Marvel Heroes Week 2 Review

Being I dabble in playing marvel heroes when I have time that means my marvel heroes play time is on the weekend.  In week two I have noticed a few things I would like to see changed.  As I mentioned in the initial review the game has potential but needs some work.  Now in week two I get down to some of the things I think need work.

End Game: Dungeons

There needs to be something else to do.  Maybe there is and I have not found it yet but spamming instanced content to continue leveling is not my idea of fun.  More so when doing all the dungeons available at the avengers tower I never once got a full group.  Did the first few with four and took me hours, not kidding, hours, trying to get a modok group.  I would join, be alone, kill some trash, leave.  I did this over and over at least 7 times before I got lucky and had a group with 2 other people in it.

We started with one standing at the entrance doing nothing and just the two of us clearing trash.  We got to doctor octopus and preceded to get our asses handed to us.  We zerged it until we downed it.  Sometimes I think it would have been easier solo than it was with 2 people.  The third person had dropped group just before that point.  We continued along until modok and the other person left.  I tried to solo it but couldn't so I gave up and had to start at the beginning again. 

Four more attempts to join for a group found me solo.  I did not even waste my time clearing trash because it was not worth the effort.  Not like anything would ever drop that was decent for me anyway.  I took some time off and did mad group 1.  I joined and was solo again.  There is no auto grouping for this one, so I had no choice, no one wanted to join a group so it was do it solo or do not do it at all.

The worst part of this is that you need to do this before you can do the challenge ones which is where you are supposed to do all your leveling.  Really, this is how we are supposed to level?  You have got to be kidding me.  More on that later.

I managed to take my sweet ass time and solo two of the four zones in mad 1 at 27.  Not really all that easy with DD as he does not seen to have the greatest of AoEs but he does have excellent mobility and I used that to my advantage.  With the more knowledge I have now I am sure I could have actually done all 4 myself if I tried a second time.  Not sure if I would have got the boss.  A few more tries at getting a modok group that ended in me being alone and I finally saw someone asking for a group for mad 1 and joined him.  It was just he and I but he was relentless trying to get a group spamming chat and after about 45 minutes we had a full group with a level 33 involved as well.  So we did mad 1.

I got myself a modok group shorty after that, was only 4 of us, two left on modok and me as DD with another DD two manned it.  At least I got it done, that is all that mattered.  We switched between add duty and boss duty as if we were talking to each other on vent even if we were not.  We melded well together in play style and we both seemed to adapt to what the other was doing making it easy, even if long, fight for a 28 and 26.

I found a doom group on my first try and was lucky enough to get into a group with 2 40s in it.  Which means I really did not need to do a great deal with it.  I just came along for the ride.  Easy peasy when you don't have to do all the heavy lifting.

I did a couple of mad 1 challenges and got to level 30, there is some good experience to be had there.  But looking at it and knowing this is the content I need to grind to get to max level immediately made it less appealing.  Timed groups I need to wait for and can miss is not really fun.  Once I waited for the countdown to reach zero and instantly it was back at 15 minutes again so I having to wait again also was a huge turn off.

So suggestions here: 

Have the auto group function work for mad 1 also.  Have the daily dungeons scale, even mad 1 scale.  I should not need to try to enter something a dozen times to find a group.  If I am solo, make it for the solo player based on class.  It would just be better design that way.  Better than me wasting hours to try and get a group.  And the mad challenge thing needs to be more come as you are.  You know, a constant thing where you come and go as you please.  This waiting 15 minutes and you can still miss it in a matter of 1 second is not going to cut it, even more so if this is how I am supposed to level.

End Game: PvP

I joined red team.  I am DD, he wears red, seemed appropriate right.  Doesn't make a difference what team I was on or what color I was wearing, death would be all I would ever know.  Not because of my lack of PvP skill or anything but because what prayer do I have when I am 28 and everyone else in there was at least 44.  I saw maybe one or two people in their 30s and I tried to fight them and still lost but at least I lasted a while and could put a little hurting on them but more often than not I would run into the fray and die instantly to some level 50+ spamming an AoE that one shot me.

So suggestions here:

Brackets.  No really.  I would not mind dying if I could at least have a chance.  If I knew it was something I was doing wrong I could get better but when I can not even get in range of someone because their AoE one shots me it loses all its fun.  I attempted to find someone on the other teams my level and kept going in and dieing and just quit.  I won't be going back until I am max level now and I doubt I will then either, the bad taste is already in my mouth for PvP in marvel heroes.  Brackets could have changed that.

End Game: Leveling

Unlike WoW end game here end game is when story mode ends.  It could end between 25-30 for most people when they beat doom on quest mode.  Level cap is 60.  So you have to level as part of the end game.  I have no issues with that.  I like to level but am not really interested in it as they have it now.  Spamming challenges is not exactly my idea of fun.  They need to have new zones with higher mobs that you can just walk into.  Like the open world zones when leveling but for higher levels.  So I can pop in and grind at will when I want to.  Now that would be a lot more fun then waiting for the queue time for this all day long.  Is there an area like that I have not found yet?  Sure hope so.

So suggestions here:

Add some non instanced option to grind.  It is pretty sad that once you finish the story your entire life is spent in instances.  We need a world to be out in or it is not really an MMO no matter how many instances you give us.  Just because there are lots of people you might meet in queue nothing will ever have a real MMO feeling than seeing people out in the world.  People you meet in instances are just NPCs really.  At least that is how I always felt about them.  They are not people.  People are the ones you meet walking around and there is no place to walk around here.  More world zones that are level appropriate are needed.

Moving along...

So I ditched DD, nothing really interesting about the end game, at least nothing I would want to do.  I did get the fabled cow thing from my card however, so as rare as that is supposed to be I guess it was a good take.  I was just not going to sit and wait for groups to not get any gear.  I think I've had enough of that with wow.  No thank you.  This goes back to the outdoor world thing.  At least there I can grind when I want and how I want so not getting any drops is something I can deal with.  But when I do organized group content I kind of expect to sometimes get something I can use.  Three mad 1 challenges and not one thing I could even equip dropped.  Hey, at least I put the other stuff in my over stuffed to begin with banks so I have it if and when I can make that character.

Starting Over:

I started over on my third character.  My second, the thing, had no quests because I did not want to reset quests when I started him as I had not finished them on DD yet.  This is a really horrible idea.  Every character should have their own quest line.  That just goes without saying, how could they not do that.   It is a glaring oversight by the designers in my opinion unless I read something wrong.  It seems like the quest progression is tied to me.  Not to my characters.  If that is indeed the case it needs to be fixed.

I started a third character now and when asked to reset my quest progression I did some online research and found that if I reached end game and reset I would still be allowed to do end game on the character that reached it.  So I reset my quest progression and my new character could start from the beginning with the quests.  Now that was nice.

I really do not think it would have been fun grinding and grinding only to level.  Quests might not offer much but it works nicely as a guide on where to move to next and I like that.

So suggestion here: 

They need to add individual character progression.  So you can be at different stages of the quests on different characters and not just have them all be one bunch collected to do the same quest line.

Overall:

Second week of play was not as enjoyable as the first.  The lack of anything to do end game could very well put the nail in the coffin of this game for me once I am done leveling my other characters.  Once you are done leveling through the quests there really doesn't seem to be anything worth doing. 

They need a few world zones for leveling past 30 and not just instanced crap.  Something you can do without a group.  And being they really require groups for everything, having mad 1 part of auto grouping would be nice because you can't do anything until you do that and without a group maker, even on the weekend when the game was packed, trying to assemble a group for it was near impossible.

I've still got thing and scarlet witch to level and I might even buy another if the mood strikes me to do so.  But at the moment I am not exactly sure this is a game I would want to support to much with money as it is not worth it.

I can not see how you released a PvP system, even if it only beta, with no brackets.  I can not see how you release a game where each character does not have their own quest progression.  I can not see how you release a game with no way to level end game outside of instanced content and not in the open world like it should be for anything that wants to call itself an MMO.

As I said after week one, I like the game and for a free to play game it is a great time waster, but if it really wants to be more than something that people play for a few hours or a few days or even a few weeks and then forget about it, they need to address some of the glaring issues with the game, like the ones I mentioned.

End note:

Another change I would like to see made is the dungeon kick function.  Three times yesterday I was kicked.  Twice before my loading screen even put me in the instance I was kicked, and the third time it was three level 10s that kicked me as soon as I zoned in and said, we don't want anyone else with us.

I am all fine and dandy with those three wanting to play together and not wanting me there.  I'll just zone in again and get another group.  I don't know why the other two kicked me because I was kicked the second I zoned in.  My screen had not even loaded the dungeon yet, that was how fast I was kicked, we are talking like in less than the 5 seconds it takes to load a screen.

What my issue with the kick function is is that it places you back at your starting zone for the quest chapter you are on.  Now I need to fight the whole fucking way back there.  I do not mind if someone does not want me in their group.  Ask me to leave and I will walk out.  Kicking me puts me roughly 15 minutes away from where I need to be best case scenario. Just made me yell, you mother fuckers, at my screen.  If I knew who kicked me I would purposely follow them around and try to get groups with them just to kick them so they have to travel the long way back to where they were too.  That is uncalled for and is rude.  You can solo most leveling dungeons on any class.  Just let someone tag along.  I had a few level 4s in one I was doing at 12 and I just soloed it, who cares that they were a low level, drag them along, this is supposed to be an MMO isn't it?  It is not like wow where a certain level of ability is required even if minimal.  You can zerg this content meaning if you are willing to spend the time you can basically solo anything.  There is no reason to ever kick anyone.

So suggestion here:

When someone is kicked put them at the gate of where they were kicked from.  NOT back at their starting zone.  Seriously, how could they even think that is a reasonable kick system.  Making the person that did nothing wrong except not be part of whatever clique that group was part of run all the way back to the entrance.

One of those two times I was kicked and did not know why it took me over an hour to make it back to the gate.  And guess what, I was the only person in there and I soloed it.  It is not like I was asking for a carry.  I just wanted to do my quest.  I should have been put back at the entrance when I was kicked.  Plain and simple.  If there is one thing I can rage about, as you saw I did a bit up there, this is it.  The most horrible design flaw I have run into so far in this game and one of the few rare times I actually cursed like a sailor at my screen.  It is griefing in the most extreme way. Ha ha, lets make this poor smuck have to work his way all the way back here.  Yeah, not a good design at all.  Have kicked people go out to the gate of the instance they were kicked from.  That is the only reasonable solution.

In the end, we are not playing a finished product, we are playing a public beta.  There are too many issues for it to be considered a finished product.  The fact that the actual game ends before you are even half way to level cap kind of proves this was not really a finished release.  Lets hope the patches come fast and they fix things sooner than later.