Whenever you release a AAA title. You have to make an impact right away, otherwise, it can just go down this awful road of having a terrible reputation which in turns affects player bases, sales, and other things too.
The same thing seems to be happening with Marvel’s Avengers. Apparently, according to other sources, PC has an average of less than 2,000 players per day playing on average. Now forgive me if I’m wrong but that is awfully low for not just a AAA title, but a title that is literally about the most popular superhero franchise in the world right now, and that is the Avengers.
So in turn having such a low player base also affects the matchmaking, so players are barely able to find any random people to play with. We play the PS4, and even we struggle on there.
The game was tagged as being a multi-year platform, with multiple DLC’s and new characters planned. However, judging by how this is going I’m expecting a lot of those plans to be shelved and the game to pretty much end up like EA’s Anthem.
The devs are hoping their new content will bring a lot of players back to the game, but I’m not so sure. No Man’s Sky’s developers never gave up on the game, bringing some fantastic content to the game but that reputation will always lie within it.
I feel like the same applies here. Let’s be honest, I enjoyed the game. Here at Comic Universe, we do enjoy it. Nonetheless, it’s not without multiple issues. Their reputation dwindles even more shortly after release they announced a patch with over 1,000 issues. I said it in a previous article, no game should ever be released with that many issues.
Albeit a lot of those issues have now been rectified, the game is still plagued with bugs and issues. Square Enix’s support is trash so you get zero help from those. I don’t just mean trash, I mean their support is one of the worst game developer support I’ve ever come across.
The game is in the category of a looter-shooter type game, very similar to those of Destiny, Anthem and The Division. In turn, it’s a great idea, but it’s very poorly executed. Why? Because it’s so damn boring and repetitive.
You do the same missions over and over and over and over again. You fight the same 4 villains over and over and over and over again. Taskmaster, Abomination, the grounded metal thing and the flying one. There’s no surprises or anything spectacular that blows us away.
The grind is simply unnecessary. It took me almost 4 weeks of playing every single night for around 3-4 hours to get Iron Man from 139 to 150. It averages around 100+ hours of pure game time just to get that. It’s ridiculous.
What’s even worse, there’s no quicker route. Challenge 3 and 4 on missions is pointless as you get nothing extra. Elite vaults are trash as again, you get nothing different from that of the normal vault missions. I’m not asking to do one mission and be given the loot within 30 minutes for 0-150. I’m not even asking to change the amount of resources to do that. I’m asking to switch the missions up and be more generous on the tougher missions.
The faction missions are just annoying. You get barely anything for those either, so what’s the point?
In response to the player base’s numbers dipping, Crystal Dynamics head Scot Amos issued a statement via Kotaku in regards to the their plans moving forward. He also stated he’s confident the player base will return.
“To our players: every day we fight to make the best game possible for our community,” Amos said. “We have a great community management team at Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix who funnel all of your concerns, suggestions, and feedback to the development team daily. We are listening. We are making fixes, improvements, and additions as fast as we safely can to make Marvel’s Avengers the game we all aspire it to be.”
Two new characters are on the horizon (Kate Bishop and Clint Barton’s Hawkeye’s) alongside a “new War Zone mission type called Tachyon Rifts, a new Outpost that’s a jumping off point for new story missions in the future, and AIM’s Cloning Lab, which requires a coordinated high-level group of four players to beat with new top-end loot rewards”.
“We are confident that we’ll see PC players (as well as those on Xbox One and PlayStation 4) return to the game as we add exciting new late-game content and demonstrate that we continue to be focused on improving the game,” Amos concluded.
In my opinion, I don’t think the plans they mentioned will be enough to draw many people back in. They have a lot more to do that than just a new character and a new mission type. They also need to sort their microtransactions out. They charge around £15 on average for a new skin in the marketplace, Fortnite averages less than that and it’s a free to play game. Understandably this requires a higher upkeep, however, they’re not adding anything remotely enticing to buy at any stage. The majority of the skins are awful.
The trophies also need to have some form of tracker. I need to save 100 AIM prisoners, 50 cache strongboxes, and however many hives. I’d love the option to see how many I’ve done. If this is an option somewhere please let me know in the comments.
Now, I’ve had my digs at the game. It thoroughly deserves the position they’re in right now. They should have delayed this game longer if I’m honest.
However, I stand by what I said earlier. We do enjoy the game. It has an extremely high level of potential, and if the developers can see through that then players may come back.
It’s fun to play the game, especially now a lot of the bugs are gone. It’s ridiculously fun playing with 3 of your friends, choosing your favourite heroes and just destroying enemies (there needs to be more than just robots, you only come across the human ones rarely).
Levelling up is rewarding in its own right, as you unlock new abilities to try out and with some having multiple options, it’s great. For example, when you’re high enough with Black Widow, you can switch between the standard pistols, automatics, or a straight-up Desert Eagle type gun. It adds variety in that sense.
The loot missions can be rewarding, but only if you go to all the question marks dotted around. You can easily leave the mission full of loot but the problem is, a lot of it is just scrapping that you get barely anything back for.
For me personally, here’s what I’d love to see come soon;
- New mission types
- New skins, for those already in the game as well
- A new faction as the two in it just don’t give enough
- A record card to see how many missions you’ve done, enemies defeated etc
- A new villain sector meaning a new villain. Just give us MODOK
- A roadmap of what’s coming and when. We still don’t have a definitive date for Kate, Clint or Spider-Man. EA’s Battlefront 2 did this and it worked. It will drag up excitement
- The option to play through the campaign again. Especially with our now levelled heroes so we can enjoy the experience again
That’s just what I’d love to see over the next few months. It can be a lot, but the players deserve a lot let’s be honest here. The game needs to drastically do something, and do it quickly before it turns into another Anthem. I desperately don’t want that to happen as I can see myself playing this every other day for a while if it stopped being so repetitive.
What’s your thoughts so far? Are you happy and enjoying the game? Have you played it and hated it? Are you not buying it because of the reputation? Let us know down in the comments below.
Here’s Kate and Clint’s reveal trailers;
