The first aspect to take note of is Iron Man’s Power Rating on his character card. Most RPGs have adopted a Power level system similar to that of Destiny’s to rank how well optimised the build is based on skills, perks and equipped gear. The Power Level is separate from the experience level. Having this in Marvel’s Avengers means that there will be a heavy focus on optimising your heroes in the endgame to take on tougher foes and challenges.
Secondly, on the right side of the character card we can see Iron Man’s four main statistics; Melee (427), Ranged (379), Defence (3292) and Heroic (409). These stats can obviously increase and be altered through levelling, equipped gear and perks.
The next notable region of the game menu is the gear selection. It appears that each hero can equip eight pieces of gear (it could vary with the character). Gear will come in standard gaming rarities: common, uncommon (green as shown in the image), rare (blue as seen on the gear selection), epic, legendary and exotic.
Each piece of gear will have its own gear power that will contribute to the character’s overall power level. Some pieces of gear will also have unlockable perks that will alter the character’s abilities. For example, The Night Fire Strike Gauntlets features in the image has the Night Fire perk which adds the ‘Chance on Headshot to trigger an Explosion AOE Burst’. Players have to collect different currencies through play to unlock these perks and presumably other bonuses. For these gauntlets, the player needs 50 silicate to unlock the perk. Gear can also be dismantled for a resources.
One can assume that gear might be separate from the character’s appearance as they are on different tabs on the menu. Finally, those who are uninterested in the game’s RPG mechanics can ignore them, but still remain appropriately levelled by using the ‘Equip Best Gear’ option on the bottom right.
Marvel's Avengers by Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montréal and Square Enix will launch May 15th 2020 on the following platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and Google Stadia.