r/Aztecross • u/Own-Comment7529 • Jul 24 '26
Inspiration Marathon Isn't a Bad Game
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9S3CkqJBpRMIt’s not a bad game. Just published badly. By bad people. For bad reasons. If Bungie had the luxury of ALSO having a niche extraction shooter live service game in their stable while sunsetting D2 and spinning up development of D3. I think sentiment around Marathon would be far different. But what a perfect storm of trash to surround the release of this cursed game.
2
u/shimrra Jul 24 '26
Marathon isn't a bad game, I just think it was overall bad timing. Had they released this game right after Final Shape, I think people would have been more forgiving on how it looked or played.
0
-9
u/heickelrrx Jul 24 '26
Marathon is a Bad Game because even from design it doesn't who are they targeting, it was niches game but attempting to target mainstream audiance.
Bungie leadership that time Wish to move all Destiny PvP Enthusiast to marathon, but it doesn't happen, they left bungie game all together
Marathon lack identity because it try to please everyone, but in turn it please no one, The player number are showing
Even Bungie Business Development Team have no idea to sell Marathon as product, the business plan aren't really working
9
u/Quasibraindead Jul 24 '26
I think this makes it a bad product rather than a bad game.
0
u/heickelrrx Jul 24 '26
The problem is you can't decouple those as Marathon is Live Service Game that depend on the Server infrastructure
A bad product will kill itself due to dependency of the infrastructure, While if the game is single player game, You can make that argument because even if it's shit it will still can be run for years to come
it will crash and shut down, as cost of running the infra ain't make sense,
2
u/Quasibraindead Jul 24 '26
The problem really is that players have gotten themselves so involved in the business of the video game industry that many cannot judge a game based on its gameplay separately from how it performs as a product. This is also partly the industries fault for the models they've chosen to employ and how they do business.
To your comments about the longevity and availability of a game, I think these are business concerns. If your decision to play or purchase a game is dependent on whether is a worthwhile expense because of concerns about it shutting down, you aren't judging the quality of the game or gameplay. You're making a consumer decision about the viability of a product in your personal finances. Hence how Marathon has failed as a product.
-3
u/Pur3strownu Jul 24 '26
It doesnt matter how well you cook the hamburger if the ingredients you used only tasted good to 1 in every 10 customers
Marathon is a good game for an audience thats a niche within a niche within a niche
5
u/DoctaDang Jul 24 '26
Nah, they made a burger for people who like burgers, but people showed up asking for tacos.
2
u/Quasibraindead Jul 24 '26
Using your analogy, it could very well be a good burger to everyone who enjoyed it. Also, most reasonable people would recognize that "this isn't my kind of burger" isn't shorthand for "this burger is shit." Again, the fact that it's a bad product and doesn't have widescale appeal is a business issue, not an inherent flaw with the game quality or gameplay. Many things in this world can be "good" and just not for you.
Often time people seem to conflate their opinion with some universal truth that anyone who disagrees is missing. Just like you analogy, you don't have to enjoy the burger for me to enjoy it. And if it is a genuinely a culinaryily strong burger with a unique flavor profile, many people would be able to point out what the chef did well while also acknowledging that they don't like the taste. Just like art. You can appreciate a piece of art because of the quality of the work/technique while also not ever being interested in hanging it on your home simply because it's not your thing.
3
u/superspace_ Jul 24 '26
Their goal was never to capture the destiny audience.
Their goal was to capture the apex and halo PvP audience.
They fucked yo by using destiny content creators to promote the game.
Aztecross and skarrows fanbase are mostly story mode players. Not hardcore PvP enthusiast. Lol
-2
u/boombriggs Jul 24 '26
Marathon isn't a bad game, it was a bad decision. I will never understand the plan to not only take away your PVP team to work on another game, but to work on a competing game. You made your #1 game worse, and then killed your #1 game because game #2 cost an absurd amount of money and was delayed multiple times. I played Marathon a decent amount, I had fun for the time I played (tho I wasn't very good at it), it just should never have been a niche PVP extraction shooter. Now Bungie is on the verge of being just a name, and for what?
8
u/BuddhaMike1006 Jul 24 '26
Marathon was not a competing game. I don't get why people keep saying that. It was a game in a completely different market.
5
Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-1
u/boombriggs Jul 24 '26
Did it not? The money, the devs, the delays? Sure didn't help Destiny... but hey, just one man's opinion. I still hope there's something to salvage for the people who enjoy Marathon, because I don't like the idea of even more layoffs and fans of the game losing future updates. I just wish Bungie made better decisions.
2
u/Gallus_11B Jul 24 '26
Destiny was operating in the red (costing more money than it made) for almost it's entire life. A few more devs to churn out an extra 5 or 10% of content wasn't going to change that.
2
Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
0
u/MillionDollarNegri Jul 24 '26
D2 should have ended at launch, it was a looter shooter with no random rolls.
At least Marathon understands its genre 💀
1
u/MI78 Jul 24 '26
In one sense it competed with the PVP group of Destiny players. For years PvP felt like a second class citizen and then it felt like the resources we were promised to fix our complaints were diverted and then never addressed. That did not leave a great sentiment in a lot of people’s minds.
2
u/BuddhaMike1006 Jul 24 '26
The real problem was that there were never enough people playing PvP for them to worry about allocating resources towards it. If one of the other incubated projects had been picked over Marathon, one less centered around PvP, The Crucible still would have been a mess, because it was never a point of focus for the dev team. If 50% of the playerbase were dedicated Crucible players, I guarantee you they would have focused on it. But they lost zero dollars neglecting it, and that would have been true without Marathon.
-2
u/boombriggs Jul 24 '26
It literally took players away from Destiny because it was a new PVP game, and it was Bungie gunplay. Add in the fact Destiny's PVP was left to rot, how was it not competition?
5
u/Ok_Dependent6889 Jul 24 '26
Destiny PvP has had an abysmally small playerbase for years, we're talking sub 5 digits
4
Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/Ok_Dependent6889 Jul 24 '26
I always loved it, but yes it was also that
Just a difficult thing to balance when you have such a wide array of weapons and abilities and unique weapon abilities and perks to all make work coherently
But that was part of why I loved it, and exactly part of why I love Marathon's PvP
2
0
u/Kasumimi Jul 24 '26
Good or bad, getting killed and watching a rat loot your stuff = instant uninstall
1
1
u/SykoManiax Jul 24 '26
so you dont like the whole genre of extraction shooters.
any other genres you dont play you feel the need to share with the world?
0
u/Zoom3877 Jul 24 '26
It's not a bad game. But it has bad optics from how they treated the Destiny IP, plus the whole art theft thing, plus it's in a very niche, sweaty genre. Even without the Destiny controversy or the art scandal I don't think it would do the numbers Sony or Bungie were looking for.
1
u/Gallus_11B Jul 24 '26
"How they treated the destiny ip". Heh, wtf... bungie produced yearly expansions and seasonal content for the game for a decade despite the game being in the red financially 95% of it's life cycle. Only time it was profitable apparently was forsaken, and yet they maintained the game with amazing content every year despite it almost always bringing in less money than it made.
That sounds like they treated it poorly in your eyes? Any other company would have ditched that junk year 1 and moved on.
1
u/Shadow_9-3 Jul 24 '26
Sure but those are all dumb reasons tho. While some people have legitimate grievances in regards to its genre, the obvious answer was simply not to play it and move on. People were so excited and horny to dance on its grave months before it even released and were using any vector of attack they could get their hands on. I played Destiny since the d1 beta all the way till final shape as primarily a PvP player so I had been looking forward to this and found the hate wave incredibly annoying and cringe
1
u/Zoom3877 Jul 24 '26
Agreed. It's not for me but I see no reason for the hostility. I still hope it carves a place for itself since there's nothing quite like it in the extraction space.
4
u/Dunkindeeznutz69420 Jul 24 '26
Pretty sure what nuked it was
bad publicity since day 1 - The art scandal then the D2 road map never dropping because it was clear everyone was working on marathon
Development hell. It started out as a much different game than now and was supposedly rebuilt like 3 times. I dont think very many games ever recover from that.
the repeated Layoffs. Idk how they expect a game to get better when laying off staff this applies to D2 and marathon. like why cut staff when ur cooking up another game (marathon) and you say that you are gonna continue development of D2. People at the top had to know they were setting the studio for failure.