Marvel Rivals now has costume customization, along with a new currency to go with it.
With the most recent patch to Marvel Rivals, onehighly-anticipated new featureNetEase Games added to the hero shooter iscustom colors for some skins, ostensibly giving players a new way to express themselves with the skin they play.
So far, custom colors are only available forLuna Snow’s Mirae 2099 skin,Winter Soldier’s Blood Soldier, Magik’s Punkchild, and Psylocke’s Vengeance skin, but over time the system will be expanded to include more skins.
Players must already own a skin to be able to purchase custom colors for it.
However, the new system comes with some other pretty big catches, and it’s got the community in an uproar.
Yet Another Currency And Misleading Marketing
The first catch is that this custom color system comes with a new currency, called Unstable Molecules, bringing thetotal number of currencies in the gameup to four.
At the moment, the only way to acquire Unstable Molecules is by exchanging Lattice, the game’s main premium currency, for them at a 1:1 rate, essentially making it a second premium currency but with an extra layer of obfuscation to make it less clear how much money players are actually spending on the game.
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Customization for one skin costs 600 Unstable Molecules, so 600 Lattice, or $6, as an additional purchase on top of the potentially over $20 to buy the skin in the first place. In essence, the system is a way for NetEase Games to charge players twice for the same skin.
That being said, in the social mediapostdetailing the costume customization system, NetEase stated that starting in Season 3 there will be more ways to earn Unstable Molecules.
The other significant issue is the misleading use of the word “customization,” when in reality, they’ve added only a single alternate color palette for these skins.
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Unsurprisingly, the misleading and expensive way NetEase has implemented alternate costume colors has sparked backlash from the community, both onRedditand in their social media replies.
Criticism and jokes have been directed at such aspects as theneedless addition of yet another currency, thelack of any actual customization, the fact that they’re being askedto spend more money on skins they already own, and more.
At this point, we can only hope that NetEase will take the criticism and backlash to heart, and as the system gets more fleshed out in future seasons it will become less predatory, limited, and misleading.
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