Marvel's Avengers, the ARPG brawler inspired by its comic book counterpart, has apparently been ghosted by its player base, with a peak player count of just over 1,000 players on PC.
Launched in September for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Stadia, the game got praise for its single-player campaign that centred around Kamala Khan, a teenage Inhuman getting to grips with her powers and responsibilities. Accompanied by characters like Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, and Hulk, the team fight back against A.I.M. forces and the nefarious activities of MODOK, who seeks to exterminate Inhumans and superheroes for good.
The multiplayer mode supports two to four players in cooperative side missions set during the events of the single-player campaign. Each character and their abilities were developed in a "similar way to the narrative," where playing as Iron Man would feel like an Iron Man game, and playing as Thor would feel like a Thor game, and so on. In fact, the structure reminded lots of players of a looter-shooter like Destiny, relying on collecting materials for upgrades to gear and powers, and the grind to get goodies was slightly stressful.
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For example, the Mega Hive activity was a mode consisting of five Hive floors with eight missions in each one. If your hero died at any point in those 40 instances, then your progress in the mission chain would be wiped and you would begin again. If you lost your hero owing to an error on your part, I guess that's acceptable. Annoying, but acceptable. However, prolific technical problems would punish the player with a "game over" through no fault of their own.
That would be enough to turn me off a game for a little while before returning, and it looks like Marvel's Avengers players have not... returned. Looking at its statistics on SteamDB, the concurrent player count on PC peaked on September 5th, one day after the game's launch, with 31,000 players knocking baddies' noggins together. However, the graph shows a steep decline throughout September, reaching just a tenth of the players that it used to by the end of that month.
Over the weekend, Marvel's Avengers peaked with 1,190 concurrent players, which works out to be a 96% decrease from its debut. There's no two ways about it: it's a far cry from the heights that the community used to enjoy. What's even more concerning is that the game has new content waiting in the wings, like Spider-Man, Kate Bishop, and upgrades to the next-gen version of Marvel's Avengers. These are only statistics drawn from PC, but it appears that Square Enix has a rocky road ahead of them if they are to attract players back to the game.
Featured Image Credit: Square EnixTopics: Marvel's Avengers, News