Marvel Heroes - 1 year later
June 4th marked the 1 year anniversary of Marvel Heroes and boy, has the game changed since it first opened up to the public, both good and bad.
When the game launched, there were some imbalance issues, there wasn't as much content to be had, the roster was smaller and many features were not present in the game yet.
Characters:
Then - Character tokens would drop in game or were purchasable with cash only. Any duplicate token you received was used to upgrade your ultimate attack. Before the switch, I managed to get 6 new characters and about another 6 duplicate tokens. I never had a problem with the drops, but other people did, which is why they went with the Eternity Splinter system after so many complaints.
Now - These can now be purchased by farming Eternity Splinters. Depending on what mode you're doing, you can get up to about 8-10 splinters an hour. Characters can directly cost 200, 400 or 600 splinters. 175 splinters for a random box. Or you can spend cold hard cash on them instead.
They're trying to release 1 hero per month and have succeeded, sometimes we get 2 per month. June should hopefully see the release of Silver Surfer by the end of this week and Mr. Fantastic at the end of the month. I smell a theme coming on, most likely for the next story chapter...
Star Lord will be late July, Magneto in September, perhaps that means Juggernaut in August or October as he's in development.
Costumes:
Then- Costumes were exactly like characters. I lucked out and got about a half dozen costumes to drop before the current system. My last drop being that of X-Force Deadpool way back in September. Since then, I haven't seen a costume drop, though I have experienced the random trade-in and have gotten about 4-5 costumes that I liked to replace the defaults on my characters.
Now - Costumes can be purchased with money, you can get select costumes out of Fortune Cards, you can get a spare costume when you prestige a character or you can exchange 3 costumes, some credits and unstable molecules to random a new costume.
There's probably been a good 20-30 costumes that have been released over the course of the year. Some are enhanced costumes, like Beta Ray Bill or Lady Deadpool that are used on Thor and Deadpool respectively, only with new voice actors for that particular costume. At some point I'll probably purchased Beta Ray Bill and Superior Spider-Man. And probably the female Ghost Rider and female Punisher costumes when they're released. The price range of costumes is between 350 - 1450 gold.
A few costumes that you'd think would be enhanced aren't, like Brood Wolverine or Frankencastle.
Story:
Then - The game went up to chapter 8, finishing at Dr. Doom. There was no different difficulty mode at the time.
Now - The game goes up to chapter 9, finishing against Loki. We now have 3 levels of difficulty. The story itself continues in the just released Beta Raid which should be beyond the beta phase by the end of June.
PVP:
Then - None at release, but a Beta PVP was released at some point.
Now - Still in Beta PVP, not a very fun experience, not something that I'll be trying again any time soon.
Synergy System
Then - None at first, but about 4 months in they added Synergy where at level 25 and 50 you would have access to a boost of some type. They also gave you a big XP buff when reaching level 60 for the first time, until you could get up to 200% the XP you normally would.
Now - Other than new boosts from new heroes, I think the synergy system is good where it's at.
Team-Ups:
Then - Closest thing to team-ups at the time was finding a pet to follow you around.
Now - We now have summonable NPCs to help us out. Currently only 5 are available, but Beta Ray Bill should be released by the end of this week. And the plan is 1 a month after that. These can be purchased in the same way as characters for the same prices. They already offered an advance pack for the first 9 announced Team-Ups, but apparently Guardians of the Galaxy will cause some unannounced Team-Ups to show up too. These NPCs can either give your character a passive ability, or be summoned at all times.
They also have their own gear, currently you can only find gear up to blue color for them, purple should be added in the future, though we were given a set of purples as a gift.
Game Modes:
Then - Limbo was the first additional game mode back then featuring a group of I believe 15 people fighting against endless hordes and a final boss, this was the best place to get characters and costumes to drop. There was also a version of this for smaller groups.
Midtown Madness was the first new game mode added that. A great place to farm XP and gear.
Then X-Defense was added to the game, but unlike Midtown where the mode never ends, you have timed rounds with XP and loot become better and better with each new round.
One-Shots are sort of like additional little stories, they were released a month or two ago, the difficulty has been amped since the initial release. It's not something I enjoy doing the most, mainly because there's no queuing involved and you can wipe out easily when you solo.
Now - Limbo is gone, it was removed from the game right around the time of the conversion to the Eternity Splinter system. I miss it dearly. It was a fun thing to do, but I'm not sure if that mode is worth it without that awesome loot.
Midtown, X-Defense and One-Shots are still all here.
Bronx Zoo is said to be a new mode like Midtown with some new villains thrown into the game. It may take up to the end of summer before we get it, though they've been talking about this forever now.
Raids:
Then - None.
Now - The first Beta Raid is being tuned and tweak. They say they want to get a couple of raids out a year. If the first raid is the conclusion of the Loki/Asgard chapter, I imagine the next raid will be the reason why Magneto/Juggernaut/Venom become allies and playable, I think the whole Silver Surfer/Mr Fantastic being released will have an impact on this storyline.
Sadly, the raids are painful to queue for. I may just do them once and that's it if there isn't a better way to access them.
Omega System:
Then - None.
Now - Implemented last week, gives you additional points to help upgrade skills, attacks, stats and the like. Inspired by the Paragon system from Diablo. 7500 points in total to be had. Shared Quests introduced that gives us 3 daily bonus Omega Points if completed, otherwise, you'll just get them from killing stuff. I'm up to about 150+ points in a week and a half.
Achievements:
Then - None.
Now - Coming soon, within the next month. Should give us something extra to do.
Veteran Rewards:
Then - None.
Now - Coming soon, you'll get a gift for logging in. Not sure if it's a small gift a day or maybe once a week.
Character reworks:
Then - They slowly began to rework most characters.
Now - Still about half to go. Any character that doesn't have a level 52 ultimate attack is still waiting for their rework. Some characters have benefited greatly from the reworks like Gambit, others, still feel a little flat. At least Spider-Man doesn't suck anymore.
Fortune Cards:
Then - Mark 1 Fortune Cards upon release, they've managed to release up to 6 series of cards since last year. Mark 2 - 6 all contain costumes that can be purchased at a certain point if you get 95 currency points from the cards. Mark 1 costumes can only be gotten randomly.
Now - X-Cards released for the anniversary that only contained boosts. Most likely more cards coming along.
Crafting:
Then - Limited types of crafting were available at launch, mostly crafting materials, costumes, some potions/artifacts.
Now - More diverse crafting available, along with a Rune system, where Runes can be found and attached to artifacts and equipment. Likely to be more runes/recipes as the game ages. Able to craft special items and gear when there are special events.
Legendary Items:
Then - None at the start, introduced around the 6 month mark or so. Legendary quests added to farm Odin mark currency to buy these.
Now - You can now get the Odin marks associated with these from world drops. No longer need to do just do legendary quests. A new legendary item was added a couple months ago, hopefully more are added.
Relics, Rings, Insignias:
Then - None were available at the start of the game, but they were slowly added over the course of the year.
Now: New types of Insignias to be added in the game like Marvel Knights insignia. Wonder if we'll get a Brotherhood Insignia with the inclusion of Magneto?
Unique gear:
Then - None at the start, but they were added last fall or so.
Now - More uniques being added over time. They fall much more frequently than they did at first.
Stark TECH:
Then - None.
Now - Still none, but it's in the work, probably by the end of the summer. Probably another way to get gear to help us out.
Boosts:
Then - We had the 2 hours boosts back then, different types were added over the course of the year and they changed how the 2 hour boosts stacked where the bonus they afforded would grow, now it only adds more time, though the 1 hour boosts stack in the bonus given.
Now - So many different kinds of boosts, wouldn't be surprised if we see more types as the game goes along.
Prestiging:
Then - There was no prestiging to be had at first. You got to level 60 and kept playing, but they then gave us the option to reroll our characters to level 1 and get them back up to level 60, initially you could do that 5 times, but a few months ago they added a 6th level to prestige which will take the better part of a month to do so.
Now - No news on any additional prestiging, but the cosmic prestige level will likely make it so that you don't want to do it again.
These are all the types of things that have changed during that 1 year. During that time, the game has been rather generous to its players. There have been lots of weekend events, free hero tokens, costumes and some upgrades.
The anniversary so far has seen 365 items being given to us for free, including a stash tab, the 'Solid Frank' Punisher costume, 3 upgrade tokens, boxes of uniques, relics and boosts. The gifts have been a blast, but a week and a half in, there hasn't been a real weekend event, but the anniversary month isn't over yet and I'm hoping for lots of fun. Apparently we'll get something big at the end of it.
1 year later, I'm still quite happy to play the game. Deadpool is my main in the game and the only character I've decided to prestige to cosmic level. I currently have him at level 42 and hope to get him to level 60 before his rework later this summer.
I've found myself enjoying some characters that I didn't think I'd enjoy all that much, such as Jean Grey. Her Phoenix mode is fantastic. Rocket Raccoon and Squirrel Girl are some of my favorite summoners to play. Hulk has one of the best ultimate attacks in the game. Spider-Man is pretty fun since he got his 52 review. Taskmaster is a fun amalgamation of Spider-Man, Captain America and Daredevil. Thing is more fun to play after I rolled his Fear Itself Enhanced Costume. Nightcrawler is also very fun and quick.
I don't have any intentions of playing Iron Man, Torch, Sue or Richards once he's released. My dislike of those characters doesn't make me want to play them, even if Iron Man is supposedly over powered.
Psylocke was kind of a disappointment to me, she was a bore and a chore to level up. However I remind myself that Gambit was like that as well but since they reworked him, I have to admit he's one of my favorites to pick up and play when I want something different.
I'm very much looking forward to the Silver Surfer and Juggernaut as far as 2014 characters go. I've got a ton of boosts saved up just so that I can prestige Juggernaut from white to red as quickly as possible. Perhaps I'll even prestige him to cosmic level, but I'll have to see if that's something I want to do again once I get Deadpool back to level 60.
All in all, this is an awesome Free to Play game, though if you love it and really want something from it, chances are you're going to pay for something at some point.
Even during its 'broken' days, I loved the game, but right now, this is my main PC game to waste time on.
When the game launched, there were some imbalance issues, there wasn't as much content to be had, the roster was smaller and many features were not present in the game yet.
Characters:
Then - Character tokens would drop in game or were purchasable with cash only. Any duplicate token you received was used to upgrade your ultimate attack. Before the switch, I managed to get 6 new characters and about another 6 duplicate tokens. I never had a problem with the drops, but other people did, which is why they went with the Eternity Splinter system after so many complaints.
Now - These can now be purchased by farming Eternity Splinters. Depending on what mode you're doing, you can get up to about 8-10 splinters an hour. Characters can directly cost 200, 400 or 600 splinters. 175 splinters for a random box. Or you can spend cold hard cash on them instead.
They're trying to release 1 hero per month and have succeeded, sometimes we get 2 per month. June should hopefully see the release of Silver Surfer by the end of this week and Mr. Fantastic at the end of the month. I smell a theme coming on, most likely for the next story chapter...
Star Lord will be late July, Magneto in September, perhaps that means Juggernaut in August or October as he's in development.
Costumes:
Then- Costumes were exactly like characters. I lucked out and got about a half dozen costumes to drop before the current system. My last drop being that of X-Force Deadpool way back in September. Since then, I haven't seen a costume drop, though I have experienced the random trade-in and have gotten about 4-5 costumes that I liked to replace the defaults on my characters.
Now - Costumes can be purchased with money, you can get select costumes out of Fortune Cards, you can get a spare costume when you prestige a character or you can exchange 3 costumes, some credits and unstable molecules to random a new costume.
There's probably been a good 20-30 costumes that have been released over the course of the year. Some are enhanced costumes, like Beta Ray Bill or Lady Deadpool that are used on Thor and Deadpool respectively, only with new voice actors for that particular costume. At some point I'll probably purchased Beta Ray Bill and Superior Spider-Man. And probably the female Ghost Rider and female Punisher costumes when they're released. The price range of costumes is between 350 - 1450 gold.
A few costumes that you'd think would be enhanced aren't, like Brood Wolverine or Frankencastle.
Story:
Then - The game went up to chapter 8, finishing at Dr. Doom. There was no different difficulty mode at the time.
Now - The game goes up to chapter 9, finishing against Loki. We now have 3 levels of difficulty. The story itself continues in the just released Beta Raid which should be beyond the beta phase by the end of June.
PVP:
Then - None at release, but a Beta PVP was released at some point.
Now - Still in Beta PVP, not a very fun experience, not something that I'll be trying again any time soon.
Synergy System
Then - None at first, but about 4 months in they added Synergy where at level 25 and 50 you would have access to a boost of some type. They also gave you a big XP buff when reaching level 60 for the first time, until you could get up to 200% the XP you normally would.
Now - Other than new boosts from new heroes, I think the synergy system is good where it's at.
Team-Ups:
Then - Closest thing to team-ups at the time was finding a pet to follow you around.
Now - We now have summonable NPCs to help us out. Currently only 5 are available, but Beta Ray Bill should be released by the end of this week. And the plan is 1 a month after that. These can be purchased in the same way as characters for the same prices. They already offered an advance pack for the first 9 announced Team-Ups, but apparently Guardians of the Galaxy will cause some unannounced Team-Ups to show up too. These NPCs can either give your character a passive ability, or be summoned at all times.
They also have their own gear, currently you can only find gear up to blue color for them, purple should be added in the future, though we were given a set of purples as a gift.
Game Modes:
Then - Limbo was the first additional game mode back then featuring a group of I believe 15 people fighting against endless hordes and a final boss, this was the best place to get characters and costumes to drop. There was also a version of this for smaller groups.
Midtown Madness was the first new game mode added that. A great place to farm XP and gear.
Then X-Defense was added to the game, but unlike Midtown where the mode never ends, you have timed rounds with XP and loot become better and better with each new round.
One-Shots are sort of like additional little stories, they were released a month or two ago, the difficulty has been amped since the initial release. It's not something I enjoy doing the most, mainly because there's no queuing involved and you can wipe out easily when you solo.
Now - Limbo is gone, it was removed from the game right around the time of the conversion to the Eternity Splinter system. I miss it dearly. It was a fun thing to do, but I'm not sure if that mode is worth it without that awesome loot.
Midtown, X-Defense and One-Shots are still all here.
Bronx Zoo is said to be a new mode like Midtown with some new villains thrown into the game. It may take up to the end of summer before we get it, though they've been talking about this forever now.
Raids:
Then - None.
Now - The first Beta Raid is being tuned and tweak. They say they want to get a couple of raids out a year. If the first raid is the conclusion of the Loki/Asgard chapter, I imagine the next raid will be the reason why Magneto/Juggernaut/Venom become allies and playable, I think the whole Silver Surfer/Mr Fantastic being released will have an impact on this storyline.
Sadly, the raids are painful to queue for. I may just do them once and that's it if there isn't a better way to access them.
Omega System:
Then - None.
Now - Implemented last week, gives you additional points to help upgrade skills, attacks, stats and the like. Inspired by the Paragon system from Diablo. 7500 points in total to be had. Shared Quests introduced that gives us 3 daily bonus Omega Points if completed, otherwise, you'll just get them from killing stuff. I'm up to about 150+ points in a week and a half.
Achievements:
Then - None.
Now - Coming soon, within the next month. Should give us something extra to do.
Veteran Rewards:
Then - None.
Now - Coming soon, you'll get a gift for logging in. Not sure if it's a small gift a day or maybe once a week.
Character reworks:
Then - They slowly began to rework most characters.
Now - Still about half to go. Any character that doesn't have a level 52 ultimate attack is still waiting for their rework. Some characters have benefited greatly from the reworks like Gambit, others, still feel a little flat. At least Spider-Man doesn't suck anymore.
Fortune Cards:
Then - Mark 1 Fortune Cards upon release, they've managed to release up to 6 series of cards since last year. Mark 2 - 6 all contain costumes that can be purchased at a certain point if you get 95 currency points from the cards. Mark 1 costumes can only be gotten randomly.
Now - X-Cards released for the anniversary that only contained boosts. Most likely more cards coming along.
Crafting:
Then - Limited types of crafting were available at launch, mostly crafting materials, costumes, some potions/artifacts.
Now - More diverse crafting available, along with a Rune system, where Runes can be found and attached to artifacts and equipment. Likely to be more runes/recipes as the game ages. Able to craft special items and gear when there are special events.
Legendary Items:
Then - None at the start, introduced around the 6 month mark or so. Legendary quests added to farm Odin mark currency to buy these.
Now - You can now get the Odin marks associated with these from world drops. No longer need to do just do legendary quests. A new legendary item was added a couple months ago, hopefully more are added.
Relics, Rings, Insignias:
Then - None were available at the start of the game, but they were slowly added over the course of the year.
Now: New types of Insignias to be added in the game like Marvel Knights insignia. Wonder if we'll get a Brotherhood Insignia with the inclusion of Magneto?
Unique gear:
Then - None at the start, but they were added last fall or so.
Now - More uniques being added over time. They fall much more frequently than they did at first.
Stark TECH:
Then - None.
Now - Still none, but it's in the work, probably by the end of the summer. Probably another way to get gear to help us out.
Boosts:
Then - We had the 2 hours boosts back then, different types were added over the course of the year and they changed how the 2 hour boosts stacked where the bonus they afforded would grow, now it only adds more time, though the 1 hour boosts stack in the bonus given.
Now - So many different kinds of boosts, wouldn't be surprised if we see more types as the game goes along.
Prestiging:
Then - There was no prestiging to be had at first. You got to level 60 and kept playing, but they then gave us the option to reroll our characters to level 1 and get them back up to level 60, initially you could do that 5 times, but a few months ago they added a 6th level to prestige which will take the better part of a month to do so.
Now - No news on any additional prestiging, but the cosmic prestige level will likely make it so that you don't want to do it again.
These are all the types of things that have changed during that 1 year. During that time, the game has been rather generous to its players. There have been lots of weekend events, free hero tokens, costumes and some upgrades.
The anniversary so far has seen 365 items being given to us for free, including a stash tab, the 'Solid Frank' Punisher costume, 3 upgrade tokens, boxes of uniques, relics and boosts. The gifts have been a blast, but a week and a half in, there hasn't been a real weekend event, but the anniversary month isn't over yet and I'm hoping for lots of fun. Apparently we'll get something big at the end of it.
1 year later, I'm still quite happy to play the game. Deadpool is my main in the game and the only character I've decided to prestige to cosmic level. I currently have him at level 42 and hope to get him to level 60 before his rework later this summer.
I've found myself enjoying some characters that I didn't think I'd enjoy all that much, such as Jean Grey. Her Phoenix mode is fantastic. Rocket Raccoon and Squirrel Girl are some of my favorite summoners to play. Hulk has one of the best ultimate attacks in the game. Spider-Man is pretty fun since he got his 52 review. Taskmaster is a fun amalgamation of Spider-Man, Captain America and Daredevil. Thing is more fun to play after I rolled his Fear Itself Enhanced Costume. Nightcrawler is also very fun and quick.
I don't have any intentions of playing Iron Man, Torch, Sue or Richards once he's released. My dislike of those characters doesn't make me want to play them, even if Iron Man is supposedly over powered.
Psylocke was kind of a disappointment to me, she was a bore and a chore to level up. However I remind myself that Gambit was like that as well but since they reworked him, I have to admit he's one of my favorites to pick up and play when I want something different.
I'm very much looking forward to the Silver Surfer and Juggernaut as far as 2014 characters go. I've got a ton of boosts saved up just so that I can prestige Juggernaut from white to red as quickly as possible. Perhaps I'll even prestige him to cosmic level, but I'll have to see if that's something I want to do again once I get Deadpool back to level 60.
All in all, this is an awesome Free to Play game, though if you love it and really want something from it, chances are you're going to pay for something at some point.
Even during its 'broken' days, I loved the game, but right now, this is my main PC game to waste time on.