The Warner Bros. crossover platform fighter, MultiVersus, will be ending its open beta and will be inaccessible until the game officially launches in 2024. The game is ultimately great and is extremely entertaining to play, but the beta had some clear issues. These problems turned many people away from the game, so hopefully they’re addressed when it does launch. Here are some of the biggest things the folks over at Player First Games should fix before releasing the final version of MultiVersus.

Server Issues

MultiVersus is an online multiplayer game, so the online has to be good. This is especially the case for fighting games since the timing of every button input and the exact placement of characters and attacks matter greatly. Unfortunately, though, MultiVersus matches are riddled with lag and baffling netcode that has players teleport, hit opponents from across the map, disconnect, and freeze. This is probably the most vital issue that needs to be fixed.

Bugs

No, not Bugs Bunny. This game is glitchy. The worst part is that the glitches have major impacts on the outcome of matches. There’s one glitch that forces the player character downward when they’re off the edge of the stage, preventing them from recovering. There’s another in which Bugs Bunny’s burrow hole vanishes so that the other cannot be used. It’s also hard to ignore character models being stretched to bizarre proportions. For the game to be playable, these can’t be happening nearly as much.

Battle Pass Progression

MultiVersus is a free-to-play game with unlockables earned via battle pass. This model has been seen to work with games like Fortnite and Apex Legends, and it’s something that can definitely work here. However, Player First Games needs to figure out how to balance it properly. During the first season of the open beta, players completed the battle pass incredibly quickly. It was a little too easy to progress all the way through it, leaving folks without something to work toward. In the second season, completing the battle pass became way too much of a grind and virtually impossible to complete by the original deadline. They need to find more of a middle ground for it.

Character Select Screen

In MultiVersus, playable characters fall under one of five classes: bruiser, mage, support, tank, or assassin. The character select screen has characters organized by their class… for the most part. Most of the bruisers are with the bruisers, most of the mages are with the mages, and so on. However, as they added new characters, they were just thrown on the right side of the screen regardless of their class. So, while most characters are with their classes, there are a handful who aren’t. It’s just sort of organized randomly, making it tricky to find the character you want to play as. On top of that, it would probably be best if the select screen was organized by franchise. It feels strange to see Shaggy be nowhere near Velma or Steven Universe nowhere near Garnet. At the very least, there should be a setting that allows players to choose if they want it organized by class or franchise.

Character Release Schedule

One of the most exciting aspects of MultiVersus is that new characters will be added to the roster over time. It’s a lot of fun having that to look forward to. However, there needs to be more of a set schedule for these character releases so that fans can look forward to specific times. In the first season of the beta, characters were released roughly every two to three weeks, which is incredibly fast for a game like this. Then, in Season 2, Marvin the Martian was released with more characters being promised, but no more characters came. If they can’t release characters at the insanely rapid pace they were doing initially, then they shouldn’t attempt it. A character at the beginning of the season and one in the middle of the season would likely be much more manageable and fans would know what to expect.

Stages

The stages in MultiVersus are cleverly-designed and shake up the gameplay for each match. That being said, there aren’t a whole lot of them. The number of stages is inflated by having variations of the same few stages rather than actually having different stages. This is especially a bummer since stages are a great way to further represent different franchises in the game. They could easily have a wider variety of stages if each franchise that’s represented by a character also had a stage.

Arcade

Arcade Mode was certainly a fun addition to the game, but it’s unfortunately lackluster. It’s just a series of 1v1 matches against glitchy bots that ends with a boss. The boss, though, is just a big version of Reindog, one of the playable characters. A good Arcade for a platform fighter should include variety. Some matches should be 1v1s, some 2v2s, some Free-For-Alls. The boss should be something more unique. Some actual story couldn’t hurt either. 

Items

Like all good platform fighters, MultiVersus does have items that can be used during matches. However, they’re only used during Free-For-Alls or “Silly Queue” matches with no settings to choose which ones are used, which types of matches they’re used in, or how frequently they drop. On top of that, just about every item is just something to throw at an opponent. There isn’t a large variety of items and most of them essentially behave the same way. Pick up and throw. There needs to be more items (especially ones fans recognize from various Warner Bros. owned franchises), and they need to have different functions, from ranged weapons to melee weapons and even defensive devices. There also needs to be more customizable settings around them.