Seven months after Marvel's Avengers originally launched, the game remains a work in progress. While the live service title was initially praised for its campaign, the rest of the package has been met with criticisms surrounding the online portions of the title as well as the various bugs, issues, and lack of meaningful content. In fact, Avengers has continued to lose its player base, putting a big strain on its matchmaking systems as it attempts to put players together for co-op missions.
Still, Crystal Dynamics continues forward with quality of life updates, patches for bugs, as well as new heroes like Kate Bishop and Hawkeye. While the experience remains far from perfect in the eyes of many fans, a long awaited roadmap was recently revealed, giving players some idea of when new content would be arriving including the surprising expansion centered around Wakanda and Black Panther. The studio made another big move today, which hints at further improvements coming to the game.
Taking to Twitter, game designer Brian Waggoner announced that he was moving on from EA Sports and joining Crystal Dynamics in May as a system designer for Marvel's Avengers. Many fans expressed excitement over the move due in large part to Waggoner's background an experience. Prior to EA, Waggoner served as game designer on Marvel Heroes, a free-to-play MMO that had a similar story to what Marvel's Avengers is currently going through.
The loot based game launched back in 2014 to middling reviews with most outlets praising the story but panning the combat and customization. However, the teams at Gazillion Entertainment and Secret Identity Studios continued to refine the experience and over time, Marvel Heroes became a fan favorite title thanks in large part to its action elements, even expanding to consoles a couple of years later. However, once Disney purchased Marvel, the partnership ended and the game was shut down in 2017 with its assets being scoop up by Trion Worlds.
Waggoner continued by saying he wasn't sure he wanted to return to another Marvel game, though after speaking with members of the development team at Crystal Dynamics and the passion they had for the game, he couldn't say no. In addition, Crystal Dynamics leadership asked Waggoner to give them honest feedback about the game and its current set of issues. After doing just that, Waggoner mentioned that they were more than receptive to his suggestions.
While hiring one person may not by the big cure fans were hoping for, the hiring does indicate that Crystal Dynamics is still very invested in trying to turn the game around. With recent updates, communications from the team, and a host of DLC content still planned to arrive like the MCU suits, Marvel's Avengers could be aiming for a comeback story. The road is still a long one, but the foundation seems to be pretty solid.
Marvel’s Avengers is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.