Gazillion's Marvel MMO - F2P, Play as existing Marvel characters only

[Ginaz]

I have yet to try this out, but I see people saying it is a lot like Diablo.  The 'fun curve' for me in Diablo (I, II, and III) pretty much peaked out at ~18 hours of play and then slowly declined after that point.  Does this have the same issue?

I can't imagine you lasting much longer with Marvel Heroes.  You're probably just not into the arpg genre.  Of course, I've put hundreds of hours into D3 and about 50 with MH but I only lasted a dozen or so with Path of Exile, a game people have been raving about for awhile now.

[Ginaz]

This is my brain shutoff game.  Which hero makes a big difference. Thing is horrible.

He is apparently the worst hero in the game.  Someone made a helpful, and probably subjective, list ranking each hero.  If you're new to the game and trying to decide which starter hero to use, try Scarlet Witch.  Its funny that both the "best" and "worst" heroes are both starter heroes.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AluRGa0DARGbdFFzdFFxMFJ1eUd6N3VJdC11M204Y2c#gid=0

[Ragnoros]

Thing is horrible.

To be fair, he was my starter.

[WayAbvPar]

I let my 5 year old choose my first hero and ended up with Colossus  I would have taken something with some better ranged options like Storm, but oh well. I picked up Hawkeye as a freebie too, but haven't played him yet.

[proudft]

Thing was the one I got to start, and then Storm and Scarlet Witch as extras before they revamped the whole hero process to use the splinters.  I then got Captain America with the random splinters, and bought Punisher because I wanted to shoot guns (and now he's a starting hero, doh).

Thing seemed ok, if sort of bland.  Run around and punch people.  He has a big jump, which goes far with me.  I like barbarian leaping.

Punisher is similar, he seems to get the job done but is kinda boring.  Hold down button, bullets kill people, the end.

Those are the only two I've gotten to 30, though I've been playing more now that I'm getting close to 175 more shards for a random Thing #2 or whatever.

It's basically Diablo but with some differences.   I like leveling people way more than paragoning people, this game is better at that for me since each hero is basically a different class with different abilities.  However, it seems like you end up with way more points than you 'need' - you've got room on your bar for like 7 things and you seem to get enough points to cap out about 5 of them, so the choices are not quite as full of choice as it might seem.

The animations and framerate are nothing like Diablo 3.  I don't know if it took a hit at some point or if it was always like that but going back to it after Diablo 3 2.0, it looks super jerky and crude.  Something is off about the screen scrolling, it really bugs me.  The screen is also always full of loot and crap, it's a fairly gaudy mess.  And the progression system with the crafters is pretty confusing.

The terminals/legendary quests are basically the same as bounties (really the other way around, the terminals were first), so those are cool for popping in for a 20 minute session where you feel like you get something done.

And of course, because I'm cheap, I think one of the best parts is that, if you can resist the lure of buying stupid costumes, you can play it for free and get everything meaningful eventually (heroes, the new minions, etc).  It's cool they haven't really cracked and prohibited that yet. 

[ezrast]

Stash tabs are pretty meaningful if you do any collecting (relics and runes will fill your stash, forget about crafting mats) and can only be bought with cash. They recently expanded inventory space by quite a bit so this is less of an issue now, but still I have six stash tabs and I'd be hard-pressed to make do with less than three.

I'm still grinding out gear on Hawkeye. 4/5 uniques now, but I'm not sure if any of them are the best choice for my build, and Hawkeye's unique for the slot I'm missing (Goliath Serum) looks amazing. 3k+ health and a bunch of offensive stats? Yes please.

Scarlet Witch is on her blue (second) prestige. They recently added a 6th prestige level (cosmic/yellow) that multiplies all experience requirements by 25. I'll probably never hit red, let alone get through yellow, but I can dream.

Also have Black Widow at 45 in anticipation of her review. Planning to do a brutal build with Stinging Barrage because I've heard that fun increases proportionally with red numbers.

[proudft]

My 175 shard random dude is ... Black Panther.  Another starting hero, curses.  At least he's high on that 'fun chart' Ginaz posted. 

[Ginaz]

I got another free random hero yesterday, Colossus.  I only played him a bit but its different from the other heroes I have because they are mostly ranged while he seems to be all melee.  I think I prefer getting a random hero instead of being able to pick one.  I like the element of surprise.

On a side note, I've almost gotten my Iron Man to 60 (58 now) and I have to highly recommend him to anyone.  He really is a lot of fun to play, esp. if you take the missile based skills.

[jgsugden]

I have yet to try this out, but I see people saying it is a lot like Diablo.  The 'fun curve' for me in Diablo (I, II, and III) pretty much peaked out at ~18 hours of play and then slowly declined after that point.  Does this have the same issue?

I can't imagine you lasting much longer with Marvel Heroes.  You're probably just not into the arpg genre.  Of course, I've put hundreds of hours into D3 and about 50 with MH but I only lasted a dozen or so with Path of Exile, a game people have been raving about for awhile now.

You nailed it, I think.  I gave this a shot, but it seems to have become highly repetitive and simplistic.  As a 15th level Hawkeye, I don't seem to worry about any defensive tactics at all.  With the slight exception of boss battles where I need to use some very basic tactics... sometimes.

[proudft]

Apparently this next weekend is going to be nuts.... 10 promotions at once:  https://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/85098/feedback-favorite-events-and-promotions

[Furiously]

It should be exploding loot EVERYWHERE, if you have any interest in the game download it through steam for this weekend.

[Raguel]

Pretty bummed that Free Thor will not be a thing this weekend, but I can get Sue Storm or NC if I wanted, so that's cool.

[Trippy]

If I'm willing to spend some real money to make my playing time more efficient what's good to buy? Currency? Hero packs? Something else?

[Furiously]

If I'm willing to spend some real money to make my playing time more efficient what's good to buy? Currency? Hero packs? Something else?

The most efficient thing you can do would be to level Cyclops to 60. (He has a bonus 10% to future character's experience) (Plus you get a 30% bonus for your first 60 I believe).

Storage space and costumes are really the only thing that never drops in game.  I would buy a 2600G nvidia code off ebay for 10 bucks or so (One time use of the nvidia codes per account), Then buy some storage slots and then this weekend buy some of the cheap characters and hope your buy one get one is an expensive one. Or just buy whoever you want to play.  This weekend is going to be crazy with drops.

[Trippy]

Cool, thanks.

[Ginaz]

If I'm willing to spend some real money to make my playing time more efficient what's good to buy? Currency? Hero packs? Something else?

If you're looking for heroes to buy, Scarlet Witch is one of the cheapest at only 200G (not sure what that translates into real $$$) and she is apparently the "best" hero currently in the game.  Another good 200g choice is Taskmaster, one of the newer heroes.  Unless you really want to play a certain hero, I would buy something else because you can get free random heroes pretty easily and quickly just by playing.  In the 2+ weeks I've been back, I've already gotten 2 free heroes with the shards.  Stash space (and costumes if that's your thing) is probably what you would want to spend money on.  If you ARE looking to buy a hero, Iron Man and Deadpool are both really fun and effective.

[Fordel]

I'm still a big fan of Princess Sparklefists. They really reworked her a LOT since I last played.

[Lantyssa]

She's a lot better than when the game first came out.  I've been happy with Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, Nightcrawler, and Emma.  They all play differently enough that I enjoy it, but not so differently as to feel lost.  It looks like Scarlet Witch has improved, too, but I haven't tried her since beta.

[jgsugden]

On Eternity Splinters - Let's say I develop a hero to have a defensive ability that'll kill off enemies faster than they hurt me.  Then, I place my character in some corner of a map wher enemies will wander past me every once in a while - meaning I'll kill enemies about once a minute without doing anything.... could I just have the game running in the background and then come back and find dozens of Eternity Splinters waiting for me? Anyone try something like this to farm splinters?

[Raguel]

MM is the only one I can reliably solo Cosmics with (and by solo I mean zero deaths). I love DD and Moon Knight though.

[Tyrnan]

On Eternity Splinters - Let's say I develop a hero to have a defensive ability that'll kill off enemies faster than they hurt me.  Then, I place my character in some corner of a map wher enemies will wander past me every once in a while - meaning I'll kill enemies about once a minute without doing anything.... could I just have the game running in the background and then come back and find dozens of Eternity Splinters waiting for me? Anyone try something like this to farm splinters?

Eternity Splinters do last longer than most other loot but will eventually despawn, I'd say somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes.  The most obvious spot I've seen people doing this is Ruined Projects in chapter 5 since there is almost constant waves of Purifiers attacking but it's only good for certain level ranges.  The best heroes to do this with are ones with a damage aura and some form of regen (Storm works fairly well) or those with permanent pets like Emma or Luke Cage.  If you have any of the new Team Ups they should probably work as well.  The way experience works in MH as long as you have done damage to something recently (and the timeframe is pretty generous) you get full XP and loot for any mobs that die in your vicinity.  So even if you miss out on some of the loot you can gain a couple of levels in the background while you're off doing something else.

As far as I remember the devs do not consider this an exploit (although you should probably do a forum search to check if this has changed) and won't take action against players doing it, but they are working on a way to combat AFK leeching in places like MM so it may come to an end soon.  Also at Ruined Projects some players like to kite the Mega Sentinel over so he stomps the AFKers 

[Ragnoros]

Are any of the classes with pets viable using mostly/only pets? Summon Necro was always my favorite in Diablo 2 because I could just sit back and watch my guys do the work for me (plus the occasional curse/CE).

[proudft]

Anyone try something like this to farm splinters?

The Splinters are pretty rare drops, but they have a 8 minute or so failsafe, so the actual way to cheese this is to go into the game, kill guys until an Eternity Splinter drops, set a stopwatch for 8 minutes, beam back to base, alt-tab until your alarm goes off, beam back, kill until Splinter drops, repeat.   

It works, you don't get logged out and the base beamer thing cooldown is less than this, but you do actually have to push some buttons.  Sometimes it takes a little bit to get one but it's usually pretty fast.  It works well if you have something semi-boring you are doing at the computer that can be interrupted.   175 splinters for random hero divided by about 7 or so splinters an hour  = 25 hours.    Probably faster to finish the story first and get the 100 or whatever you get at the end first.   

[Furiously]

Are any of the classes with pets viable using mostly/only pets? Summon Necro was always my favorite in Diablo 2 because I could just sit back and watch my guys do the work for me (plus the occasional curse/CE).

I've heard that Nick Fury is their planned skeleton necro.

[proudft]

And it's live, a mere 2 gig patch.  Long ass-patch notes: https://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/84908/marvel-heroes-2-42-patch-notes

All I can think when I see these notes and changes is that they be making a ton of money off costumes to fund all this stuff. 

[proudft]

And two more keys today:  RNDMCSTM for a random costume and RNDMHRO for a random hero.  They've gone mad!

[ezrast]

Be extra sure to log on tomorrow (Saturday) for the Easter basket. Most of the 10 events go on all week, but the Easter basket is Saturday only and I think contains at least one guaranteed unique for the hero that opens it (mine had two last time - both dupes, of course, but still).

[Goldenmean]

I know I'm just falling prey to marketing, but the buy one get one hero deal was too good to pass up. Threw money at this and just started buying the cheapest heroes and working my way up. Ended up with a pretty good chunk of the lineup.

Don't know why I'm having so much more fun with this than I am with Diablo (yes even, after RoS). Maybe it's just because it's new to me and there's a wider range of characters to play, and more incentive to play different ones.

[jgsugden]

I played.  I got bored with Hawkeye.  I put it aside thinking I would not return... and then decided to give it another shot.  It was still repetitive and simplistic, but it seemed to be more fun.

I think they're making a mistake giving only one starting character.  They need to give you two - one you choose and another that is semi-randomly chosen to be different than the first (if your first is Hawkeye, they make sure the second one is not also an exclusively ranged character).  I think I'd have had more fun if I put Hawkeye aside for a bit and played a Colussus, Thing, Captain America or something else with melee action.

[Soulflame]

If you play through the campaign, you should have enough splinters to buy a random character outright.

Of course, if you're stuck with something meh like Hawkeye, that can be tough.

[Ginaz]

Some more codes for free stuff. 

InfiniteRetconWeek
INSTITUTE
RECRUIT
2XFUN
SPRCNDY
SPRCNDY2

[Goldenmean]

If you play through the campaign, you should have enough splinters to buy a random character outright.

Of course, if you're stuck with something meh like Hawkeye, that can be tough.

It's guaranteed actually. You get 100 near the beginning of the campaign and 100 for killing Dr. Doom the first time. That's enough for a random and some change, or enough to flat out buy one of the cheaper heroes, even neglecting any additional shards ever dropping.

I don't understand the Hawkeye hate. He's not overly *interesting*, but it's a Diablo-like, I don't really find any classes interesting, per se, just various degrees of effective or not.

[proudft]

Hah, I'm the exact opposite.  Since any character can just blow through the campaign and the green terminals in this game, I want one that is interesting to play!

My free random guy was Hawkeye so I guess I'll find out how fun he is for me.   

[Tyrnan]

Got Moon Knight in mine.  Was pretty good going since he's 1 of only 5 heroes I don't have.   Bought Squirrel Girl with splinters earlier since I'd heard good things about her mini-review and she has crazy sustain.  30 squirrels out each healing you every time they hit adds up pretty quick.

[Threash]

I got sick of all the space crafting mats take up so i donated all of them to the crafter.  That was probably a bad idea since the bar hardly moved.  I did get one of the few heroes i was missing from that random code so thanks for that!.