Marvel’s Avengers fans may have seen its end coming, but that doesn’t stop the disappointment caused by not seeing its story finished or potential met.
Following developer Crystal Dynamics’ announcement that it would be delisting Avengers and ending active development, its community took to social media to share their disappointment.
Many complained about cosmetics being made free after its dedicated community had already spent considerable amounts of money on them, others lamented that long-requested features would never come to be, and others just shared their sadness that a game they enjoyed is shutting down.
The biggest complaint, however, seems to be that Avengers will forever have an unfinished story, as despite having three major expansions, plot points set up in the base game will now remain unanswered.
This was the biggest issue for Reddit user Isa-MC, who said Avengers was “a game full of potential, ended without fulfilling its complete story,” and adding that “the fact we are getting no Kree, no Ultron, no Carol, and no proper end really bums me out”.
Another user, Rojo696, hoped for a mini-series from Marvel to finish the story, saying “it would give us all some closure”.
YouTuber BobDuckNWeave, who has played and covered Avengers since the first day of its beta and clocked around 2,000 hours, agreed that this is the biggest travesty.
“We’ll never see a resolution to the main story and we’ll never really see the full potential realised,” he told IGN. “I don’t doubt the passion and talent of the developers themselves, I just wish they were given the sorely needed resources to at least close out the final parts that had been set up since day one.”
Marvel’s Avengers struggles
Alongside sewing in story threads that would never come to be since day one, Avengers has also been criticised by fans and critics since it was first revealed. IGN called it one of E3 2019’s biggest disappointments, citing the live service game’s lack of post-launch support as an issue from the get-go.
We again brought this up in our 6/10 review, saying that while “Avengers’ campaign is fun and endearing, the loot-based post-game meant to be the meat of this meal is unrewarding and overly repetitive.”
This was also evidenced by player data as, according to Steam DB, the roughly 30,000 players at launch dropped to less than 10,000 two weeks later, and around 3,000 two weeks after that — a worrisome trend for a live service game that was intended to get better with time.
This is what contributed most to its downfall, BobDuckNWeave said, as while the likes of Fortnite has regular updates that keep its core audience actively engaged, Crystal Dynamics choosing to release larger, story-based expansions once or twice a year didn’t keep people around.
“It always seemed like Avengers just lacked the player-base to be able to survive this way as very little endgame replayable content was added, so people would come back to play the free story DLCs and then leave without diving into the multiplayer and interacting with the marketplace,” he said.
The writing was on the wall
BobDuckNWeave expected active development to continue for a while longer though, to at least include the long rumoured Kree Invasion and Captain Marvel DLC (data for which was found in the latest update), but admitted its delisting announcement wasn’t that much of a surprise.
“I think many of us who play the game — and many that don’t — knew the writing was on the wall,” he said. “As time went on we received less and less communication from the team on what they were working on, hearing from them only when there was a significant update coming like a new character, also the time between these updates increased too causing a relatively small player-base to continue to shrink.”
“A large amount of folks are definitely out. Some are just good with what they got out of the game. Others are angry and upset that their time and money investment is gone.”
November’s inclusion of The Winter Soldier as a playable character clearly wasn’t enough to bring Avengers back into consideration for Crystal Dynamics, but despite it being the last piece of major content coming to the game, BobDuckNWeave expects some of the community to keep playing.
“Whilst this game has been extremely polarising for the game community as a whole there are people who loved and even still love the game,” he said. “[They] are still working to provide feedback to the developers to leave us with something we’ll enjoy playing after the final update in March.”
It remains to be seen how many players will stick around after that final update, of course, and BobDuckNWeave said “a large amount of folks are definitely out. Some are just good with what they got out of the game. Others are angry and upset that their time and money investment is gone.
“Regardless though, I think this game will continue to be played a lot longer than many ever thought,” he added. “I will continue to play even after the delisting. For all of its faults I still love the game, and as I’ll occasionally go back to games like Mass Effect, Skyrim, and more, I’ll continue to do that with Marvel’s Avengers.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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