A patch seven months in the making, free-to-play action RPG Marvel Heroes is getting its "biggest update ever" this Thursday, January 19th. First announced last September, the update will overhaul all 59 heroes, as well as tweak its items, replace the current endgame progression system, and introduce a new difficulty slider that lets you increase difficulty for increased reward.

The core of the update is really the changes being made to Marvel Heroes's entire roster of characters all at once. Every hero in the game is being touched in one way or another—some simply being moved over to the new talent tree system (which, in itself, will add ways to modify each hero's abilities) while others might be getting more major revisions to their kit. Developer Gazillion is also using this as an opportunity to revamp older characters with some of the tech they've developed for newer ones, which makes sense as the game nears its fourth birthday.

Gazillion game designer Brian Waggoner told me another one of the main drives behind the hero changes was about removing "false choice," or the illusion that you have options in how to level-up your character when really there's an optimal route that would be a mistake not to use. The new talent system is more about giving each hero different playstyle options, rather than transparent power spikes. 

The game's previous endgame progression, the Omega System, is being scrapped entirely and replaced with the Infinity System, the goal of which is to create a more streamlined, easier to understand way to progress. The Omega System had roughly 170 different upgrade options you could put points into, while the Infinity System has just 30. Once you hit level 60 with any hero you start gathering Infinity Points, which can then be used to improve the stats of specific heroes. Players who still have Omega Points from the old system will see them converted to the new one when it switches over later this week.

Waggoner said Gazillion generally prides itself on very frequent updates, but felt it was important to get all of these changes done at once. Gazillion slowed its usual updates for the last seven months to work on this patch and during that time built new heroes with the changes in mind, so Thursday has been a long time coming for fans of the game. 

Marvel Heroes is available to download free.