The latest Marvel’s Avengers patch has fixes for more than 1,000 issues, including bugs that were making the game unplayable for some. Earlier patches have made changes to the recent multiplayer game - including some that fans say actually made it worse - but none of them come close to the size of this latest update.
Marvel’s Avengers has had a fairly rocky launch. Even pre-release looks at the game came under heavy criticism, but once it was in players’ hands, it became clear just how rough and buggy of a product it was. Some of the game’s glitches are relatively minor, such as one that unnaturally contorts Captain America’s face when he’s wearing certain costumes, but others made AI companions nearly useless or even halted progress. Some players had a hard time getting the game to even run, as it released in a fairly unstable state.
Crystal Dynamics is taking a big swing at solving many of the game’s biggest problems in one go. The patch notes Crystal Dynamics released for its most recent update reveal over 1,000 changes to Marvel's Avengers, “ranging from several progression stoppers to small graphical fixes.” Seemingly every aspect of the game is affected by the patch in some way, including its graphics, matchmaking, UI, gear, and gameplay. There should be an overall increase in stability after this latest patch, and a handful of game-breaking bugs that stopped story progress should also be removed. Most of the fixes in the update relate to bugs, but Crystal Dynamics says its upcoming patches will address quality-of-life issues and adjust various features based on player feedback.
It’s been a year full of game delays, and it seems like Marvel’s Avengers could have benefited from staying in development a little longer before its release. Major features like raids are still set to come in future updates, and their addition at launch could have helped flesh out the game’s currently lacking end-game experience - not to mention how much an extended round of bug-fixing would have helped. Other features like new characters are also planned to come to the game in the future, but it’s hard to get too excited for them to arrive with the base game still in such a rough state.
The longevity of live games like Destiny 2 almost certainly played a part in the design of Marvel’s Avengers, but it’s unfortunately looking a bit more like Anthem. While it’s in nowhere near as bad a state as that game - which is essentially in hibernation as BioWare completely rebuilds it - but it seems like it will take a lot more than just routine post-launch updates to get Marvel’s Avengers into fighting shape.
Marvel's Avengers is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox, and PC.
Source: Crystal Dynamics