When Marvel’s Avengers was first announced, one question loomed over the heads of potential fans for months: What kind of game is this? Slowly the layers peeled back and it became clear that Avengers aimed to be a loot-driven live service game akin to Anthem, Destiny 2, or Borderlands 3. While the core gameplay was more arcade-brawler than shooter, players of these other franchises would experience progression in familiar ways.
During the most recent beta, the game that provided Avengers with the most inspiration has become significantly more apparent. Warframe, the free-to-play space ninja simulator, seems to have had a greater influence on key design decisions than any other game in the genre. While it’s exciting to see Marvel’s Avengers iterate off some of the popular mechanics of Warframe, not every lesson learned was a good one.
There are many different forms of advancement in Marvel’s Avengers. In order to improve character abilities and move sets, players need to level them up through the acquisition of XP. XP is gained by killing enemies and completing missions and objectives, like in many, many games. However, Marvel’s Avengers handles XP gain slightly different than some players may be used to.
Each Hero Has Unique Function and Progression
Gaining XP gives skill points, and these skill points, used for skill trees, have no bearing on character stats. Unlocking a new combo move doesn’t make The Incredible Hulk or Kamala physically hit harder. Instead, stat boosts come from gear that is found at random throughout the game. Since this gear drops randomly, players should expect a much less linear form of progression, with spikes in progress happening upon the bigger drops. Stats can also be improved by Power Boosting gear. This is another form of progression, fueled by collecting resources found at random in missions. Finally, there’s the cosmetics. These rewards, such as emotes, nameplates, and character skins, are unlocked as a part of the hero-specific Hero Challenge Cards. The only way to advance these is to complete daily and weekly challenges during gameplay.
With all of these forms of progression happening at once, it’s easy to miss the scale of what’s at stake here. All of these factors need to be accounted for with every different hero in the game. Avengers has taken a page out of Warframe’s book and completely separated progression between heroes and/or frames. Leveling up Black Widow has no effect on Hulk, just as leveling Excalibur will not improve the stats on Nidus. Outside of the collecting of resources used for Power Boosting, playtime on a hero only affects that hero. This can be both good and bad. It’s interesting because it allows players to focus all of their effort on a single character and max them out quickly if they so choose.
It can be harmful because narrowing in the gains to just the equipped hero may make much of the grind inaccessible to players with less free time. This is especially challenging for players looking to go at the game solo. Marvel’s Avengers has introduced an exciting system where your unique heroes can be artificial intelligence teammates during solo play. This, however, will be greatly hindered by the fact that these characters cannot gain XP or loot while they are on your team, meaning that if you never dedicate time to play these heroes personally, they will remain low-level. Thankfully, in a conversation with Screen Rant, Marvel’s Avengers game designer Lauryn Ash shed some light on how AI companions will scale with the player without actually leveling: “Player companions are going to scale towards your level, but you’re going to feel it. Because you have better perks, more power, better skills. The enemies see you, and they know this is the Hulk. This is the guy that has all of the Hulk powers. This is the Pym particle Hulk, he’s going to shrink me. All the heroes, they all know that. So, your heroes are going to be a little bit lower. You will have to build them up to take on those threats.“
Loot Progression is Not Tied to Cosmetic Changes
One of the most controversial decisions found during the Marvel’s Avengers beta was that of how loot progression is expressed visually. Loot in Avengers is invisible. Sure, the UI provides a name, a rarity, and an icon to every piece of gear, but it will never appear on a hero while they are active in the field. This questionable choice was likely made in order to maintain the integrity of the cosmetics that Cyrstal Dynamics wants players to chase and purchase, but a great deal of personalization has been lost.
Warframe has a similar function in its frame and weapon mods. Players can hunt and earn modifications that greatly augment the way their gear works. Anything from stat boosts to total alterations of abilities can be applied through mods. These modifications, however, are not displayed visually in any way. There’s no way to show off a mod outside of displaying its effect. Warframe is a bit different in that in addition to mods it also has the weapons themselves, which can be touted with pride, but there’s no weapon equivalents in Marvel’s Avengers.
The solution here feels obvious. It’s a problem that has been solved multiple times by simply allowing that piece of gear to be visible or not. If players want to show off their latest version of Iron Man’s gauntlets or the Hulk’s spinal cord (yes, really) then they should be allowed to. If they want the cleaner look of the costumes available to them, let that be allowed as well. Everyone wins.
Discrete Missions With Discrete Matchmaking
Marvel’s Avengers has made some decisions to help benefit the more casual players. One of these choices includes the creation of a wide variety of mission types that vary greatly in length. If players only have a few minutes, they can matchmake a drop zone and be out in a quick five. If they have more time to spend, perhaps a war zone or even a major boss encounter will satisfy their desires. Warframe excels in this as well through this availability of quick assassination missions and endless hoard missions. This creates a new problem, though, and it has been present in Warframe for years. If a player wants to play a mission that is less popular, there is a much smaller chance that they will be able to find the teammates they want. Missions are matchmade individually with no addition of playlists or randomizers.
If a player wants to just play, if they want to just sit down and mindlessly grind the game for a few hours, there’s unfortunately no way to do that without crossing their fingers and hoping the mission they’ve chosen to play is well-populated. Perhaps, at some point, Marvel’s Avengers will add functionality similar to those found in many MMOs, akin to a Dungeon Finder. This simply allows players to queue up a mission type and choose a class, and the game does the rest. There’s no telling which specific mission will be activated, but players would have a much easier time linking up with other players looking to gain the most out of their gameplay sessions.
In truth, it remains unknown what changes or improvements will be introduced with the full game on September 4th. Crystal Dynamics has provided a succinct, yet calculated beta that allows players to merely dip their toes into gameplay and progression. While it’s highly unlikely that there will be any fundamental shifts in these mechanics before launch, laying the groundwork for improvement early never hurts. Listening to players and iterating on concepts quickly is crucial to the success of live-service games, including Warframe. Hopefully, Marvel’s Avengers has watched the industry closely and learned this lesson as well.
