After a long wait for Marvel and Square Enix’s Avengers Project, Marvel’s Avengers has finally landed. Marvel’s Avengers reviews paint an interesting picture, where some love certain aspects and hate others. The main campaign has a surprising amount of depth, but its biggest selling point, the co-op elements, have been painted as a bit lackluster. Nonetheless, it’s a live service-style game, meaning a year from now, it’s likely to be much better.
But in that time, one element that will be improving the game moving forward is its inclusion of free DLC characters. When this was first revealed, many fans were extremely happy, as this means new missions, new stories, and more all for free. In fact, some would even go so far as to say Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League should take a similar path, but it would need to change one big thing about it: the Battle Pass-style additions.
Marvel’s Avengers Hero Challenge Cards seem to have looked at battle royale games like Fortnite and Apex Legends, and said, “I’ll do you one better.” These cards come with every character, including the launch heroes, and give access to Takedowns, Emotes, Skins, and more. Marvel’s Avengers has a slight skin problem here at launch, but with everything else going on, it’s not the worst aspect of the game. And of course, these Hero Challenge Cards are completely optional, but neither do they rotate or retire. There’s no seasonal approach as in battle royale games. Further, players basically get their credits back if they choose to spend $10 on the hero, as well as content that is worth 12, 500 credits. It doesn’t sound like a bad deal, but it could set a bad precedent.
First, there have only been a handful of characters confirmed as DLC, such as the PS4 exclusive Spider-Man. Hawkeye’s up first, but he’s also confirmed to eventually be joined by Ant-Man and Kate Bishop. However, there’s a long list of heroes that have been datamined to appear in the game, including Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Dr. Strange, Falcon, Mar’Vell, Mockingbird, Quake, Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk, Vision, War Machine, Wasp, and Winter Soldier.
The Prudent thing would be to be just to purchase a pass once or to do with credits, while saving up for the next. However, many younger players and perhaps some older player with little impulse control may end up spending those credits elsewhere, and electing to spend money on the free Marvel’s Avengers DLC characters. Assuming the datamine was correct about every aforementioned character, that’s a potential spending of $170. Again, Marvel’s Avengers seemingly handles this well, but it sets a bad precedent.
For example, battle royale games are constantly adapting, and this could be a bad thing if this style was handled in a more predatory manner, such as in the case of seasons. To use Apex Legends as an example, this could be a bad precedent if every season, each character had its own $10 Battle Pass. Players could pick and choose, in theory, and it’s unlikely that the Battle Pass would be 110 levels each. But with 14 characters, that could be $140 dollars a season. Again, this is just a theoretical example of how this practice could be used, as Apex Legends isn’t likely to do this.
Marvel’s Avengers‘ microtransactions are one thing, but for the most part, there’s enough here to say that this an “acceptable” approach to a Battle Pass-style progression system, given it’s entirely optional and can be done so with just credits. The big question there is how its values work exactly and how viable doing so with just credits is. But with one small tweak here or there, this could inspire other games to take a much more predatory path.
Marvel’s Avengers is out now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
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