This just in from the official forum: Iceman as a summoner “destroys immersion” and is “unrealistic”. In a comic book game. That has Squirrel Girl.
Layoffs at Gazillion.
Former Gazillion employee Michael Parks raised the alarm on Twitter earlier this week, and although Parks neglected to offer an exact number, he did reveal that “a lot” of Gazillion employees are now looking for work.
Chris Baker, Gazillion’s PR manager, has since confirmed that the studio has “unfortunately parted ways with some truly excellent personnel”.
I saw the post where Heretic was leaving to work elsewhere. But now I wonder how much of that was spin control.
Having said that, let me say this:
I have been playing the fuck out of this game. In the last week I got Storm, Dr.Doom and Iceman to 60. The funny thing is that after doing Doom and Iceman I really miss having a summoner. It’s like I forget that I don’t have Doombots or Ice Golems to help me. I had trouble deciding which character I wanted to play next. After a try at Vision and Cyclops I decided to go with Black Widow.
From the forum:
Hey all,
As you’ve seen in the official statement, yes, there has been restructuring at Gazillion, and as Brevik said, not everything has shaken out just yet. I can’t discuss any specifics since 1) people’s personal and professional lives are, well, private and it’s their business if they want to share with you guys, and 2) I think there’s probably something about privacy rules involved as far as the company goes.
Regardless, we’re still full speed ahead on everything you know about and more - we still have an aggressive schedule planned over the next year (we wouldn’t be the Marvel Heroes team if we didn’t!) and plenty of content+heroes to release. Kitty Pryde and Danger Room are both still on track for their previously estimated release dates (should both be on TC in the next 2 weeks) and we have a lot of stuff planned for MH2016 (speaking merely of the things you don’t know everything about, since you already know of a lot from our recent PAX panel!)
I <3 you guys and understand you’re freaked out. Marvel Heroes is not going away. Ultron not taking over. I’m still going to troll you as often as possible.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I was just looking over Boss Specific & Raid Drop Rates with the items team and working on Kitty Pryde & Sunspot power names.
Worth noting: there are like 200 of similar threads popping up and we may consolidate them into one place. I don’t mind if you guys discuss, but we do ask that you guys show respect to employees past, present and future, as always! If you have questions, you can PM me and I’ll do the best I can to answer, but as I said, I can’t really talk about specific changes at this time.
Ryan Collins
Word from Doomsaw about his departure:
http://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/233168/doomsaw-you-are-the-bar/p2 (about half way down).
The forums of the game probably aren’t the best place to get the unfiltered truth, but his post certainly sounds reasonable. I really enjoy the game and still actively play. I’m hoping all those let go land on their feet. Getting laid off sucks. Why does it feel like these things happen more often before long weekends?
I’m not a melee character fan. All of my 60s are either ranged or mostly ranged hybrids. So I was pleasantly surprised with X-23. I was messing around with her and hit 10 before I knew it. I had 200 splinters burning a hole in my wallet so I fully unlocked her. Lots of fun and a refreshing change from ranged characters.
I took a few weeks off from playing Marvel Heroes, but the recent release of Kitty Pryde has sucked me back in. Loved me some Shadowcat in the days of the X-Men Evolution cartoon, so I’ve been looking forward to her release. I’ve played her up to 60 twice now, once using the dragon tree with Lockheed, and once without. (It didn’t take as long as it sounds…with all the bonuses they give you, and taking advantage of big XP from legendary quests, each playthrough is maybe 4-5 hours.) As a general rule, use of dragonfire appeals to me, but in this case I think I’m going to roll without the purple dragon because all the phasing and swordplay stuff is really fun. My only real complaint is that she has no non-cooldown power that inflicts vulnerability, so I find myself hitting the button for Watch Your Step or Phasing Samurai a lot when they’re not ready. Haven’t taken her into any endgame stuff yet, but I imagine she’ll do just fine in large part due to having two really good Invulnerability powers (Just a Phase and the sig, Phased Out).
After my brief return to play with Shadowcat, I haven’t done anything more than log in for the daily rewards for the last couple of weeks. When I did so today, I found a whole bunch of changes: here’s the patch notes. Most notably, Magik is now a playable heroine, and they completely overhauled the defense system.
Dived back in pretty hard this weekend, getting Ant-Man up to 60 and finally getting Punisher’s ultimate (though it’ll take a bit more running around to get him to 60 too). It’s a good time to come back because there’s a server-side 100% experience/RIF/SIF boost going as well as regularly spawning Winter Boosts that trigger a rather shiny lootsplosion once you’ve picked up five of them. Plus Operation Omega as well. There’s also been special one-off daily login gifts including boosts, a random hero token, the Doctor Doom Classic teamup, a pet, etc. I’m a bit sad because I missed several while I was away for vacation (including the pet, which is the one I most needed) and I think that particular portion of the event is done with now, but I might be wrong. Worth checking, anyway.
In the intervening month since this thread last popped up, they’ve added Iron Fist as a playable hero and a new Danger Room mode available at 60, which is kind of like the random maps from Path of Exile or Torchlight II: Danger Room Scenarios drop off bosses (or can potentially be crafted) with random affixes, based on different areas of story mode, and with different challenge ratings and bonus “Danger Room Merit” rewards (a new currency with a new, richly laden vendor). They also have various rarities, with higher rarities having more affixes, etc. You can craft pairs of lower-rarity scenarios into the next step up, though. Then you take them to the Danger Room hub (which appears to be instanced to you and I assume any group members) and use them, spawning a portal to that scenario. There are then various challenges that pop up with optional objectives and spawning enemies (and sometimes hazards or useful environmental effects), both of which contribute progress towards completing that challenge, though the objectives provide more. The enemies can include a new tier of enemy, the “mini-boss”, which is a step beyond the yellows that were the previous maximum, and the whole thing will culminate in a boss fight with a randomly spawned supervillain boss after you’ve completed all the challenges. Then you’ll get a reward chest, with a bonus if you completed the scenario without dying more than X times depending on the scenario. I only completed the training scenario, but even that got pretty crazy, with saw blades spawning from the floor and rocks falling from the ceiling as tons of high-tier doombots rushed me. Ant-Man’s so freaking durable that I didn’t die, though I did have to break out the medkits, something I hadn’t had to do with him in any other mode so far.
Oh, and not sure when they added this, but there’s now a single general stash tab that you can buy with eternity splinters, for 600. So even free players can have a little more room to breathe.
I did in fact get Punisher to 60. And Juggernaut from 1 to 55 - the exp bonuses are crazy. Juggernaut’s pretty straightforward - his spirit equivalent is Momentum, which builds when you’re moving and decays when you aren’t, and so you pretty much charge around like crazy and intermittently do big ground-pound type attacks while being real frigging hard to kill. Especially with an Elektra medallion, still I think the gold standard for movement power oriented heroes. I’ve now gotten like eight copies of his helmet unique and zero of his slot 1. :(
I’m pretty sure there’s like a crafting recipe where you can take 5 uniques like that and role a new random unique for the same hero. Might get lucky that way instead. :)
David Brevik is leaving Gazillion.
https://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/255872/thank-you-all
As CEO, I spent most of my time running the company. I played the game a lot, talked about the game a lot and added lots of feedback and new ideas, but that is a very different job than being a Creative Director. After doing this for several years, I really want to get back to developing games and programming. I got into this industry to make games and I miss the day-to-day creation process.
That said, it was difficult, because I love Marvel Heroes. I love our community. I love the team I helped assemble. We have an incredibly talented staff here and I know that the game is in great hands. I believe in the future of the game and I know a lot of the amazing things that are being worked on. The game has some really cool features coming that I know I will enjoy. Yes, I will still be playing the game. Yes, I will still be streaming. I will still be sending the team feedback and information and suggestions. I may not work at Gazillion, but I love this game. I’m very proud of what we accomplished.
As for what’s next, I am going to go indie. I’m going back to doing the things I love most: programming and making games. We will have more information about that in the future.
There’s been a lot of speculation about when the next Advance Pack would be or if there would even be one. Turns out the time is now, and yes, there is one. Mind you, it’s not the gala spectacular the first two were - you’re only getting 7 heroes (plus stash tabs and potentially an additional costume for each), and either one or two Cosmic Penta Boosts with the release of each depending on the pack version you buy. But they’re slowing up their aggressive hero-a-month release schedule this year, hopefully to spend more time on other aspects of the game that need updating or adding on to (I wouldn’t mind some more story mode, for example). So that’s fair enough. And the price tag has dropped accordingly. $60 gets you the heroes, the stash tabs, and 7 pentaboosts. $80 for the deluxe gets you the heroes, the costumes, the stash tabs, an Enhanced Iron Spider costume for Spider-Man a month before its general release, four team-ups (Kamala Khan, Miles Morales Spider-Man and two TBA), and 14 pentaboosts.
Those heroes, btw, are Green Goblin, Ultron, Angela, Nick Fury, Elektra, Black Bolt, and one TBA.
Oh, and there’s another BOGO sale on heroes and costumes right now, including chase costumes (which have not previously been around for BOGOs), and Odin’s Bounty is up.
I was kinda hoping that after yesterday’s 9 hour downtime they might throw us a few splinters or a boost today. Nope.
I bought Capt Marvel and got Taskmaster as my free one which I didn’t have.
Deadpool 52 live on Test Center. WOOOOOOOOTTT!!!
I sure hope he’s good. I’m sure he will be, the 52 reviews have generally been huge improvements. But he was one of my early 60s and it was kind of a slog. He’s a funny character but he felt pretty underpowered and one note at the time.
I haven’t played him a lot, but it looks good. It seems that he has, legitimately now, three builds. Ranged, melee and hybrid.