Crystal Dynamics has recently promised to avert the dying state of Marvel’s Avengers by adding new characters such as Hawkeye, but there’re concerns that it might not be enough. A single month has passed since the initial release, and the live service game is already losing its momentum on PC.
With players massively abandoning Marvel’s Avengers, it became clear for Crystal Dynamics that the game desperately needs a shake-up. In a recent official statement, the development team promised to bring gamers back by offering them new exciting content. According to the studio, it intends to introduce a new type of missions along with additional endgame activities for those who want to continue experiencing the action title after the story finale.
Crystal Dynamics believes that the upcoming adventures of the two Hawkeyes, represented by the original hero Clint Barton and his apprentice Kate Bishop, will work as an enticing piece of content significant enough to bring back lapsed Marvel’s Avengers players, especially on PC. Addressing the situation in a response to Kotaku, the studio head Scot Amos underlined that the story arc Operation: Taking AIM will continue the core narrative picking it up right where the base campaign ended. As a proper expansion, it will introduce new missions, villains, and mysteries propelling the whole plot further and building up the foundation for any future DLCs. Being the first additional heroes, the two Hawkeyes will probably be accompanied by more new characters in the future, although Amos didn’t share any plans beyond releasing Operation: Taking AIM.
The game definitely needs a better plan for future content support. According to a popular Steam stat tracker SteamCharts, the online numbers of Marvel’s Avengers have been declining since the very launch. The all-time peak on PC was less than 30,000 concurrent players, which already was a troubling sign for a live service game dependent on gamers’ activity and engagement. Since then, Marvel’s Avengers has been losing its audience, which is now less than 2,000 concurrent players on average. It all resulted in matchmaking issues with Steam users waiting dozens of minutes to hop into a session with a full squad of superheroes. While on consoles the situation is slightly better, similar issues do occur.
The lack of content, which the development team at Crystal Dynamics is determined to fix, might not actually be the single major issue of Marvel’s Avengers. The game is not a perfection in technical aspects either, as shortly after the initial launch, it received a massive patch with over 1,000 bug fixes and improvements, some of which were critical ones. It appears that the title might be eventually forced to return back to the drawing board for a complete revamp, much like it happened to EA’s Anthem, as throwing new content might not be enough to solve the core issues of the game.
Marvel's Avengers is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Source: Kotaku