now say is overwhelming the screen.

More is still incoming. The Hood joins as a Vanguard in the mid-season update in early August, fighting with dual pistols and a sword. The Egypt-set Thebes map, a convoy map tied to the Apocalypse storyline, shipped July 23.

A new Captain America swimsuit skin drew a wave of attention, with players joking about a sudden surge of Cap mains. NetEase tied the design to Marvel Swimsuit Special #1 from 1992, a recurring comic built around putting heroes in beachwear, keeping the silhouette while adding definition. The studio has leaned into the game's reputation in thirstier corners of the internet before, treating it as free marketing. I read that skin as evidence the team knows exactly which levers move engagement, which makes the clutter problem harder to wave off as an accident rather than a byproduct of chasing the same attention.