For a while now, Marvel Heroes players could optionally Prestige (re-level) their heroes up to six times, each time earning its own special color nameplate as a reward. Cosmic, the final tier of Prestige, required something like 25X the normal experience to level from 1-60, but your name would show up in yellow, the color of Cosmic rarity items in Marvel Heroes. It was something to do for fun or to show off your dedication to a particular hero to other players.
I never went crazy with the Prestige system; I mostly used it to get a fitting color name for a particular character if I felt the urge. For example, I re-leveled Psylocke three times, so my name would show up in purple when I played her. Psylocke is one of my most played characters, so you’d think I’d Cosmic Prestige her, but the purple name was good enough for me. In fact, I’ve never taken any character through Cosmic Prestige, not even Storm, likely my most played character, and who would fit well with the yellow nameplate the Cosmic tier would confer. It’s just too much work and it’s not fun. I don’t have a problem doing repetitive activities in an ARPG like Marvel Heroes when I’m at max level with all my powers and gear. But slogging through the early levels with crap gear and limited powers along with experience requirements bumped 25X to boot? That just never appealed to me.
That’s why it disappointed me to find out that Gazillion would be tying a new endgame progression path to Prestige. The new tier, called “Omega Prestige,” requires players to have completed all of the existing Prestige tiers on a character and then go through some convoluted grind just to unlock Omega Prestige on a particular character (or pony up $40 for a limited time Omega Prestige package to skip right to it). Once you’ve unlocked Omega Prestige, you get a snazzy Omega visual effect (don’t worry, you can toggle it off) on your hero, as well as a new nameplate and flourish.
If it all ended there, I wouldn’t be writing this article today, but unfortunately, progression is tied to this feature. You get two new traits (which increase in strength with each Omega Prestige rank), a lower cooldown on your ultimate power, doubled synergy bonuses, and a new Legendary item, specific to the hero. There are also 70 ranks to Omega Prestige. Yep, you read that right, you’ll need to level a single hero 70-76 times (depending on if you purchased the package or not) in order to get the most out of it. I’ve leveled a few characters to the fifth Prestige tier and I was just done by that point. I can’t even fathom subjecting myself to the torture of Omega Prestige.
I feel the introduction of Omega Prestige is a colossal mistake on Gazillion’s part. The power disparity between an Omega Prestige character at max rank and a standard character is insane. You’re getting +70 to both of your primary attributes. This comes out to a whopping +560% base damage. Seriously?
It’s one thing to just play the game at max level and acquire Infinity points to spend on progressing your characters. You just gain the points over time and you get to participate in whichever activities you wish while doing so. You can even switch to different characters to spice things up since the Infinity system is account wide. Omega Prestige ties a significant amount of power to probably the most tedious activity the game offers and it’s on a per-character basis. I’m not really sure what the idea is here other than to try and distract from the ongoing drought of content Marvel Heroes has been experiencing for some time now, but this isn’t a good look, Gaz. By all means, introduce Omega Prestige to expand the Prestige system with new, exclusive visual rewards. Dial the spirit of the original system up to 11. New auras, titles, special emotes, whatever you want. As it stands, Omega Prestige takes something that was about fun and achievement and makes it feel mandatory.
What’s your take on Omega Prestige? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
