Marvel Heroes is getting the equivalent of a comics universe reboot
Civil War, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Secret Wars, Flashpoint, The Infinity Gauntlet, and That One Time Peter Parker Sold His Marriage to the Devil. These are all milestone events in superhero comics that forever changed the makeup of their respective universes. Powers changed, origins were rebooted, and new readers were given an easy way to jump in to the fandom. Like these crossover events, Marvel Heroes’ big update will refresh and redesign almost every aspect of the game.
While the free-to-play superhero Diablo-like from Gazillion will remain an action slugfest, the developers intend the “biggest systems update ever” to update every single hero in one massive patch. The item system gets a thorough shuffle. The way characters move was reviewed. Even the endgame gets an overhaul with the new Infinity System. It’s like when Uncle Ben turned out to have been killed by Sandman all along. Everything you thought was wrong!
Marvel Heroes’ Biggest Update Ever will launch on Thursday, January 19th.
I checked out the test server a couple of weeks ago. So many changes; I’ll just say that I’m not a fan of what they’ve done.
It’s a shame, because summoner-spec Dr. Doom may be my favorite pet-centric class since the D2 necromancer. I’ve only logged in a few times over the last six months though. Maybe I’ll just consider the update to be my ‘exit point’ and uninstall.
Moves like this are rarely a good idea. It doesn’t really attract new players, as they have no idea what or why the changes are, and it’s bound to piss off more old players than it makes happy, just because it’s change. Who knows, maybe it will be awesome. If I could place a bet, I’d bet it’s not going to be particularly successful.
I left the game a bit over a year ago, when the game switched from a casual click… click… fest to a frantic cli-cli-cli-click one. How would you rate the pacing of the new version (or maybe areas weren’t available to test, actually)?
From TheArtofRawr (clicked on Nick’s link to “the way characters move”)
The tuning of endgame has become more and more of a challenge, and mobility is the primary reason for that. Those who have played the Cosmic Trial know that, for the most part, the only way to beat it is by being extremely mobile, dashing or teleporting constantly. That’s not how we want the endgame of Marvel Heroes to play out–there should be more to the game than just damage! Providing you with opportunities to make meaningful decisions and react to the challenge presented to you: that’s how we can continue to produce a variety of interesting content! To do that, we have to dial back on the speed just a bit so that we can trade it for strategy, decision-making, and better gameplay
Hope this helps. I’ve been a big fan of this game but also left it awhile back as it got really grindy (to me) with the Omega System. Then again, I should’ve been playing more heroes (the changes make it sound more viable to me to - no more just leveling up to put more points in the same skill I’ve been using)
Overall sounds like they are taking some nice cues from Diablo 3’s rune system.
I’ve played MH casually at best, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to regarding changes in pacing. Areas were available, but I didn’t do any serious fighting.
Some of the big changes stem from efforts to simplify the game, like the single power bar, so maybe that will reduce the clickfest? Dash/teleport spam is also gone, which is part of the change to movement powers referenced in Mike’s quote.
I am immediately not a fan of the switch from omegas to Infinity. Omegas were perhaps overly complicated and labyrinthine, but they had flavor and personality and the Infinity gems…don’t. They’re only slightly more interesting than Paragon levels in Diablo III, and that only because there’s a few more stats covered.
Similarly the boosts were getting out of hand but I don’t think the solution was to squish them down to the worst kind - the ones that have a short duration and stack diminishing return of bonuses, not durations, thus being more easily wasted and less easily optimized.
Seems like Summoner Doom is largely unchanged except that you have to pick a number of separate summoner traits instead of just taking the summoner mastery. Didn’t actually go out and fight because things seemed pretty wobbly right now.
Didn’t update until late last night. Today people can’t log in. Maybe I’ll get a chance to try it over the weekend. Regardless, not happy about some changes.
That could alleviate a lot of what had turned the game into an exhausting experience to me: I remember one day, Midtown Madness was that casual fun place, the next one, you had to teleport like crazy, grabbing boxes and killing bosses and mid-bosses by the dozen. I got dazy (really) playing that area or the new industrial one whose name I forgot, while they were pretty much a big part of the end-game filler content between raids.
I’ll probably give the game a try again when I get a chance altough…
with this many changes there are definitely some I wish hadn’t changed, but overall I think it’s a huge improvement to the game as a whole. I don’t understand the forums and steam community blowing up saying it’s ruined and not even an arpg anymore. Crazy talk. It was such a convoluted mess before that the amazing characters was one of the only saving graces for me.
How is it as a casual action RPG? I’m kind of burned out on Diablo, and I quite fancy playing one with familiar characters, but I really hate most F2P RPGs, not to mention most MMOs.
As a very casual player (only 5 heroes at 60, no prestige and no desire to promote boss only runs as the only gameplay) I’m liking it so far with Deadpool, Vision, and Captain Marvel. I’m moving more in combat, thinking about when to dash vs just moving, and trying out new skills I never used in the past.
I have hit what looks like a bug I reset a pet to change away from +3 fighting but now my Herbie won’t take uniques that I drag to him.
I like the game a lot but my biggest problem with it has been inventory management. I bought extra stash tabs and vendor anything less than cosmics. I don’t keep any crafting stuff at all except for runes. And I still have a ton of stuff in my overflow. My gaming time turned into a protracted inventory shuffling exercise and I didn’t care for that at all so I stopped playing for the most part.
Do these big changes do anything to alleviate the inventory madness?
I’ve always preferred it to D3 as a casual ARPG (it’s been my favorite game in the genre, actually) but have yet to evaluate the changes in this update. Since they make powers less fiddly and numbers oriented I’d expect it to be more casual now, not less, FWIW.
Eventually they eliminated quality levels of crafting materials so there’s only like four elements and the unstable molecules and matrices of unbinding left and it will automatically slot those out of inventory or stash alike. They also killed medkits in favor of a universal medkit button, and removed Starktech cubes since powers don’t have levels anymore. And they’ve shrunken the number of boost types dramatically although they didn’t actually remove any you already have so until you use those up they’ll still be there.
But there’s still plenty to fill your inventory. And while I guess they didn’t get to Omegas with this update after all, that’s one of the next steps. Basically, Diablo III style legendaries - a tier of item with random but character-specific affixes that make some substantial change to a power that character has.
What a weird reboot. It’s clearly based on the Diablo III model of characters just unlocking skills and then you use whichever ones you want. There’s no longer any sense of personalizing the character by focusing on certain skills, which I imagine is a big disappointment to some longtime players. I don’t know what Gazillionaire was thinking.
But it will be much easier to jump in and just noodle around without worrying about whether I should put a point into, uh, Mind Blast or Telepathic Missile. Or what about this Mental Shard thing? Instead, I can just use whichever one I want without committing to any kind of character build.
That said, my Jean Grey doesn’t seem to do what she used to do. I am disappoint!
Chris, it’s actually very good as a Diablo III alternative! I think you’ll be happy with what you find. And although it’s free-to-play, it’s probably the least odious free-to-play game I’ve seen.
There’s still soooo much junk in my inventory and I have no idea what’s worth keeping and what to throw away. Then there’s all the stuff in my stash. Ugh. I’m tempted to just trash it all, but I just know there’s some doo-dad in there that’s ultra rare or something. If I throw it away, I’ll be hobbling my account forever!
