I’ve given Marvel Heroes it’s own category now as I suspect I might wind up talking about it a fair bit. I went to login to it this morning and it was down for maintenance, a fairly big patch, mostly of bug fixes had been put in place.
It wasn’t all bug fixes though and a forum thread caught my eye, and my interest. I finished the story and got my first hero – Storm – to endgame. In this patch they’d fixed the need to find a group yourself unless you wanted to, and much like with all the little ‘dungeon’ type things in the world, you got auto grouped if you have that option enabled. I liked this change as I don’t really know anyone in Marvel Heroes yet and so it’s nice to be able to run them, I had thought that I might not be able too.
So I had a plan worked out. I got my two free extra heroes through doing the quests on Storm (Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch). I thought that I would level those through the story. In the meantime I would run Storm through the terminals. Then I would run these new heroes through the terminals when they got there. The advantage to having multiple heroes that could do the terminals was the Cube Shards. Per account, per day there was a quest where you could hand in Cube Shards and get a Fortune Card. I think in my previous post I said that you could get a hero, but I now believe that not to be the case. You can get good stuff, mostly boosts, but costumes have a chance to drop too. Over and above this daily quest, Cube Shards were really useful for levelling up the crafter as they give good XP. I want to level my crafter up to access the costume core, so that I can put an extra chance for special items (heroes, costumes etc.)
That was the plan. I did hope that maybe in the course of getting the three heroes to the endgame that another hero would drop. If one didn’t then no matter I’m fairly certain I’ll be buying a hero at some point. I still feel that they are overpriced, but as I mentioned in the other post, if I view it as like “buying the game” then it feels ok. I’m also getting into the game and so my conscience is starting to prickle. I feel like I should buy something to support this game.
However, in the patch they made it so the Cube Shards only drop once per day, per account. Run that past me again? How does that make sense? Up until that change the whole ethos of Marvel Heroes seemed to be about multiple heroes, about building a roster, there was no need for a main as everything was shared. Considering that their income comes from people purchasing heroes that seemed to be a very good model to support. There are those with lots of heroes already unlocked as they bought founders packs, and ultimate packs etc. that were available pre-launch. They still have to level them all to max, they still have to run the terminals. Maybe it was a change to try and make it more equal for the f2p people, those that don’t have lots of heroes. However, I do find this incredibly counter-intuitive, surely they want everyone to spend money. Why would people spend money if there is no point to playing multiple heroes?
It remains to be seen whether the bonus to finding special items, which is the first kill of each boss a day, is per hero or whether it has changed like the Cube Shards to per account. I just don’t understand this change. It might seem like a small thing but it isn’t. I suppose in time when I’ve unlocked the crafter, then there would be less use for multiple Cube Shards so it won’t matter so much. Time will perhaps cure this. However, I repeat that it does seem like an odd move for a company to make, when it’s income is reliant on alts. Surely they should make more benefits to having multiple heroes, not less.
On another note I started levelling Hawkeye today. It’s different from playing Storm, plus I have got used to the higher level abilities. Hawkeye doesn’t have much aoe in his skill tree either. Still I’m learning new things like I can hold my mouse button rather than click it like crazy, hopefully that won’t destroy my mouse (I was getting worried) as it’s a Razer Naga and I want it to last. Perhaps I should plug in a different mouse for Marvel Heroes sessions? You can also teleport to other players, which means no corpse run if you die during a boss fight. That feature is very cool. I also like the bodyslide, it’s like a hearthstone but you return to where you were before – no vendoring issues.
Regardless of this … strange choice I’m going to continue to play and enjoy Marvel Heroes.
