Crystal Dynamics lost the plot.
Marvel’s Avengers has problems and it is getting harder to defend Crystal Dynamics as a company when on a regular basis they put their foot in their mouth on issues related to the game and community. Needless to say there are problems in Avengers that haven’t been fixed for months. Daily missions are still broken, bugs that should have been fixed by now are still causing problems, the campaign is still not replayable, there is little content diversity, and the first seven months of live service is giving us two characters that are really just a clone of one Hawkeye.
Remember when our biggest worry was Spiderman being PS4 exclusive? Do you think he’ll ever actually be released?
Crystal Dynamics is far behind on their content schedule, has essentially ditched their roadmap, and what do they decide to focus on? Players are leveling too fast. Now the community has blown up over CD’s announcement that leveling in Avengers would get slower, which should contradict their earlier claim that this is what the community wants. But instead of acknowledging it, CD doubled down on the deception.
We wanted to offer more clarification and details on the recently announced XP change: we did not change XP to increase grind for grind’s sake. Our initial blog was not comprehensive enough to convey what we were doing and why….so we caused confusion,…we get it.
See this is a lie. Crystal Dynamics is definitely increasing grind for grind’s sake. The easiest answer is that this is a matter of engagement. There are months in between hero releases and if everyone is hitting the level cap with Kate Bishop on day one they aren’t engaging in the service longer, thus less chance to buy stuff from the cash shop. I get it, Avengers is a live service and needs to make money. Doubly so since the game underwhelmed financially.
But Crystal Dynamics can’t even keep their own story straight. The official line is that experience is being increased due to new players being overwhelmed and “diminishing each skill purchase.”
We want people to level up, in fact, we really want to see more people level up more Heroes, as playing the full Avenger roster should be the most fun thing you can do, but we don’t want the leveling up experience to be too overwhelming or diminish exploring each skill purchase.
But the announcement that CD gave was that levels after 25 would be increased, making the game less “overwhelming” to people who had already gotten used to it. Not only that, but the starting experience will be even faster.
“We also tuned the game to make early leveling slightly faster, giving players more advantage against enemies when first starting out and hopefully making them feel more like a Super Hero faster.”
So let’s take score here. Crystal Dynamics is totally worried about new players being overwhelmed, so their plan is to make the starting experience for a hero even more overwhelming (by their own logic) by throwing more skill points at a faster pace, only to slow the experience down at the point where the player would be more accustomed to the hero. Do you see where the whole façade starts to fall apart?
And where does this system work? Free to play. I won’t sit here and claim I have an insider source telling me that Avengers is going free to play, but this all feels like a precursor to Avengers going free to play. Free to play games love showering players with early progression to keep them engaged long enough to get hooked, and then once you have your fingers in them they keep coming back. I’m not dissing the idea either, free to play might be the best future for Avengers.
I can imagine a free to play Avengers relaunch where Crystal Dynamics sells a $40 “founders pack” that gives access to all future heroes. People who already bought the game would still get everything they were promised. Free players would get access to the base campaign plus starting six heroes, with further characters sold as “packs” with the stuff you’d get for free anyway. Look, for $10 you get the hero, their premium pass, and their story DLC. What a value. It would be possible to unlock these using the premium currency you get from hero passes, thus adding to the “you can unlock everything without paying a dime” pitch.
The only thing I can’t decide on is whether free players would have access to the starting six premium pass tracks. I’m thinking you get to choose one to unlock for free, because it would reward hardcore players and let them slowly unlock every pass without paying a dime while most others would get frustrated and just toss up the $10, or pay the $40 for the everything pack because it includes all of that plus more.
While it does look like Crystal Dynamics is setting the stage for free to play, I don’t believe it will come until much further down the line. Mid to late 2022 if they are smart about it. Avengers needs more heroes to sell and more costumes to show off. I would keep an eye out for CD suddenly pushing out heroes at an accelerated rate, physical copies being pulled from shelves, and the inevitable leak of something witty like an “A-Day Founders Pack” edition by a retailer to let you know free to play is right around the corner.
But what do I know, I wear corgi pizza socks.
MMO Fallout 