In an interview with MeinMMO, we talked to Phil Therien and Shana Bryant from Crystal Dynamics. They revealed to us some details about the endgame in Marvel’s Avengers.
In a few days, some pre-order players of Marvel’s Avengers will be able to dive into the multiplayer action game themselves. The first beta test starts on August 7, which will be exclusive to PS4 players.
We spoke in advance with Senior Designer Phil Therien and Senior Producer Shana Bryant and asked them a bit about the endgame that players can expect after finishing the campaign.
Here’s what they revealed to us.
The end of the campaign is actually the beginning
Marvel’s Avengers opens with action-packed starter missions that you will play alone. After that, you have the choice to either jump directly into multiplayer at the War Table or first play the story campaign.
The single-player will provide you with background information, levels, gear, and cosmetics, but it actually serves as a kind of introduction to the world of Marvel’s Avengers. This lays the groundwork for future updates that Shana Bryant refers to as the “Avengers Initiative”:
It’s all the post-game content where we continue the story of the game. Hawkeye will soon join the group. He will come with his own solo campaign but will also be playable within the Warzones [the multiplayer missions].
Getting through the campaign is just the beginning. The fight against MODOK is just starting. The world opens up, and this is the fertile ground we have to tell more stories and introduce new threats. The Avengers will continue to grow, and the dangers will get bigger.
Shana Bryant
In the course of the initiative, the game is expected to receive a steady influx of new content. The update model for Avengers has not yet been officially presented, but it seems to differ from the usual models of add-ons or season passes from other games.
Phil Therien explained that the development team divides future content updates into three categories:
Depending on how large the content is, it will be released at different frequencies. We haven’t shown our roadmap fully yet, but we’re looking forward to it.
What I can say is that between the major updates that bring a lot of story and content, smaller events, stories, or characters will come. Just things like that.
Phil Therien
According to Therien, there will be significant updates on one hand. They will bring new story missions and other types of content that will advance Marvel’s Avengers. Of course, this work will take longer and they will come at greater intervals, so Therien.
However, various smaller updates will be scattered between the major ones. They will appear more frequently and will consist of new characters like Hawkeye or Spider-Man.
Players will also be provided with temporary events such as hotspots that appear on weekends and can offer more loot and EXP.
According to the developers, there should always be something happening in the game. Furthermore, all updates in the future will be free, including new characters and story missions.
Loot, challenges, and “raid-like” content await
The endgame content revolves around the challenges, builds, and loot that are intertwined. To progress in the game, you need to level up and equip your heroes.
For some challenges, according to Therien and Bryant, you will need a full team of AI characters. For this, you’ll need to individually level up and equip your heroes. Other tricky missions can only be mastered with a team of human players.
There are places where you need other human players to succeed. It’s similar to a raid; we haven’t really announced it yet, but we have something. This will definitely be a content that people will want to visit.
Phil Therien
How exactly these “raid-like” contents will look and what players will do in them has not yet been revealed by the developers. However, there are expected to be strong rewards and loot available.
If you are playing in multiplayer with a specific hero, you will mostly only receive loot tailored to that one hero. Exceptions include general collectible items like comics, according to Therien.
For the power level, Marvel’s Avengers follows the proven path and features a loot spiral:
The power level, quality, and type of gear mostly depend on the difficulty you are playing on and the type of mission you are doing. Different missions have different types of loot.
For example, you can do a drop zone to collect a specific resource and improve an artifact. But to get that artifact, you may have had to do a vault mission. The vault was discovered while you were doing a cache mission. To improve your armor, you need to complete different sectors and boss fights.
There are thus different upgrades depending on what type of content you play. It is structured in such a way that you always find the right content for the upgrades you are looking for.
Phil Therien
The multiplayer missions at the War Table have a significant impact on the development of your characters. There, you will find the necessary upgrades to make your hero team stronger and to try out new builds, of which there will be many.
Matchmaking in every type of content
A particularly important point for the developers was that every type of multiplayer content has matchmaking, emphasizes Phil Therien. The team itself is a big fan of multiplayer games and didn’t want to miss this feature in their own game. Even in raid-like endgame content.
In Marvel’s Avengers, matchmaking works quite classically:
The system goes through your parameters such as latency, region, and so on. However, there will also be a distinction between the heroes. It will always connect you with someone who is playing different heroes than you. So you can play the hero you want.
It also considers your power level and will try to connect you with people who are as close to you as possible. It’s relatively standardized, with the exception that we want to emphasize the exclusivity of the heroes. There can only be one hero per session.
Phil Therien
If one of the players loses the connection during a mission, the system compensates for it. However, a new human player will not take their place, but an AI character.
So if you are fighting your way through an AIM base and your Black Widow suddenly drops out of the game, the game will replace her with another character controlled by AI. It will always replace the character that was previously played in the group.
Which stats and equipment the replacement character will have depends on the player who is leading the session.
On August 7, the PS4 players among you will be able to get an impression of Marvel’s Avengers and try out the many features it has to offer. You can learn more about War Table and the multiplayer missions in our “Find Your Next Game” interview on Marvel’s Avengers.
