Massive Marvel’s Avengers Update Patches Literally A Thousand Issues

Marvel’s Avengers has had a tough launch. The game has endeared itself to players with a strong story and a pretty fun post-campaign live game component–even though the two parts didn’t really feel in sync–but it’s been plagued with bugs since its release. With a new update, developer Crystal Dynamics is hoping to clear out the infestation, claiming to address more than 1,000 issues. Some of these are relatively small, while other fixes are for game-breaking bugs.

As Crystal Dynamics notes on the Avengers website, Update 1.3.0 is the first big patch since Avengers’ launch, built in response to bug reports it has received from players on Reddit and elsewhere. The focus is mostly on bugs at this point, with quality-of-life changes coming down the line in later updates. For the time being, though, there are a lot of bugs to patch, ranging from weird graphical issues to major problems.

Avengers’ biggest trouble up to now has been instability resulting in crashes. During my time reviewing the game on PC, I found crashing to be a major issue in the days after the game’s full launch. PC players in particular have been complaining about that issue, but it’s affected the console versions of the game as well. Crystal Dynamics mentions dealing with PC crashes in Update 1.3.0’s notes; Nvidia also has released new graphics card drivers that should hopefully help the issue. The game will be coming to Xbox Series X and PS5 with cross-buy at a later date.

Check out the full patch notes for Update 1.3.0 below.

REASSEMBLE CAMPAIGN & AVENGERS INITIATIVE

• Fixed an issue where A-Day would not progress if the player started the campaign from the War Table after selecting Avengers Initiative first.
• Fixed infinite loads when reloading the game during “The Light that Failed” and “To Stand Alone”.
• Resolved bad save states for an infrequent bug where players are unable to progress with the campaign due to an infinite loading screen.
• Fixed an issue where a strongbox in “House Call” was sometimes not usable.
• Fixed an occasional bug with the bridge in the mission “House Call” that prevented progress. This should also fix bad save states.
• Fixed an issue where Pause and Character menus were blocked during “Testing… 1, 2, 3”.
• Fixed an issue where you would be teleported out of world when attacking the boss between fight phases in “To Stand Alone”.
• Fixed an issue where steps 1 and 2 of the “A Global Offensive” mission chain were not tracking properly.
• Fixed an issue where combat would not progress when defeating both Assault Adaptoids at the same time in “By Force of Mind”.
• Fixed a hole in geometry in “Dogs of War”.
• Fixed an where players could fall out of bounds in “Along came a Spider”
• Fixed an issue where players could get stuck inside geometry in “Rocket’s Red Glare” after enabling the teleport to space.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes an enemy could be stuck behind a closed door during “Task at Hand”.
• Fixed an issue in “Bad Blood” where the Final cinematic would sometimes not play audio.
• Fixed an issue preventing “Interrogation Anxiety” from being completed. This should also fix bad save states.

MULTIPLAYER & MATCHMAKING

• Reduction of cooldown after leaving a strike team before the user could matchmake again (from 30 second down to 4 seconds).
• Matchmaking now stays enabled during mission launch countdown to give more time for players to join.
• Fixed a bug where the “Searching for Heroes” UI would not always match the actual matchmaking status.
• Fixed a bug where multiple host migrations would prevent the player from matching successfully again.
• Fixed “Quick Match – Launch with any Hero” failing when two Quick Match players joined another match simultaneously.
• Fixed losing Quick Match status when a player failed to join another match.
• Fixed a bug where leaving an existing Strike Team would prevent the next Quick Match attempt from working properly.

ART & ANIMATION

• A variety of minor graphical issue fixes including clipping and popping.
• Fixed several areas where players could see out of world.
• Fixed many minor graphical errors and transitions.
• Fixed several ragdoll issues.
• Fixed a visual issue where enemy shields would pop in.
• Fixed Captain America character model bug in “Front Line” outfit.
• Fixed an issue where Thor would appear in the “War Cry” outfit in the Main Menu before unlocking it.
• Fixed an issue where Tony appeared in the incorrect Iron Man armor during the “Alone Against AIM” cinematic.
• Fixed Faction NPCs having no facial animation and freezing upon interact.
• Fixed Sprint Heavy Attack sticking to ground during certain combat scenarios.
• Fixed an issue with Black Widow’s grapple that launched her off trajectory.
• Fixed an issue where Iron Man would play the incorrect animation when doing laser Heavy Attack.
• Fixed an issue with Monotronic Exo Takedowns in multiplayer where the animations would get out of sync.

USER INTERFACE

• Fixed an issue that would cause damage numbers to appear on destroyed objects.
• Fixed an issue with Faction prisoner rescue, in which cell destruction markers would sometimes show the wrong icon upon Reload Checkpoint.
• Various Skill Menu videos updates for Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man.
• Various localization and text fixes.
• Approaching hackable terminals with a Hero that lacks that ability now displays a tutorial explaining why it cannot be accessed.
• War Table icon now has different appearance when there is a new Mission available.
• Reward icons for some Missions have been corrected to display the actual rewards.
• “Cancel” label added to the push-pull piston UI when interact option is set to “tap”.
• “Inhuman Sanctuary” mission chain thumbnail now better reflects being a Pym-centric activity.
• “Inhuman Sanctuary” mission chain notification no longer appears in campaign if it has already been shown in the Avengers Initiative.
• Talisman Artifacts now display correct thumbnail images.
• Faction Rank reward tutorial on helicarrier no longer displays before the Faction Vendor is available.
• Vault sequence tutorials now allow players to access the Character Menu while active.
• Based on player feedback, players can now see progress when being revived.
• Based on player feedback, we have implemented a 0-10 Motion Blur slider. When set at 0, Motion Blur is completely disabled.
• Fixed issues of objectives not displaying after player death.
• Fixed an issue where UI elements would show up during the introduction of Dropzones.

COMBAT

• Fixed an issue where “Control Point” events would continue to spawn new enemies after completing the control requirement.
• Fixed an issue in “Defend” events where the battle would sometimes stall until Heroes got closer to defenders by increasing participation radius.
• Improved an issue where sometimes the “Secure the Area” portion of some Sabotage encounters would not register completion due to enemies becoming inaccessible or hidden during battle.
• Fixed an issue where at higher difficulties, enemies would hack rescue cells silently, causing mysteriously inconsistent activation times.
• Fixed an issue in a small number of encounters where some stronger enemy types would spawn too many at once.
• Fixed an issue which could prevent lock-on from working when the Warbot is downed.
• Fixed some navigation issues that would allow flying enemies to go out of world.
• Fixed an issue that would cause Dreadbots to become unable to move.
• Fixed an issue that would allow the final stage of the Warbot to be skipped.
• Fixed multiple issues where some attacks were not able to damage the Warbot when it is downed.
• Fixed an issue causing some enemies to spawn without proper portal FX.
• Fixed an issue where rarely a hero could still be controlled after being defeated by Adaptoids.
• Fixed an issue that would cause Kamala to unintentionally throw grabbed enemies at her feet.
• Fixed an issue which would cause Kamala’s arm to stay stuck in front of her when doing in-air attacks.
• Fixed an issue where Widow’s Bite could get shot out of the air by enemies.
• Fixed an issue where Widow could not move on stairs while aiming the High-Caliber pistol.
• Fixed an issue where player would get stuck when triggering Hulkbuster near other interactable items.
• Fixed an issue where certain Hulkbuster moves cause double vision on another player’s machine.
• Fixed an issue where Hulk could become stuck interacting with the world while holding an enemy.
• Fixed an issue when in high framerates, Hulk’s Sprint Heavy Attack would fall short.
• Fixed various issues with Captain America’s “Mirror Shield” skill.
• Fixed an issue where Captain America’s shield could become stuck in Iron Man’s Energy Barrier.
• Fixed an issue where Iron Man could become stuck when evading while flying low to the ground.
• Fixed an issue where Ironman’s Unibeam Heroic ability could be used infinitely during his combat on the Golden Gate Bridge.
• Various Iron Man lock-on improvements.
• Iron Man’s “Hyper Coils” skill now grants the intended 10 second duration increase.
• Iron Man’s Laser Specialization reduces the intrinsic cost of aimed ranged attacks.
• Invulnerability frames when entering Hulkbuster have been extended.
• Improved enemy spawn positions in 2 encounter locations.
• Minor tweak to turret activation in “The Inhuman Condition” AIM bunker.
• Reduced difficulty for Embiggened Kamala to revive downed allies.
• Reduced difficulty of “Secure the Asset” in the “Alone Against AIM” missions.
• Reduced aggressiveness of turrets and enemy ranged attacks.
• Adaptoid laser attack is easier to avoid.
• Assault Adaptoid tuning, including:
  • Less aggressive in multiples.
  • Less aggressive when the fire shield is active.
  • Triggers a smaller hit reaction when Heroes are hit by the laser.
  • The laser attack is easier to avoid in combat situations.
  • Fireball visuals were updated to make them easier to see in combat.

GEAR, CHALLENGES, & REWARDS

• Fixed an issue where the Fabrication Machine would occasionally not reward an outfit (or units if a duplicate pattern).
• Fixed an issue where resources in a player’s inventory – including Units – would disappear if they reached a total of 32,000. We have capped all Units and Resources at 65,000 for storage and ensured they will not disappear moving forward. If you lost a large number of Units due to this bug, please contact Square Customer Service.
• Resolved bad save states and returned missing campaign outfits to users from a bug that was reverting them to a locked state.
• Increased Gear power cap for Threat Sectors, Drop Zones, and Hives to 130 to align with their max mission power.
• Exotics gear now have higher attribute points. Power Level 130+ Exotic gear now always has better attributes than other rarities.
• Gear that was erroneously being awarded at Power 1 and Uncommon rarity has been fixed in all activities.
• Activity-specific Gear earned in Elite Heroic Hives is now awarded at correct power and rarity.
• Gear with hero-specific perks can now be awarded at Epic, Legendary, and Exotic rarities with the correct number of perks; previously Legendary gear items of this type had too many hero-specific perks and Epics were not awarded at all.
• Faction XP is awarded to the entire strike team when rescuing Inhumans in War Zones.
• Hulk’s “Fractured” outfit now appears in the Appearance Menu when awarded through a Rare Pattern; will display item correctly in inventory of players who have already collected this outfit.
• A Rare Pattern is now correctly awarded at the start of the ‘More Assembly Required’ mission.
• Various Hero Challenges that were incorrectly tracking progress or not advancing under certain conditions have been fixed.
• Based on your feedback, we are moving to a single global content refresh and challenge reset time and day. Starting with this V1.3.0 patch, challenges will reset every Thursday at 10:00 AM PT. As a token of our appreciation we will provide 22 challenge points per hero with the refresh to account for the shortened challenge period. These points will be available to claim until Thursday the 25th at 10:00 AM PT.

PLATFORM-SPECIFIC FIXES

Additional PlayStation Fixes:

• Fixed bug where players would not join an existing lobby if ‘Quick Match – Launch with any Hero’ was selected while set to the same Hero as a player in the lobby
• Optimized matchmaking filters to reduce matchmaking search times
• Changed matchmaking algorithms to reduce server load and further improve matchmaking search times
• Generally improved matchmaking invite functionality and bug fixes.

Additional Xbox Fixes:

• Fixed bug where a lobby would become unjoinable if a host migration occurred during an active mission.
• Fixed a bug where invites would not work if a player had the “Show as offline” privacy setting enabled.
• Update from V1.2.5: We have confirmed that “New Girl Makes Good” will retroactively grant on Xbox if you had earned it prior to Patch V1.2.5. “Tentative Peace” will not retroactively grant. Both have been properly registering progress since V1.2.5.

Additional PC Fixes:

• Various stability fixes based on collected crash reports.
• Additional error messages for failure cases based on collected crash reports.
• Various CPU performance improvements.
• Reduce number of CPU cores used for Direct3D shader pipeline compilation.
• Overall reduction to memory usage.
• Added Backup Save menu in Settings -> Gameplay.
• Fixed Kamala and Thor HARM tutorials when Defense Mode was set to Toggle.
• A number of mouse/keyboard UI improvements.

Additional Stadia Fixes:

• Added Backup Save menu in Settings -> Gameplay.
• Added ability to erase all save-data in Settings -> Gameplay.
• Improved performance for 30fps High-Resolution display mode.
• Fixed Kamala and Thor HARM tutorials when Defense Mode was set to Toggle.
• A number of mouse/keyboard UI improvements.