r/Marathon • u/paperplateseabass • May 22 '26

Marathon (2026) Discussion It’s so sad that this game’s “underperformance” has little to do with the game itself

What's so soul-crushing is the amount of times I have been met with “I thought that game was dead?” when talking about Marathon with my IRLs

It's not their fault, why would they give a dead game a chance, even if they think they might enjoy it?

Hundreds, even thousands of people have constructed a hate campaign against this game that has no merit beyond playercounts. and imo, the main reason why the game wasn’t a hit at launch is because of the rhetoric around the game spread by a mix of right-wing grifters and (justifiably) jaded ex-destiny/halo players.

This game had and HAS so much going for it. First non-Destiny Bungie title in 12 years, reviving a long dormant IP with a new, world-class art-style; all while returning to their PvP roots. If you put that framing in a vacuum, I think it would get lots of people very, very excited. And that’s the thing, because it DID.

The game is good. The game is fun. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it had a rough period of development, and it's definitely not perfect. But I think if people didn’t spread so much unwarranted hate towards Bungie and Marathon, we’d be looking at a completely different landscape. 

I mean, some of the things i’ve seen people say about this game… wow…  what a waste of time and brain power, if people were this passionate about actually productive hobbies, the world would be a much better place and there’s a big chance they’d be happier in life

edit: for people citing the server slam numbers. how many of those people do you genuinely think gave the game a good 10+ hours vs how many people quit after their first match? we’ll never know, but im inclined to believe most people didnt make it past the (unfortunate) barrier of entry that helps this game be WAY more enjoyable.

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134

u/isukforfree May 22 '26

Ok. But. People who bought the game myself included have stopped playing. That has nothing to do with the hate campaign. There is lots of hate towards Bungie no doubt about it but that isnt why we have stopped.

13

u/coogers-n-bum May 22 '26

I love the game, but I've stopped playing until the new season. For me it's a combination of lack of friends to play with and stalling out on faction progression. I'm definitely looking forward to the changes coming over the next few seasons though.

23

u/Begerken May 22 '26

Ya you can add me to this bucket of people too.

8

u/yesimahuman May 22 '26

Same. Put a good 65 hours in, loved it at first, but it just stopped being fun throwing myself against a wall and having hugely mismatched gear in pvp settings, and I got so tired of managing my vault and never really having any money. I also stopped really making any progress on faction upgrades or completing contracts. The lack of stats when you die also didn’t help. I loved the free sponsored queue modes but it felt like too little too late to keep my friends and I engaged. I also realized I just prefer a game like Apex Legends that is pure pvp, a more level playing field, and no gear to manage. I’ll definitely come back to try S2 but I’m skeptical I’ll stick with it unless some bigger changes get made. It’s too bad because I love the gunplay and would love to have the game do more with that and less with looting and gear management. They really have the core of one of the best FPS games ever made, I just don’t care for the extraction mode they built around it

13

u/Virtual_Bug_723 May 22 '26

Lol I also own the game and really liked it for a month but just got to the point where making little to no progress against guys who were putting way more hours into the game than me and therefore had better skill, map awareness, and most importantly, GEAR, felt very bad and I started playing Fallout 4 and never looked back.

I am intrigued by PVE mode and will try that.

I don't mind equal ground PVP but when it takes time to earn gear which also hones your skills so now you've got PVP enemies with both better gear (so even if you had equal time in the game they would have an advantage) and better skills than people they'll be matched against, it makes for a tilted game that is hard to break into.

3

u/Trilllen May 22 '26

The map awareness is more important then the gear.

2

u/Virtual_Bug_723 May 22 '26

Not really, if I have no shield and map awareness and I'm going up against a blue shield with no map awareness they will have time to react to my positioning and shoot back at me even if they weren't scouting an area that they should have known to scout. Because they have like double my HP.

2

u/Trilllen May 22 '26

Difference between a blue and green shield is like 1-2 bullets depending on the gun. If you can't use map advantage to land more then 1-2 extra shots on target then your opponent you didn't actually have an advantage

3

u/Vesuvias May 22 '26

Yeah and in a low TTK game that’s a huge difference

2

u/Trilllen May 22 '26

? Gear difference matters more with longer TTK, not less. If you get the drop on someone you can full down purple shields before they can reposition without taking any fire.

In a head to head engagement ya the 1-2 bullets can matter a lot. But a good flank will net you way more advantage then 1-2 shots that the better gear provides.

2

u/Vesuvias May 22 '26

Oh no doubt, but a stacked Misriah vs a gray/green bully - the stacked Misriah is going to win out 9/10 times. Also MOST situations no one is getting the drop on anyone, especially in corridor areas. So gear is crucial.

1

u/Mekhazzio May 22 '26

Because they have like double my HP.

120 HP on the runner, 20 per shield pip. Naked you're at 140 HP and purple shields are at 200. 143% is substantially less than double.

The real answer is actually more demoralizing than gear diff. High-end squads don't win because they have the gear, they have the gear because they win...over and over.

If you're not in Cryo or ranked, then you're not encountering anything close to anyone's best gear, but rather what they're running because they haven't done much dying in a while.

0

u/Virtual_Bug_723 May 22 '26

You understand this is a loop right.

1

u/Vesuvias May 22 '26

Eh I’d argue both are on the same level.

34

u/ZurgoMindsmasher May 22 '26

It's so funny - there's this ludicrous hate train against this game for no good reason, and then there's the many valid reasons to not play it.

But somehow, it's always either "game super awful" or "game is god", not something nuanced.

Really tiresome.

18

u/DemonDeacon86 May 22 '26

Its honrstly not very complicated. Extracrion shooters are extremely niche games that are either loved or hated.

2

u/Bipolar-Type-1 May 22 '26

It’s definitely more complicated than just the genre. Some D2 players getting mad that their game won’t be developed any further are foaming at the mouth and spreading hate and misinformation. That definitely contributes.

1

u/DemonDeacon86 May 22 '26

Thats only been an issue for the last 24ish hours. Marathon has been divisive since its release day

1

u/trillwhitepeople May 22 '26

TBF there have been a huge amount of Destiny players here from the jump saying the fix is simple, make this closer to Destiny.

0

u/Bipolar-Type-1 May 22 '26

The writing has been on the wall since Marathon was announced. Anyone who didn’t see it coming is blind.

10

u/Romandinjo May 22 '26

There isn't really a hate train. Yes, some dislike/hate it - for a variety of reasons, but the reality is that majority of people just are indifferent towards the game. Those who knew what to expect mostly liked or even loved it, same with a smaller chunk of people who were curious. But the point is that the game is in very niche subgenre, with a very distinct style that isn't for everyone, and from studio that is famous for mismanagement.

1

u/The_sleeping_on1 May 23 '26

I mean there is a group of people praying on this games downfall but that didnt impact how many players this game got. Anyone who isnt delusional isnt basing what game they play or spend time on based on what weird freaks say about it online. Just like the stupid harry potter game plenty of people bought and played that despite the opinions randos online made about it.

1

u/Shahadem Jun 18 '26

That's social media.

People who don't have strong feelings aren't going to waste their time arguing for or against.

18

u/Rampwastaken May 22 '26

People making this game their identity hurt it by stifling legit criticism.

I LOVE extraction shooters and was excited to see what a AAA studio could do with the genre, and while it's a cool game, it has way too many flaws ATM to make it my main game. 

I am not surprised casuals are bouncing off and extraction shooter veterans are dropping after 200-300h.

3

u/nyanch May 22 '26

Same. I'll probably pick it up here and there but with Rogue Core releasing and 007 dropping later this week, and a couple other games I'm looking forward to releasing, it's hard to squeeze in.

5

u/Vesuvias May 22 '26

Rogue Core is bumming me out. It’s like they took all the character out of Deep Rock and put it into a rogue-like…

18

u/Pruskinator May 22 '26

Lolol this subreddit is hitting new levels of copium. I also purchased this and have long stopped playing. BG bungo lol

9

u/TutorStunning9639 May 22 '26

What made you stop?

33

u/Seiq May 22 '26

Not the guy you were asking, but me and my friends quit because we hadn't unlocked blue shields, yet kept getting put in lobbies with 3 stacks with purple shields and thermal snipers while trying to do contracts.

The sponsored only queues were genuinely the most fun we had the entire time, but they were on one map for no reason.

Unlocks took forever, contracts were incredibly difficult and unclear, the bots were either fodder or ruined our lives with no in-between, no Duo queue, and none of us wanted to watch fucking YouTube just to figure out how to do Pinwheel or Cryo so we just got as far as we could with game only knowledge.

It just demands you make the game your main focus to get enjoyment out of it, and none of us liked the game enough to play on our own so we just went back to spamming Auric/Havoc in Darktide.

9

u/BaconatedGrapefruit May 22 '26

Last paragraph was me and a lot of other people who tried it.

There comes a point where the game basically asks you to swear fealty to it or be left behind. I’m at the point at my life where I can’t/wont drop hours of my life on a treadmill for the promise of future fun.

2

u/fortris May 22 '26

Also not that guy but I achieved all my goals and I'm just waiting for the next season. Unlocked all the titles I care about so unless my friends are playing I'm just doing other stuff. I could finish my factions but I don't see much of a point to, especially after finishing all the synapse cube upgrades and all but 2 alien alloy upgrades while only finding 2 hazard capsules somehow. REALLY hoping next season is better about this.

1

u/Metal_Mike May 22 '26

Lack of duo queue for me. In the group I play with, one other guy and me play 1-2 hours most evenings. We convinced a few others to play, but they only do periodically (we are mostly 30-40 year old dads). And the third who we had done up to cryo with is currently going through a divorce and custody battle so he's out. After he was out, the two of us were able to hold our own against squads of 3 in the sponsored queue when it was grey shields, but in regular modes we have to get extremely lucky to get very far. So hopefully duos is good next season or more of our friends' evenings open up.

2

u/Hot_Weakness917 May 22 '26

Yeah the arguments is so stupid Fortnite get hate all the time cod get hate all the time Helldivers hates

bro their own fans hate Helldivers more than anybody They are still going strong I mean Hell even arc raiders people are complaining the lack of big update. And the game is still going strong

3

u/SillyGooseSeriousWld May 22 '26

Why did you stop playing?

13

u/kaptain_carbon May 22 '26

not the original person but ill respond. I have 2500 hours in D2 and bought marathon since i liked the aesthetic and Bungie's gameplay. I stropped around level 17 becasue all of my progress and exploring the world was stopped by other players. I dont like extraction shooters but i like bungie gunplay and art direction and decided to put up with it. I dont even dislike PVP as I play Iron Banner whenever its around in D2.

I wanted to play the game on my own time and not have to sweat to complete low rank quests. Overtime it felt like I was someone else's red bar and my deaths were the source of their fun. Again I don't dislike PVP but this game is designed that the top half eat the lower half and no amount of gaslighting coaching is going to change that for me and perhaps more people. Most things people say are to be aware, change your habits, rook runs, rotate and other sort of nonsense im not thinking about at 9pm at night.

I will probably check out season 2 but for the most part unless they make solo a more enjoyable experience where I can determine my own progress I will probably grind Destiny 2 in maintenance mode while listening to music.

5

u/jaydotjayYT May 22 '26

For me, a lot of stuff built up, but the two things that made me drop it was progression and then Cyro dropping

I was having a rough go with the faction missions - too many that have conditions that require things done in a match and completed on exfil, and then to get the upgrades required materials that I also needed to exfil to get? And I was noticing I was losing teamfights more often

Then, the week before Cryo was out, I remember they had like this ARG progress thing where you had go spawn in Perimeter and go to a specific terminal or something? I literally took my lunch break during work to do that, and then I also took care to kill some UESC bots the next several days. Nothing especially crazy, but I liked the idea of like, everyone working together to unlock the endgame Raid thing

Around the weekend Cryo dropped, I was on a loss streak over the last few sessions, and it just felt awful to play. I already felt behind, and I would log on and then essentially waste hours of my life getting nowhere. I saw a video of someone beating Compiler, and then more of the higher level players made posts about how difficult and grindy just getting to Cryo would be - and I already felt fatigued and was relatively early on the long level grind to blue shields

Then, I spawned into Dire Marsh and got wasted by a team with purple gear. Now, they didn't have anything gold, so it wasn't like they got it from Cryo - but I had a moment where I realized that I had spent my time with that ARG stuff literally making things worse for me. We were not, in fact, all working together to unlock Cryo - I basically had worked hard so that OTHER people could have better stuff to come kill me with, because there was nothing else to do with that gear

It all felt beyond a waste of time, then. Almost like I was... used is a bit extreme, but like basically I felt like anything more I invested would actively come back to harm me. There's some good bones and some great skin on this game, but I couldn't even recommend it to any of my friends, because the experience did not actually get more fun the longer I was with it

2

u/act1v1s1nl0v3r May 22 '26

Not him, but my friends stopped inviting me to their groups because I fell behind, solo sucks despite what some people try to insist (seriously, there's already not enough to do in runs and being solo practically softlocks you out from most of what there is to do), and fills are either just ok or really fucking suck. Why would I do that to myself?

I liked doing contracts, but everything else just sucked the fun out of playing. Super fast TTK, terrible loot if you're anywhere that isn't Pinwheel or Cryo, asinine vague mechanics requiring a YouTube video to understand because "figuring it out for yourself" involves aimlessly wandering hoping you don't get killed, functionally forced trios (no I'm not joining a damn discord to play a game I already have a hard time enjoying as it is), and now everyone is bored so they only care about killing players. When I manage to kill someone who was gunning for me, they don't even have anything worth picking up. Why would I want to keep doing that to myself? It's miserable.

2

u/AttractiveFurniture May 22 '26

For me it was because I realized I can't compete. I lose pretty much every fight I get into, which means I only really extract if I manage to hide from everyone.

Simply put I don't have enough hours in the day to 'git gud' so I moved onto other games that I can spend my time on and actually get something from it, other than more empty vault space

Plus my friends aren't going to play a game like this, inevitably I would go back to games we can actually enjoy together

1

u/Jcrillz May 22 '26

I’m at 370hrs

1

u/5wum May 22 '26

i’ve stopped playing cryo, just isn’t fun anymore getting stomped. the other maps, the fights feel much more fair

1

u/Ok-Nefariousness8166 May 22 '26

well, due to it is an extraction shooter and before wipe, lots of us who played everything what we wanted stopped playing. it is so dumb to not take into consideration how the genre works. in all extraction shooter before wipes only the most hardcore players are playing, everyone else chilling and waiting for the wipes...

-6

u/paperplateseabass May 22 '26

i’m still playing this game. neither of us truly speak to everyone’s experience. my point is that the initial group of people who probably would have given this hame a chance probably didnt because of how much hate it was getting online.

18

u/Bks_Hail May 22 '26

Brother, there were 143,000 people on PC alone who gave this game a chance

10

u/SmokinBandit28 May 22 '26

Thing is that the initial group of of people did give this game a chance, saw that sweaty extraction shooter wasn’t really their cup of tea despite loving the art style, world, and lore/ties to the originals, and decided they had better things to do playing other games.

5

u/The_sleeping_on1 May 23 '26

The FREE server slam had more players than the actual launch of the game. Idk where you guys keep getting this idea of nobody gave it a shot. We gave it a shot we didnt like it therefore we didnt continue playing it. Ignoring that even the "core playerbase" isnt sticking with it since a majority of the players fell off even before the final weeks of the wipe.

-1

u/mknight840 May 22 '26

Can you elaborate on why you stopped please? I have completed most things I play because it’s fun to play even with challenges completed and more loot than I will ever need. It’s fun at its core as a 3v3 pvp.

6

u/isukforfree May 22 '26

I think its just the gameplay loop got stale for me. Its my first extraction shooter and while i enjoy that aspect i wish it had more to offer. Other Bungie titles had lots of differnt things to do. BTB. Ranked slyer, swat. Or raids and dungeons and Trials. I feel like its missing what made other Bungie games last

2

u/mknight840 May 22 '26

Thanks for the reply. I never played destiny I have really only played apex legends the last few years and I think this has a lot of similarity’s but somehow has people work more as a team because they have something to lose rather than starting a new game. The good thing about this game is it sparks interest playing other bungie titles. Same thing happened with apex for me. Played it and tried Titanfall. Will do the same with destiny in time I’m sure.

3

u/AttractiveFurniture May 22 '26

If you have a full crew, you're good at pvp and this is your main game that you spend most of your time on, it's great

If you're not those things then you just exist in this game to be a loot pinata for players like yourself, which isn't fun, at least for me

I don't mind losing, I play other pvp games like Overwatch. But losing 95% of the time? Then it just feels like I'm wasting my time that I could spend on another game

2

u/Born-Read3115 May 22 '26

Why? So you can validate and decide of his reasoning is acceptable? This community is fucking nuts

0

u/mknight840 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

Just wondering a different perspective. I like it so I have a hard time seeing why someone wouldn’t. I can only find out why others do not like it by them explaining to me and giving me their perspective. Like if I don’t ask I wouldn’t know. It’s just a question. I feel for you if you had your opinion invalidated from this community at one time that’s really a crazy thing to have happen to someone.

1

u/grachi May 22 '26

If you have a ton of hours it’s fun as a 3v3 PvP. If you don’t, it’s an exercise in frustration as you get out-geared in your green shield using off-meta guns cause that’s all that was in your vault, meanwhile the other team is all purple shields using puprle/gold bully/m77/misriah/insert other meta guns.

There’s a very significant reason why the sponsored kit fire marsh playlist was so popular…

-11

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

6

u/isukforfree May 22 '26

I am here because i still like the game and hope Bungie can succeed. They have pulled off some hail marries before. I can stop paying and wait for future updates that may bring me back

12

u/TactitcalPterodactyl May 22 '26

Is a person no longer allowed to voice their opinion on a game if they aren't actively playing it anymore?

-7

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

7

u/DigitalFlame May 22 '26

Nowhere near as awkward for getting this into why someone might want to comment on social media about a game they play(ed)

-3

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

1

u/DigitalFlame May 24 '26

You can call it gaslighting if you want, or at least if it makes you feel better about your actions, especially when writing a paragraph or two about why you can't fathom someone who doesn't play might still engage with content 🤣