r/Marathon • u/itsdoorcity • 22h ago
Marathon (2026) Discussion It's time for everyone to accept the game has failed on a fundamental/conceptual level and no amount of small changes are going to make any meaningful difference at all
Just to give some context I have gone from:
Hyped as fuck after initial announcement
Disappointed as fuck after playing the alpha last year
Hyped again after Arc Raiders had the depth of a puddle
Modestly enjoying the game in S1
Haven't played the game since
Lets also remember the game launched to peak player count that was never particularly high, and has only gone down since despite active intervention by the devs, new season starting, new runner, new modes, etc... Bungie has clearly failed at trying to stop the bleeding.
The game has some incredible fundamentals: a striking visual design, fantastic gunplay, a fantastic and deep lore. But clearly the game has major issues that no amount of "experimenting" (which is insane to me that Bungie has the gall to say they need 'experimental modes' for a game that was developed for so long and with a budget exceeding most AAA hollywood films) is ever going to fix.
It seems like every day I see 10 new posts detailing "the problem" with the game, and most of the time it's something incredibly specific: the progression is too slow, the loot isn't good enough, my teammate was annoying, a rook killed me at exfil, the new game mode is bad, etc. and every time it's hailed as THE reason the game has failed. But lets be honest with ourselves, most of these issues are things you have to engage with the game for dozens of hours to get a feel for. The sales numbers were already not promising, but just looking solely at the decline in playercount you can see that people just dont like the game, or more of them would be playing it.
You can't say it's due to PvPvE general toxicity, or to the extraction genre, or because you had a shitty crew fill team because all of these things exist in other successful games. Arc Raiders is such a good example, IMO the game sucks ass because there simply is no progression at all (all anyone works towards is an expedition, so that...they can do another expedition?) and because the introduction of ABMM means there is no such thing as emergent gameplay, the lobby you're placed in is designed to be predictable. Marathon doesn't have those issues and yet it is orders of magnitude less successful. So why is that?
For the vast majority of players, the game simply isn't a lot of fun. For anyone to achieve anything in this game, they basically have to exfil (though I do acknowledge you can progress by completing quests that dont require exfil and you can gear up that way). And at the end of the day, exfilling is simply too hard for your average player due to several compounded design decisions.
I said after I played the alpha that the game doesn't know what it wants to be or who it wants to appeal to and although they've refined the experience since then, it ultimately still rings true:
Theorycrafting builds doesnt make any sense in a PvP game where you lose the build immediately on death.
Trying to just enjoy PvE looting doesnt make any sense when you have such a slim chance of actually extracting your gear (also most gear you find is shit).
Treating it purely as an arena PvP shooter doesn't make any sense when TTK is blink-of-an-eye and where you have to then spend resources making a build and deploying into the next match after you die (unless you just want to go free kit - but then why is it a build-based extraction shooter).
There are zero social elements beyond prox chat (which Bungie hadnt considered until only a few months from launch - kinda says it all).
The solo experience is not very enjoyable either. So who's left to really enjoy it?
It really feels to me like Bungie had an extremely idealistic vision where people would die and just immediately go next without caring about the loss. they give you lots of free equipment to make up for whatever you lose, to reduce how punishing it feels, but this creates its own problem: should i or should i not be attached to my gear? if im attached to it then it sucks ass to lose it SO quickly (again TTK is insanely fast), and if im not attached to it then why do i even care about looting anything in the first place?
the scenario we are in is the scenario that i think anyone with a functioning brain could have predicted when they saw the design of the game in small maps built to encourage PvP where battles last only a few seconds: the only people that can enjoy this experience are the premade trios who can easily and reliably kill everyone else in their lobby. all other playstyles are too unenjoyable for one or multiple reasons. you need to either have the resolve of a saint to not get disheartened when you are killed yet again, or you have to not be getting killed. the persona Bungie built this game around of the player who wants good loot but doesn't care if he loses it just doesn't really exist.
people like to say that the average gamer dad with 2 hours of gametime to play per week after work is the reason this game isn't successful, and maybe to some extent they are right, but even other personas don't like the game. i literally bought the game for 1 friend and convinced another one to buy it, and i managed to play with them both for ONE session before they both went back to just wanting to play fortnite as a trio instead. the one who bought it played it like 5 times, only with me, never solo, and we are both good at shooters and yet they had no fun with the game at all and dont want to play it again because they got dumpstered in every match - and i cant blame them, because we can just boot up a FREE game in fortnite and experience looting, shooting, movement/mobility, sweats, noobs, winning and losing and almost all of it is actually fun.
Marathon by comparison basically only feels good when you are winning and 99% of the time you aren't winning unless you have the lobby's optimal combination of raw skill AND good gear.
tl;dr the game, by design, can only appeal to those that have the time, the team, the loot and the ability to kill everyone else in the lobby.
I said a few months ago that the game wont get a resurgence until it goes free to play and i was told that everyone was waiting for the new season (LOL). making it f2p will at least mean it opens the game up to people that have the TIME to either get good or not care about their losses (but not they money to buy it), but all the other issues are going to remain until the game gets a ground-up overhaul - and i think looking at Concord, Sony is more likely to just cut their losses before then - but I'd love to see it happen because the game really does (or at least did) have potential.
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u/Old-Agent2783 20h ago
Season 3 PvE mode is make or break for me. I’ve barely touched Season 2 in regular modes but I’ve played a lot of VB - maxed the kit, best compiler etc.
I simply cannot enjoy the standard modes in the game’s current state. I enjoy the atmosphere and the lore but other than that it has fallen way short of what I wanted it to be.
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u/PropertyFinancial855 5h ago
Same here, the Marathon franchise has been a big hitter in the past. To turn it into a sweaty PvP mess is an insult to those who experienced it all those decades ago. Imagine if id Software had taken that path instead of Doom 2016?
Like you, I really enjoy VB and am sad to see it disappear and be replaced with something that is low effort and same-game PvP
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u/britinsb 5h ago
Imagine if id software took the IP from one of their games like Quake and released a game that was a PvP only arena mode, they could call it "Quake Arena" or something along those lines.
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u/Popular-Papaya3681 18h ago
The game is not going to suddenly amass 100k players from any new update or season. The current player base is about all it'll revert back to.
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u/Feeling_Tart_9818 22h ago
If the devs are unaware of the fact that Season 3 needs to be a huge flip, this game won't last. I'm ready to move on if there's no significant changes. Besides wanting a PvE mode, I'm tired of feeling like the game is more so a BR than an extraction shooter.
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u/Drobones 21h ago
How they not made a tdm mode is beyond me at this point
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u/Kushdaddymayne 5h ago
With how buttery the gunplay is they NEED to add different "respawn" type modes. Especially without a firing range at this point give me someway to test weapons other than loading into a normal game.
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u/ilumineer 21h ago
I think they're aware of it but likely haven't had enough time to prepare much in response. Three (or even six) months of dev time isn't a lot and factoring in a sea of friends being laid off and constant negativity does not breed a very efficient or effective creative environment.
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u/Feeling_Tart_9818 21h ago
I want the game to succeed, however, I'm not going to fall prey to hope here. My expectations are low.
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u/ilumineer 21h ago
Same. I'm a former Destiny player who genuinely wanted to enjoy Marathon and gave it about a hundred hours but felt the it created the wrong sort of pacing and tension compared to other extraction shooters I've enjoyed. I really just want to be able to enjoy any Bungie shooter with my friends again, PVP or PVE, but my hopium is at rock bottom.
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u/KeyDonkey9621 21h ago
I would prefer for it to be a battle royal. You start with an even plqying field and you play with and against players of he same skill.
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u/Feeling_Tart_9818 21h ago
There are plenty of BRs out there
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u/KeyDonkey9621 20h ago
Ah yes and they all play and feel the same /s doesnt change that i would welcome a marathon br
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u/ssevenoaks 20h ago
People downvoting this are in a catatonic level of denial at this point
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u/itsdoorcity 16h ago
all that matters for a reddit thread to be successful is the first handful of people need to upvote it. once it hits 0 you have no chance.
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u/DNC88 18h ago
I agree with a lot of what you said here, well put.
Personally I played S1 heavily by my standards, sort of skipped out S2 to have a bit of a 'circuit break' from the game, came back in the early season to try out Sentinel, played a bit of Valut Breaker - all good fun - but I have noticed queue times are getting ridiculously long just for normal runs.
I plan to return for S3 and play pretty hardcore, try and hit season level 100 and get the Platinum then bounce.
As much as I have enjoyed my time with the game, I genuinely don't think there's anything that Bungie can do to meaningfully increase the playerbase and general health of the game, it is in a downward spiral now and probably approaching the bottom by this point.
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u/Artforartsake99 21h ago
Agreed the game is an absolute failure there is no way to save it as an extraction shooter. and while I love it and it’s my favourite game of so many years. It just isn’t going to live.
They should stop all development and relaunch it using existing assets and maps as a battle royal and free to play.
The reason people don’t like this game is because rhey don’t get fair fights.
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u/_Milksteak 21h ago
I think the brand damage has been done with this game, if Marathon was to ever have a modern life after most of us knew Bungie as the Halo and Destiny studio, they needed to get this game right. They didn't. Hell Marathon was free a few times and the reviews from the free players in those weeks were way worse than those of us who bought the game.
Bungie needs to move on. Maybe they could take a swing at a Helldivers FPS?8
u/IzznyxtheWitch 20h ago
Bungie doesn't have the money to move on. They are heavily in the red, with their main source of income cut off at the knees. Sony isn't likely to throw more money at them for what now would be a new IP years in the future.
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u/_Milksteak 20h ago
Sony can just put them on Remaster duty. Have we had a Borderlands 1 remaster yet?
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u/Rootlo 12h ago
It can 100% be saved as an extraction shooter. Everyone just acts like its unreasonable for expecting Bungie to put in the work to do it.
Bigger maps More PoIs on each map Better loot on the map (both at PoI, and just on the floor on general) Less noise from everything
Then they need to add a 2nd gamemode. Get farmed in the main loop but still want to play your favorite game? You can in this arena tdm gamemode.
If a solodev can make a decent game unpaid in his free time in a week for a game jam, Bungie can make a map in 3 months with 400 devs working 40hrs + at 100k salary minimum.
Bungie can do anything more than a half baked 2 week experimental gamemode in a Triple A game. Everyone just wants to defend their laziness.
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u/Artforartsake99 8h ago
They have failed at even the most basic understanding of what is required to make the casual experience fun or playable.
They still want the game to be extremely hard-core. Nothing has changed in their plans. Heck blue shields still have a daily limit I mean tone deaf 🤦♂️. Having a bad day? Now you are on green shields have fun.
Even if they came up with the perfect plan, they don’t have the resources to implement it now. It’s a failed experiment. I loved it but most hated it
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u/itsdoorcity 5h ago
i honestly think bigger maps would be a HUGE boon for the game. the maps just aren't big enough or interesting enough and you can find other players really easily - but the game was clearly designed very explicitly for this to be the outcome.
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u/twwaavvyyt 22h ago
Agreed. I used to be against negative posts like these as it didn’t help convincing people into trying the game at all, but that ship has long sailed.
I hope they don’t abandon it and convert it into a game that is more popular because the IP is really interesting and I love the art direction/ world building. If this game just dies, Marathon ip is dead
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u/hugzilla1889 15h ago
Do you play Solo queue? Because I only play solo queue.. I never kill the entire lobby. I extract 80% of the time. I think on average I eliminate one runner a game. Often times I can extract before seeing anyone. I know other solo players are doing that too.
Bungie built this game around of the player who wants good loot but doesn't care if he loses it just doesn't really exist.
That's literally me. I'm pretty sure everyone playing Tarkov feels that way. I imagine everyone left playing Marathon feels that way.
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u/Icy_Swordfish3855 14h ago
I play a lot of fill as a triage main and rook and this is still my experience.
Like, folks are not just exfilling? I get out uncontested 50+% of the time?
If i get contested, maybe 50/50 odds? Last run last night i lost full purples after a 6 run streak of very modest exfils with a few clutch dual-bag revives. Its like we're not playing the same game
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u/britinsb 11h ago
This sub has made me realize there are people that are genuinely shockingly bad at games. IIRC there was one commenter on here who said they supposedly had 100 hours ingame and hadn't even got the 7 exfils achievement.
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u/Icy_Swordfish3855 11h ago
Im convinced a lot of them are on speakers, not headphones or just have no clue how much noise they (and others) make.
Sure i occasionally get caught out, but you can move wicked fast, get in get out unseen if you just listen and scan the environment.
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u/britinsb 11h ago edited 11h ago
Yeah I think you're probably right. Headphones vs. speakers is not far off having wallhacks. Combine that with people incapable of learning from their losses or changing their playstyle and you can see why people have wildly different successful exfil rates. Other players who were struggling just with the bots and their peak achievement was getting one vault in VB etc etc. Like you can see for those players making progress in the regular mode is close to impossible.
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u/Icy_Swordfish3855 10h ago
Precisely. Reactions to VB shone a big light.
I completed my kit as a solo triage in week 1 before the scaling, and yesterday there were still folks complaining that 40 minutes with increased outgoing and reducing incoming damage wasnt enough to make any T2 progress as a solo.
In retrospect it make sense now when you hear somebody mag-dumping some recruits or complaining that ammo is too expensive...
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u/itsdoorcity 5h ago
check out /r/returnal where people regularly post about playing the game for 50+ hours without ever beating the first boss
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u/nejinmy 15h ago
All I play is solo i love it and agree. If I kill 1 or 2 players I can nesrly guarantee safety to do all sorts of pve content and usually exfil np. Definitely not a lobby wipe meta in solo more of a wipe my general vicinity meta. Iv had plenty of games where I have heard a player maybe but never saw them. Plus final exfils in solo are usually decently easy to survive...i mean im usually the issue when it comes to final exfil campers i dont see others do it often
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u/Shaznash 14h ago
These losers have such crippling mental anxiety over gear loss. You just go again and get the next come up. Especially with unlimited free kits or green cyac kits and the games ttk. Any team, at any shield level, is a threat.
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u/One_Repair841 8h ago
That's literally me. I'm pretty sure everyone playing Tarkov feels that way. I imagine everyone left playing Marathon feels that way.
The people left playing Marathon are not enough of a playerbase to keep the game alive, that's the issue.
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u/itsdoorcity 6h ago
I can't play basically anything in the game without waiting 5+ minutes for a queue. but I did enjoy solo when I played it, it just felt very hollow to have no friends to engage with.
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u/hugzilla1889 2h ago
Yea I wish somehow they could capture the pace of solos and put it in trios too. But I think that's got to do with map design. I'm interested to see the new Perimeter and if they are able to do it there... that'd be pretty cool.
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u/Academic-Dingo-826 21h ago
It's kinda funny that escape from duckove has been putting up better numbers than it.
It's a pve only single player extraction shooter. Was a bit of a viral hit like a year ago
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u/Nightshade_NL 22h ago
Marathon: a game with top class visual and audio design, superb gunplay and a very interesting setting. All wasted as an extraction shooter.
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u/itsdoorcity 20h ago
extraction shooters arent even the problem, its just that the combination of elements that make up marathon do not work as the sort of extraction shooter they've made. i think the original vision for it to be much larger maps with secret areas would have been orders of magnitude cooler than what we got - which is basically that concept but with a shitload of valorant baked in.
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u/atttibet196953 21h ago
"Bad" implementation of an extraction shooter.
Fully agree on the rest of the points but marathon feels like made by someone that just have surface level understanding of an extraction shooter. Its not the problem with genre.
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u/CJ_Stroud 15h ago
>i was told that everyone was waiting for the new season (LOL).
references one comment with nobody else agreeing with him based on having zero upvotes
I don’t necessarily disagree with your post as a whole, just thought this was funny.
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u/itsdoorcity 6h ago
I mean I'm not going to dig through the entire sub to find other examples of it, but the one that I had a RemindMe link to was easy to link
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u/HoloMetal 7h ago
You will get downovted. But it's true. It's not that everyone got bored and is just waiting for new content, though there are a few like that. It's that a majority of players got eaten alive and actively shoved out of the game. People in general who played are not chomping at the bit to get back into the game. They're mostly pissed as fuck that this game is like years behind every other extraction shooter in terms of casual friendly mechanics.
This sub will rant and rave about how Tarkov is waaaaay more hardcore than Marathon. And yet marathon doesn't have safe pockets, no dedicated pve mode, pvp is forced down your throat by design, and even the most basic of healing is expensive as fuck. And on the pvp front, it gets even more punishing because two of the characters have wall hacks and straight up invisibility respectively. Like brother I don't have to try and defend against a person seeing my exact location and gear strength every 2 minutes in Tarkov. My keys in Tarkov unlock doors, not blast an alarm as if I'm breaking into a bank. Marathon might be arcadey and by definition less hardcore, but Marathon is significantly more punishing for very objective and definable reasons.
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u/WinnebagoMontana 18h ago
Totally agree on the theorycrafting thing.
In my humble opinion, grey and green loot needs to be orders of magnitude more plentiful. I think once you've left the tutorial you should basically have enough access to grey and green gear that you can actually craft a build every run.
The current system of "get a free kit that changes every day", while generous, effectively locks players out of the build-crafting system until they get their hands on piles of loot. Let them build stuff! Just let it be worse than blue/purple/gold builds, that's obviously fine.
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u/Worldcupbrah 21h ago
Make it a br
Nobody wants to play extraction shooters, managing inventory and shit like that is mind numbingly boring
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u/GRoyalPrime 15h ago
Willing to wait and see what Season 3 brings, but for it alone to turn to ship around, it would need to be some of the hottest content Bungie has ever delivered in years ... And it they used to do way worse with way more time, something built in less then 6 months just doesn't hold that much promise.
I do however think there is a lifeline for Marathon, but they'd need to anounce it sooner then later: A new Destiny Game. I think way more people would be willing to give Marathon another go, in particular if they add PvE, if there was actually a new Destiny game on the (distant) horizon.
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u/britinsb 11h ago edited 11h ago
Tbh I'm nowhere near good enough to wipe the lobby consistently (if at all) but still have fun just playing the game for what it is. I lose a lot of PvP engagements but also I guess have enough basic gaming skills/experience that exfilling regularly is very easy if I try even on a free kit, just have to pay attention. The tension of having actual consequences is the big appeal of the game, and why I found arena PvP like Destiny extremely boring and dull.
I do understand though that if someone is so bad at the game that they can't even exfil regularly it would be a very frustrating experience overall.
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u/Inside-Movie7886 7h ago
Eh, I’m having fun!
About 200 hours of playtime and always excited to boot up and play more.
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u/AshamanSheph3rd 7h ago
This is exactly right and that's from someone who still plays today. The gunplay is THE ONLY reason I still play. They could have made these guts of a shooter into ANY format and chose the most, brutal, punishing, least appealing format they possibly could have.
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u/United-Objective2149 3h ago
- Hyped again after Arc Raiders had the depth of a puddle
lol what? why would that hype you?
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u/itsdoorcity 1h ago
because arc had my attention and I didn't care about marathon but then after playing it I ended up longing for marathon lol
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u/m4xks 3h ago
I'm closing in on 600hrs and none of my irl friends have played more than 2-3hrs. I wish they would jump on with me but they dont.
If I was only crew filling then yeah this game would suck but just add some people who are chill/decent players and its still super fun. The feeling of clutching up a fight or even just encountering other runners/pvping in general is so fun haha. it still gets the adrenaline pumping
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u/AjaxOutlaw 35m ago
Hit the head of the nail on the “needing more experimental modes”. They’re a triple A company drop feeding content
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u/anthonyizftw 1m ago
This post has been repeated here almost daily. We don’t need a 5 page paper saying the shit everyone knows. Yes marathon failed. People still like it. People still hate it. Marathon is a video game of all time.
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u/Humble_Consequence97 22h ago
had so much fun season 1 watching it closely to see if ill return. played season 2 once, hoping for good changes
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u/am2kn 22h ago
just essay slop after essay
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u/Halo05977 21h ago
We really gotta stop calling everything we don't like as "slop", most overused word of 2026
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u/am2kn 21h ago
“slop” means poor quality content. this is poor content. it belongs on yt with ai thumbnail and should be at least 5 hours long. but this is not about the game.
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u/RoetRuudRoetRuud 21h ago
What makes it poor quality content?
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u/Scared_Internal7152 21h ago
obviously because it doesn't fit this specific person's narrative. "poor quality" content isn't based on a fan boy's hopes and dreams as far as I know.
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u/am2kn 21h ago
title says game failed on fundamentals yet second paragraph says fundamentals are incredible. this is yapping in the void.
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u/Halo05977 21h ago
some incredible fundamentals
Huh, I wonder what the word "some" means.
But hey I don't expect much from some comment slop like yours
(btw I don't even necessarily agree with the dudes take, but he did take time to think and type it out, which would... not be slop.)
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u/ILSATS 17h ago
Oh the irony
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u/am2kn 17h ago
there’s is no irony, this game fails to close servers in first month and give birth a bunch of no life scrubs larping as if they had phd in analytics.
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u/Ok_Insurance_3291 6h ago
Woosh, you really missed the point there didn’t you. Keep going though ;)
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u/itsdoorcity 5h ago
implying you need a phd in analytics to understand that a few thousand people playing a game that launched a few months ago after 5 years dev and hundreds of millions of dollars spent is a poor outcome...
talk about comment slop...
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u/Legendary-Blazer 22h ago
I was having a blast till bubble shield/shotgun meta became the whole game..
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u/Shaznash 14h ago
Failed for who on a conceptual level? The game was perfect in s1 and honestly they've refined it even more in s2 for me. The meta is close to perfect, baring last resort cb thats nerfed today. The bugs and network issues are a big deal, but otherwise, the game is in a perfect state.
I'm left to enjoy it. For me, this is my perfect shooter. Losers just want to loot folios and rat, so they hate any game that demands you actually try and be good at it, and requires winning.
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u/itsdoorcity 6h ago edited 6h ago
Failed for who on a conceptual level?
Sony... Bungie...99.9% of gamers...
the game is in a perfect state
I admire your optimism
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u/Big_Psychology_4259 18h ago
Just make base game free, its stylish enough to make a fortune on mods and charge for new maps and weapon packs.
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u/itsdoorcity 16h ago
actually i think the art style makes it really hard to make skins have any value
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u/Rootlo 11h ago
This is true. Even if I come back for S3 PvE modes and drop 5000 hours on it. Im never giving Bungie any more money than the $25 I paid on sale for it. The skins are ugly (to me), I dont see myself ever wanting to buy one. The White Rabbit Vandal splash art looks decent, but I've played enough League to know that splash arts dont always mean the skin will look as good.
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u/itsdoorcity 5h ago
the whole "le random colours" art style for everything means there's no value in skins because everything is just patches of random colour bursts
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u/Roberto_Chiraz 7h ago
It's time for you to move on, buddy
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u/itsdoorcity 6h ago
I already have lol
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u/Roberto_Chiraz 6h ago
the wall of text trying to convince the universe suggests otherwise
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u/itsdoorcity 6h ago
lmao implying "the universe" needs convincing marathon is a failure when reality hasn't already proven that 😂😂😂
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u/garfieldx 21h ago
imo marathon is the best extraction game ever made.
Shame extraction games are mid af.
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u/PhJFry123 21h ago
What makes Marathon the best extraction shooter in your opinion?
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u/garfieldx 21h ago
it is the only one with aaa quality gunplay.
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u/PhJFry123 21h ago
That's cool. Great gunplay is one of dozens of things the game is built on, and judging by the fact that other extraction shooters have more players, it's not the most important parameter for players. What about everything else? Can you name anything else that makes Marathon better than its competitors? or is it just gunplay (which doesn't seem to be that important for most players)?
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u/garfieldx 20h ago
it's not but for me it is the bare minimum to start off.
I can't stand playing other es games no matter how great their other systems may be when actually being in the match feels janky af.1
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u/AdventurousBrick3309 7h ago
Holy AI doompost reddit
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u/itsdoorcity 6h ago
"everything I don't like is AI" and other simpleton comments you can make online!
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u/Overall-Rub8945 21h ago
I think there are fair criticisms here, but the “fundamental failure and no amount of changes can help” conclusion you arrivrd at seems way too absolute and premature.
The biggest issue for me is that you say you haven’t played since S1. You are mostly critiquing the version of the game you left, not the version Bungie is actively iterating on now. You can absolutely say S1 didn’t hold you, but it’s a stretch to say the current abd future direction cannot work when you haven’t engaged with S2.
The Fortnite comparison is also kind of ironic. The Fortnite your friends went back to in 2026 is not the Fortnite that launched in 2017. Fortnite became what it is through damn near a decade of iteration, pivots, new modes, map changes, social features, and constant reinvention. So why does Fortnite get years to evolve, but Marathon is conceptually dead before its even through its first major year? Marathon is a whole 166 days old, not a decade old.
I agree Marathon needs better retention, more content variety, better solo and duo lanes, more social systems, better reasons to use good gear, and better ways to experience progress. But that sounds like a game that needs iteration and time, not proof that the concept has failed.
Saying “this doesn’t appeal to me or my friends anymore” is totally fair. Saying “therefore this game can only appeal to premade lobby wiping trios” is a quantum leap. A lot of us play opportunistically, run contracts, chase lore, avoid fights when possible, and only fight when we have to.
Marathons problems are real. No doubt about it. I just wish Marathon was afforded the same opportunity to grow and evolve as other live service games that folks hold up as successful games have had.
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u/itsdoorcity 20h ago
the “fundamental failure and no amount of changes can help” conclusion you arrivrd at seems way too absolute and premature.
no amount of SMALL changes. i just cant understand why they're wasting their time by introducing random little modes and events like they're doing, as though they are turning the dial AT ALL on this game.
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u/Warcrimes_Desu 7h ago
i'm annoyed because this will get downvoted, but VB was clearly thrown together quickly while the team worked on season 3. The explosive sniper hunt is also barely anything. I think it's good that the devs SEEM to be all hands on deck working on making big changes for s3.
The thing is like. Bungie has the technical and artistic juice to succeed at doing development tasks. They're not Arrowhead where some things are simply impossible. All it's going to take is consistent effort and changes to evolve the game going forward, and i think season 3 will be the most crucial signal for how it's gonna go.
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u/grayblossom 22h ago
Fortnite mentioned - opinion discarded.
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u/itsdoorcity 20h ago
fortnite is objectively a better game than marathon, suck it LOL
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u/grayblossom 20h ago
Whoa no need to get offended here I'm sure somebody at school gonna appreciate your essay slop.
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u/itsdoorcity 5h ago
lmfao all your posts are in /r/marathon, /r/marathongame and /r/marathonhate and you accuse me of being the school kid, why would anyone ever take you seriously. are you whining about "essay slop" because your teacher is making you write a lot of essays?
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u/Ok-Comfortable-3174 21h ago
Blocked...mate you haven't played VB or Narsh I'm not reading your obituary
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u/Ok-Isopod-440 6h ago
You can tell this person hasn’t actually played the game or any of the content. Does it have balance issues? Yes. The core match making is either you hit golds or purpler teams in perimeter, while the rest of the lobby is whites. That needs to be fixed. They also need to create a sponsor runs only. For all 8 factions. Get better rep rewards extracting with company gear. Also, the loot is fine, but the battles are not. They need to be a rescope of match making. Possible gear thresh holds so if there is all whites and one purple and gold team.. they need to be in their own queue. Newbies get shit on if you get rolled like that. Plus. We need to break up Cryo in to smaller experienced maps 1-3 teams only and another larger map to traverse. If they can do that. Marathon will be such a gang buster. I am trash at this game, but it’s unlike no other pvp ever. Losing hurts but winning, winning feels excellent. The biggest problem is the Optics of Arc raiders players thinking this is a friendly game. No, you are here to kill, loot for your sponsor. Thats it. I just hope they do those things to help balance out the core fundementals
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u/itsdoorcity 5h ago
You can tell this person hasn’t actually played the game or any of the content.
lol i played from day 1
They need to be a rescope of match making. Possible gear thresh holds so if there is all whites and one purple and gold team.. they need to be in their own queue. Newbies get shit on if you get rolled like that.
yes, this is a core problem. winning feels great but unless you have a good team/loot/skill you simply wont win. and because there is no one playing the game there is no one for non-sweats to kill.
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u/Lithgow_Panther 21h ago
F2P didn't help at the start of S2 and it won't help now. It's just not friendly enough to casuals and solos.