I tried out the beta too, and saw a dozen Iron Men running around just before the game started to lag very badly and crashed. That was the worst actual problem I had.
The game’s main issue is that it’s just so damn bland. Nothing about what I was doing felt like the character I was playing. The world was just so lifeless. All the enemies feel generic until a boss shows up and those just feel cheap. I’ll give it another try since it’s free and still on my hard drive but I don’t see this getting much more of my time.
I would still recommend folks who are interested give it a shot. Just know what it is and isn’t going in and have realistic expectations. It’s a fairly light, Diablo-esque f2p with Marvel characters. It isn’t better at anything than a number of other games (other than having Marvel characters), still has some noticeable teething issues, but the total fun is more than the sum of its parts, at least for a while.
That said, it seems there some depth it the power systems and are a number of ways to build characters; I can only speak in detail for Thor but I put mine together as a ranged hero who hardly ever actually hits anything with his Mjolnir, while I see other Thors who seemed to be specc’ed much more for melee combat.
Big open world Boss battles can be hectic effects-fireworks shows, its true.
There are lots of the popular characters roaming around but given the explanation in the story, it doesn’t bother me any more than any issue of 52. There are also lots of the lesser-known characters running around as well. Rocket Raccoon is way more popular than I realized. Or at least his character in the game is.
I just played the tutorial mission as the Thing, and I liked it. It was one of the better, more enjoyable tutorials I’ve done over the years. Maybe it sucks further in, but I’ll play it for now.
This will probably be a good game eventually, it actually got worse as beta progressed and they seemed to be over their heads in many regards. I think they will sort things out eventually.
To be fair to the game, I’ve been playing tonight because it’s free and I figured why not, and I’ve had more fun with it than I did when trying the beta. Whether that’s because I’m using a different character (Scarlet Witch) or it’s just more polished I’m not sure.
Put in 81 minutes (according to Steam) as Daredevil, finishing both the tutorial and the Hell’s Kitchen section. I came in expecting something bad based on what I had read but it’s not so much bad as it is just average, at least it in the early experience (which could certainly be better than the rest of the game, as obviously they’d want to make a good impression and won’t start pushing microtransactions harder until a little further in). I probably won’t bother any more - to be honest I don’t even really have all that much affection for ARPG/Diablo-type games, so this really isn’t up my alley other than the license, which is the only real reason I tried it.
The most memorable thing to happen was dropping into a zone and being informed that Venom (an ‘event boss’) was wandering around. I made my way over and when I eventually got there the game turned into a slideshow because there was a crazy amount of heroes (60, 80, who knows) all frantically attacking Venom and his cronies, except nobody could possibly have any idea what was going on because of the combination of performance issues and the insane amount of visual feedback going on in the screen. For the vast majority of the rest of my time I was in instances though.
I played the first chapter as Daredevil. I think I like it but I hope there’s more to it. There are a lot of things that are by the numbers and more needs to be happening in each environment. I wonder what they’ll do with loot and if I’ll just have a bunch of things I won’t be able to use.
I was taken back by the cost, however. New heroes are expensive ($20 for Spiderman, for example). All the heroes are at least $6 and the good ones are $12 or $20. If they were half that price, I would have already committed some money but at $20 a pop for my favorite characters, I might not buy anything. It also looks like inventory space is $8.50 a page (the game encourages you to save drops meant for other characters). Yikes.
Yeah, that Venom fight is absolutely bonkers. I’ve done it twice and I noticed something cool the second time. Venom’s black goo shoots out and possesses the corpses of nearby killed guards. I think they’ve called “Symbiote Victims”. There are basically zombie adds pouring into the fight!
I did that fight yesterday and focused on taking them out. There was such a horde around Venom himself that it was ridiculous, and the adds were killing characters off without them realizing they were being attacked from behind.
Just hopped in to check this out! I picked the Thing because he seemed really angry in The Shield. Then I punched some green pajama nazis and was awarded Ben Affleck for my troubles. Then I ran around in circles with my clone posse. I am not sure this is the game for me.
Super disappointed with this title, wanted a change from Path of Exile until their new patch hit. This game is NOT good. Everything about it seems to annoy and niggle me. I wont even get into the £15 for a different class thing. I lasted maybe 5 hours before i realized this game is a huge disappointment.
I found it okay fun, but the insane lag ruined the game for me (At the docks, with the venom thingie) - The sad thing is, there is such an awesome potential in the universe, and this is what they squander it on? DC Universe was on the right track and if they tried something like that, I would have loved, loved loved it!
Marvel Heroes is definitely a better game than the beta version that was so utterly dreadful. But it really is nowhere near good enough. It’s free, for sure, so long as you want to play as a character they know you don’t really want to play as. But ultimately my brief hours with it were very dull. There’s no panache to the combat, there’s no pleasure in the loot drops, there’s no intricacy to levelling (to the point of only upgrading abilities – there aren’t even attributes to boost) – were it an offline, single-player ARPG, it would be a disappointing one. That it’s then made more alienating by its MMO overcrowding, and completely fails to find any joy in its license, makes it very hard to like at all.
So in the interests of full disclosure, I went ahead and got the Ultimate Founders’ Pack and have been really glad I did. All it would take would be a few $20 heroes and I would have been close to spending the same money, regardless. So far, I have completed the story with Thor(lvl 27) and Cyclops(lvl 29) and am about halfway through with the story with the Hulk (lvl 18) and have also played Captain America and Scarlet Witch.
The most shocking thing so far is how well the actually captured the spirit of the character in the way their on-screen counterparts play. Cyclops and Capt. America make really great grouping characters (although I solo’ed most of the time with them regardless, they actually shine in the auto-groups instances put together for you). The Hulk playstyle makes such a mess I actually had one auto-group drop me before we even made it past the first room of the instance because “we don’t like how messy the Hulk makes things”; well go tell it to the mountain, brother, that’s been the story of Hulk since his inception.
They are still working through a number of bugs. Secure trading and a patch to buff defense for the melee-only tank characters (Thing, Hulk, Colossus) are in the offing as well.
The above article quoted by ineffablebob from John Walker of RPS is at least somewhat incorrect: There are attributes to boost, only its not done in the same manner or method as most ARPGs. When one brings up your character screen, look at the top right, there you will find attributes such as Strength, Durability, Intelligence, Fighting, etc. These have ranks that unlock as you level or can be added by items added to your costume of choice.
It makes for another avenue of balancing. When you look at the Hulk, he has been described as “overpowered”, and to be sure, he is powerful. As at least part of the counterbalance to that, he also had a huge experience penalty (-15%) brought on by his “low” Intelligence score.
Yeah, that’s a pretty significant feature of the character building and, as near as I can tell, the overall point of the crafting system. Anyone who misses this probably hasn’t sunk much time in the game.
So anyone still playing this? My character’s name is monofurioso. I recently bought Captain America and started over so he’s a level 7 and about to embark to Madripoor.
I’ve been trying some over the weekend as a Hawkeye same as my username here. The waves of identical enemies don’t help it. At most you see 2 types of enemies per area at least in the beginning. It’s also quite a burden on my system for as low as I’ve put the settings. Mowing down tons of enemies is pretty fun at times, it’s actually the event bosses that are quite dumb. It’s yawn-inducing to watch 30 players just spam basic attacks at a bullet sponge enemy with no real chance of actually hurting any of the players. I ran into Rhino with surprisingly no one else around and spent 15 min. at least getting 2 or 3 shots into him and having to dodge away, repeat. Really wish they tuned them to recognize only one guy is fighting. Finally by that point I had him down to about half his hp bar and one other player found us and flummoxing him became a lot easier if still time-consuming. The only times you really die are either when you alt-tab while transitioning to another area assuming the transfer points will be safe (psst, they’re not), or when the game decides to spawn 30 enemies on top of you that can all dash, pull you to them, and/or melee.
The few skills they’ve put in really feel too far apart in levels. As Hawkeye you have to use the same basic attack until level 10 and special attacks are mostly just fairly amusing control effects until level 12. I keep coming back to it oddly in the hope of beating the system and actually seeing a hero I want to play drop as a loot reward. All in all, I can’t pin it down, but the game just feels incredibly greedy as a F2P.
