Crystal Dynamics, the primary studio behind live service Marvel’s Avengers game, studied Anthem and Destiny in order to form a strategy for post-launch content. Marvel’s Avengers was released last year to mixed reviews, mainly getting praise for its story, character moments, and gameplay while its endgame content was received as repetitive, grindy, and lacking replay value. Endgame missions are essential for live service games to keep their player bases grinding for interesting loot, but Marvel’s Avengers struggled to retain its audience. Crystal Dynamics has not thrown in the towel yet, as the studio continues to release and develop more heroes and story content as well as keeping the game updated with patches.
This week’s Square Enix Presents showcase showed what will be coming next for Marvel’s Avengers now that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series versions of the game have released and its first two post-launch heroes, Hawkeye (Kate Bishop) and Hawkeye (Clint Barton), have been released. This spring, players will be able to select the same heroes in missions and new HARM rooms will drop new hero outfits. The “Summer and beyond” will include new patrol missions, outfits based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a "War for Wakanda" expansion introducing Black Panther as a playable character.
In an interview with Game Informer, Scot Amos (head of Crystal Dynamics) said that the development team studied other live service games like Destiny and Anthem to plan out the studio’s post-launch roadmap. Both of these games had rocky launches but are opposites when it comes to their fates. Destiny’s year one expansion, The Taken King, was a refresh to the game, bringing back many players that had fallen off of the game. These expansions ultimately led to its 2017 sequel, aptly named Destiny 2, which is still receiving content years after its initial release. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Anthem’s updates and patches came fewer and farther between before Bioware decided to cancel Anthem's NEXT update in order to free up bandwidth to its upcoming Dragon Age and Mass Effect sequels.
Amos said that the team at Crystal Dynamics is aware of the issues fans have with Marvel’s Avengers and that the developers are going to adjust their design philosophy based on these criticisms. Amos said that the game’s rough launch “humbled” the team and that they will be working hard to give the fans the content they “want and deserve.” Crystal Dynamics “believes in this game” and is “committed to making it right.”
Marvel’s Avengers is such a large project that Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix had to have considered Anthem’s failure and the eventual success of the Destiny franchise before even beginning development on Avengers. The game’s content roadmap is exciting, even though the updates in between new heroes are so minor. Bringing in a big gun like Black Panther to Marvel's Avengers seems more likely to draw in players both new and returning than any of the other post-launch content Crystal Dynamics has released or has shown off. No offense Hawkeye fans.
Source: Game Informer