The grind in Marvel’s Avengers is being increased to fix “pacing issues”

There are a lot of things wrong with Marvel’s Avengers, a game that’s seemingly dead set on taking players who actually want to enjoy the game and do its best to convince them to never come back, yet the XP curve didn’t feel like one of the blunders to me.

Or rather the lack of an XP curve, something Crystal Dynamics is aiming to tweak with an upcoming update. Marvel’s Avengers is being adjusted so that players will need to earn more XP to level-up the higher their level, which is standard practice in most RPGs, right? Technically it makes sense, I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to play more of this game than they have to.

Speaking about the update in a blog post announcement, Square Enix said, “The current XP “curve” isn’t really a curve at all.

In most RPGs, the amount of XP you need to level up increases as you gain levels in a curve, but our system is a straight line. This has led to pacing issues, such as skill points currently being rewarded too fast, which may be confusing and overwhelming to newer players. We want each decision to invest in a skill or Heroic to be more meaningful.

From level 25, players will require more XP to eventually reach level 50 with the required amount increasing every level. Crystal Dynamics also made it clear these tweaks will only affect your character level and will have no bearing on your power level.

It sounds like a decent enough reason to increase the grind but the cynic can’t shake the feeling that forcing players to spend more time in the game is just a happy consequence of such an update. Crystal Dynamics also confirmed that the update, scheduled for 18 March, will also tweak the way certain cosmetics are rewarded. “We’ll be reworking how players obtain certain cosmetic items with the goal of providing more player agency and clarity about how to obtain them by removing randomness from the process.

Currently, many of these items are only obtainable through a random chance in strongboxes or in Chastity’s store (cosmetic vendor). We want to make sure that when you earn a cosmetic item, it is something you have had a choice in working towards.

Players will now need to obtain a sufficient number of units to purchase the cosmetic they want rather than cross their fingers.

Again, a reasonable change that allows players a say in what their rewards are… for the cost of putting more time into the game. That’s not entirely fair though, we don’t know how much these cosmetics will cost; they could be dirt cheap or priced to such an extent that grinding is necessary. Both of these changes will be included in the upcoming update which will also add in a new character, Clint “Hawkeye” Barton. Great, another Hawkeye is exactly what the game needed.

Last Updated: March 5, 2021