Having been a player since only a few months after the game launch I’m pretty happy about a lot of these upcoming changes. One of the big things that seems to plague the development team is the individualisation of heroes in regards to itemisation seeming to take up a lot of time with micromanagement. Or, put simply, it was taking a lot of time to balance the unique system, and that often felt like a losing battle. I’m glad this new systems seems like it will free up a lot of that time by being able to be fine-tuned on a grander scale without so much micromanagement.
Not gonna lie though. Finding out a lot of the stuff that I spent hours getting in this game is now going to become obsolete is coming as a hell of a body blow. My fragment of twilight is now obsolete? I slow-grinded the recipes for level 66-69 uniques rather than raiding. I worked hard to get good rolls in the crafter in a way that wasn’t really all that fun to do (until afterwards when it came to the fun of stomping on things with my badass new gear.)
What I’m really surprised by, however, is Asros’s recent comments in his Q&A’s that included these sorts of things:
“However, getting the perfect rolls on an Omega item is not going to be required to play, but there as something for min/max players to work towards.”
“Some players feel it absolutely necessary to min/max every hero that they have. That is a choice, it isn't required to play all of our content. If you wan't to do that, that is great and we support that. However, that isn't something we expect everyone to do on every hero.”
“Well, we don't expect most of our players to min/max at that level.”
“How much you min/max your affixes will be up to the player, but the average player will be able to pick up an omega item, just as they can with a cosmic, or epic, equip it and play the hero.”
These comments seem to indicate that maxing out gear and stats is, to the developers POV, a sort of secondary goal in the game that a few players enjoy pursuing. This leads me to ask the question: What am I supposed to be doing instead?
Exploration? I like the content of the game just fine, even the zones that are a bit out-dated now I like in concept, but I know them all like the back of my hand already.
Improving tactics? This isn’t a very tactical game and fighting revolves around keeping moving whilst laying down high levels of damage. Again, it’s not bad but it’s not exactly something that’s easy to start out with but hard to master. You get the gist of it after a few weeks of high-end content.
Exploring new difficulty? This seems to be the focus of the difficulty slider, but I’m not sure that players will be hungry for harder content just for the challenge of it. I think most players will be attracted to increasing the likelihood of getting their butts kicked because of the increased high-quality loot that they can use to maximise their own butt-kicking efficiency.
Levelling new characters? Ok, I do like getting my characters to level 60. But beyond that I often leave them in the dust in favour of a few select characters that I enjoy playing and want to improve. Improving them usually involves taking them to a place where their stats are fearsome, and that involves re-rolling gear and gearing them out for hellish defence and damage.
Now, I’m not saying that any of these game concepts are bad, but for me the most fun thing about Marvel Heroes has been the idea of having a really cool set of main characters with maxed out gear and items. I know that not everyone goes to extremes in this pursuit, and I very much agree that the game should be fun for everyone at every level they’re playing at as they work toward getting awesome characters. (Again, grinding out those 66 & 69 crafting recipes was not a fun time in my play history.) But am I really that wrong in suggesting that maxing out character stats and gear is pretty much the central and rewarding appeal of this game?
It’s called Marvel Heroes, and I’m here because I want the best Marvel Heroes I can have. Right?
So, if maxing out my stats and getting the best gear I can get isn’t the central appeal of the game in the eyes of the developers, then what is? I’m totally serious here. Have I missed something!?