We at MeinMMO interviewed the developers of Marvel’s Avengers about the multiplayer aspect of the game. Here you can read what they told us.
Although Marvel’s Avengers was announced back in 2017, there was only minimal information about the superhero game until recently. With the first “War Table” stream came a wealth of new information including gameplay videos of Marvel’s Avengers.
The new game set in the Marvel universe is an action game where you can play as familiar characters like Thor or Black Widow in missions. The game tells its own story: The Avengers disbanded for 5 years after a severe accident and the destruction of San Francisco.
Marvel’s Avengers features an extensive multiplayer mode, where you are sent on missions around the world. We had the opportunity to ask the developers about the multiplayer in more detail.
How does the multiplayer work? From previous information drops, we already know that Marvel’s Avengers multiplayer is designed for 4 players. You choose a hero that appeals to you the most and complete missions together with other players.
Each hero can only appear once in a multiplayer mission. In the game, these missions are called “War Zone”. Therefore, you cannot take on everything with 4 Hulks, even though it would be really funny.
With the recent stream, many new details about Marvel’s Avengers were revealed, and MeinMMO readers actively discussed them under the news article. One of the questions raised there was how significant the multiplayer component in Marvel’s Avengers actually is. We asked the developers from Crystal Dynamics about this in our interview.
The War Table is your gateway to the multiplayer mode
The multiplayer of Marvel’s Avengers begins and ends at the War Table. The War Table is the menu through which you can access the multiplayer mode. There you will find all the missions that you can complete together with your friends or random players.
The game’s director Scott Amos told us that fans can dive into this mode right from the beginning of the game. Although he does not recommend it, as the single-player campaign provides a lot of story and content, it is possible if you want to.
The premise for multiplayer missions: At the center of the conflict in Marvel’s Avengers is the organization AIM, led by the notorious Marvel villain M.O.D.O.K. AIM also plays a significant role in multiplayer, as Phil Therien, the multiplayer mode director, explains:
As soon as you have played the campaign and rebuilt your Helicarrier, you can check out the War Table and get the feeling that AIM is a global threat. The Avengers are back together, the individual factions have gathered, but what now?
AIM has taken full advantage of the time while the Avengers were busy stopping what was clearly only a small part of their plans. You look at the War Table and see all the things happening on a global level.
Phil Therien, War Table Director
Scott Amos emphasized that the multiplayer missions are all grounded in the game’s story. They provide additional information about what the organization AIM and the various minor characters like Maria Hill or Hank Pym have been doing over the years following the Avengers’ dissolution.
Multiplayer missions without other players? That’s possible
How does the gameplay work in multiplayer? All the content available at the War Table is supported by matchmaking. No one gets left behind. This was very important to the developers, according to Phil Therien.
Another important aspect of gameplay in multiplayer is that you can also play it solo. This happens by entering the multiplayer missions where the roles of the other 3 team members are taken over by AI.
Once you have leveled up the heroes and given them gear and outfits, they will carry over into multiplayer.
The special thing about our game is that it focuses on the team experience. It ensures that regardless of how you play, it’s supported by the game.
For us, it was important that there is matchmaking for everything. You can play with people or AI if you want, but you are always part of an Avengers team. It feels naturally different whether you play with players or with an AI. But fundamentally, it remains an Avengers game. That’s a pretty big achievement for us because it sets us apart from others.
Phil Therien, War Table Director
So it’s up to you how you want to play the multiplayer of Marvel’s Avengers. If you feel like teaming up with your friends to take down AIM’s robots and soldiers, you can dive in as a group.
If you prefer to leisurely gather materials for your Helicarrier on your own, you can do that with your hero team, which is controlled by AI.
Learning from other players: According to Scott Amos, there are certain advantages to playing multiplayer with other people.
These lie in the build diversity that Marvel’s Avengers offers for your heroes. The characters have different abilities that they can perform at any time. So when you assemble your own team, they will do what you expect from them.
When you play with other people, you will encounter versions of the Avengers that you have never seen before and can come up with interesting strategies, according to Amos.
The War Table Director Phil Therien provided an example for this:
Let’s say you’re in a War Zone and about to attack an AIM base. Obvious situation: The base stands in the open field, we are a bit further back, watching it and noticing that there are turrets and people, a big exosuit moving around. Then we consider: Okay, how do we want to approach this?
If you and I are playing as Hulk and Iron Man, then Hulk can go in first, use all his defensive skills, draw the aggro of the enemies, and then Iron Man flies over and shoots them all with his lasers. Okay, that sounds like something I’ve seen before, but that’s not how I play.
I would say: Use your lasers, go into melee, gather the enemies into a big group and stun as many as possible. I’m going to be standing on a cliff as Hulk and throwing huge boulders at the enemies, charged with cosmic energy, like a crazy catapult. And suddenly, my Hulk is a ranged character throwing these large glowing red boulders and you ask, “Can Hulk do that?” Yes, he can because you can build him that way.
And seeing that in multiplayer is super cool because you suddenly play completely differently than you did before. That’s a strategic aspect.
Phil Therien, War Table Director
Therien says that it simply becomes much more interesting to play with other people on a strategic level. For example, you can coordinate your support abilities or various damage types with them to receive truly good bonus effects.
If someone says, “Hey, this fight is really hard. We should approach it defensively. We’re going to go in close and try to stun as much as possible to control the enemies.” Why not? That’s cool. And it develops quite organically with the people you’re playing with.
Phil Therien, War Table Director
“War Table is a living organism”
What missions will there be? In the interview, Phil Therien also provided some examples of the types of content players can tackle in multiplayer:
- Story: You can help SHIELD rebuild after the events of A-Day. This will earn you faction points. Alternatively, you can play missions that tell how one of the heroes spent the years after A-Day. For example, you will see how Bruce Banner tried to cope with being the Hulk.
- Bosses: You can face well-known and lesser-known villains from the Marvel universe, such as Abomination, who attentive fans discovered in one of the trailers.
- Secrets: You can complete a mission where you find a secret SHIELD hideout that gives you coordinates for a mysterious camp. And this camp then becomes its own mission, providing you with further special rewards and loot. You can also search certain locations for hidden artifacts that influence your heroes’ powers.
- Collecting and Grinding: You can gather rare resources, upgrade your Helicarrier, or simply farm EXP and gear for your heroes.
Some of these missions are a kind of “endgame content”; however, for Avengers it’s a bit different. We haven’t created content that only 3% of our players will ever reach. That’s not something we find exciting.
We have content designed to challenge you both in teams with other players and with your own team of heroes. You will be able to fight through AIM’s underground facilities, which we call “Hives.” They are doing some pretty wicked stuff there; I can’t tell you much about it yet. But it’s really cool.
Phil Therien, Wartable Director
Therien compared the War Table to “a living organism.” Depending on what you do in the multiplayer missions, you will unlock further missions. The more you uncover what AIM is plotting, the more new missions you unlock, according to Therien.
This creates a kind of “chain reaction” that unlocks even more missions. This can happen by:
- Gathering reputation with different factions
- Leveling up your heroes
- Solving multi-stage missions that keep unlocking new sequels
Additionally, the developers are working on implementing more missions in the future.
Therien also mentioned that the missions are not static. There will be a certain base amount of tasks at the War Table, but there will also be missions that rotate in and out. Hotspots are also planned that may only be active on a weekend because AIM has something nasty planned again.
Where will the missions take place? There are also several distinct regions. The missions take place in different locations. AIM and the Avengers should feel like a global presence.
Therefore, the developers wanted to take players to cities, forests, deserts, the Antarctic, secret underwater bases, even into the Earth’s orbit, according to Therien.
So when you go into a War Zone, you go to one of the locations of these regions – and we have many of them. All of this is designed so that we can continue adding more content after launch.
Phil Therien, War Table Director
Loot and Rewards
As a reward for completing many multiplayer missions, players can earn resources such as EXP and faction reputation and, of course, the most important thing in such a game: loot.
How does loot work in Avengers? Veterans of the multiplayer genre will find the loot system of Marvel’s Avengers familiar. It features the classic grading of rarities (normal, rare, legendary), which is also color-coded – that is, white/grey, green, blue, purple, and gold.
According to game director Scott Amos, with rarity not only the stats of the equipment change. Other properties are also improved. These include:
- Perks that the armor can have
- The number of perks
- The strength of the perks
We also have something we call “Prime Gear”. We have these specific sets of equipment for the heroes, where at higher levels you can try to get these special rolls with perfect stats for exactly the build you want to have. And that’s precisely the incentive to pursue them.
Phil Therien, War Table Director
In terms of loot, we also learned from games like Destiny, as Therien mentioned in our conversation.
The strength of the armors naturally increases with the difficulty of the content. In challenging missions, which include fights against Marvel villains, you can expect more powerful armors with new perks.
The equipment is designed to enable you to customize your heroes to your liking and adapt them to your playstyle, alongside the skills system.
Marvel’s Avengers will be released in a few months, on September 4, and we will then be able to see for ourselves the variety of customization and the size of the multiplayer.
You had my interest. Now you have my attention.
I must say honestly that I was very skeptical at first. As an Avengers fan, a multiplayer game in the Marvel universe is very cool for me, but the scant information that came after the reveal sounded pretty thin.
With the additional information from the War Table stream and interviews, my interest has been rekindled.
As someone who values story in games, I am glad that the multiplayer missions will also contribute new information to the story and lore. This gives me another incentive to play them alongside the loot.
The customization options for the heroes also sound like a lot of fun and a long-term engagement for those who enjoy tinkering and trying different builds.
There are still many uncertainties: How does matchmaking work? How does loot distribution work? How does communication with other players happen? But the basic framework for Avengers looks good to me, and I look forward to more information.
Irina Moritz
Community Manager
