Marvel Rivals Season 1 started off with a pretty serious rank reset that saw everyone go down at least seven levels from where they finished in Season 0. This was to prevent any stagnation and ensure everyone in the higher ranks are active in the game, but even still, the reset spread chaos throughout Season 1's ranks.
"After hours of suffering and grinding, I'll be thrown back to Silver 1 with players who were hardstuck at Gold," VolrathK says in a Reddit thread. "Why God? Just why? Why not placement matches? Valorant has been doing that for years, and it just works. Big L for the devs in this one."
It meant that a lot of decently ranked players have been thrown back down into the pit of Silver/Gold, which is no fun to play in. Thanks to how mixed the players are, you'll either stomp or get stomped—those are the laws of the land. I went all the way down to Silver 2. Only after some tumultuous climbing, hard work, and a ridiculous amount of healing did I manage to reach my previous rank and then go on to Diamond 2. With all this pain and suffering, I'm not really surprised by the current rank distribution in Marvel Rivals. After all, competitive play isn't for everyone.
Currently, if you look at RivalsTracker, you can see a chart that shows the distribution of Marvel Rivals ranks only for PC. Silver and Gold have roughly the same number of players, with 418,426 players and 359,062 players, respectively. It's not until you get into Plat and above that you start to get a dwindling population. I'm one of 12,494 players in Diamond 2 right now, and Eternity is just sat with 24 players, while One Above All has 71 players right now. But the most impressive thing about this graph is just how many players are in Bronze 3, the lowest rank.
There are currently 482,526 players in Bronze 3. I don't think there's just a massive number of bad players who are all hardstuck in Bronze 3, although there may be a few. The most likely reasons are more mundane than that. First off, there are plenty of players who just never play ranked. Secondly, there are a great deal of Marvel Rivals players who probably gave competitive a go, had an awful time, and decided that they never wanted to play it again. Players who clearly have better restraint and value for their mental health than I do.
But even if Bronze 3 is slightly skewed, the ranked distribution in Marvel Rivals is still a little chaotic right now. With 72 days left in Season 1, we're only at the beginning of players trying to navigate the ranks to find out where they're best suited to stay. So, to everyone stuck in Bronze 3 right now, worry not—there's plenty of time to claw your way out into Silver before the next season.
