A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece highlighting the terrible implementation of Omega Prestige in Marvel Heroes. Prestige, a system originally designed as a fun activity meant for personal achievement or showing off dedication, was now tied to endgame progression, forcing players to participate if they wanted to get the most out of their heroes.
Truthfully, I didn’t have much in the way of expectations for Gazillion to rectify this issue. The system had already been implemented and it’s hard to put a genie like that back in the bottle. However, I’m glad to be able to report that Gaz has come up with a great way to rework Omega Prestige’s reward structure to make things a whole lot saner and also improve quality-of-life for those who do decide to Prestige.
First things first, the power aspects of Omega Prestige are going to be frontloaded into Omega Prestige rank 1. You unlock Omega Prestige, you get the beneficial effects, and that’s it. The final values for this haven’t been determined just yet, but I do hope they’re a bit more modest than what players could have expected to have at Omega Prestige rank 70 in the original iteration. I don’t mind there being some power involved, but I don’t want it to be enough that even Omega Prestige rank 1 feels mandatory. That’s still a lot of re-leveling and doesn’t keep within the original spirit of the system. There’s no way Gaz could remove all power from the system at this point since there are customers who likely bought into it for those reasons, but I do hope the final numbers are reasonable.
Instead of rewarding you with power at each Omega Prestige rank, you’ll now earn a Prestigious Loot Shard. Earn five ranks (this doesn’t need to be on the same character) and you’ll be able to combine the five shards to create a Prestigious Loot Box. The contents of which will be similar to the Marvelous Loot Box, though it won’t rotate. This is the sort of reward that should have been originally conceived for Omega Prestige. You can get some helpful things out of a Marvelous Loot Box, but the main draw is the cosmetics. Compensation in the form of double shards per Omega Prestige level will be rewarded retroactively for levels earned before the new reward structure rolls out.
Unlocking Omega Prestige itself will be a bit less annoying for those who aren’t looking to drop $40 on the limited time package, too. Stack sizes of Omega Essence and Fractured Omega Essence are going to be increased significantly. You’ll still have to do the grind, but at least it won’t fill up your inventory as much.
Finally, Gaz will be introducing a great quality-of-life feature to make Omega Prestige less painful for those who wish to partake. Unlocking Omega Prestige will grant an item set usable at level 1 that will scale all the way through level 60. If I could offer one piece of feedback, I would suggest that this item set be made available to players who have started either standard Prestige or Omega Prestige. It would be nice to have these items even when completing the pre-requisite standard Prestige tiers needed to unlock Omega Prestige. I’m not really one to want to re-level a character, but this would sure make things a heck of a lot less painful.
What’s your take on the Omega Prestige changes? Do you feel Gaz has adequately addressed the issue? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
