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Marvel Avengers


one-armed dwarf
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I think you can stick a fork in it.

 

Nothing short of a realm reborn-ification will get this back on its feet and retaining players. It's live game side is just without structure right now.

 

Not trying to kick it when it's down, I'm all up for Avengers 2.0 if they ever do it. But putting the single player aside this is just a really bad online game. 

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It’s a shame, as the potential is there. The campaign is really quite enjoyable.  But the fact they’re already delaying new content rings massive alarm bells. 
 

Considering the license, this should be  in good health. Yet it’s on the verge of death, going off the radar at a faster pace than Anthem ever did. 
 

But this is the problem with live service games. Launch something half-arsed, with a “we’ll fix it later” mentality. Promise years of support, which is optimistic at best. And then expect people to come back when its eventually good. When the fact is that people will have already uninstalled it, and moved on to other things. 
 

Kind of wish they’d focused more on the campaign. 

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This was just one of those "publishers have no idea what they're doing" moments à la Anthem. First you decide what kind of game you want, then you approach those developers that have shown they can handle it. I'm pretty sure Crystal Dynamics would have been able to ship a decent singleplayer effort by the time Endgame was being shown in cinemas -- or at the very least to coincide with its Bluray/VOD release. That way they would have had a) an all-around good game and b) would have benefitted from the still strong Avengers hype which, let's be honest, has kind of cooled off in recent months due to a lack of movie presence.

I can only guess here but the amount of time they must have lost during development because CD very clearly has absolutely zero experience with multiplayer games, let alone the more modern live service game with constant updates, was not worth it at all. 

 

Pick the right guy for the job. If I ask my butcher to renovate my kitchen I'm pretty sure I'll have an excellent assortment of knives when he's done but everything else will be lackluster and probably will haven taken twice as long as if I had just asked the right person from the beginning.

 

I hope they don't try to keep this semi-alive like Anthem but just be done with it by the time the last announced character has been released. There's phenomenal talent going to waste here for absolutely no reason other than the SE suits being utterly clueless.

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For anyone that hasn't ventured into the UK/US Sales thread in the News section, this was the #1 top seller in the US for September.

 

It's got plenty of legs left in it yet, I do think launching just before next-gen has disrupted their plans quite a bit though. From what I've heard the Campaign is excellent but everything else mediocre, I still think they can pull enough folks back in with updates and the next-gen version next year.

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Did it get much competition in September tho, mainly what I look at for the health of the game is who's playing it. Player retention is the most important metric rather than pure sales.But I'm still mostly looking at it from a MMO mindset I guess, I want to find people to play it with (and I want the game to have a good gameplay loop and other general improvements). When I did play it it could hardly find anyone and sometimes it would bug out and kick people out randomly only to put them back in again.

 

To me those problems and all the other technical issues kind of took the legs out from under it, it just couldn't stop making terrible impressions like that. I bought it cause I wanted to give it a genuine chance but the experience playing it is very very bad right now, or at least it was when I was still on it.

 

I guess for full disclosure it says I played it 7.4 hours on steam, mostly in the online part of the game.

 

It might have actually benefited them more to have a mediocre campaign but excellent everything else, or at least that's what I selfishly wish it turned out as as I'm not interested in the Kamala Kahn storyline.

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Yes, the question is not whether or not it has sold a lot of copies but whether it was successful at what it is supposed to be. And from the feedback I gathered, I haven't played it so everything that follows is an armchair analysis, that seems to not be the case as it's supposedly a disappointing multiplayer game with a solid campaign. The idea behind the project is to bind players to it for a long period of time with a fun and motivating multiplayer gameplay loop, which it supposedly fails at. And to which I say, well of course, that result should have been clear the moment they put Crystal Dynamics on the job, as mentioned above.

 

Plus the IP is just not suited for this kind of game, at least not in the way it is implemented here. If I'm playing Destiny I find and unlock cool gear and weapons that I and everyone else can see on my character. I can customise my hero which adds to this personal power fantasy these kind of games offer. In Avengers, only the numbers change. And the numbers also dictate that the Hulk has to punch a small robot multiple times before it dies. In a way, it's the complete opposite of the power fantasy. That's also the reason why something like DC Universe lets you make a new character from scratch instead of having a million Supermen flying around. And I don't think you can salvage this and make it better by just fixing things and adding characters. This either needs a fundamental rework or, better yet, SE pulling Crystal Dynamics off the project and onto a new Tomb Raider.

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I think you can make a good live game out of Avengers tho. It is admittedly a bit weird that you're playing as pre-defined characters rather than something custom made and that if I'm Iron Man you can't be. But then if this was XIV and I was a tank then you would have to be a healer or DPS so in that sense it's not so weird.

 

Avengers is the biggest media franchise in the world so it's not surprising that it would sell somewhat alright, but again isn't the most useful KPI either when you want people to stick around. I think with FFXIV what you had there was a train wreck of a game which threatened an entire brand which Square has made its bread and butter on, so they had to be ambitious with that rework cause FF could have died with it. It's not likely that they will view avengers the same way.

 

The thing that's killing this game's chances right now is they have so much technical debt (bugs/performance) that they have to resolve first and I think that's why the next gen version got delayed. Making the game functional pushed the DLC down the roadmap and then also the PS5/Xbox versions.

 

Also I know I'm a broken record on this but lack of crossplay is poison to games like this, that Spiderman deal may have killed this game further cause there's no way to get Sony players to link up with Xbox/PC cause of it. So each playerbase sort of languishes in its own obscure pool.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Oh dear. Even more painful that a Marvel game has sold so poorly, considering just how successful the movies were. 
 

It is a shame, as the Campaign genuinely is a lot of fun. But once it’s over, the massive grind soon kills any reason to bother with it. What could have been a great game has been totally fucked with a typical live service attitude of “We’ll fix it later”, combined with a piss taking micro transaction store. 
 

And the loot is just so unrewarding, to the point where you stop giving a toss about it. It’s not until the final stretch of the campaign do you get anything that changes your actual appearance, because all the good cosmetics are locked behind a ridiculous paywall. £15 each, for a single outfit? Utter bollocks. 

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I tried the beta and it seemed somewhat generic, i believe the fighting/combo system would work out much better one later leveled up.

 

but there was nothing about it that made me jump at the game even being a massive Marvel fan.

 

I'm not surprised the game has lost over $60 million tbh, may still pick it up when it drops heavily in price with a few friends to do some strike missions.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I suppose this is old or at least known news, but Square enix have said to investors that Avengers failed to make back the 'amortization' of its development costs

 

 

What is kind of wild to me is how little people are going to care about that exclusive Spiderman DLC thing Sony has for it.

 

There's definitely an interesting 'wha happun' video to make about this game, how the devs went from making a follow up to Mankind Divided into making this strangely misguided handling of the biggest entertainment IP in the world, a tale of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

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Making these persistent games must be a nightmare because they seem to be the most disparaged games yet also some of the most played at the same time.

 

How do you even navigate that? What decides the successes and failures? I play some of these and I'm not even sure.

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10 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

how the devs went from making a follow up to Mankind Divided into making this strangely misguided handling of the biggest entertainment IP in the world

 

I mean this was mostly Crystal Dynamic's game, but that's probably the reason it failed. I know I sound like a broken record but why do you put two studios with zero multiplayer experience on a GAAS project of this magnitude? It's just bollocks. Might as well ask the Animal Crossing team to do Last of Us Part 3.

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No doubt the always entertaining Matt Mcmuscles will do a ‘Wha Happun’ video on this eventually.

The game is already losing players at a massive rate, probably highly doubtful they’ll bother returning when Spider-Man eventually joins the roster.

 

At a time when the MCU has raised Marvel’s profile massively, the fact this has sold poorly speaks volumes. And I think it’s pretty safe to say Xmas sales won’t do much to change the fact that most people can’t be arsed with it.

 

And it’s a shame. As the single player has some great moments. There is definitely room on the market for a fun Marvel multiplayer. Unfortunately, this definitely ain’t it.

 

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1 hour ago, AndyKurosaki said:

At a time when the MCU has raised Marvel’s profile massively, the fact this has sold poorly speaks volumes.

Yep. I fucking love the MCU. Own all the films, most on 4k blu ray, watched most of the multiple times and just a big old fanboy regarding it. & I fucking love games. Yet I had zero interest in this by the time it was released. Just looks boring and generic plus all the GaaS trappings turn me off massively. 
 

I’ll still give it a go though. I’ve heard enough positive things about plying the campaign to be intrigued and my partner has already hinted I’ll be getting it for Xmas or my birthday. Especially since it’s now £25 at most places. But I’m still just not overly fussed. 

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Maybe they should just make it F2P at some point and put some sort of mtx in (MTX isn't a bad word necessarily with a free live service game)

 

Make the campaign into DLC.

 

I don't know, this is the first time I played a really bad live game, I didn't quite imagine that it would be so bare. It's like if FFXIV launched with 5 dungeons or something (not a fair comparison I guess).

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They really fucked up with the loot system. You get so much of it in game, but as none of it affects your characters appearance, you quickly stop giving a toss. All it does is boost your power level. Hardly exciting.

 

The actual costumes cost a ludicrous amount of in-game currency. It’s pretty bad that even though I saved all that I earned, by the time I finished the campaign I could afford fuck all. 
 

There was potential, but their greed totally shafted the game. As much as I enjoyed the campaign, I tried a few hours afterwards, only to think “I can’t be arsed” and jacked it in.

 

The total lack of interesting enemies really didn’t help either. A vast array of Marvel villains to choose from. But nope, same old boring robots, copied and pasted repeatedly. “Ooh look, this one is green instead of red, makes him a totally different enemy!”. No, it genuinely doesn’t.

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