I’ve been waffling on what MMOs to play in this upcoming holiday break since I’ve got a handful of long-term games already in session. It’s probably because – as I’ve learned about myself these past few years – I really, really am a completionist, just not entirely in the way we MMO gamers typically think of it.
It’s not that I need to get all the achievements. Maybe back when I had that kind of free time, I really did. But these days it’s simply finishing something so that it really feels like I got my money’s and time’s worth. That goes from licking the peanut butter and jelly jars clean to finishing a campaign in an RPG to finishing the main storyline in a video game.
So what’s that got to do with Multiversus and MMOs and multiplayer games today? I think it’s why I haven’t committed to a game yet, and it’s why what I’m playing right now is a bit more snack-sized… which is where Multiversus fits in.
Last week, I read the headlines about the recent addition of a certain vampire queen to the Multiversus roster: Marceline. She’s incredible on so many levels. From her original appearance in Adventure Time to her deeper backstory explained in the Distant Lands, I just can’t get enough of Marceline as a character.
So naturally, she led me right back into Multiversus. I loved it in the beta a couple of years ago, and I even thought that the new features brought about with the official release helped fill in a number of the game’s feature gaps. Yet, something about the last time I played just didn’t stick with me. And now I’ve realized what it was this time around, and it might just change everything. Well, not everything, but I might be playing it a lot more!
There are so many new heroes since the last time I played
The number of characters the team at Player First Games has put together is kind of outstanding. I suppose when you have as thick a catalogue of characters as Warner Bros does, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. But that doesn’t mean a team of developers can actually create those characters in game and bring so much about what makes them special to life! Multiversus has 33 heroes to choose from, and at least five or six are new since it officially released. It’s too much to go into depth on them all, but maybe I can at least talk about Marceline a bit.
Marceline the Vampire Queen, as she’s officially known, is classified as Bruiser hero. In Multiversus, each hero is one four classes. It’s funny because the general idea is that it should lead you to understanding some basic mechanics about the hero, but in practice it doesn’t really work that way. I suppose if you squint and rub your eyes a bit, you might see that the Bruisers are a bit slower and more often have guard-breaking attacks or just bigger punches, whereas the Tanks should all have good defensive maneuvers. When you’re actually battling, though, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. You tap the X button for more hits, you hold the Y button for more special hits, and occasionally you smash the B button to try to get some dodges in.
Having played a few matches with Marceline, I find that there’s some disjointed actions in her design. Her special move brings out her bass axe – yes, it is a bass guitar, but it is also an axe. While it’s out, you can play a few chords (attacks), which then end in a stronger attack. The attack will change slightly depending on the direction you aim it. The problem really is that it has a rooting effect, so you’d better hope you’ve set yourself up and can smash your attacks out quick because in this game, standing still for only a few moments is asking for death. Fortunately, you can dodge to exit the animation and return to your normal move set, but I still felt a bit stuck when I played her.
I also don’t really love the pencil stab on the neutral normal attack. The payoff for the windup did not feel like enough for the amount of time it takes to build up. Her elbow drop is probably my favorite of her skills. There’s something super satisfying about climbing into the air and turning it into an elbow drop that really delivers some big damage.
She does have a flying grab that is somewhat reminiscent of Superman’s flying grab and punch. I recall that move being way too easy to cheese a fight with last time I played. (I didn’t fight very many Superman players in my recent visit, so I can’t say whether the devs have tuned that down to where it should be yet.)
There are new game modes, including a tourney and free-for-all
I’ll never be annoyed at developers adding more game modes, and we do have new game modes in Multiversus – but they are a mixed bag of nuts.
The free-for-all is so stupid it’s perfect. I’m not sure why this wasn’t in the original game. It’s just a simple brawl where you try to smash everyone else. Of course, the winner is determined by which player gets four knockouts first, so it can be annoying when other players basically kill-steal you. But it’s a free-for-all, so who cares. Maybe a life system would be better – as in Super Smash Bros.
The tournament one, currently dubbed Arena, is kind of strange, and I’m not sure how to feel about it. At a high level, it’s a series of 2v2 matches in a round-robin-style tournament. Each fight has a short 90-second time limit, and the team with the most knockouts wins the round. Depending on how you did, your team’s score will drop by an unclear amount. And between rounds, you can spend coins that you earned from knockouts on perks to give you various bonuses during a fight. After six rounds, the team with the most points wins the tournament.
However, the biggest grievance I had with the system was that as the tournament begins, you have to lock in the hero you want to use for the whole tournament from a seemingly random and very small list of around half a dozen fighters. Neither of the two heroes I actually know how to play was on that list, so instead I just picked one randomly, and it was kind of a miserable six rounds. I don’t know why the game would limit your hero choice as I certainly fought teams where both players picked the same hero, so that can’t be it. I don’t know.
But it was the game’s Events that drove me out last time
With that basic run-down of the game out of the way, I can finally circle back on my discovery about why I stopped playing before: It was a result of the way the Events are designed. Events here are just another type of battlepass or achievement list – basically, just a series of things you need to complete to earn some set of rewards. The issue was that these are tied to either the PvE or the PvP mode, not usually both.
So when I played at release, I was attempting to complete one of these achievement grinds, which was all PvE-focused. It meant I didn’t actually do any PvP battles (which I likr and wanted to do), so I got bored of the grind. Then, I just didn’t log in one day… which turned into multiple days… which became months.
However, this time I logged in specifically to try out Marceline the Vampire Queen, and I really didn’t care about the achievements. And you know, I was having a blast! It was like the beta all over again. I was just playing the game, smashing away at baddies, and having fun.
I think this really means only one thing: We need to be rewarded for these Events in both the PvE and PvP modes. Don’t lock the good stuff behind one thing or another. Let us play, have fun, and earn the same rewards regardless of the game mode.
My plan moving forward on this one is to try to close my eyes to the achievements and just focus on what I really love about the game.
Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!
