Crystal Dynamics second beta for upcoming Avengers game raises concerns
Marvel's Avengers makes headlines yet again; Crystal Dynamic's upcoming action-adventure title had been in beta since early August and was reportedly unpolished and rife with connection errors and bugs.
Many issues were centered around players not being able to join sessions despite the beta being well underway. For entrance, players needed to link their respective platform accounts with publishers Square-Enix, but some were halted in their tracks due to flaws in the registration system.
Some Xbox One users encountered "You are too early" messages despite other platforms, and other Xbox One owners, joining with little issue. Other issues included random instances stuttering and crashes, while sudden freezes would occur for many players during the same specific cutscene.
One of the most common issues was the seemingly random warning of a lost internet connection, which, while itself is annoying, angered players, even more, forcing them to maintain an online connection even if they were playing alone. Even those who did want to play with others couldn't, due to flaws in the matchmaking system.
However, Crystal Dynamics have addressed this issue specifically and announced they had fixed what they believe to be the core issues affecting network activity.
The feedback wasn't all negative. Many still found much to praise, such as the character design and core gameplay mechanics. Even the game's graphical fidelity seemed more robust… when everything was going smooth. It was hard for players to ignore some of the "clunkier" animations and texture bugs.
No one expects a beta to be perfect, those producing and enjoying them know this all too well. The whole purpose of a beta is to stress the project from top to bottom to find any issues that escaped the original development team. Then, once seen with the help of direct player feedback, developers can refine and reiterate their game until (hopefully) it's as polished as possible before launch.
The issue with Marvel's Avengers is that there seem to be a lot of fundamental problems to address before the game's release early this September, a matter of weeks. Fans had already much to criticize after Marvel's Avengers E3 2019 presentation, mostly about the game's reportedly shoddy appearance and shallow presentation. Then in January, it was announced that Marvel's Avengers would be delayed to the following autumn instead of the original May 15th deadline.
With almost four months of extra development, skeptics and potential buyers alike expected a substantial rise in both quality and content. With two beta sessions now closed and another, open beta this Friday, audiences are again dubious if Crystal Dynamics made the most of the time they bought.
This comes only weeks after Spider-Man was announced to be a PlayStation 4 exclusive character – which in itself angered fans and sparked heated debate over the parceling of exclusive content between platforms. Seeing as the rights to Spider-Man are co-owned by Sony and Marvel Comics, it seems the powers that be exercised those rights to hopefully encourage potential buyers to consider purchasing on PlayStation 4 instead of others like PC or Xbox One.
The open beta starts on August 21st for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Steam. Marvel's Avengers will launch on these platforms and Google Stadia September 4th.
