Marvel Heroes 2nd anniversary this week

General GTG Off Topic
1

This week is the 2nd anniversary of the free-to-play Marvel Heroes game.  The reason I'm mentioning this is because, since it's an anniversary event, they'll be giving out tons of goodies, so if you were interested in playing, now would be a great time to jump in.  And I figure at least some people here may like superheroes...

The game is essentially Diablo (3/4-view, mowing through lots of minions, taking down bosses) but you play as actual Marvel superheroes.  You can play any hero in the game for free up to level 10 (this is new with the anniversary patch) to try them out, and then you'll unlock your favorite to keep going.  You'll get drops in the game which you can use to unlock more heroes, or you can purchase them.  You can get alternate costumes too, so if you'd rather play as Cyclops wearing his classic 80's costume than his modern I'm-dressed-like-the-Gimp outfit, you can.  You can also get team-ups so you can run around with another hero backing you up.

Because everyone has the same set of 45+ heroes to choose from, it does mean you'll be playing as Scarlet Witch and run past five other Scarlet Witches sometimes, which I thought would bug me, but it totally doesn't.  They're who they are and I'm who I am, and it's fine.

The game has a storyline which takes you to classic Marvel locations (Madripoor, Asgard, Midtown Manhattan), you take down fun bosses like Green Goblin, Sentinels, Mole Man, etc. and they have "raids" where you have to defend the X-Mansion against waves of attackers, plus patrol areas where you roam the streets of New York looking for evil to stop.  There's no question that like Diablo, what you're doing at any given point will always come down to "destroying tons of mobs", but like Diablo, that makes for pretty fun gameplay for the most part.

The game is way more fun than I expected, it's free to play (though I've dropped a good amount of money into it so far to (a) reward it for being so good, and (b) get my hands on extra characters and costumes), and now's the best time to get in if you're interested because as part of the anniversary event month, they'll be giving out a free hero next week, a free pet the week after that, and a free team-up the week after that.

One thing to note - once you download the game you'll have to go through a pretty lengthy patching process before you can get in to play, so make sure you take care of that the night *before* you actually set time aside to sit down and play or else you'll use up your game night by sitting there watching the patcher progress bar slowly fill up.

It's available for both PC and Mac.  Excelsior!

https://marvelheroes.com

2

Also you may note that it is both best (game type) and most improved.  I have seen very few games that improve so much, constantly, over the life of a game.  This game is constantly getting better and better.

3

As someone who really only spends his discretionary money on board games but enjoys video games, how free to play is it?  I've seen it and been somewhat interested, but will my experience/enjoyment be severly hampered if I dont shell out actual monday.  Are their bosses I realistically won't be able to beat or content I cannot acquire without spending actual cash?

4

It's completely realistically free to play.  As soon as you get one character to level 10 you get a free uncap to max level, so no paying for your first hero.  They have daily rewards for logging in which, after a couple of days, net you enough shards to uncap a second hero as well, so within your first week you'll have two heroes to mess around with.  I'd say you'll get enough shards to get a new hero each month if you're playing regularly, all without paying.  Plus, as I said, you'll get another free character as part of the 2nd Anniversary event.

Random costumes are said to drop as loot, but I haven't seen any, and since they're random, they're not likely to be the ones you want.  So figure on paying for costumes, if they're your thing.

You can't buy gear and I've been able to put up a good fight against everything in the game with just in-game drops.   There's no question that purchasing a team-up will add to your firepower, but (a) it's not necessary, (b) as part of the 2nd Anniversary event, you'll get one for free anyway.

The thing which will be the most painful is the storage space.  It's not so hard to not hoard gear - you'll get drops which you aren't high enough level for and you'll get drops for other heroes, but loot is so plentiful there's really no reason to not just vendor anything you can't use right now.  What is difficult is there will be lots of runes and elements and other crafting material you'll probably want to keep, and they take up a lot of space.  $5 will unlock another bank slot.  I'm sure you could get by with just what the game gives you for free, but it's more pleasant with more space.

TL;DR - I would say with the possible exception of bank space, your experience should be good spending $0.

5

Awesome, thanks for the detailed reply.  I will definitely check it out this weekend

6

I can also vouch for this game, I've played since beta and it honestly wasn't great, but they added tons of content and rebuilt aspects of the game and now it's great. 

Just my 2 cents

7

I played around with it some last night/this morning.  I've honestly never really gotten into MMORPG so I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the different content/missions etc.  It is really fun so far just taking the different heroes around and leveling them up.  Are there any good beginner guides/resources y'all would recommend?

8

Here's the list of resources I've compiled in my month or so of playing:

  • List of heroes in the game and their available powers and costumes.  I get the impression it may be a bit old, but it's still good enough to give you an idea of what heroes can do and why you'd want to play them.  Now that every hero in the game is free to play until level 10, a list like this is less necessary, because you can just try them out yourself.
  • List of team-ups available.  Here's a team-up guide which is now obsolete because they revamped how team-ups work with the latest patch, but it will still give you an idea of the general idea of team-ups and why you'd want one.
  • Hub4heroes is the closest thing I've found to a fan site for MH worth reading.  It'll tell you the latest news and patch notes, and it collects promo codes from around the internet so you can use them (I've found that the most recent month or two of codes generally still work in the game).
  • A guide to the small pets you can get in game and why you'd want one.
  • Their official forums.  Mostly I just use this to read feedback on a hero before I spend time playing it.  Take it with a grain of salt though.  The general consensus was that Mr. Fantastic wasn't much fun to play because most of his powers can't be used while running, but I find him really fun to play.
  • A guide to the runes you'll be getting from drops.
  • Attributes and what they do for you.

One of the most useful pieces of info I read is that when you start out, you want to donate items to the Crafter (Hank Pym) and Enchanter (Asgardian Enchanter) rather than sell gear you don't want.  This levels them up and gets them better things they can do for you.  This is especially important for the Crafter because you'll be getting Costume Core drops which are things you can add to your costume to make it better.  The Crafter needs to be at least level 10 before he gets this recipe.  So, the idea is to donate to the Crafter until he's level 10, then the Enchanter until he's level 10, then finish them both off (level 20 max).

Another useful thing for noobs is you'll be getting lots of the crafting isotopes and genomes and whatever.  Rather than fill your bags with a million of them, the Crafter can combine them into higher level versions and can also split them into lower level versions.  This means you can save bank space by combining them into higher level items, then if you find you need a lower level one for a recipe, just split it back down.

One of the first things you'll be wanting to do with your crafting items is to add either defensive or offensive "affixes" (the game's name for bonuses, I guess) to your costume.  There are four levels you can add, so adding a Level 2 doesn't overwrite the Level 1.  However you can only have one type at each level, either defensive or offensive.

When you first start off, you can't go wrong by playing through the storymode.  It tells you where to go and puts an icon over the guy's head who will get you there.  If you don't want to do that, you can do the Midtown Manhattan patrol (there's a door in the bottom-right of Avengers Tower) where you run around Manhattan taking down bad guys in the street (fun).  You can get to other areas like Industry City Patrol (same idea as Manhattan but a different layout and different events/bosses), or go re-encounter villains you've beaten previously in the story, or do raid events like X-Mansion Defense, by using the SHIELD teleporters.

This will all make sense as you get used to the surroundings in the game.

One more thing -- I mentioned how bank space is a limiting factor.  I've unlocked two additional slots for $5 each and I'm doing pretty well for bank space.  So, if you find yourself being pinched, $10 for two slots is pretty much all you'd have to do to relieve the irritation.

9

The youtuber DannyC also has a huge guide over the entire game, it's quite long, but very useful, and I believe he's redoing it soo too, to cover over all the huge changes from the last year or so.

10

Link to Danny C's youtube video.  You weren't kidding, this thing is super long and super comprehensive.

11

Crafting materials do take up a lot of space, but you can buy up to six crafting material tabs for I think 300 points each.

You can also buy individual stashes for each hero at 350 points, I think.

The 2nd Anniversary will be running for a month. This week's reward is a "birthday cake" that creates a loot explosion for the character who uses it. Next week's reward will be a free hero. I forget what the third and fourth week rewards are. 

This game is my most played on Steam, but I've only got about 330 hours in it. Definitely worth it, though.

 

12

Thanks for all the info and links, I am beginning ti get my head around it.  I def want to play through story mode some to figure out which heroes I want to start with.  I had read the tip about donating items, already had my crafter to level 6 after just donating the stuff from today

13

Check out dc universe online. The game is great and been addicted to it. You do have to pay for new levels but it's not super expensive for the earlier episodes

14

That's a moba, right?  Like League of Legends or Heroes of the Storm.

15

I could be wrong, but I think the DC MOBA is Infinite Crisis, which is shutting down in August.

16

Oh right, DC Universe online is the MMO.

17

Nope the mmo and still going strong. They r trying to transition to start monthly content in August instead of every 3 months which is nice

18

I just realized there's another thing happening during the anniversary month for Marvel Heroes - there's an XP bonus of +22% which increases by another 22% each day of the week until the next week's patch, at which point it resets and starts over.  So should be good levelin' this month.

19

I tried DCU, but the behind the shoulder feels, a bit fiddly to me, and I prefer the Isometric view coming from RTSes and MOBAs

20

I bought random heroes with my second day shards since I didnt really havea preference and havent uncapped my first one yet.  Got DD and Jugernuat, currently have Jugs to level 25 grinding X-Defense and midtown while doing story with DD.  Love both of their styles and this game is really quite fun.  Considering Diablo II is still one of my favorite game ever porting that style + Marvel Super heroes is right up my alley