Earlier this week, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix released a brand new War Table giving fans a first look at Future Imperfect, the next major update for Marvel’s Avengers. Originally planned for release in November last year, Future Imperfect will bring Clint Barton’s Hawkeye to the world of Marvel’s Avengers in a new story expansion. This new wave of content is inspired by fan-favorite comics including Old Man Hawkeye, The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect, and Matt Fraction’s iconic 2015 run, Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon.
The new story expansion launches alongside Marvel’s Avengers free PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X upgrades, giving fans plenty of reasons to return to the game. However, many players have already dropped off due to the state of Marvel’s Avengers at launch, and the minimal content updates over the last five months. With news that EA is currently assessing the future of Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers finds itself in a similarly tight spot and it’s going to take work to bring the game up to scratch. The path to redemption for Marvel’s Avengers isn’t going to be easy for Crystal Dynamics, but there’s still hope for Earth’s mightiest heroes.
When Marvel’s Avengers released last September, the two areas that received the most praise was the singleplayer campaign and the core combat mechanics of the six heroes. Crystal Dynamics built a decent foundation for a fun game that was propelled by the power of the property, but it suffered from major issues with its online services, gameplay loop, and how it rewarded players.
Rebuilding entire systems takes time. It’s not going to be a quick fix, and because of that, will likely be saved for a larger expansion similar to Destiny: The Taken King. While those systems are overhauled, the focus should be on quality of life improvements and delivering on the planned roadmap with new characters and story missions. The worst thing that Crystal Dynamics could do is go silent and abandon the game while it works on new content – there needs to be content to satiate the players that stuck around.
During the Hawkeye War Table, one thing that was surprisingly emphasized was the fact that both the Kate Bishop DLC and Clint Barton DLC were part of Season One for Marvel’s Avengers. Crystal Dynamics spoke about seasons of content before launch, but those plans seemingly disappeared. If the current plan is to continue with seasons, then what players need right now is a roadmap for content and updates.
Bungie has been great in the past at releasing roadmaps for Destiny when it was in a bad state, detailing new content, features, updates and fixes, and system overhauls coming to the game. Being transparent with the active player base and setting realistic timeframes for bug fixes, system overhauls, new activities, and the PlayStation exclusive Spider-Man DLC will do nothing but help the game.
Some of the biggest complaints coming from the Marvel’s Avengers community right now include matchmaking not working, or it being very difficult to find players, a lack of meaningful endgame content, a lack of meaningful loot or rewards worth grinding for, and repetitive missions and enemies. Like Destiny 2 before it, many of the systems need to be entirely reworked if Crystal Dynamics wants to keep players invested and bring in new ones, but that won’t happen overnight.
The path to redemption for Marvel’s Avengers needs to include smaller quality of life improvements on the core systems throughout the year while bigger changes are being worked on. Reworking the loot system to make loot more rewarding and creating fun, challenging activities to earn that loot is the end goal. In the meantime, implementing an auto-dismantle feature for lower-tier loot after a set power level would go a long way for many players.
After players finish the main campaign for Marvel’s Avengers, the game’s live service elements begin to open up more and unlock a range of new War Zones, HARM Room challenges, side missions, and more. The problem with Marvel’s Avengers right now is that, outside of Elite Hives, there’s no meaningful endgame content which makes the lengthy Max Level grind unbearable.
Back when the game first launched, a Twitch streamer was able to access an endgame level activity called the AIM Secret Lab. However, Crystal Dynamics has never officially released the Marvel’s Avengers raid or mentioned the activity since. Whether its this secret lab or something else entirely, without endgame content, live service games simply can’t survive long-term.
For Marvel’s Avengers to even have a chance at a revival and win back players, it needs to get a proper expansion at the end of the year (this would be the case even if the launch had been incredibly successful). When the original Destiny launched in 2014, it had a lot of the same issues as Marvel’s Avengers, and it took Bungie time to turn things around. In September 2015, Bungie released Destiny: The Taken King, the first of many annualized expansions which included a brand new campaign, locations, new weapons and game modes, and complete overhauls of existing gameplay systems. Not only did the release of The Taken King breathe new life into Destiny and fix all of the game’s most troubling issues, but it’s also still considered to be some of the best content released in the franchise to this day.
Adding new playable characters is integral to the success of Marvel’s Avengers, however, the game can’t survive on that alone. At some point (September would make the most sense), Crystal Dynamics needs to release a proper The Taken King level expansion that adds brand new playable heroes, a new story campaign, a brand new location like Wakanda, new villains, reworked systems and levelling, and perhaps most important, a robust endgame. Until then, players can look forward to the long-awaited release of Marvel’s Avengers on PS5 and Xbox Series X, which will introduce significant improvements to load times, framerates, and more.
Marvel’s Avengers is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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