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Marvel’s Avengers: Everything You Need to Know about Co-op Play

With around 80+ War Zone/Drop Zone missions available at launch, you’ve got lots of options on what to play in Marvel’s Avengers, and who to play it with! You can:    

  • Enable matchmaking, and jump into the game with other Marvel fans online  
  • Invite your friends to play and form your perfect Strike Team  
  • Disable matchmaking to fly solo and take on War Zones with AI Companions, kitted with the gear and skills you’ve earned!    
  • Or, a combination of the above!    

Read on for more information on co-op play in Marvel’s Avengers.   

KEY TERMS  

Let’s start with a few common terms:     

  • Reassemble Campaign: The original Avengers story that follows Kamala Khan as she sets out to reassemble Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.   
  • Avengers Initiative: The Avengers Initiative is at the heart of our expanding world, where you can jump into online co-op. Here you can continue to hone your team while playing through an interconnected series of stories, missions, and personal hero arcs. The Avengers Initiative will evolve over time with the free addition of new heroes, villains, regions, and gear, for years to come.    
  • War Zones: A War Zone is an expansive, explorable space that can be played solo or co-op, loaded with side content including concealed caches to uncover, powerful bounty enemies to defeat, AIM depots to take over, faction allies to rescue, and hidden rewards to claim.   
  • War Table: War Zones are accessed via the War Table, which can be found in Outposts, Quinjets, and the bridge of the Chimera Helicarrier. The War Table keeps the pulse of all AIM activity worldwide and allows players to launch directly to where they are needed most.   
  • Strike Team: The term for your team that assembles to take on War Zone missions! Up to four players can matchmake into a Strike Team together – yourself, plus three others. No duplicate heroes may exist in a Strike Team.  
  • Hero Level: The individual Hero’s total level, which is increased by gaining XP. The Hero Level affects enemy drops, chest rewards, and skill point availability.    
  • Power Level: The average number of all Gear slots used. Power Level influences rewards, enemy progression, and gates access to late-game content.   
  • Challenge Rating: This is the chosen difficulty of each War Zone on the War Table. Challenge rating affects enemy attack and defensive strength and counter difficulty.     

  

  

CO-OP MISSION TYPES  

Unlike in the Beta, if you want to jump right into War Zones and co-op play at launch, you can! (Beware of spoilers, however!) There are several types of War Zone missions you can access via the War Table.     

  • Faction Missions: In addition to reassembling the Avengers, players will help rebuild Outposts for their allies. SHIELD suffered greatly after the disbanding of the Avengers, and the Resistance formed as a direct result of AIMs increasingly authoritarian activity worldwide. Players can take part in missions to provide these Factions intel, supplies, and defend them from AIM attacks.   
  • Drop Zones: Drop Zones are short missions with a single objective, such as defending allies or sabotaging an AIM structure. These missions are great for quick play sessions, and for replaying to gain rewards.   
  • SHIELD Vaults: Vaults are large explorable spaces that take some legwork to uncover. To access a Vault you first have to locate the coordinates from hidden SHIELD caches around the world. Once you’ve found the entrance, you must fight your way inside and breach the vault before you reap the rewards!  
  • HARM Rooms: A HARM Room (Holographic Augmented Reality Machine) is a holographic training room where you can take on challenges with an assortment of enemies.  
  • Hives: Hives are AIM strongholds located throughout the world, the Avengers must uncover their location and fight their way through and a gauntlet of increasingly challenging AIM defenses in order to disable them.  
  • Villain Sectors: Villain Sector missions culminate with a boss fight, such as notable Marvel villains working in tandem with AIM, or one of the organization’s extra-deadly constructs.    

MISSION FLOW  

Once you’re ready to start a mission in Marvel’s Avengers, the flow is as follows:     

  • Mission Selection: Players browse available missions on the War Table; This can occur in the Helicarrier, an Outpost War Table or on inside a lobby. Each War Zone mission will display the difficulty and suggested Power Level before launching. Although difficulty can be user adjusted, the higher the challenge, the bigger the rewards.  
  • Lobby Load: Players load into a game lobby. If you have matchmaking enabled, this is where your strike team will assemble! AI Companions will be selected at random to fill empty roster spots on launch.  
  • Ready Up: Players have selected a mission and are readying their Strike Team. Players can manually launch a mission with a less-than-full Strike Team if desired – the remaining spots will be filled with AI Companions. Players can set “Requested” companions on the Character select screen to specify AI Companions to fill empty roster spots. Pro-tip: If everyone hits the “launch mission” option, the timer will drop to five seconds!    
  • Mission Load: Assembled Strike Teams have launched a mission and the mission is loading. This is when you can check out your Strike Team’s awesome outfits!    
  • Mission Start: The Quinjet drops you off at your destination, and the mission begins! If a player drops out of a Strike Team while mid-mission for any reason, the game loads in a Companion AI version of the character to take their place.  
  • Mission Complete/Summary: The mission is complete and players load back into the lobby. Players are presented with a tally of their proficiency on the previous mission and are rewarded for their success!  
  • Return to Campaign or Stay in Co-op: Players select to continue playing co-op War Zone missions or return to Reassemble Campaign Missions. This phase is only presented to the player if they have the option to load directly into the next campaign mission for their current operation. Any player can interact with the Quinjet War Table and pick a new mission, but the party has a choice to veto it if desired.      

  

  

MATCHMAKING   

Matchmaking will prioritize matches between players close to each other’s Power Level. You’ve got three options when it comes to matchmaking:     

  • Select War Zone: You can select a War Zone from the War Table to matchmake to that specific mission.   
  • Quick Match:    
    • Selected Hero: Select this option if you want to stay and level up the hero you currently are in any available War Zone.   
    • Any Hero: Select this option if you’re open to playing any Avenger in your roster for any available War Zone.      

If one player in a Strike Team has matchmaking enabled, the game will continue to try and match them with other players. Matchmaking will end once all open Strike Team slots are full, a player presses the launch mission button, or a player backs out of the ready up phase – for example, to select a different mission on the War Table.   

Once a mission is launched, if there are empty slots in a Strike Team and any player has selected an AI Companion, the empty slot(s) are filled with the requested companion heroes. If there are more selected companions than available slots, a random character is selected from the list. If multiple players select the same Hero, the AI Companion with the highest Power Level is selected.   

  

PLAYING WITH FRIENDS   

If you’d rather play with friends, players can manually invite others to join their Strike Team by hovering over their Nameplate in the Social tab of the Character menu. The Social tab will show your friends, allowing you to invite anyone currently online!   

You can also play with friends via first-party interfaces. Accepting an invite from a group currently in a War Zone will put you in a Quinjet lobby. When the group completes their mission they will join you!   

Don’t worry if your friends are at a higher Power Level than you. When in a Strike Team, Power Level is a unified value across the team, and will determine enemy power. Challenge Rating doesn’t limit the matchmaking pool either; difficulty is set individually per player, and affects the rewards you receive at the end of the mission.    

Speaking of rewards, they aren’t shared, so you don’t have to worry about others taking your hard-earned winnings!   

Technical Tips    

  • Muting Players: If needed, you can mute a player by hovering over their nameplate.   
  • Pausing: When matchmaking is enabled, pausing the game is disabled in War Zones. When matchmaking is disabled, players are able to pause the game.   
  • Join in Progress: Marvel’s Avengers doesn’t support Join in Progress Matchmaking at this time.  
  • Crossplay: Marvel’s Avengers doesn’t support Crossplay at this time.   
  • NAT Types:   

If you missed our past three blogs this week, check them out below:    

Tomorrow we’ll dive into gear and cosmetics, on Saturday we will detail our learnings from BETA, and close out the week with insight into the weekly gameplay ritual on Sunday!

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