Marvel’s Avengers: A-Day

[Ktisis]

1 hour ago, Retroguy said:

 

you get enemies floating in mid air after being juggled

 

Now I'm being really picky here but are you sure that isn't just the anti grav perk on gear pieces?  You're right about the other stuff though, just today (because I booted it up to check the Helicarrier rooms so I did a couple of missions until I crashed half way through a Hive and got annoyed) I got hit by a laser as Tony and was flying around T-Posed until I decided to land and reset the animations. That shouldn't be happening at launch, let alone after however many patches we've had now. Even Mass Effect Andromeda fixed their shitty animations pretty quickly. Also I can totally buy Spiderman just being a Widow reskin, they'll just add a reskinned stun debuff for webbing and call it a day, maybe work in pinning guys to walls like Mjolnir does. Widow basically moves and jumps just like Spiderman anyway.

[Retroguy]

1 minute ago, Fneeb said:

 

Now I'm being really picky here but are you sure that isn't just the anti grav perk on gear pieces?  

Oh yes, totally- this is after they’ve died and their corpse is just floating stuck in mid air, and I don’t have any gear with that effect anyway. It’s a physics bug- I’ve had plenty of objects just stuck in midair too.  I’ve even had prompts to takedown enemies as they’re floating and obviously you can’t get to them.

[mdn2]

Ouch.

[moosegrinder]

I guess there comes a time when you're in for a penny you're in for a pound. Also maybe they were being pushed to release it by the Mouse, but that doesn't tie into any marketing push for anything else.

 

Again, I would pay good money for an honest post mortem documentary of the making of this.

[Mr. Gerbik]

I wonder how many pounds they're willing to be in for and for how long. Obviously they want to recoup, and they probably have the glorious resurrection of FFXIV still fresh in their minds. But looking at how the development of Avengers has slowed down I don't know if they're hoping or expecting the game to recover without pumping a shitload of money into it all over again to start from scratch. Because I doubt it can be salvaged without doing so.

[moosegrinder]

Well this is it. I think they would have been too far into development at the MP beta to slam the brakes on, so they just pushed forward with it. Now it's out I reckon they'll cut their losses and bin all future development.

[StumpyJohn]

57 minutes ago, mdn2 said:

Ouch.

 

Sounds like they have a bad case of sunk cost fallacy in thinking that they can turn this one around.

Also, how have they managed to spend so much money and just get a big dog shit out of it?

 

[moosegrinder]

1 minute ago, StumpyJohn said:

 

Sounds like they have a bad case of sunk cost fallacy in thinking that they can turn this one around.

Also, how have they managed to spend so much money and just get a big dog shit out of it?

 

Incompetence. Too many chiefs not enough Indians maybe. I'd say it'll almost certainly be at a managerial decision making level.

[Mr. Gerbik]

5 minutes ago, moosegrinder said:

Well this is it. I think they would have been too far into development at the MP beta to slam the brakes on, so they just pushed forward with it. Now it's out I reckon they'll cut their losses and bin all future development.

Yeah, they're "adamant that they can make a recovery" but the way development has slowed down and DLC could maybe never appear, that's signalling the exact opposite. A huge Marvel nerd I know excitingly paid 220 euro for the super deluxe version thinking the game would last years like the most successful examples of this genre do.

[Mr. Gerbik]

50 minutes ago, StumpyJohn said:

 

Sounds like they have a bad case of sunk cost fallacy in thinking that they can turn this one around.

Also, how have they managed to spend so much money and just get a big dog shit out of it?

 

 

48 minutes ago, moosegrinder said:

Incompetence. Too many chiefs not enough Indians maybe. I'd say it'll almost certainly be at a managerial decision making level.

And all signs point to the project starting out as a traditional 3rd person action adventure type affair before the mandate came it to turn what they had into a Destiny-like. Thus ending up with an engine that's completely unsuited to the genre and the online co-op structure. A game that feels Frankensteined together with not just the kind of bugs you'd expect, but weird limitations in the basic tech. One of Hulk's special moves leaving him frozen in midair in certain levels because he hits the skybox - the engine they're using apparently unable to cope with that problem.

[Retroguy]

Another example of that is Thor’s supermove where you basically beam down in the bifrost which you can move around before selecting a spot and doing AoE damage. When you come to position it, it won’t just jump between different levels of the area. This is because the way they’ve done it is basically that you’re still controlling Thor, but he’s now invisible within the targeting effect. So, if you want to place it say on a balcony, when you activate it from a lower level, you have to walk the bifrost up the stairs 

[mushashi]

On 07/11/2020 at 09:25, StumpyJohn said:

 

Sounds like they have a bad case of sunk cost fallacy in thinking that they can turn this one around.

Also, how have they managed to spend so much money and just get a big dog shit out of it?

 

 

There are several examples of Service Games which have managed to survive poor launches in the current console generation so it's not exactly an insane hope, depends on implementation. Even the maligned Fallout 76 survived and is supposedly now actually good even.

 

No idea if this will, but it's certainly not impossible for them to at least recover their costs on it, Anthem ain't dead apparently either and that was the last major Service Game to bellyflop.

[Retroguy]

4 hours ago, mushashi said:

 

There are several examples of Service Games which have managed to survive poor launches in the current console generation so it's not exactly an insane hope, depends on implementation. Even the maligned Fallout 76 survived and is supposedly now actually good even.

 

No idea if this will, but it's certainly not impossible for them to at least recover their costs on it, Anthem ain't dead apparently either and that was the last major Service Game to bellyflop.

I’d say this game is somewhat unique from all those examples though. There are so many inherent issues with the game that they’re going to have to have to go back to the drawing board and rewrite massive portions of it to get it to an acceptable level for what they’re purporting to want to achieve.

 

Those other games had the right basic frame in place to support further development. This, you can most definitely tell, does not- the levels, the AI, the multiplayer infrastructure, the menus, these are all currently massively flawed. That’s even before you address the lack of game content and the loot system.

[footle]

The big licence fee to marvel, and who knows what other attached penalties, probably required the game to come out. Not owning the underlying IP, unlike EA with Anthem or Bethesda with Fallout, isn’t going to help matters.

[sandman]

I bought this entirely for the single player campaign and I’m having a blast even if it’s painfully obvious that the devs wanted to be making the next Tomb Raider. 

[cassidy]

I just started this as well this morning and really enjoying the SP Campaign. They have gotten Kamala spot on. Loving it. 

[Retroguy]

The new character is due out today, so thought I’d have a quick play to see what the state of the game is like.

 

It’s still atrocious, with game breaking bugs, as well as lots of visual ones.

 

Played a multiplier game with one other person (couldn’t find more than one other person to join my quick play game). Got to near the end of the level, had to kill a group of enemies. Near the last respawn group, we knock one through the floor. But he’s still alive. So we can’t kill them and finish the level. Reload the last checkpoint. Get to the same bit, this time the enemies don’t spawn, but our objective is still to kill them. Reload again. They don’t respawn. Give up.

 

And this was amongst other bugs like ms marvel having arms constantly stretched out over the whole level. Just woeful stuff lol

[dreamylittledream]

18 minutes ago, Retroguy said:

The new character is due out today, so thought I’d have a quick play to see what the state of the game is like.

 

It’s still atrocious, with game breaking bugs, as well as lots of visual ones.

 

Played a multiplier game with one other person (couldn’t find more than one other person to join my quick play game). Got to near the end of the level, had to kill a group of enemies. Near the last respawn group, we knock one through the floor. But he’s still alive. So we can’t kill them and finish the level. Reload the last checkpoint. Get to the same bit, this time the enemies don’t spawn, but our objective is still to kill them. Reload again. They don’t respawn. Give up.

 

And this was amongst other bugs like ms marvel having arms constantly stretched out over the whole level. Just woeful stuff lol

What format are you on?

 

I’ve played quite a lot over the last month to 6 weeks and on PC it seems pretty stable to me, not encountered any game breaking bugs at all.

 

I only play with bots however due to the matchmaking issues so that might be an influence.

 

Was quite looking forward to the DLC...

[Retroguy]

11 minutes ago, dreamylittledream said:

What format are you on?

 

I’ve played quite a lot over the last month to 6 weeks and on PC it seems pretty stable to me, not encountered any game breaking bugs at all.

 

I only play with bots however due to the matchmaking issues so that might be an influence.

 

Was quite looking forward to the DLC...

PS5.

 

Yeah, I was matchmaking with a level 50 with a power level of about 118. It matched me with a level 7 character with a level 9 power level. Unsurprisingly, I left that group lol How can they still not have fixed this?

 

This is also the only game I’ve played on the new console that still takes ages to load.

 

Good job you’re only playing single player- since they’re only releasing one new character, you won’t be able to play online with anyone else using her. Not like multiplayer was a focus for the game or anything though! 

[Gabe]

I wonder what player numbers are like for this now and what 2021 holds for it. 

[Retroguy]

A slow death to save as much face as possible I imagine. There can’t be more than a skeleton crew working on this now to try and show they weren’t lying when they promised years of content, until everyone forgets about it and they sweep it under the carpet. Considering the Aim cloning lab content, promised two weeks after release (when the game is already knee-deep in clones), still hasn’t appeared shows just how little progress they’re actually making.

[Hexx]

So Kates fun - feels almost like playing Nightcrawler.

 

The problem is you’re endgame back in the same few missions against same few enemy types...

[Gabe]

This keeps greeting me when I open Steam and I won't deny that at half price I'm getting tempted to buy it, on the basis that a lot of people seem to say the campaign is good.

 

To help me to push the button, is there anything on the horizon that will make the end game worthwhile? And is the new character stuff all free or buyable with currency earned in-game?

[dreamylittledream]

I really liked it, the campaign is a solid combination of modern Tomb Raider with a brawler and the characters all play quite distinctively.

 

Tells a really nice little avengers story and the characters are really spot on (despite the slight visual air of Poundland MCU). Looks really good too in places (less so in others though to be fair).

 

Seems pretty stable on PC now (console versions may differ).

 

End game wise, I continued to enjoy taking all the characters up to level 50 and the soft cap, even though the post campaign missions are thin to say the least, and you will tire of beating up the same robots.

 

Screw chasing max power though, that just gets silly and tedious.

 

I got a solid 60 hours out of it before I got bored and I am intending to return to it to try the Hawkeye(s) DLC so would recommend at the current price.

[Mogster]

@Gabe You can save a bit more in the GMG sale, which has it at £21.25. I'm tempted myself at that price for the sake of the campaign.

[Retroguy]

If you’re just buying it for the campaign, it’s maybe worth about £20 if you like the Marvel universe. But only once, as there’s still no way to replay it lol

 

Anything else it still a total shambles- there are still tons of bugs, even ones like getting duplicate characters in your team, objectives failing to trigger and daily missions not working. At some stage, most of these were fixed, but then reintroduced in later patches. There are also massive flaws and limitations with how the game was built, which I expect never to be rectified. I think it’s fair to say that whoever’s left working on this has no idea how to fix it.

And that’s aside from the shameful lack of content, both in terms of what there was at release, and what was promised but never delivered.

[Thor]

7 minutes ago, Retroguy said:

as there’s still no way to replay it lol

You fucking what?

 

[Gabe]

I presume new characters add some new story missions?

[Retroguy]

12 minutes ago, Thor said:

You fucking what?

 

Haha yeah, they’re still ‘working’ on that apparently, and have been since it was highlighted on release  I’m assuming there’s only a skeleton crew on the game now, but even so, it’s pretty woeful lol

[Retroguy]

13 minutes ago, Gabe said:

I presume new characters add some new story missions?

You get a few new cutscenes, but otherwise it’s just more of the same old repeated objectives you’ve been doing over and over again in open world maps. There’s one new boss fight against a slightly different synthoid, which is themed around a new area like the vaults, but that’s it. And you can’t replay that boss fight because they haven’t added that bit yet, so the daily missions are still the same as always lol