Got to try more Marvel Heroes on Saturday's Closed Beta... I have to say I'm more convinced now..
Got to understand the Crafting System a little better.. In the game, Hank Pym is your crafter. Basically, you go to him for all your crafting needs. You collect different elements with different grades and you can upgrade them by combining 3 of the same element together (so similar to Diablo..)
You can also upgrade Hank Pym's crafting level by "depositing" items to him. So basically you decide if you want to sell your unwanted items for credits or upgrade your crafter. (You can do the same for your items vendor). Higher rarity items increase your level faster and you get better Hank Pym gets better crafting abilities.
The system is very similar to Diablo of course and if the rewards are good, it will keep the loot-hunters happy as you will need to find the crafting materials for each recipe.
I managed to access the public realm this time. As a beginner and someone new to MMO games, I found it very messy. People are running all over the place, enemies keep spawning. Hopefully I will get used to it after a while.
From what I have experienced so far, there are 2 kinds of maps.. Public Realms and Private Instances.
Private Instances: This is where all the story missions are at. When you enter a Private Instance map, only you and your party are in the map. You complete your quest and then go back into the Public Realm to find your next objective. Again, not sure if this is a norm in MMOs, but it seems like a good thing. You won't even have to worry about others completing the objectives before you get there..
Public Realms: Here you have everyone running around.. Enemies keep spawning so you don't have to worry about finding enemy mobs to gain xp. In the map I tried, Venom was one of the "Event Boss". Every 10-15 minutes or so, he spawns and there will be an alert and indicator to let you know he's around. You can run over to his locaton and join many others to take him down. He seems to get tougher with more players fighting him and taking him down is no easy task. It takes a good 3-4 minutes to beat him and if you thought Venom was tough, wait till you meet Rhino. Rewards are pretty good so you will want to join in whenever you can.
He seems to be spawn a little too often though. Not sure if that's because they are testing him during the Beta or that's how it's going to be. After 4 or 5 times, it started to get a little tiring as it wasn't that special anymore but you might want to rinse and repeat for the rewards. Hopefully not as often as the beta though.
Played with a friend this time and I had lots more fun than my first encounter. I'm really excited about the prospects of playing so many different heroes but somehow it seems that this is the biggest attraction of the game. It hasn't impressed me to the point where I'm going WOW! With the frequent references to Diablo, it seems that this will always be compared to Diablo and it loses out.
That said.. this is a totally free-to-play game so that alone should be enough reason to at least try it out. If you can put away the comparisons to Diablo, then you can appreciate this game for what it is. A Marvel MMO game that is free to play with dozens of characters to choose from, with references to plenty of Marvel History. All Marvel fans will enjoy this!
Thoughts on Marvel Heroes Beta Part 1
