Marvel’s Avengers continues to solve bad problems

Screenshots of Marvel’s Avengers

After spending over 150 hours in Marvel’s Avengers, his core combat and how he makes each character’s abilities feel is what kept me coming back, despite a lack of content. Be it new types of missions, types of enemies or even locations. All of this is missing. Case in point: six months after launch, there are only four bosses available to fight, and it’s been the same since launch. Only half of them, Taskmaster and Abomination, are actually supervillains.

For those who haven’t spent all that time playing the online component and crushing their heroes, but may have been considering launching alongside the launch of the next-gen version or new story content from Hawkeye, this time will now be even more difficult. .

As you climb your heroes through each of their 50 levels, you unlock abilities that really show the fun one can have with Avengers, and regularly accessing these new powers is what keeps him from becoming completely obsolete. The dev team recently announced an XP overhaul that will make the process of crushing heroes slower than before, making an already repetitive process even longer. As detailed in a blog post, the reassessment of how quickly XP grew out of concerns about this pace:

The current XP ‘curve’ is not a curve at all. In most RPGs the amount of XP you need to level up increases as you level up in a curve, but our system is a straight line. This has led to pacing issues, such as skill points currently being rewarded too quickly, which can be confusing and overwhelming for new players. “

While most RPGs I’ve played require more XP per level than previous ones, these tend to offer a level or variety and replayability that Avengers just doesn’t have. In fact, the speed at which you level up characters and gain new superpowers was one of the most welcoming aspects of the Avengers postgame. For an experience designed to let you play like some of the most beloved superheroes of all time, constantly gaining new abilities and mixing and matching them to create your own versions of these heroes is what allowed me to playing continuously at first, and I never found it overwhelming.

This decision is a bit confusing, especially when paired with the minimal amount of content added since launch. The XP overhaul wouldn’t seem like such a pointless change if there was enough variety in the gameplay to support it, but without it it feels like a step in the wrong direction. Adding more grind to a game that is at its less enjoyable when grinding is not what everyone is looking for.

It’s especially frustrating because I stayed hopeful – on the eve of every War Table stream, I thought to myself, “This might be the one where the issues are resolved.” This thought has not yet become a reality.

There has been no word on the Secret Lab missions that aim to test max level characters, and without those there is very little incentive to grind for better loot at all. Months have gone by with no sign of a roadmap for their addition, and it’s just hard not to feel worried – especially when, weirdly, some players have managed to accidentally playing part of the Secret Lab missions in September.

Considering the state of the world right now, there are surely very valid reasons for the delays in some of the advertised content. But it’s the lack of communication with Marvel’s dedicated Avengers player base, coupled with the suddenness of announcements like these, that are frustrating.

March 18 could have been a time when Marvel’s Avengers rewrites some of its wrongs to bring back outdated players and attract a new group of players, as Hawkeye enters the fight alongside his series of story missions as well as versions. PS5 and Series X arrival. But many can now be put off by the increased grind that awaits them. The XP curve change will not apply until then, which means there is an incentive for players who currently own the game to play now if they want an easier turn at level 50, and even them. developers seem to know that.

“If you have a character that is not level 50 and you want to speed up their progress, take that time to do so before the March 18 update,” the ad read.

This will leave a lot of people caught between deciding to play the same missions in an inferior version of the game now, or waiting to play a technically improved version but for much longer. What should have been an exciting new start for Marvel’s Avengers may well turn into a choppy reboot with a player base made up of tired veterans and puzzled newcomers.

I want to love Marvel’s Avengers. In a year, I want to look back and see how successful it has become. For that to happen requires better communication with fans and a real back-and-forth regarding the issues fans have with the game. Of all the complaints I’ve seen about Marvel’s Avengers, none wasn’t about how surprisingly quickly your heroes leveled up, but almost all of them were about the lack of fun to be had once you’ve done that.

Hopefully the ‘too big to fail’ theory comes to fruition and I will enjoy this game for years to come, but this week’s announcement sounded like an unnecessary change in the tide before a potential iceberg arrived on it. March 18.

Simon Cardy currently has an Iron Man, Thor, and Black Widow power level 150 but no reason to use them. Please sympathize with him on Twitter at @CardySimon.