Marvel’s Avengers’ XP grind is about to get even slower, for some reason

Marvel’s Avengers, the action role-playing game from Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix, is finally coming to current-gen consoles on March 18, but it’s also getting another change. After that date, it’s going to take even longer to reach the game’s max character level, because the developer is increasing the XP requirement.

According to the developer, the quick level ups and rapid XP gain was something it thought could be confusing for new players, in part because each level required about the same amount of XP to progress through, rather requiring more for subsequent levels.

“This has led to pacing issues, such as skill points currently being rewarded too fast, which may be confusing and overwhelming to newer players. We want each decision to invest in a skill or Heroic to be more meaningful,” the developers said.

To help reduce the amount of progress players can make quickly, the XP needed to advance in levels later in the game is being increased starting at character level 25. To conclude the post, the developer recommends that anyone who has a character that isn’t already level 50 already level them quickly before the change takes effect. Of course, this means that players starting fresh on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will be forced into the new, slower leveling system.

One thing that’s not entirely clear is why this change was necessary at all. Not starting the XP increase until level 25 means that new players might still get confused on skills. More importantly, the slog of leveling a character all the way to level 50 was already one of the slowest, grindiest parts of Marvel’s Avengers. Making that process even more tedious, especially for new players, is confusing, to say the least.

The March 18 update of Marvel’s Avengers will also include the release of Hawkeye, as well as a new change to cosmetics that make them slightly less random and give players more control over which ones they unlock.

Update (March 5): Crystal Dynamics took to Reddit on Thursday night to provide more insight into the XP changes and explain the studio’s thinking.

The studio said it’s changing the grind because players were often leveling two or three times during a single mission, even at higher levels, because the XP wasn’t scaling well enough — or it was scaling too well, in this case.

“The problem we were seeing, and hearing, was that you would immediately get more skill points than you had time to review, apply, and get used to, before embarking on your next mission and gaining your next few levels,” Crystal Dynamics said. “Hopefully, you can see the issue here.”

Perhaps making the point even more confusing, Crystal Dynamics also noted that it is changed early leveling in Marvel’s Avengers to be even faster than it already was, which would seem to add to confusion over skill points rather than reduce it.

Overall, Crystal Dynamics said that it hopes the new changes will add three to five hours to the act of reaching the level cap.