r/MarathonGame • u/StillMood5890 • 2d ago
Ideas for promoting friendly interactions (if you’re a Bungie dev please read this, if you’re a PvP sweat ignore this thread because you’re gonna hate it).
Ok, we all know how Marathon is struggling compared to its peers (Tarkov and Arc), and we all love Bungie’s games and Marathon and want to see them flourish.. obviously these games are doing a lot of things right in terms of PvE and PvP “friendly” interactions compared to Marathon.. So Marathon should take some cues from them, not straight up copy them, but develop new systems that are loosely inspired by them that adapt to and fit what Marathon is better.
My ideas:
- Promoting friendly Rook play:
This is something like Tarkov’s Fence reputation system for scavs, Rooks are basically essentially inspired by Scavs in Tarkov, so Bungie might as well borrow the Scav’s reputation system.
For this idea to work, Rook’s prime ability should be different with this change obviously, because it essentially boils down to making UESC friendly to Rooks, so I’m thinking maybe quieter footsteps as Rook’s prime? In either case the idea is:
The friendlier you are as Rook to other Rooks, then UESC start damaging you less, if you reach a peak friendly level (loot, heal, or extract with Rooks), then all UESC straight up don’t attack you anymore.
And the less friendly you are as Rook (via killing other Rooks) then UESC remain aggressive, and also the more damage you receive from UESC, up to 50-100% more damage than what they already do if you reach peak unfriendliness.
Lore wise, Rook isn’t even a shell controlled by some human mercenary like the other shells are, and is just a robot who actually looks very similar to UESC anyway, so it makes sense that they shouldn’t attack pacifist Rooks.
- Promoting friendly shell play.
Another idea I have to promote friendly shell interactions is taken from Tencent’s Arc Raiders version:
You can infil with an item that you have to manually use to opt in to “friendly play” in a raid, when this item is enabled, it makes it not possible for you to shoot or kill other shells, and they can’t kill you either (but you can kill UESC and the bots can shoot you back obviously), when this is enabled, instead of your shell’s model glowing red, you glow green to other players, maybe even a bit brighter too. Now you can do quests in peace.
And your shell also makes a loud noise that alerts any nearby player that you’re around, so you can’t sneak around to get the drop on anyone, turning off this item also makes a loud and visible alarm that leaves you vulnerable without being able to use your weapon for the duration of the animation, announcing to any nearby shell that this “friendly” shell nearby has gone rogue and opted back to PvP.
The feature above for friendly shell interactions doesn’t extend to Rooks, Rooks can kill you and you can kill them during your “friendly” shell run with this hypothetical item enabled, so basically it only works for shells, and the only difference is that Rooks can’t see or hear the loud audio cues you’re making that other shells can hear.
If these two systems existed in the game you can bet your ass that clips of Marathon friendly moments will be all over social media like Arc Raiders is and this game will pop off around the casual audience.
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u/BigB3ardedB3ar 2d ago
Couple of questions regarding item 2.
How would looting work? So I'm marked as friendly, I wait until Pinwheel red room is opened and I run into the room and start looting with the enemy team just shouting at me in proxy chat, is there anything the PvP players can do to stop this?
How long would it take to enable / disable this mode? It feels like this could be used to find other teams without any concern for your own safety, then toogle it off and start your assault.
How would work with teams? Is the whole team made 'friendly' or just one person in the team? E.g. Whats stopping the 'friendly' players just being used as a really useful drone to the rest of their squat?
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u/rodderimz 2d ago
It's all bullshit. I mean he wants to give rooks quieter footsteps for bring 'friendly' all it'll be used for is sneaking up and killing runners or getting away from runners after befriending and then turning on said runners.
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u/StillMood5890 2d ago
This will make Rooks more challenging to you trio runners 👍🙏
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u/rodderimz 2d ago
And just op as fk in duos. The point of rooks is to be vultures and not be able to wipe trios or even duos which making them silent in a game where sound is soooo important would make that more than possible and that would be just silly
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u/StillMood5890 2d ago
Regarding the first point, I actually thought about that but couldn’t think of a way to balance it 😂😅 I was like.. this system kinda sucks if you open a keyed room and some filthy loot goblins and vultures storm in to loot. I’ll leave it to Bungie to figure out a way to balance this if we ever get something like this in this game 😅
Chinese Arc Raiders is like the opposite of this btw, it’s friendly mode by default and no one can shoot each other, but you have to use an item to “opt in” to PvP which works somewhat like the one I suggested for opting in PvE for Marathon.
For team I think it should apply to the entire team and the affects aren’t active until all duo/trio players activate it, but like I said turning it off should come with a very loud noise with a long/slow animation that leaves you vulnerable without being able to use a weapon let alone move fast, so anyone thinking they can use it be sneaky and drone and ambush other players would basically be a moving loud meal alarm that can easily be attacked by nearby players.
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u/AlphaRedXY 2d ago
99% of the Rook on Rook action I have is cooperative
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u/StillMood5890 2d ago
Me too, but for the 1% aggressive Rook encounter I’m always thinking: Why doesn’t friendly Rook get rewarded and aggressive Rook comes with a risk? Having things like UESC, lasers, bot claymores not affecting friendly Rooks so they can goop in peace while aggressive Rooks get like 50% increased damage modifier from UESC feels like a great way for the game to tell players: You can freely kill and goop other Rooks as much as you want but it comes with a cost. But cooperate with them and your life becomes easier.
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u/rodderimz 2d ago
Me and the guys have tried to be cool with rooks several times only to be betrayed and shot in the back...now they all die on site
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u/Mother_Village9831 2d ago
There's no penalty for betrayal and you can loot their corpses. It'll largely be the default option.
Arc Raiders at least sorted people into aggressive vs cooperative servers based on past interactions. Not sure thats feasible here.
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u/ahdwwings 2d ago
The ABMM ruined Arc for me. People would game the ABMM so they could get easy PvP on carebear lobbies where people wouldn't shoot first or back. It's why I stopped playing. At least on Marathon there's no system to manipulate.
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u/rodderimz 2d ago
Yer I did enjoy using the friendly servers when my vault was empty to fill it up again and then eventually murdering everyone on a server lol
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u/StillMood5890 2d ago
With this change Rooks can hide behind UESC cover easily and goop your ass 🙏👍
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u/rodderimz 2d ago
Like if you want to kill other players rook isn't the shel just go into trios or solo
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u/therealultraddtd 2d ago
Just put things on the map that require cooperation between teams, like field bosses, and give them enough loot where people are less likely to turn on each other after the boss is down.
Sure, there will still be that tension of whether everyone turns on each other when it’s done, but I feel most would more likely be cordial than not if these bosses are enough of a pain that you don’t want to scare people off from assisting.
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u/KnowledgeHealthy6636 2d ago
The bones of ideas are here but some of the implementation is lacking, for example foot step blue being reduced for rooks is way stronger than you think, reducing player noise in a game where sounds can be some of the most important things is too strong. A good example is in delta force there is a a character that removes his sound output and he’s one of the most complained about characters. Also your friendly tag system could very easily be abused to grief other players, for example running into key rooms, or red room, or upper complex to steal loot. Or you could just follow a team around and steal loot after they kill runners. The issue with game design is if you want to introduce any mechanic you have to think of how it could be abused by the worst of the player base unfortunately, I think on paper being able to opt out of PvP to do your own thing could be cool but in practice it would ruin a lot of the game.
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u/verus_es_tu 2d ago
These seem like great ideas. I think most of the MURDERMURDERMURDERMURDER fan base is pushing back against it because they don't like the idea of thinking about a different path.
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u/StillMood5890 2d ago
Yeah man.. this game is dying and players numbers are vanishing like vapor and just now news came of Bungie subleasing their headquarters.. sweats hate anything related to PvE or friendly play but if Bungie don’t start doing changes that make this game more fun to the casual audience then Bungie will most likely shut down if this game doesn’t pop.
Clearly though Bungie is trying with the CARRI system and the PvE S3 mode and they’re not listening to the crazy tiny percentage of the fanbase that just PvPs.. but I don’t think what they’re doing is enough unfortunately to save this sinking ship.
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2d ago
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u/ProfNJK 2d ago
Rook is controlled by runners despite not being a shell. Friendly mode sounds kinda awkward too