Game Update or Annoying Marketing Ploy?
So I fired up Marvel: Ultimate Alliance over the weekend to continue the co-op Hard campaign with a buddy of mine. The long-awaited Hero/Villain Packs finally dropped a couple days earlier so the automatic update upon launching the game was expected.
What I didn't expect upon loading my save game was how they "nerfed" so much of the Gear I had already collected. Allow me to explain. M:UA is a pseudo-RPG where you create a custom superhero team from a large roster of famous Marvel comics icons and set them out on missions. Like any good RPG, your team completes quests, earns experiences and gains points that can be used to improve various stats and special abilities. Also like any RPG, you also pick up special items (called Gear), usually from vanquished boss villains, which your heroes can equip. Some of these are hero-specific but many are general use, as they enhance core stats shard by all characters in the game.
After applying the latest game update on Saturday, I pulled up my team inventory screen and found that about 90% of all my general use Gear had their properties altered. Same name, different effects. The real kicker is the properties where changed to enhance specific characters....characters offered in the newly released Hero and Villain Packs!
This has got to be a bug. My friend and I chuckled about it at first, thinking Activision was just pushing their new character packs a bit too hard. But this can't be right. Some very useful items were nerfed and the fact they still have the same name just makes the whole update look extremely sloppy from both a technical and marketing standpoint. I just fired up the Box today and sure enough, the items are still messed.
Granted the game is old news now so maybe many players have moved on permanently to other games. On the heels of an anticipated DLC release, however, you'd think the developers would be on top of this glaring bug a little bit faster. And if it's not a bug? Oh boy. Sad, sad marketing ploy, is all I can say.
Labels: bug report, downloadable content, marvel ultimate alliance
posted by Clinton @ 12:24 p.m.
3 Comments:
That sounds way too coincidental to be just a bug. Just to be clear, it changed the properties of the Gear you had already picked up, right? That is devious.
What really steams my bean is if this was intentional, they didn't even bother to rename the changed items to reflect their new powers. That's why I think it's a bug.
It's also a bug because Activision would be breaking Microsoft's rules, and that is players cannot be punished for choosing not to buy DLC.
I am looking forward to getting a chance to try out the new characters, but they should have added new gear and not just changes stuff that was already there (assuming it is not a bug).
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