MMOs: Impressions of Marvel Heroes

Marvel Heroes is a recently released F2P Action-RPG MMO developed and published by Gazillion Entertainment. With the success of DCU's move to F2P, a Marvel MMO following suit should come as no surprise. The real question is whether or not Marvel Heroes is worthy to claim the title “Marvel MMO” and be a good entry into the super hero MMO genre. Gazillion currently has a 10 year exclusive contract with Marvel Entertainment games so we'll have to see if their second MMO into the Marvel Universe can stand up against the competition.

(Please note this is only a first impressions article and will not give full detail on all the features Marvel Heroes has to offer.)

Marvel Heroes places the player into the role of one of 27 available heroes tasked with stopping Dr. Doom from using the “cosmic cube” while other Marvel villains run interference. This title's lead writer was Brian Michael Bendis who has worked on a number of Marvel comics so fans shouldn't have to worry about the game taking too many liberties with the Marvel universe. The story is divided up into 9 chapters and will take the player to various locations such as Avenger Tower, X-Mansion, The Raft, and Savage Land. There are several cutscenes throughout, each a series of still images with voice over to give a comic book feel, that feature a predetermined group of 5 heroes. I use the word “predetermined” because the characters featured do not change depending on the hero you play as which can be slightly immersion breaking.

Upon starting up, you will be prompted to select one of 5 heroes to play as: Dare Devil, Hawkeye, Storm, The Thing, or Scarlet Witch. As stated earlier, there are 27 playable heroes in total, but only 3 will be unlocked for free; the rest must be purchased for $5-20 apiece or dropped very rarely as random loot. It is at this point that the real immersion breaking will commence. Below this paragraph is an image that will soon become all too familiar to players of this game. Because only one of 5 heroes are available from the start, you will often run across scenarios such as 4 Daredevils and a Scarlet Witch beating the crap out of Taskmaster. In fact, you will so frequently run into duplicate characters one would almost think Spider-Man's "Clone Saga" spilled over to the rest of the Marvel universe. The only way to alleviate this, is to enter the cash shop and purchase a new outfit or a new hero entirely which may have been the developer's intent. This also leads to one of the most bizarre design decisions of the game: all characters share a story line. New characters you buy or acquire start at level 1 and can only play through the story if you reset all of your progress with another character. If you got to chapter 7 with Daredevil and feel like leveling up the Spider-Man you just bought, you can either grind through enemies for hours on end, or start the story over from scratch to get quest exp. Why each character just doesn't have the option to play through the story seperately without losing progress is beyond me.

Getting into gameplay, Marvel Heroes plays like any other action-rpg. Left-click is your move/basic attack key while your other abilities will be mapped to right-click and the A,S,D,F,G, and H keys by default. As per the usual for this genre, there is certainly loot galore to be found as enemies burst into piles of coin and gear like living pinatas. A good thing in Marvel Heroes' favor is the very big and open areas filled to the brim with enemies and smaller, instanced areas scattered about each map for additional enemies and loot. This game is not afraid to throw over a dozen enemies at the player at one time and that's, mainly, because most of the typical enemies don't really do damage. Granted, this makes sense being a super hero game, but one can easily be surrounded by a dozen gangsters, just auto-attack, and walk away barely missing a quarter of their HP. This can lead to someone breezing through most of the content without much trouble at all which could be a positive or negative depending on the player's preference. Thankfully, the instanced group dungeons/sewers/evil bases do ramp up the challenge and make soloing these areas all but impossible.

Another point in Marvel Heroes' favor are the random events that can spring up from time to time. Each area will only have one or two events available, but they do require large groups of players working together to complete. These missions can range from protecting some mutants against xenophobic humans to stopping a group of sentinels from wreaking havoc on Manhattan. These events will usually draw large groups of players which helps give that feel of an MMO, but, again, reminds the player their Hawkeye is but one of dozens all living in the same world.

Coming off of the controversy of Diablo 3's always online policy, making a game within the same genre, but as an MMO to justify being always online seems like a smart move on paper. Aside from the lack of immersion, Marvel Heroes suffers from stability issues. It is not uncommon to run into frame drops and stutters while playing the game and you are all but guaranteed to experience some kind of brief lag while traversing the game world. Even the still image cut scenes can suffer from stuttering which can lead to a very frustrating experience. At the very least, I can say I never experienced being booted to the log in screen or any lag lasting longer than a few seconds. It's not saying much, but this game will remain playable through your gaming session.

Since Gazillion made the decision to make an MMO to try and avoid a repeat of Diablo 3's issues, one would think there would be worthwhile MMO features. Sadly, Marvel Heroes is lacking in that department. The bare necessities are certainly there: chat window, friends list, party invites, playing with dozens of other people...and that's really about it. Trade windows are nonexistent, PvP is still in beta and can only be accessed upon completing the story, there is no auction house, no guilds, and even group instances will just automatically throw you in with people. Entering one of the group-based instances results in the player being dropped into a group with just whomever is already inside the instance regardless of their progress. So, yes, you can be dropped into a group after they have finished the instance and, yes, you could also just not be dropped into a group at all if no one is available. In that latter scenario, one must resort to the usual “LFG blah blah”, but good luck in getting a reply. It's almost as if Marvel Heroes' community realizes how shallow the MMO elements of the game are and just chooses to go solo until the game forces them to MMO. One can go hours without ever seeing any activity in the chat window, so good luck if you need help with a group quest.

Even the single player elements are rather shallow. Each character has 6 stats that all provide bonuses and assist them in whichever designated role the character is. However, gear does not provide any bonuses to these stats. In fact, the player never chooses to level up stats; it is all done automatically at predetermined points. Gear will grant HP, defense, and small bonuses to secondary stats, but their main purpose is to grant ranks or boost ranks of abilities. Each character has a skill tree divided up into three sections and gains 2 advancement points upon each level up to obtain or improve abilities. The odd thing is the fact gear can also boost an ability or give an ability outside of your character's level requirement. What this means is that a piece of gear can give your character access to a level 16 ability even if they are only level 14. It's certainly a very strange system that almost provides a sense of strategy, but will really boil down to focusing all of your gear bonuses between two to three abilities. This way you can just spam those few powers since you can boost them so far it will one-shot most enemies.

The only really interesting element I found involved the item and crafting vendors. Each type of vendor has a rank that determines what items you can purchase or what you can craft. These ranks are leveled up by donating gear; the better quality the gear, the more exp the vendor type will gain. This actually provides a nice bit of decision making on the player's part. Do they just sell all their gear for extra cash or start working towards ranking up the vendor and just hope the enemies drop enough cash to make the rank up worthwhile. The crafting system does not have the player make any gear, but rather upgrade the gear they find in the field or craft consumables. Enemies will drop elements which can be used by the crafter to upgrade blue quality or higher gear or add a stat bonus to your hero's costume. Since gear is hero specific, the crafter can even take the gear from other heroes and transform it into equipment your character can actually use.

Judging from everything that I experienced with this title, it almost seems like Marvel Heroes is an action-rpg trying its hardest to scream, “I'm an MMO! Look, look! Marvel MMO!” The MMO features of this game are severely lacking and what is there barely makes up for the game's shortcomings. A co-op game in the vain of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance would have would have been great to see, but, then again, I suppose Gazillion really wanted that cash shop. In fact, if this wasn't Gazillion's second Marvel MMO, I would dare say that's what they wanted to make. Fans of Marvel comics or someone looking for an easy, free game to get in to will probably find enjoyment here. MMO players or fans of action-rpgs will likely be disappointed by the lack of expected features and the shallow selection of what is there. Perhaps, as more time progresses, Gazillion can turn this title around and give DC something to compete with.