Marvel Heroes 2015

I’m not a big comic guy. I have some self-contained Batman comics, I have some Alan Moore stuff, some stuff from Vertigo (DC Comic’s off label) and by typing this I’ve just now realized that I actually have more DC stuff than Marvel. I’m pretty sure I’ve got an anthology of Ultimate Spider-Man somewhere but that’s about it. I think comics are pretty stupid actually, but I’ve never been a longtime reader of any of them and maybe just reading Wikipedia’s condensed format of various arcs isn’t the best way to get informed of a comics history. I don’t like how disposable comic book heroes tend to be, dying and coming back to life and all that. That doesn’t mean I don’t hate everything about them though. I’m a nerd, I think shooting lasers out of my hands would be the coolest thing ever so comic book heroes are appealing by that idea alone. This is where Marvel Heroes comes in: it does a really good job of satisfying that feeling and a lot more.

Marvel Heroes, now titled Marvel Heroes 2015 in part to a complete reboot and restructuring of itself, is an free-to-play MMOaRPG made by Gazillion Entertainment. Gazillion is headed by David Brevik, one of the co-founders of Blizzard North who were responsible for the genre defining Diablo games. It’s an aRPG in the style of Diablo that stars the many heroes from the Marvel Comics universe. I don’t think I would have ever considered combining those two things together. I actually thought Marvel Heroes was another aRTS, more in the style of Dota 2 or League of Legends, because around the time it came out companies were clamoring to get their own version of the aforementioned games out because they thought aRTS’ were free money. While I didn’t play it when it first came out, I’m glad I didn’t and I’m glad I was wrong. Marvel Heroes was a mess when it first released and Gazillion went through the titanic effort of making their game not crap. This included a complete overhaul of every character in the game in what is called a “new 52 review” (ironically, as that is the name of a reboot to the DC Universe), the addition of raid content, a system that takes after Diablo III’s paragon system but if far more useful, and a ton of other changes I don’t even know about. I’ve only been playing the game for about a month now, so the vast majority don’t really matter to me due to my timing, but they’ve made the game better. Heroes are still getting their new 52 updates and special events are still being added to the game, and I think there is still room for improvement but Marvel Heroes is a solid playing aRPG as it is now.

I’ve waxed poetically pretty hard so far so I’ll get right into the nitty gritty of how the game works. When you first make an account and log in, you’ll need to pick one of about ten heroes to play as your first character. These heroes range from Black Panther to Colossus to Storm to Captain America to Punisher to Luke Cage and they all play like how you would expect the heroes to play. Black Panther is big single target DPS hero, Colossus is one of the best tanks in the game and can throw Wolverine into battle for a short time, Storm is a very strong area damage character, Luke Cage can call an entourage of other heroes to his aid and throws cars all day. It’s really cool and possibly the most important aspect of trying to make a game based off established heroes. Even in the context of an aRPG, where diverse skills and loot is king, if you’re playing as Wolverine and he doesn’t feel like Wolverine you’ve failed. Heroes skills are set up in a World of Warcraft talent tree kind of fashion, although not nearly as linked to each other as the older WoW talents were. Every hero has, or will have after their new 52 review, a Signature skill somewhere and an Ultimate skill which you get once you hit 52. The Signature skills are cool and range from Iron Man spinning like a top and sweeping his lasers in a circle to Colossus crying out with so much power it knocks even bosses to their knees. Ultimate skills are really something though. Gambit can call in Rogue as a temporary ally who lifts him up and lets you layer an area in explosive cards for crazy area damage before fighting with you for a short time. Wolverine breaks the attack speed cap and gets 100% critical chance. They are truly powerful, flashy abilities that have long cooldowns to match. Signature skills also have built in synergies with a characters Ultimate skill, so leveling up the Ultimate will benefit the Signature. There is also the Synergy System where, once a hero hits level 50, you can use that hero to confer stat bonuses to other heroes. This can range from minor buffs like rare and special item find to really good additional stats like critical strike and specific damage types. There is also the Omega System, which is Marvel Heroes own version of Paragon Levels, but I have yet to really explore it. As an additional, smaller but effective bonus, every hero you get to max level will give you a permanent experience bonus.

Once you’ve picked you hero there is a story mode to run through, which should be done at least once just to see it. It’s fun enough and you’ll fight against a mess of villains from across Marvel. The boss fights are actually really well done too. Coming from Diablo 3, where pre-ex pack there was not a single interesting boss fight and post-ex pack things got better but still not very interesting, I sat up and took note that there were quite a few cool things done for boss fights in Marvel Heroes. The last one in the campaign is particularly well done, if not also a complete pain in the ass the first time you encounter it. After you complete the story there are higher difficulties to run it on, ala typical aRPG fashion, but that isn’t the only thing there is to do. Once you hit level 20 you’ll unlock a host of new ways to level up and get loot. Midtown Patrol, which is an open, instanced area of downtown New York, can house up to around 20 to 25 players where you can run around and do nothing but beat up hordes of enemies and fight bosses that spawn regularly on a timer. It’s a lot of fun and I can’t begin imagine how awesome something like this would be in Diablo 3. Terminal Missions are instanced missions for solo or group play which basically encompass a single area of the campaign. The difficulty is scalable and this is the primary method of farming bosses for specific loot. Holo-Sim is a wave based defense mission for two where two lives are shared between the two heroes and you fight various waves of bad guys and bosses until you run out. X-Defense is a five man wave defense where you can die all you want, but it has another kind of fail condition where if you lose too many NPC’s in a wave, you lose the match. Two other things called Legendary Quests and Shared Quests are tied into all of these and all of them have different kinds of rewards. It’s a really diverse set of things to do, especially after I’ve played Diablo 3 for so long with nothing to do at the end of that game except smash your face into Bounties to get Rift Fragments and then smash your face into Nephalem Rifts over and over and over and over and do I have enough Blood Shards yet? Time to gamble on Kadala! Nothing? Back to the rift!

Did I also mention 10 man raids? Yes, raids! In an aRPG! While I haven’t run them myself, and there is only one available as of this writing, people seem pretty satisfied so far and Gazillion plans on expanding into more of them later.

Also recently implement are weekly events. Gazillion has created several weekly events that rotate throughout the month which range from things like Midtown Madness, which increases the loot drop from bosses in Midtown Patrol to an insane lootsplotion (amazing time for leveling up new characters and gearing fresh 60’s) to Cosmic Chaos, which increases the loot from Cosmic level Terminal bosses (great for well geared characters farming for “that one item”). They also come with their own event currency which can be exchanged for all kinds of special loot from an event specific vendor. You don’t even need to go out of your way to accomplish this stuff either. It’s all integrated into things like the Legendary and Shared Quests.

Let’s talk about the most important thing in an aRPG: the loot. Marvel Heroes has loot, and a lot of it. There is the basic rarity color range going from Common (white) to Cosmic (yellow), with Cosmic even having special generic proc effects, and Unique items which can range from hero specific to usable by anyone. Instead of selling all your items you’re not going to use, you can donate them to vendors to level them up and unlock unique options for gear. In the case of the Crafter and Enchanter, the two most important vendors, they’ll allow you to upgrade your items. Not just upgrade either; you can use them to unbind items you’ve already equipped, upgrade item rarity to Cosmic, reroll stats, add stats, add visual effects, and even trade Unique’s for Relics and Runes, two valuable types of items for making your character better in the endgame. There are more options for where your old, crappy or spare gear can go instead of just melting it down for a near useless crafting component *coughI’mnotbitterIswear*. Legendary Items are a cool thing, which is an item you earn after collecting Odin Marks from Legendary Quests. When you first get one, it doesn’t do anything but levels up over time to confer some powerful bonuses to your hero. Odin Marks aren’t even that hard to get so getting one doesn’t take long and leveling a Legendary only takes about a week.

This is all well and good, but I did mention that Marvel Heroes is free-to-play so I should talk about the caveats to that. The follow is a list of things that you can buy with real cash, along with some additional notes…

• Heroes – Can be unlocked without paying via Eternity Splinters. Range from $4 to $9, Spider-Man is $13.50 for some crazy reason.
• Costumes – Very, very rare chance of dropping through normal play. Range from $4.50 to $14.50 with special “Enhanced” costumes being the most expensive and containing totally new models and voice work, such as making Shuri the Black Panther or Gambit as Death. I’d say the average price is $10.
• Vanity Pets – $7 each.
• EXP/Rare Item Find/Special Item Find Boosters – Occasionally given out for free through story play or promo codes. $1 each.
• Retcon Devices, respec potion – Reliably gained through story play and Eternity Splinters, rare drop too. $1.25 each.
• Unstable Molecules, high-level crafting item – Rare drop and Eternity Splinters. $.50 each.
• Matrix of Unbinding, high-level crafting item for unbinding items – Rare drop and Eternity Splinters. $1 each.
• Team Ups (Followers) – Can be unlocked without paying via Eternity Splinters. Not required for play in the first place. Range from (there is a sale right now so I can’t see the original prices, but the average is around $6).
• Cards – Essentially bonus boxes that can give anything from boosters to rare crafting items to exclusive costumes. Occasionally given away for free via promo codes. $1 each.
• Stash Space – You start out with a single Stash box with 48 slots and can buy up to 18 “general” stashes, 6 crafting stashes and even a single stash for hero specific items. General Stashes are $5, Crafting Stashes are $3, Hero Stashes are $3.50. You cannot get these without buying them.

So then how do you actually earn all this stuff in-game? Eternity Splinters, the games “soft currency” are an item that drops on a timer, about every 6-10 minutes. You can get anywhere from one to two to ten to a jaw dropping twenty during Midtown Madness, although the higher amounts are more rare. I’ve gotten a good handful of two drops and one ten drop. Your first run through the story mode will net you a free 200 Splinters as well. Stockpiling these will allow you to purchase additional Heroes, Team Ups, Recton Devices, Matrix’s, Molecules and Ultimate power upgrades. Additional Heroes and Team Ups can cost anywhere from 200 to 600 Splinters, but you can also buy a random hero for 175 and if you get a duplicate you can use that towards upgrading that heroes Ultimate. This is a really nice deal if you own less than half the roster or aren’t looking for a specific hero to play next. I would say the one point they’re going to really stick you on is stash space, but people have very well played this game without paying a cent. They’re just way, way less of a pack rat than I am.

The largest piece of criticism I can lay on Marvel Heroes is that the UI is not that great. It works, but you need to edit an .ini file to bind more ability buttons than the main bar. There are no debuff timers. Buff timers are very limited. Floating health bars on enemies can be really hard to see, which sucks when you’re fighting a small boss. Linking items in chat is more of a hassle than it should be, as is clicking items in chat. Clicking on peoples names in chat doesn’t have an invite option so you need to type out hajoobiejoe’s name exactly as it’s spelt every time you want to invite someone to a party. Managing chat channels is also less intuitive than it can be. The map can also be touched up to show objectives more clearly, maybe even a drag function to move it around. Not a complaint about the game itself, but information about Marvel Heroes outside of the official forums is scarce and there isn’t even an updated skill planner anywhere. It puts a bit of a damper on seeing what other heroes can do just by peeking at their skill trees.

Marvel Heroes is a pretty awesome aRPG, and a really stand out free-to-play. After dumping several hundred hours into Diablo 3, in the lull between the 2.1 patch I started playing and was really hooked. I like it far more than Diablo 3, especially in terms of economy and end game. There is simply more to do. Gazillion has a long plan for Marvel Heroes ahead of them, which they keep a pretty open book of on their forums and they have an amazing record of communication with their community. I’m telling you to give Marvel Heroes a go, especially if you’re a fan of aRPG’s. If you’re a Marvel fan, go for it. If you’re neither, I say give it a shot anyway. It’s free.