10 Years of Datamining

As much of the Thanos Vibes lovely fanbase are big fans of "data mines" let us have a look back at the past 10 years of this esteemed profession. This will encompass both datamines of the game files and the few "leaks" that exist.

Importantly, the information in the first 2 sections mostly comes from Reddit due to its searchability, and the latter 2 sections from THANO$VIB$ own datamining. Perhaps there is more out there that we are not aware of: I am of two minds about whether other languages' or private communities have better datamining tools. It feels likely to be the case, but also strange that we haven't gotten a legitimate datamine from an unknown source if there was one.

This will also ignore uninteresting datamines like events and Collector's Vault stuff, focusing only on datamines of upcoming content.

  • Post-Launch

    Post-Launch

    As the game had just launched I am sure there was a lot of information during this time. However the waters were murky with people faking tons of "leaks" with Avengers Alliance artwork and so on.

    [1.0] Sandman, Strange, Enchantress

    This is likely the first datamine ever, supposedly in the files since the game's public beta version. This may have been indication that they were at some point intended to be launch characters.

    Also notable is that the portraits changed for both Sandman and Enchantress when they actually arrived in the game. All these characters debuted much later - Sandman in 3.2, Strange in 2.6, Enchantress in 2.7.

    While looking at posts around this time there was some talk about Red Hulk, Singularity and Nico Minoru portraits also being datamined early. Probably true but nothing confirmed.

    [2.0] Proxima Midnight

    I actually have no recollection of this but found it while searching around. This would have been early indication of the 2.0 Update which added World Boss.

    [Spoiler] New Character INFO
    byu/scorpio0920 inFutureFight
  • the dark ages (but actually awesome)

    the dark ages (but actually awesome)

    The next few years of the game were pretty barren. Dataminers at the time benefitted a lot from certain information being more readable in the game files at the time, leading to World Boss drop tables, XP tables, and so on.

    While this info was useful at the time, there was not much in the way of datamining predicting future content. This did make it all the more significant the few times it did occur though, with some of the most interesting leaks occuring in this period.

    [3.0] Starlight and Space Knight

    Two of the game's biggest legitimate "leaks" both came before the 3.0 (Guardians of the Galaxy 2) update.

    The first was an obscure reddit comment that called Sharon Rogers' Starlight Armor (though the "two new characters" part was not exactly a hot take):

    Comment Link

    The second was a screenshot of a tablet screen that showed the update's new UI with SpaceKnight Venom on the homescreen. This was the first time something like that had happened and was met with skepticism, but turned out to be true. Sadly this post has been long deleted and the image may be lost to time.

    Some of the comments on the patch notes thread reference the leak, like the one below.

    Comment
    by from discussion
    infuture_fight

    Interestingly the reddit user who posted the comment above deleted their account days after the update dropped. They created a new account not long after but did not post any future leaks, nor did they ever reveal where they got the information from.

    [3.7.5] Luna Snow Predebut

    Pretty basic portrait datamine. I believe this came at a time where people were passionately counting the number of characters in the game, and there was some speculation as to who the 150th would be. People decided pretty quickly that this was an original character, especially as the portrait came with the filename "lunasnow_01".

    Who is she??
    byu/protion31 infuture_fight
    [4.x?] The Lost Defenders Update

    After the 4.4 update, the following five "Defenders" themed Comic Cards were found in the game files.

    New cards in the files game
    byu/neophrene infuture_fight

    This update, which released in September 2018, also added the Heroic Quest gamemode, which debuted with free missions for Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage. This seemed like too big of a coincidence and with Daredevil Season 3 airing the next month, it seemed all but certain that a new Defenders update was queued up. That was until update 4.5 - themed "X-Men vs. Sentinels" - released.

    It would not be until update 6.9, over two years later, that the Defenders finally got their update. With the Iron Fist show being cancelled in early October, it seems very likely that a prospective Daredevil and Defenders update was cancelled along with Netflix and Marvel's deal.

    The Defenders cards were eventually overwritten in the game files, replaced by the five Monsters Unleashed! MFF Variants. The final piece of evidence was discovered with the aforementioned 6.9 update, where Luke Cage's new uniform overwrote previously unnoticed gear images for a uniform that never released.

    [4.9] X-Force Portrait Discoveries

    It was around this time that Netmarble migrated off the "mobirum" site and moved their official forums onto the Netmarble Forums. To support users having character profile pictures, portrait images were hosted on this site, following the same naming system as in-game.

    Using this naming system, someone was able to discover portraits for new characters Warpath, Sabretooth, and Juggernaut, and uniforms for Wolverine and Deadpool.

    Comment
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO from discussion
    infuture_fight
  • the golden age

    the golden age

    This was the time where I arrived on the scene. Hello

    Let's start by clarifying that I am not claiming "the golden age" was brought about by the proto-THANO$VIB$ community getting involved. The main reason for this was the new pattern of releasing mid-month patches every single update.

    Netmarble develops all the content for a given update as one "version", including any mid-month content, then attempts to remove all traces of the mid-month when they roll out the initial patch. This is also the reason why we often do not get datamines about upcoming updates, as those are properly versioned off.

    Unfortunately for Netmarble the game is very large and it is quite hard to remove all traces of mid-month content. As this era progressed, Netmarble progressively got better at patching up these holes, with the main effort of datamining being finding indicators of mid-month content.

    [5.9.5] Scarlet Witch's Tier-3

    This was the start of the mid-month era, so it gets a mention. I don't remember the exact context around this, I think it was announced that Scarlet Witch would get a new uniform. At the time they just left skill icons and strings like this in the game files. And the advanced "datamining" of the hour was opening an Excel sheet.

    Scarlet Witch Tier-3
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight
    [6.0.5 - 6.2.5] Portrait Datamines

    The following few updates just had mid-month portraits in the game files. We were able to find the Synergy Uniforms for the Black Widow movie very easily, as with Silver Surfer Black and Odin's All-Father uniform. The latter two gained a lot of traction as popular Native Tier-2 characters getting uniforms and Tier-3s, so this didn't last long. By the time of the 6.2 update they were getting better: we had Odin's portrait but no skill icons, and only a string (with no images) for Red Hulk [Symbiote of Vengeance].

    On the subject of strings, it was around this time we discovered that Taskmaster's Tier-3 had been worked on for the 6.0 update - they would sit on it until 7.2 though.

    Black Widow Uniform Skill Icon Comparison + Yelena Belova Unreleased Awakening Skill
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight
    Silver Surfer Uni
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight
    Odin Uni + Probable T3
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight
    [6.8] Skill Preview DPS Testing Flop

    After the 6.8 update a bunch of strings were added that seemed to suggest that DPS testing in Skill Preview would be added at some point.

    DPS Testing (Probably) Coming to Skill Preview
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight

    Unfortunately this never materialised, and the strings were removed shortly after. It is not known if this is an internal testing feature, or if it was intended to be released but scrapped.

    [7.0.5 - 7.6.5] Skill Charge Tier-3s

    Starting from the 7.0 update I discovered that characters who are getting a Tier-3 in a mid-month would have the charge rates of their normal skills adjusted. This was a truly good time as I could just run a script to tell me who the mid month Tier-3 would be - starting with Vision and ending with Hela.

    Vision is the mid-month Tier-3
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight
    [7.4.5] "White Sirius" Armor

    Probably the most significant datamine of this era was when they just left the names of the three upcoming OC uniforms in the game files. This was so easy that I suspected they did it on purpose for hype.

    Comment
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO from discussion
    infuture_fight

    At some point they decided to rename these to "Light Sirius" which I dislike. I have a feeling I know who the culprit is.

    Can't win them all though. This update also came with a Crafting Event in the files that is still there to this day and was never implemented. Apologies to anyone who is still saving 6* Cards in anticipation. I do not think it is going to happen anymore.

    7.4 Crafting Event
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight
  • modern times

    modern times

    We'll define this as the post-Tier-4 era, starting from update 8.1. Towards the end of the Tier-3 era, Netmarble had actually done a very good job of plugging the leaks and the datamining well was drying up. Thankfully Tier-4s added a whole new bunch of ways they could forget to remove traces of new content.

    [8.2.5 - 8.4.5a] Tier-4 Striker Dialogue

    This was the next closest thing to the Skill Charge Tier-3s leak as it was consistent for a while. Along with Tier-4s came unique striker dialogue interactions when certain characters are set as strikers. They simply forgot to remove this information from mid-month Tier-4s for a while.

    This was used to find that Storm, Black Widow, Blue Dragon, Carnage were getting Tier-4s. Not the longest run sadly.

    Storm is the next Tier-4
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight
    [9.1.5] Spider-Verse Update

    This update they just left the uniform names in the files again, same as White Sirius. This ended quite a long datamine drought. Do this more please.

    Spider-Gwen, Wolverine, Sabretooth Upcoming Uniforms
    byu/OwO_PinkChode_OwO infuture_fight
    [9.2.5 - 9.7.5] I don't remember???

    During this stretch we were able to datamine:

    • 9.2.5

      Luna Snow as the Seasonal Summer uniform

    • 9.3.5

      Black Panther as a mid-month Tier-4

    • 9.4.5

      Ghost Rider as the Seasonal Halloween uniform

    • 9.6.5

      Phil Coulson as the Seasonal Winter uniform

    • 9.7.5

      Mystique as a mid-month Tier-4

    The only issue is that I have absolutely no recollection of how I managed this despite it being very recent. Most unnerving.

    [9.5.5 - 10.7.5a] Leaving Uniform Titles In The Game Files???

    This brings us pretty close to present. It has actually been very easy lately as they have just been leaving the "Uniform Title" images in the files. This is something they did once or twice in the past but never as consistently as in this period.

    This has led to:

    • 9.5.5

      Loki Season 2 uniform

    • 9.8.5

      Someone from "Annihilators" which turned out to be Ronan

    • 10.0.5

      Scarlet Witch and someone from "Mighty Avengers" which turned out to be Quicksilver

    • 10.3.5

      Daken, Apocalypse, and X-23 as mid-month uniforms as the titles were unambiguous

    • 10.5.5

      Knull and someone from "Superior Carnage" which was correctly assumed to be Carnage
      (Note that a promotional image of Knull's new uniform also leaked at this time)

    • 10.6.5b

      Someone from "Marvel Rivals" which turned out to be Magik

    • 10.7.5a

      Winter Soldier [Revolution] uniform

    This seems to have stopped for now as Black Widow, Nick Fury and Elektra's uniform titles were all not present in the main update files.

    [10.8] Crescent, Ancient One and Elektra

    For completion's sake we'll cover the most recent datamines. With the uniform titles thing patched it's back to looking for random indicators with nothing consistent at the moment.

    • Crescent

      Noticed a model update for Io. This tends to indicate a Crescent update as they remember to remove Crescent's model update but forget to remove Io's.

    • Ancient One

      Found a drop table for a chest that gave Crescent and Ancient One biometrics. With Crescent likely to be the female character this confirmed both.

    • Elektra

      Much like her outfit, this one will stay "under wraps"...

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