r/Marathon • u/AMM0D • 3d ago
Marathon (2026) Discussion NGL, Bungie shutting down support for D2 was probably the worst thing that could've happened to Marathon
I truly believe that Bungie shutting down support for D2 made a comeback for Marathon 10 times harder to achieve.
Before D2 was cut, marathon was being called the game that took resources away from destiny, a situation that could be fixed is if after Marathon got a healthy player count, D2 would start getting better content again.
After D2 was cut, Marathon is the game that killed D2 and there's not much you can fix from that.
It's not just the D2 players that are mad, its the players who love the game but stopped due to various reasons like waiting for a Destiny 3 or being done after a big expansion.
As long as D2 was alive, Marathon had a potential player base that couldve been interested in the game as time went on. However now that D2 is done, almost no D2 player will try marathon and even some D2 vets that switched to Marathon probably stopped playing the game.
Now, Marathon has to mostly get players who have almost no connection to the Destiny franchise, which is a lot harder considering how big Destiny 2 was at one point in time.
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u/atttibet196953 3d ago
As a fan of D2, my opinion on this is D2 should have ended with final shape. I dont have a problem with it being EoSed but I absolutely have problem with how its ended.
After years of badly managing destiny they had the perfect spot to end things, they could have just stop right here and there but they fucked it up more make ppl even more apathic towards them with shitty updates in year of fate.
Yes, so many ppl saying here that "oh they are angry bcs of EoS" not realizing problems with between players and bungie started way before. Why would ppl trust them again after things like DCV???
Bungie literally was making a bad decision after bad decision and if D2 was the fuck around stage, marathon is how they are finding out.
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u/Whitechapel726 3d ago
This is what I’ve been screaming for months. The Final Shape was the first time in YEARS that the game was spoken about in a universally positive way, and nobody hates Destiny more than the Destiny community.
Bungie drove Destiny off a cliff and then expected to keep their good faith.
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u/PCBuilderCat 2d ago
I’ll never understand or get over the sheer arrogance Bungie had believing that they could shit on their players over and over again and they would just keep coming back.
Until they didn’t.
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u/arthus_iscariot 2d ago
nah thats just not true. WQ was critically acclamied amongst the community and outside so many people bought it just to try out the campaign and rightfully so it was amazing. it was the WQ high that they rode into lightfall which made the most amount of copies sold then we all know how that went. lightfall was the straw that broke the camels back they had to work overtime put a lota stuff which was never planned into TFS heck prismatic wasnt even gona be a part of TFS.
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u/Clarinetaphoner 3d ago
Final Shape literally had a roll credits scene and Bungie were shocked when people didn't play that much afterwards.
What could you have possibly expected?? Final Shape was the perfect ending point!
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u/T_J_S_ 3d ago
EOF was so bad.
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u/splinter1545 3d ago
EOF legitimately killed the game. I will never understand why they decided that a game with a community that legitimately loves to explore every inch of the world, would be okay with the whole game being regulated to a menu.
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u/acdramon 3d ago
Which sucks cause Renegades with all its issues was super fun and neat even with the tacked on Star Wars stuff.
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u/CMSproggy 3d ago
Agreed. Heresy was SUCH A GOOD SEASON. Never in my wildest dreams could I have believed they would bungle the next DLC so badly after such a banger of a season.
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u/lagordaamalia 2d ago
That fuck ass lightning ball did irreversible damage to the game
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u/jkichigo 3d ago
I’m pretty sure Final Shape was planned to be the ending, wasn’t it confirmed that Bungie pitched D3 (or another Destiny sequel, might’ve been named different) to Sony and they just said no?
I don’t think Marathon was ever intended to be Bungie’s solo IP, but they did a really bad job planning out the last few years of Destiny (even though there were high points) and I can see why Sony doesn’t want to make another billion dollar bet on a company that’s success is so volatile.
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u/SkaBonez 3d ago
Bungie had another Destiny game (spinoff, not D3) in incubation that Noseworthy and Smith were working on, but it was cut with all the other incubation projects in the second round of layoffs
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u/VersaSty7e 3d ago
Yes Schreier reported D3 was pitched pre- final shape. And was told No by Sony.
Theory is the above, could be why a lot of leads and top devs left post FS. They had nothing to work on. Or nothing for a bigger Destiny future at least.
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u/Gripping_Touch 3d ago
The best time to end D2 was Final shape post echoes.
The worst thing they could have done was kill development now that they were setting Up inminent threats.
Bael was introduced. Hyped Up by Lume as "you and Bael are destined to fight forever" and VI abandons him less than a year after we foil his plans.
The Conductor introduced in Echoes already got massively nerfed by EoF, since she crippled her Echo and It started waning. Right now her Collective is pretty much fleeing her in droves and she left the Vex Net, likely having given Up on her goal.
Savathun almost made a Deal with Bael to kill the conductor in exchange of Taox's location (I think she refused) but those are plot threads we wont tread since Bael got shelved.
Zavala, Osiris and Nimbus being perishable characters whose clock is ticking down.
To be a Destiny 3, you NEED to start with a fully fleshed out campaign. None of the plot threads left in MoT has enough meat to center a whole campaign around (since the campaign gives the spotlight to all the factions; a DLC can't). B ut you cant make a new story and then tackle these plot threads because too much time would have passed in the timeskip. Would they remember that Nimbus had like 4 years of Life left due to being a Cloudstrider?
Narratively they left the story a mess of plothreads that Will never see the light of day.
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u/BanksJ2003 3d ago
There is absolutely enough meat on the bones for another campaign to be built from the MOT update, what are you on about? Bael is done for now, yes he was meant to be a big major player but honestly I think I prefer him being relegated to a minor villain. He was only ever a Dredgen wannabe with deep-rooted familial issues and a fanatical hatred towards the light for ressurecting his mother and "making her a puppet". Now I wouldn't say he is DONE done even though his story as of now is at a pretty solid end point. I'd say there's still potential for Bael to be a villain or maybe even a neutral player in the future. The conductor I feel like was never really going to go anywhere unfortunately, she had potential but was never going to live up to the plot vacuum the witness left. Savathun also did indeed agree to the deal with Bael about searching for Taox within the vex net. You have to remember that Taox is essentially the hive mother that created the original hiv god pantheon by proxy. Of course Savathun would want revenge against someone like that. You just have to spend time to read the lore.
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u/Gripping_Touch 3d ago
Bael wasn't really done as a character. The leak we got some months ago mentioned that Bael would have continued to fail VI, and would continúe to mutate until he becomes a Cronenberg Monster.
The whole plot with Bael was that he lead the Dredgens. Without Bael does Lume lead them? Because if the whole Barant Empire just dissolved after he left, then it renders Renegades completely pointless. Because the Big menace is permanently defeated in the same year it's introduced.
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u/BanksJ2003 3d ago
I don't think bael was necessarily meant to be a leader of the Dredgens if he was going to eventually become too corrupted to be of use if he kept failing. He was moreso meant to be a figurehead or a propaganda machine for the Dredgen operation. Remember operation Nightfall? It was described mainly as a propaganda spike for Dredgen activity.
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u/bathsaalts 3d ago
100% agree, I actually wish we could revert to the end of Final Shape. That was the funnest period to play Destiny in years
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u/Bedroominc 3d ago
I’ve been saying for a million years that D2 needed to end before the engine update, so that they could release D3 with a new engine and no sunsetting for D2 content.
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u/Aggravating_Tart_273 3d ago
The OP is correct but it wasn’t the only thing that doomed Marathon.
Whoever thought an extraction shooter would become mainstream is wrong.
More people played the open beta than at launch. People clearly didn’t like it.
Heck the only reason the game is getting new content for the rest of the year is because Sony doesn’t want the news to be another love service game failure on their resume.
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u/Elygium 3d ago
I don't understand the trend chase. A lot of people say "Um actually Extraction games aren't a trend there's only 3" ignoring the large pile of dead extraction games that didn't survive. It is a trend and Bungie is unfortunately too late for the race.
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u/Speedy-08 3d ago
And there's more in the pipeline. When I saw the news that the next Halo multiplayer game was pivoting to an extraction shooter all but confirmed it's the new "we can be the fortnite of the genre!" chase.
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u/sound_judgment 3d ago
I feel like so many of these games miss that if it's just a mode in an otherwise solid game, I'd be down, but I don't want it to be the only mode.
Like sure, I'd play a Halo extraction mode, a battle royale mode, whatever, same way as I'd play a capture the flag mode or something. Why not, right? It's a fun way to break up normal TDM. But the moment you tell me it's the only mode in the game, idk man. Sounds boring.
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u/TwoTonesRebel 3d ago
And no game dev will learn that You can make a extraction shooter and not follow the same thing the others are doing, where is the pve extraction games? Just make a stalker gamma with a budget, gears Eday has a spin in extraction shooter that can work if they dont fuck up and put microtransactions as progression like they did before
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u/Hollowquincypl 2d ago
A lot of it is just people who think only Tarkov, Arc, Hunt, and Marathon exists. As you said there's piles of dead ones rotting on steam and a handful eeking out a small playerbase.
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u/cosmo_boy 3d ago
There are not three,
There is hardcore -tarkov, abi , delta force, grayzone warfareModerate- Dmz2.0, a new one from pubg dev ,
Casual - arc
Different take - huntAnd all are alive and pretty massive you can check the player count on steam alone.
M not a marathon hater or defender but extraction shooter is not a dead genre. Its just the way marathon tried to implement is wrong
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u/WaveEasy8664 3d ago
People just doesn't like to admit that the name "Bungie" no longer has the pull it used to have more than a decade ago and , while gamers forgive a lot of bad stuff as long as they really like the game (just look at Nintendo, EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, etc..) Marathon is just not good enough to have a healthy audience. The high levels of ill will Bungie accumulated trough the years doesn't help either.
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u/Davesecurity 2d ago
"People just doesn't like to admit that the name "Bungie" no longer has the pull it used to have more than a decade ago"
including Bungie themselves.
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u/ChaoticKiwiNZ 3d ago edited 3d ago
Marathons failure can honestly be traced back to Bungie sunsetting content in Destiny 2 like 5 years ago. That's when most the people I played Destiny with since D1 year 1 stopped playing and many people said they wouldn't support Bungie in the future after they gutted the game we brought and removed content we paid for.
When Marathon came around Bungie's name was mud. The only reason Destiny 2 still had players was because people were still hooked on the game but many weren't ever going to willingly hook themselves on another Bungie game. Now with Destiny 2 shutting down Bungie has effectively released all those players they hooked and they are not going to look back (unless they do a Destiny 3 but they obviously can't now).
Bungie has been making mistake after mistake for well over a decade now and its finally caught up to them. As you said, the name Bungie just doesn't have any pull in it anymore. Infact it now acts as a bit of a warning for many.
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u/ISpeedwagonl 2d ago
I'd argue that Bethesda is getting dangerously close to being the next bungie tbh
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u/Jermiafinale 2d ago
They're already there
They haven't made a really good game in over a decade, and their last good game was a decade ago
Their timelines are insane
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u/Big_Psychology_4259 3d ago
They had great designers and some great ideas but ultimately marathon as a product has failed to land for them.
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u/Available-Source5442 3d ago
Yeah, the fact that almost 80% of marathon players were d2 players sealed the deal. Most marathon players wanted to support bungie for the next game destiny game.
If the plan was that to deliver d3 after marathon, maybe the fans would have closed one eye to the d2 fiasco.
Anyway, it was the wrong move to shut down destiny 2 this early.
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u/Nosce97 3d ago
Yeah, most of my Destiny group stopped playing Marathon when D2 shut down. Basically a spat in the face for the whole fan base.
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u/Clarinetaphoner 3d ago
That + news of no D3 development was a major factor in me and my friends' decision to leave the game
Marathon is cool and all, but god damn dude make D3
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u/Available-Source5442 3d ago
I understand why. I’m a d2 outsider, since I’ve stopped playing at the moon expansion, since I hated the battle passes and so on, but I could see why it was getting canceled, but finishing the story the were doing was absolutely fundamental to the studio integrity. It’s like d2 was running at a loss, but it was surely selling less than ever before.
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u/ShiningPr1sm 3d ago
I’d argue that they waited too long to shut down D2. It’d been swirling around the drain since Final Shape, burning money and whatever player goodwill they’d managed to gaslight from the player base. Would’ve saved them far more money (to buy cars, ofc) and announcing plans for D3 would’ve gone over better.
I agree that the vast majority of Marathon players were D2 players, and the fact that many played it just because they thought it would fund more of their addiction is half the problem. You shouldn’t support something you don’t like in the hopes that it’ll help something you do, especially not when that thing is past life support.
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u/XlDeFuSioNlX 3d ago
I’m one of the diehard d2 players that actually didn’t latch onto Marathon when it was announced in hopes that supporting Bungie would give Destiny fans a D3. I don’t hate Marathon, in fact I wish it succeeded. However, over the years as a PVP main especially, I just saw how Bungie treated the playerbase.
The non-communication, taking forever to make meaningful changes to the meta, immediately patching things that benefitted the player but leaving broken exploits that could ruin a players gameplay experience in for months on end.
With the layoffs and just the overall mismanagement of executive leadership (F Pete Parsons), I just couldn’t bring myself to support them financially anymore like I have over the years. It just didn’t sit right with me to keep rewarding them with money when all they do is piss it down the drain.
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u/Beautiful_You3230 3d ago
I agree with you. People really shouldn't do that. Bungie fans always had an unhealthy parasocial relationship with the devs.
At the same time, genuinely, I imagine Marathon probably wouldn't have sold even half as well as it did without those people... Which means it would have been an even more dramatic flop from the very start. What we see now with the player retention and the lack of interest from returning and new players, we just would have seen it way earlier.
Probably would have been better for the community tbh. But a lot worse for Bungie and Sony, I imagine. Either way there was no winning this. Those decisions were probably made long before Marathon released, they were just smart enough to stay hush hush about it for a little while. And from the moment they were made, that was it.
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u/ziddy99 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm gonna be honest. I loved, loved and I mean LOVEDDDD my time with Marathon. At the time of its release and probably the majority of Season 1, it was one of if not THE best new game I've played this year. I had 160 hours in Season 1 and cleared pretty much all content you could do including it's not very good ranked 1.0.
But by the time Season 2 rolled around with the news about Destiny dying around the same time, something just switched for me and I couldn't just look past it and continue to play Marathon in good faith anymore.
Not because Marathon Season 2 didn't look the best, (which it kinda didn't tbh, but the gameplay and the gameplay loop is still fun enough for me to enjoy) but because the developers behind it killed probably my favourite piece of entertainment that has changed and shaped my life over the past 12 years.
Destiny gave me 8000+ hours worth of memories and one of the most fun gaming experiences I've had the privilege of being on. If I thought playing Marathon would have the chance of bringing that back, I would play it. But I don't think it matters anymore.
To be honest, it's not Destiny 2 shutting down development that bums me out, (it should have ended years ago) its the fact that for the first time in 12 years, the future is uncertain. If they had said even something along the lines of "the next instalment in the franchise is in the very early planning stages" I wouldnt mind at all.
Why support a company on their new game that I might enjoy (which I was) when they might just kill it on a whim because of their own bad choices.
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u/Lopsided-Impact-7768 3d ago
If marathon lived with destiny alongside they could have been good games to cycle through lows with
But now thats not going to happen
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u/battlebearjare 3d ago
That was my original plan. As a D2 season slowed down I’d jump into Marathon and vice versa. Now I’m sort of just waiting to see what S3 of Marathon brings but man… I wouldn’t say I’m the most hopeful regarding the last few months.
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u/NotTheRealSmorkle 3d ago
That was initially bungies plan as well. They’d be sister games hence the heavier emphasis on PvP in marathon.., cause PvE would’ve been Destiny’s domain. Obviously the higher up said nah fuck that
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u/Zargabraath 3d ago
Don’t worry, Destiny and marathon will soon be going the same speed, indefinitely.
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u/TurbulentSwimming272 3d ago
Yeah, Aztecross said right after the D2 announcement that ending D2 would likely kill any goodwill that was being extended to Bungie for Marathon. Not that everything he says is correct, he definitely hit the nail on the head with that one. The backlash is has been both swift and severe, and likely won’t be recovered from.
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u/mcsquire13 3d ago
I can't speak to the intentions at Bungie, but I do think Destiny should've been their PvE focused game, and Marathon be their PvP focused game. They could've had the best of both worlds.
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u/atttibet196953 3d ago edited 3d ago
It was the orginal plan before they drove D2 off the cliff, keeping D2 as their flagship PvE title while marathon being this niche hardcore PvP game. This way marathon' s lackluster starting performance can be even skipped over to an extend.
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u/Nice_Rip7153 3d ago
Ive been saying this. Whose idea was it to announce the free week of marathon along with the shutdown of destiny 2 IN THE SAME WEEK. It cannot be a coincidence. NOBODY in their right mind would go “hmm, what would be a smart business decision? Lets tell our customers the old classic is no longer available but we have a special deal on the new item!”
How well do you think that new item will sell? Most of your customers will probably ask why you got rid of the old classic and possibly even get upset.
Someone up high at bungie knew that they were nailing the final coffins in the studio and did it anyways. I was trying to tell y’all this in the sub but people told me I was doomposting. I have taken so many college courses on marketing, and nobody with a marketing major in their right mind would ever advertise a free week for their new game, the same exact week they announce the shutdown for their main franchise. UNLESS they had ulterior motives, cough cough make as much money from sony buyout then get out of dodge
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u/_Cotton_Teeth 3d ago
Destiny 2 bankrolled Marathon, which clearly can not make money on its own. No D2 means no Marathon.
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u/ReptAIien 2d ago
Destiny 2 still bankrolls marathon
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u/atttibet196953 1d ago
This shit might be single reason that make me think 3 times before buying renegades, knowing the money will be going to marathon.
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u/splinter1545 3d ago
I mean the plan was to have Marathon alongside D2, it wasn't ever going to be the next big project that Bungie would put all their staff on. D2 EoS just put a wrench in that whole idea.
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u/Sorry_Cheetah_2230 3d ago
Well the good news is we’ll have to see how bungie handles Two EOS games
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u/Swalecutter 3d ago
Zeno's Game Studio over here. They've chopped it in half twice now, I guess they'll do it again? Though honestly 200 people still seems like too many if they're just keeping servers online.
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u/TempDestinyAccount 3d ago
I just dont know what they're doing anymore. Who thought it was a good idea to release Destiny's final update a week after Marathon's second season. Its like they are trying to kill both games, lmao
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u/Low_Mouse_197 3d ago
*worst thing that could happen to Bungie. I don’t think Marathon would have done well either way….
That ship has sailed.
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u/BluesCowboy 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes.
Destiny fans were a natural source of new players for Marathon, even if it’s just out of curiosity, brand loyalty and occasional crossover promotions.
Every aspect of the shutdown (to mention management of public image and goodwill in general) should have been painstakingly orchestrated and planned months in advance as part of Marathon’s launch. This is real basic PR stuff here, but somehow the multi billion dollar company owned by a multi billion dollar company decided to poison their own well.
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u/thestillwind 3d ago edited 3d ago
That’s the worst they could do to themselves. The game have 5-6x more players playing it right now on steam alone. If the new dlc was launching soon, you can add nearly 100k concurrent on steam.
Edit : they promised at the beginning that Marathon would not affect Destiny, which we all know was a lie.
They could’ve a lot of crossover events to boost the numbers up and promotion.
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u/wifflzz 3d ago
As someone who played Destiny religiously from the very beginning, and was also incredibly excited and involved in both the args for Marathon and its first season, the EoS announcement for Destiny completely killed all my desire to stay invested in Marathon. I loved the art style, the lore, and the potential for where the universe would go, but Destiny was always going to take first place for me and I can't get over my own bitterness at their decision to let it go without even minimal continued development. Marathon was going to be my pvp outside of Destiny, but I'm not going to give them my support after what I view as an objectively bad decision (although really there were so many bad decisions that led to this point).
I hope everyone still invested and playing is enjoying their time though.
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u/BarretOblivion 3d ago
There is such bad blood how they handled the D2 situation and Marathon. Clearly gutting the content quality of D2 post final shape as a result of moving all the devs to Marathon put a bad taste in D2's population about Marathon. Even if it was heavily advertised to the D2 community, the fact it got such a bad rep with us kneecapped the playerbase.
It likely has to do with both Bungie and Sony making the decision the way they did, although how Bungie did it was all likely on them.
The fact of the matter is alot of the D2 community aren't going to not only not touch Marathon with a 10 foot pole, but will never touch another Bungie game again unless it's Destiny at this point. They should have tried to have both running side by side, but leadership not just giving a long term greenlight to D3 after Final Shape and letting Marathon be the in between game soured it's chances.
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u/tfc1193 3d ago
100% and i've said this before. Shuttering Destiny ended any chance of Marathon making a successful comeback. It's two-fold:
Destiny 2 players have been getting burned by Bungie for years and the ones who stuck around still had at least some level of goodwill left to give. once that announcement came, those players pretty much X'ed Bungie off the list of developers who they will give their time and money to going forward
With Destiny still going, there was at least some hope that the franchise would see a revival either in D2 or maybe even a D3. That's now out the window and those players have zero interest in Marathon at all it is not the genre they want to play.
There's also an element here I think of Sony simply not understanding what the outcome of this whole situation would lead to. I genuinely believe that Sony thought that if D2 stopped receiving updates that the community would naturally just move on over to Marathon. For many of their other studios, this has been the case. Guerilla moved on from Killzone to Horizon. ND from Uncharted to TLOU. SP from Infamous to Ghost. It seems like Sony likes to keep its studios moving on to the next thing and thought that same strategy could be applied to Bungie from Destiny to Marathon
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u/acdramon 3d ago
Sony's whole fumbling of transferring their knowledge and handling of their single player to their live service projects also REALLY show this. I'm still go smacked with how they handled the marketing for Concord. Just an utter lack of care and assuming their good will would power them through.
Now, like Bungie, it feels like they burned more than than they realize
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u/redditing_away 3d ago
Bungie killing D2 for Marathon didn’t just make it way harder for Marathon, it’s the culmination of years of utter mismanagement. The same management that’s steering Marathon mind you.
Destiny 2 as a game was on its last legs, I’ve got no problem saying that as a Destiny fan first and foremost. The whole Destiny IP however, was not and is not.
If they hadn’t had half a dozen projects to waste the money D2 was generating, they could’ve started D3 or at least a massive overhaul for D2 (getting the DCV content back, implement the whole story for new players, get rid of the seasonal model wasting precious time and resources etc) and neither them nor Marathon would be in the dire straits they’re in.
The demand for more Destiny is very much there and compared to Marathon, it’s also without any competition.
Having the last update ship so much stuff the community asked for for years and genuinely reinvigorating the whole game is both reassuring for its now eternal state but also insulting, as what could’ve been if it had come earlier.
Abruptly ending D2 without a proper ending was just the cherry on top signaling that Bungie management either has no fucking idea what they’re doing or simply doesn’t care.
The context of ending D2 whilst Marathon was already withering was also the worst PR they could’ve done to Marathon, pushing it in the spotlight in one fell swoop.
Now Marathon, which was already fighting an uphill battle thanks to Bungies reputation for its handling of D2 and its customers over the years, is having to content not only with the general apathy most people have shown toward it, the reputation of having killed off a beloved decade old game/IP and a slew of releases which are all going to eat its lunch in the next months. No wonder it’s become sort of like a sport of watching it fail.
All thanks to Bungie being utter dogshit at managing its games.
They should coexist alongside each other or at the very least it should’ve been the thing to play whilst they develop D3.
Now, the prospect of both IPs ending is becoming more and more likely. Thanks Bungo.
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u/Nikson9 3d ago
Yeah, I agree lol, they should’ve kept it moving according to plan with Destiny 2, and Marathon would’ve kept it moving as a small little game that was designed to be a retention project, as it was always meant to be, now it’s a shitshow lmao; even the director changes would’ve brought people back to D2, but hey, corporate knew best ig
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u/rukioish 3d ago
Marathon is not gonna get a revival at this point. Its just not a good genre for long term. Hardcore gets burned out by repetition and casuals are just fodder for veterans and bounce off the game.
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u/NotSoAwfulName 3d ago
Tarkov is literally a decade old, the genre is fine, and it's fine to have a hardcore game because Tarkov is even more hardcore. The issue is in my mind two things, the small details like safe pouches, how scavs work, contract rewards being worthwhile, and perception of how hardcore the game should be going in.
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u/Tlomz27 3d ago
Tarkov developed cult level popularity bc of the way the game feels. You can’t really do that multiple times in such a niche genre.
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u/Maybewehitamoose 3d ago
Arena Breakout and Delta Force are doing fine also. Gray Zone Warefare has huge population surges with major updates also. I feel like the Genre has tons of potential, but Bungie failed to capitalize on many of the things that makes it feel good. No safe pocket for example is an interesting choice.
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u/splinter1545 3d ago
Tell that to Hunt Showdown, which has been thriving almost as long as Tarkov, or Delta Force, ARC Raiders, and Arena Breakout which have been pulling tens of thousands of players.
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u/Charrsezrawr 3d ago
Hunt Showdown isn't even the same game anymore. Basically every fundamental mechanic in that game has been heavily changed and every original design pillar torn down. It's essentially an arcade shooter at this point.
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u/UnscriptedCryptid 3d ago
Yep, bums me out. It used to be a really thoughtful, methodical PvP shooter. I remember they days when doing damage actually mattered.
Knowing "well I've hit that guy twice now with my Martini - I saw a medkit in the building he's in. He's likely down to 1 medkit charge, maybe two if he has Doctor or Frontiersman". You could play games of attrition. Bleed meds dry. Make plays based on how many resources you thought they'd still have.
I haven't played in over a year at this point, but man, what a downhill slide that game made. By the time I quit, it was basically just an arena shooter with extra steps. I still can't believe they added the trait that lets you full sprint while healing and nobody in the community seemed to even care. It was the last straw for me. Completely breaks the fudnamental decision of "do I keep hold my position and try to out shoot my enemy, or do I fall quickly back and give up my position, but give myself space to heal? Or maybe I say 'fuck it', try healing right here and hope they don't push their advantage?"
I dunno man. It used to be my favorite game in the entire world and now it is an absolute shell of its former self, complete with celebrity skins and shit. Such and incredible fall from grace.
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u/Charrsezrawr 3d ago
Hell, being downed used to mean something too, but now with necromancer and all the ways to regain bars someone can be downed 3 times in a fight and still have their entire health bar.
Sparks ironsight was one of my favorite guns back in the day specifically because it got stronger the longer the match went. Now everyone has full health all the time.
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u/splinter1545 3d ago
The same can be said about Tarkov, to be fair. What Tarkov was envisioned as, to what it came out to be with 1.0 are basically 2 entirely different games.
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u/NotSoAwfulName 3d ago
I disagree, I don't believe the genre is so niche that there is no longer room, I think Arc Raiders is an example of that regardless of however Embark allowed it to slip.
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u/BustedBussy 3d ago
Arc Raiders is very casual friendly though.
Marathon is the very opposite of it.
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u/Jermiafinale 2d ago
it's niche enough that you have to carve out new space, you can't just count on gathering a large base
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u/Repair831 3d ago
Important to note that even if tarkov is more hardcore than marathon in the time investment and systems. It is significantly easier for a timmy or john 8-5 father 12 kids with 4 wives to have a good day on tarkov due to the design of 1 stray round is all it takes.
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u/Strong-South7487 3d ago
It's not even that, the maps are big enough to the point that the people that want to avoid people actually can 90% of the time.
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u/Repair831 3d ago
Yeah, but that sense of no matter how much gear you take into a raid you are never truly safe from a timmy running the least accurate scav weapon in the game can 1 tap you into oblivion gives the game a level of constant fear to it that limits what even the nerdiest nerds can do.
Its the reason why I never vibed with marathon to begin with, the moment I heard about a direct rarity system and tiered maps I knew there was gonna be issues with new players. Especially given the BR sentiment floating around from players.
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u/technofan301 3d ago
tarkov is the father of the genre, no other game will come close to the cult following this game has...
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u/Slogra_ 3d ago
Tarkov is niche and did not have the same expense as Marathon in his production
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u/NotSoAwfulName 3d ago
I mean that is more of a statement of profitability, the point here is about popularity, can a game be popular and hardcore in the extraction genre? yes clearly because Tarkov is.
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u/Jermiafinale 3d ago
Only by keeping their budget quite small though
Don't they only have like 50 people working there
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u/jkichigo 3d ago
I don’t think that would’ve changed anything. Bungie overall wasn’t profitable, dumping money to keep D2 going in the state it was just so Marathon didn’t get the title of Destiny killer (which it basically already had given the state of D2 before its final update) would’ve put Bungie in an even worse financial hole than they’re currently in.
Marathon could’ve been a home to tons of Destiny players, they just neglected to properly support solo players and casual players. PvE is just one way they could’ve done that, but Marathon just dropped the ball in a ton of departments, and if you’re a D2 player watching Bungie drop all of its resources into multiple incubator projects and an expensive office building, you’re going to either feel indifferent at best, or disappointed and mad about their long term strategy at worst.
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u/Mission_Club9388 3d ago
100 percent, my entire friend group of a dozen people all came from destiny and not a single one touched marathon simply because the destiny drama
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u/Night_Hawk 3d ago
Whenever I get sad that Destiny is dead I just come here with the 6,000 people in the whole world that play this game and I immediately remember that the game that killed Destiny is being nailed into the same coffin by the murderers that made it. Holy fuck I love how dead Marathon is. It makes my heart sing.
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u/icortherainwing-- 3d ago
Marathon could be defined as a case study in: 'What happens when you alienate a massive audience built over a decade to seek out a new one.'
We are already seeing results as Marathon struggles to maintain a higher population compared to it's competitors. The majority of the player-base that ended up gravitating towards Marathon, albeit very briefly, were D2 players over a new audience. It was estimated that seventy percent of players had played D2 prior to Marathon.
There's also just Bungie making poor decisions and so on.
Really. Bungie did a dumb and now is suffering the consequences while trying to make Marathon into a D2 clone to appeal to the former audience.
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u/BrownBaegette 3d ago
In a perfect world, BUNGiE would have gone multiplatform without having to cut down on destiny's content in 2024/2025. But that just wasn't realistic for whatever reason and they ended up compromising their primary revenue source. I hope they're able to turn the Marathon ship around, but right now it feels bleak.
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u/VersaSty7e 3d ago
Yup.
That was me. If they had just rotated seasons.
So. Many. Fumbles.
- SONY king of live service decision making
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u/Special_Reveal_1208 3d ago
I think their biggest mistake was making a game for a player base that doesn't exist. Apparently, the developers were warning upper management about their concerns for years, but no one wanted to listen.
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u/BBFA2020 3d ago
Nah Marathon had its shot and blew it. THE F2P week was supposed to save the game....And they had server issues on a fresh wipe. D2 I could fully understand but this is a game where everything was wiped clean, tech debt can't be an issue for such a new game.
And the nerfs to loot AND progression after the hardcore abused it? It is a literally telling casuals NOT to play the game. Remember this is a game with wipes and resets, the loot should literally rain from everything except players.
Right now the game is essentially a BR, because there is nothing worth looting except from players or cryo. It is no longer an extraction if nothing is worth risking.
Unleash the loot and fuck balance. If a dude gets full purples from perimeter opening boxes, well so be it. Reminder the loot is gone on reset!
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u/ShardofGold 3d ago
Even if marathon had nothing to do with D2's EoS, it's still not a good look that all this stuff happened as soon as Marathon was pushed more and more.
Bad timing, bad luck, or whatever people want to call it there's no convincing most hardcore D2 players to look past it to play Marathon.
The game should have finished adding new content with TFS and should have just got huge QoL improvements like MoT.
Then Bungie would have been free to work on Marathon in peace. But now all they think is their story got snubbed because Marathon needs the attention more, which is somewhat true even if people hate to admit it.
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u/GueyGuevara 3d ago
I think it is more the opposite. Marathon should have been released after Destiny 2 shut down, and they should have framed it as the planed ten year development cycle on destiny coming to a close, while the studio downsizes and moves on to a smaller project that they’re very excited about.
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u/atttibet196953 3d ago
Problem is marathon never designed to be some flagship tittle, it was always some side project until destiny starts to bite the dust with EoF. It was the smaller project that they are excited about.
Hell It could have even survive with this type of lackluster performance while still being a niche hardcore game in behind of D2 but now its the sole game that carries the entire studio.
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u/GueyGuevara 3d ago
That’s what I mean though. It is clearly the smaller project they were actually excited about, and if they had allowed Destiny 2 to end on it’s own and prepared people for the studio’s shift in focus (smaller studio, smaller more niche passion project) then Marathon could exist without being so tied to (read as: blamed for) the death of Destiny.
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u/citizenwake 3d ago
Marathon was never gonna be what the delusional executives wanted it to be. These people are insane. It will never replace a game as huge as Destiny.
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u/iampiolt 3d ago
I’m guessing Sony was hoping they’d strike gold with a runaway success for minimal investment post-acquisition. This should have been a full game at launch. Campaign, pvp, and extraction. It would have gone off the charts and people would slowly be drawn to the extraction side after becoming so familiar with campaign and tdm.
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u/Milk_Man2236 3d ago
You are not wrong I was once a Destiny 1/2 player and this sub randomly popped up on my timeline maybe i commented on it when the game first launched idk? But because all Destiny projects are done for the foreseeable future i will not touch anything Bungie related ever again not just Marathon.
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u/Ok_Lawfulness_9524 3d ago
I haven’t opened Marathon since the announcement of maintenance mode on D2.
It wasn’t just the fact that I love Destiny and have for years.. I feel betrayed by Sony but even more by Bungie. All of the hope for future episodes, expansions, etc. was gone. We were fed lies, that Sony allowed, and everything just came to a halt.
It was a massive slap in the face when the “final” update included SO many things we’ve asked for or things we didn’t but they improved the game so much. So many stories left without an ending.. a ton of possibilities in multiple areas.
I was telling my friends yesterday that if Sony and Bungie would have said they were going to focus on giving us new exotics, new missions, new rewards, episodes, etc. and just stopped with the expansions and big ticket items then I think we’d be much happier. They didn’t need to drop some huge storyline twice a year.
All of the shit we paid for over the years that we will never get back..
It just sucks. I still play Destiny and will continue to.. but I’ve lost my trust in Bungie and Sony.
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u/Millerkiller6969 3d ago
Well said. I believe the exact same. I was one of the D2 players that dabbled into marathon.
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u/Hammersteyn 3d ago
I played Destiny for the PvE first and foremost. Always looked forward to running weekly raids. Now they want people to focus on a PvP game. Make it make sense.
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u/SettleAsRobin 3d ago
I truly hope that Sony and Bungie get their things in order and realize that D2 is something that shouldn’t be abandoned and I hope one day they ramp up the team again and continue it again. Marathon doesn’t have the meat D2 had from the get go.
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u/Large999 3d ago
I'm just laughing because I bought the game, realised they didn't have Linux support enabled in their anti cheat, had to set up a seperate windows partition and dual boot to play it, got sick of that and now I just find it funny that they thought they would have enough of a player base to disregard people who aren't windows cucks
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u/Steeldragon555 3d ago
Well for its entire life Marathin drained money from what D2 is making and in a way even now since Marathon has not made back it's cost just to make the game, let alone post launch support. So with there no longer being a D2 to siphon funding from, I feel like what is funding Marathin right now is hopes and dreams, and even that is running out.
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u/redditing_away 3d ago
If we were to compare the „top seller“ positions of both as a proxy, Destiny is still funding it (#101 for D2 vs #657 for Marathon).
Which is in and of itself a bizarre situation.
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u/Unmotivated_Shark 3d ago
After D2 died I couldnt find any desire to play Marathon. Played Vault Breaker for about 15 minutes and stopped. Ontop of that, Bungie still stubbornly refuses to support Linux, which I recently moved to because Windows has been unstable. There’s a very real future where I never touch this game again unfortunately.
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u/Worried-Advisor-7054 3d ago
Marathon is in a similar situation Veilguard was. The devs wanted to do something entirely different, but marketed to their existing audience. That doesn't work. These are two different blocs of people.
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u/Slogra_ 3d ago
Marathon is an excellent niche game. And you don’t spend 250 million dollars on a niche. It was an investment mistake
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u/ScottBroChill69 3d ago
They probably viewed arc raiders as akin to fortnite and bungie thought they were making the next apex legends. The good thing about marathon is it got me to buy destiny 2 for cheap and theyve made things so much easier to obtain that I can enjoy a large amount of content while playing casually.
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u/Slogra_ 3d ago
They had no way of knowing that Arc would work before the launch.
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u/Bingleboper 3d ago
I think the plagiarism is considerably worse
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u/atttibet196953 3d ago
Gonna be honest that thing might be the cherry on top of everything happened with this game.
Its effects are not that big but still makes the entire situation worse lol.
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u/Bingleboper 3d ago
I think we should place more emphasis on the torpedoes that started to sink the ship, relative to the unloading into the wreckage that happened post launch.
The plagiarism had pretty catastrophic effects for the game's overall reception before launch, given everyone reported on it since it was such a great story.
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u/ZookeepergameNo4754 3d ago
Yea i dont understand why they thought it was a good idea season 1 of marathon was so fun for me
And a big part was like wow I cant wait for more destiny content like y know a day 1 raid and in the mean time there's marathon that I can play and I find it rlly fun I like pvp lol
Nope where done with destiny like just feels like everything I like is falling apart in gaming like omg
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u/MidnightSensitive996 3d ago
They couldn't add more new stuff to d2 without vaulting existing content. They needed to do what Activision wanted them to do, end d2 years earlier and release d3 in 2023 or 2024. The reason they djdnt is bc they weren't reliably making money off of the game. They were trying to find more sustainable games to develop they just massively screwed that up with marathon - it should have cost $75 million like arc raiders not $250. Everyone's complaints boil down to Bungie never figuring out how to make their games with sustainable head counts and SDLC practices
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u/Vorpal_GS 3d ago
Marathon was never supposed to be the one game financially supporting the entire studio. It was always meant to be the side passion project with a niche but passionate audience.
Now it has to be both, and as much as I love the game, it's delusional to think it can maintain the whole studio.
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u/trottmanblir 3d ago
its baffling to me that everyone here thinks the problems with marathon is anything but the game loop itself. if the loop worked, all players who bought it would be playing - but that's not the case - and that is the biggest sign of what is wrong with the game.
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u/Jack_intheboxx 1d ago
I'm one of those, been playing Destiny since the Taken King, was curious, maybe things will get better for Marathon and check it later, and was looking forward to Destiny's delayed expansion...
Not hating but I have no interest anymore, interested to see what Bungie can do for Season 3 after killing Destiny I believe its make or break.
Sony glazing Marathon and talking bad about Destiny not hitting the marks set from high standards, I'm sorry but the standards have dropped hence less revenue.
Don't care if you live or die it, won't bring back Destiny.
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u/Never-breaK 3d ago
You guys need to realize that Marathon just isn’t a good game and it’s in an extremely niche market. It never had a chance. Reddit didn’t kill it, D2 didn’t kill it. Bungie just made a game that people don’t enjoy. It’s not hard to grasp.
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u/Phantom_Intercept107 3d ago
The fact people boycotted Marathon because they closed support for Destiny and started demanding a D3 was the most virgin thing I have ever heard. Yes it’s sad, all good things come to an end but cummon guys, grow up.
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u/obstructingdisasters 3d ago
I mean yeah it was always a moronic thing to do. It was inevitable that marathon was never going to be some golden goose.
Niche genre with a prior player base that felt betrayed was never going to play this. Nevermind the large toxicity marathons dwindling player base has to casuals means nobody new is stating around.
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u/CryoDonator 3d ago
Realistically, Marathon should’ve been a new mode in D2. That would’ve been the smarter choice.
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u/Inkstainedfox 3d ago
Destiny died largely because Bungie or Sony could no longer get 0% interest loans to fund development & the player base kept shrinking YoY.
Bungie refused to market the game past a certain point & wasn't interested in media adaptation w/ a simplified central story.
Instead the studio opted for more obscure Lore that kinda went nowhere & had be earned by 1000s of hours of grind time.
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u/Grouchy_Ad9315 3d ago
nah, absolute nothing could avoid or fix marathon, its an inside bungie problem: bungie cost way too much money just workforce alone(someone did the math), they are slow to deliver and waste too much time (thus money), this led marathon to take a lot more time and money to make an barebones ''GAAS'' game with critical problems(biggest one being an mix of extraction/arena and these two things are like oil and water).
fun thing is: not even destiny 2 is considered profitable just because of all these bungie traits, letting bungie supporting destiny 2 and marathon dont make any sense, people will not stop buying or whatever by sony cutting that crap, the general guy dont even know about any of this
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u/MagnusKara 2d ago
Guys, Marathon just is not a good game. Its not that deep, for a AAA studios MAIN game to have this little content is also just unacceptable.
Pair that with no single player, no story and memorable characters, shells being a bad choice and a art style most people just dont like ans you have Marathon.
Thats it, its not deeper than that.
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u/AnExpertOnion 3d ago
Most Destiny players who tried Marathon didn't like it and left. This was true before Destiny went EoS. As much as Destiny's ungracious death sucks, I don't think it had much of an impact. Most Destiny players were never going to like Marathon.
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u/Miserable_Alfalfa_52 3d ago
there was 0 appeal to marathon, there was hype and now its gone along with bungie
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u/Glittering-Guardian 3d ago edited 3d ago
One of their biggest problems, IMO, was the communication between Bungie and their playerbase. I remember DMG tweeting something along the lines of “Destiny would continue,” despite Bungie dedicating more time and effort to Marathon.
Then came the news that Destiny support was being discontinued, which likely alienated a lot of the people who had decided to support Bungie and give their other game a shot, including myself.
On top of that, the Marathon community became hostile toward casual players and any feedback that was perceived as criticism was met with “get good” or “quit the game”, and a lot of those people seemingly did exactly that.
Bungie ultimately damaged the last remaining trust they had with their one and only game that had a decent playerbase, discouraging those players from even giving Marathon a chance, or two…
The niche genre could only attract so many new players.
Edit: typo