The recent return of the Cosmic Threat Event in Marvel's Avengers continues the game's trend of recycling the same three events over and over again, and it needs to stop. Marvel's Avengers feels as though it's on a bit of an upswing as of late, with much of the game's new content - including the PS5-exclusive Spider-Man update - receiving positive feedback from players. The game's first true expansion, War for Wakanda, featured an interesting new locale and the addition of the very popular hero, Black Panther. More recently, Marvel's Avengers' new Klaw Raid: Discordant Sound, gave longtime players a new endgame challenge to farm to high level gear, and players on PlayStation got to take control of Spider-Man, adding one of Marvel's most beloved heroes to their roster.
Unfortunately, there have been no updates to the game's limited time events since the third event, the Cosmic Threat Event, launched in June 2021. In the time since, Crystal Dynamics has continued to re-run the three events time and again, which include the aforementioned Cosmic Threat Event, the Red Room Takeover Event, and the Tachyon Anomaly Event. The latter of these events also became less interesting after an update that allowed Marvel's Avengers players to pick the same hero permanently, which was the initial pull of the Tachyon Anomaly limited-time event. While these events do give players some challenges to do while they wait for their weekly resets and give them an opportunity to grind for some extra exotics, the lack of interesting new challenges or engaging new rewards have left these events feeling stale.
Other live service games have been known to reuse events, but these typically include new rewards and longer intervals between the reused events. Overwatch, which has become known for its popular limited-time events, only reruns an event once per year (usually around the holiday it's based on), and each time it reruns the event it adds brand new skins that couldn't be earned the previous year. By contrast, Marvel's Avengers' events only reward randomized gear pieces that can be earned at any time through normal gameplay. They also keep the majority of skins, like Marvel's Avengers' MCU costumes, locked behind paywalls. While the odds of a getting a good gear piece are somewhat improved during an event, many long-time players have already earned these pieces (or better ones) through their many weeks of grinding, rendering the event rewards somewhat pointless.
How Marvel's Avengers Can Improve Its Event Problem
In addition to increasing the number of events available to players, there are several different ways that Marvel's Avengers can improve on its events and keep players interested in signing on to take on the new challenges. The first way would be to vary the content in the events more significantly, making each event feel more special when it does roll around. Creating events themed around real holidays, or around fake, in-universe holidays, could be a great start. Social hubs could even be decorated to match each event's theme.
If Crystal Dynamics didn't want to touch on real holidays, it could use fictional in-universe holidays, such as an A-Day remembrance holiday, to theme the game's limited time events around. In addition, these themed events could introduce limited-time skins, similar to the ones in Marvel's Avengers' Shipments, as rewards for these events. There are still plenty of costumes that could be added to the game, and Crystal Dynamics could even base these events off of key milestones in Marvel's history, releasing themed content to coincide with the anniversaries of characters' first appearances.
Introducing themed skins would not only make the events more memorable, but also provide an extra incentive for all players (no matter their level) to take part in the event and try to earn skins for their favorite heroes. If Marvel's Avengers managed to space these events out properly, and added new themed rewards each time the event rolled back around, it would entice players to not only play the events, but look forward to the next time they returned to the game. This would help maintain and possibly even grow the player base, which Marvel's Avengers would benefit from massively.