After a rocky first impression, Marvel's Avengers placed players in a story about the splintering and reunion of the fabled superhero group. Having launched last month, Marvel's Avengers continues to see its fair share of difficulties and hurdles in attracting a consistent player base. Crystal Dynamics' latest effort to show "appreciation" to loyal players only serves to highlight one of the game's many flaws: its endgame cycle.
Like most titles that have adopted the role of a "game-as-a-service," Marvel's Avengers only truly begins to open up once the initial playthrough of its main story has been completed. Players find themselves able to replay several different types of missions with the initial team of playable characters, grinding for new gear, skills, and upgrade materials. This becomes the gameplay loop that permeates the experience for players, and with only a roster of six heroes, the repetition can be felt very quickly.
In a "State of the Game" update on Marvel's Avengers' official site, Crystal Dynamics addressed some of the lingering issues with the title, with patches having already been released for some notable bugs. The post confirmed that players will be receiving a stimulus pack of sorts, with credits, units, upgrade modules, and DNA keys to use at no extra cost. However, the rest of the blog would go on to show why these additional items simply add to the clutter and repetition of an underwhelming endgame experience.
Why Marvel's Avengers' Appreciation Pack Adds Little Of Note
The blog went on to confirm the delay of upcoming character Kate Bishop and her story mission, "Taking AIM." The addition of a new character would allow players to further break up the repetition, and with the promise that her story mission would lay the groundwork for Marvel's Avengers' story beyond the "Reassemble" campaign of the base game, Kate Bishop's addition would have gone a long way toward fulfilling the original promise of bringing Avengers players back with new content. With this delay, players who have already spent the previous month waiting will have to wait longer, and so the appreciation pack feels hollow.
While the additional items provide players with an extra boost to their resources, Marvel's Avengers' redundant and cyclical loop has already worn down its player base, and Avengers players reporting longer matchmaking times across all platforms. Offering existing players a pack of in-game resources may seem helpful and an appropriate show of "appreciation," but if the game is suffering from a dearth of players, simply providing the remaining ones extra resources falls flat, as it does nothing to address the bigger issue of those same players being unable to find others to enjoy the game with.
Despite its sales, Marvel's Avengers continues to hemorrhage players as a result of the lack of originality and freedom once the campaign has been beaten, devolving the game's compelling combat into a plodding, uneventful march toward min-maxing gear and equipment. The appreciation pack stands as a gesture to the players who remain, but in the end, it merely adds numbers to the resource count, doing nothing to help solve the greater issue of the repetitive endgame cycle. With the delays to future content hitting at such an key time in the game's life, fans may find Marvel's Avengers en route to look more like Anthem than Earth's Mightiest Heroes.