Season 6 of Marvel Rivals launched last week, finally introducing Deadpool to the hero roster, as well as a new battle pass and various gameplay tweaks. Part of the update includes a major reworking of the hero proficiency system. It added new rewards for players to earn but unintentionally promoted a new epidemic of “lord farming” in the process.
The updated system changes how players earn proficiency. Rather than a tiered system where players earn proficiency through universal and hero-specific challenges, there is now a linear system that players progress through via solely universal challenges, so each hero progresses identically regardless of role. There are now 70 levels for players to progress through, with rewards across various milestones. Players now also earn more proficiency per minute spent playing. You can find a full breakdown of the changes here.
The overhaul has led to a spike in players farming for cosmetics by staying in spawn and spamming abilities in order to quickly progress through the updated system. Players who engage in this behavior are sometimes referred to as lord farmers, who create deeply unbalanced matches by essentially being AFK the whole time.
The phenomenon calls to mind Civilization designer Soren Johnson’s 2011 blog post, where he writes, “Many players cannot help approaching a game as an optimization puzzle. What gives the most reward for the least risk? What strategy provides the highest chance—or even a guaranteed chance—of success? Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.”
A new behavior detection system is on the way
Fortunately, NetEase is aware of the behavior and already working to address it. “Recently, we’ve noticed that some players are exploiting matches by remaining stationary and repeatedly farming stats to gain hero proficiency points. This behavior disrupts normal gameplay and seriously affects the match experience of other players,” the Marvel Rivals team wrote on X on January 19. “To address this, we are planning to introduce a combat behavior detection system. Players found engaging in such behavior may face penalties including, but not limited to: warnings, short-term suspensions, long-term suspensions, or permanent account bans.”
NetEase has not yet stated when the countermeasure will go live, or if any efforts will be made to prevent lord farmers from creating new accounts in the free-to-play game once the old ones are banned. In the meantime, some vigilante players are messing with lord farmers.
While a combat behavior detection system will hopefully help deter lord farming going forward, it doesn’t address the fundamental game design decisions that are encouraging the behavior in the first place. Only time will tell if the hero proficiency system receives additional reworking.
