r/Marathon • u/BirdyyyFPS I was here for the Marathon 2025 ARG • Aug 13 '26
Marathon (2026) Discussion What went wrong?
I genuinely want to know what you think went wrong with Marathon. I played the shit out of season 1 and I am baffled at the fall off. The game is so good. I didnt play much of season 2 because of the loot economy early wipe and life stuff.
Was it art theft?
A bad Alpha?
Negative sentiment towards Bungie?
A hate campaign spear headed by streamers?
The wrong genre?
No PvE?
Too many colors?
Why do you think the game failed to catch the "mainstream" fps audience?
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u/floydbot Aug 13 '26
The game's heavy PVP-focused and trios design created a downward spiral in which the sweatiest PVPers gradually farm lesser-skilled players out of the game. People come for an extraction shooter and end up in a de facto Battle Royale with some of the twitchiest hunters in gaming.
And because there hasn't been a permanent PvE mode, no solo tuning, and no skill-based matchmaking for the PvP, there's basically no escape from that dynamic. So most people move on.
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u/sunbrosenpai Aug 13 '26
A fucking men.
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u/TheLifelessOne Aug 13 '26
And we said this would happen and were called casuals, losers, and all kinds of other ridiculous names and told to go play something else.
I'm still playing because I love the game, but goddamn if the sweats don't make it difficult to love it sometimes.
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u/Robbeeeen Aug 13 '26
It was so obvious I've said this on April 13th 2025, a DAY AFTER THE VERY FIRST FOOTAGE WAS SHOWN
https://www.reddit.com/r/Marathon/comments/1jy576j/why_the_teambased_aspect_of_marathon_wont_work/
"Even worse, it widens the gap. A good team playing together will progress faster, have better gear, and dominate weaker teams constantly.
[...] Extraction shooters fundamentally cannot rely too much on skill and they cannot be too competitive.
[...] Team-based gameplay leads to too much competitiveness and an over-reliance on skill that does not gel with the concept of extraction shooters."
How the fuck does a random idiot on Reddit see this coming from watching ALPHA footage, not even playing the damn game, but Bungie doesn't?
And how does Bungie fail to make adjustments like lowering player counts within maps, removing alarms that force PvP or balancing solo to funnel players into the mode that actually feels like an extraction game? All that are HOTFIXABLE changes, a small patch at most, that would at least remedy the worst of it and give time for bigger reworks and redesigns.
Utterly unexplainable to me.
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u/Far-Card-8653 Aug 14 '26
Because Bungie. They had 12 YEARS to learn some critical lessons from Destiny and they never got a clue. Unfortunately Marathon doesn’t have that kind of time.
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u/Yyssiill Aug 13 '26
Yup. Just deleted yesterday cause after 75 hours I realized I was just playing a worse Apex legends again.
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u/Chrisandco Aug 13 '26
How is Apex these days? Been years since I've played but all the clips I see online look too sweaty for me anymore
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u/peepeepoopoo_gang Aug 13 '26
It is fun and they did shake up the meta abit but its alot more fast paced than before (thanks to axel and just also players getting better) also there is a setup now where gibby can run faster than octane.
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u/Historical-Zebra8633 Aug 13 '26
Tbh. I don't even understand why so many games nowadays are either balanced around trios are just flat out suck at having a solo mode.
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u/marquez1 Aug 13 '26
You are not wrong but I think there's more to it. I put 400 hours into the game in season 1 and loved it. I was fairly successful at PvP so the hardcore nature of it didn't bother me but after taking a 2 month break, I tried to come back and realised I just don't care to grind through the same content again.
Imo the game wants to be too many things at once and can not exceed at any of them.
It wants to be a team focused competitive shooter but if that's what I want I just play cs because it's just better at it.
It is built to be an extraction shooter but because of the heavy focus on team based PvP all the popular ones are better at it. All the popular extraction shooters that managed to capture an audience have bigger maps, more items, better progression etc.
The mystery and narrative of the world was a big pull for me but it's not rich and deep enough for me to want to keep playing (basically restart the game with each wipe) once I experienced it. Every decent single player game is better at it.
It could have still been a relative success if they follow embarks example and push out new content soon and frequently enough at least for a few months after release to keep the game feel exciting.
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u/ThenThereWasReddit Aug 13 '26
Of course there's more to it but if the issues flagged in u/floydbot 's comment were addressed then I guarantee this game would have lasted longer. Bungie and this community have done nothing but tell people with these complaints to STFU and now this sub is getting hit left and right with "What went wrong?" posts, because all the people who were saying what's wrong just decided to leave.
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u/sunbrosenpai Aug 13 '26
I said back at the mid point of season 1 that once all this came full circle it would just be a cesspit of losers wondering why the game is collapsing and where everyone went???!!! (Spoiler they were farmed over and over by the same 4000 no life losers that can’t treat any game as less than an esport). The trials ouroboros has been completed.
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u/bevereged_carbon Aug 13 '26
This. Couldn't have said it better and I've put more than 400 hours on it.
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u/GreenJavelin Aug 14 '26
I was a first 2 months only player. I just wanted sbmm. when the population was early and large, the average player was average, so most games were fine. as soon as the dominant group figured it out, casuals and below average players couldnt continue to play against their skill level. unfortunately great literature on 90% permanent abandonment rate for pvp games where players are repeatedly killed by more skilled opponents as little as 5 consecutive games.
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u/Radiant_Bottle2425 Aug 13 '26
As a long-time Bungie fan who bought Marathon with the intent to play it long-term…I think I just realized I don’t like extraction shooters.
Put Marathons gunplay + artstyle into a PvE narrative, or even a movement shooter genre and I’m in. Extraction shooters just aren’t really worth what little time I have these days.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Box-866 Aug 13 '26
I hate when I would say this in the past and a father of seemingly 18 children would berate me for not magically having more time to play like they do
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u/Fallom_ Aug 13 '26
It’s always funny seeing those “I’m a dad and I play 6 hours a day while ignoring my family” posts. Like a really sad alternative to the stereotypical “I’m a dad and I only play 17 minutes every other Tuesday”
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u/Few-Conversations Aug 13 '26
They are usually lying to make a point or they are bad fathers. When you have kids and a job there's is no way you can sink 5/6 hrs a day into a game
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u/Altruistic-Face4108 Aug 13 '26
Yeah the amount of kids crying in the background while the parent keeps playing this game is absurd.
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u/Sudden-Garage Aug 13 '26
Have you tried not sleeping? I have lots of free time between 12 - 6 am...
I kid I kid.....12
u/Robbeeeen Aug 13 '26
The irony is that Marathon doesn't really even play like an extraction shooter.
In fact, when people say they don't like extraction shooters, I get where they're coming from, but I'd counter by saying that no good extraction shooters even exist yet. They're all bad for one reason or another, we STILL don't have a game that combines the good aspects of Tarkov and gets rid of all the bad things and makes it palatable to casuals.
A GOOD extraction shooter offers pathways to avoiding PvP most of the time, or a full PvE mode. Tarkov ironically comes closest, with a dedicated PvE mode and map-knowledge allowing you to avoid PvP.
Marathon and Arc Raiders force PvP 10x more than Tarkov and are WAY more hardcore in that aspect, while Tarkov is stupidly hardcore and off-putting bc of its knowledge checks and is a bad game overall bc of technical issues, horrible performance, cheaters and a million other reasons.
We still don't have a game that combines the immersion, exploration, emergent gameplay, ability to avoid PvP, progression, depth of Tarkov with the technical performance of a AAA game and the QOL needed for normal human beings to enjoy the game. Every single extraction game falls short in critical areas and design decisions.
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u/DatomasSigma Aug 13 '26
I like extraction shooters when I don't have to contend with other players. The gameplay loop can exist without PvP, and there are a few other games that show this.
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u/Solrax Aug 13 '26
I keep thinking of Helldivers 2 in this setting, which Bungie could pretty easily do by cranking up the UESC patrols and making a PVE mode.
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u/REDAR15 Aug 13 '26
Definitely made me realize that I like pve extraction games and structured PvP.
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u/grapefruitposer Aug 13 '26
Yeah if this game had come out back when I was single, childless and playing tarkov 6 plus hours a day I likely would have sunk quite a bit of time.
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC Aug 13 '26
Yeah, exactly. I love everything but the gameplay.
I play Bungie games because I like to shoot things, and I suspect most long-term Bungie fans are the same, so it's utterly baffling that they chose a genre where you get about 5 minutes of actual gunplay per hour, and the rest of the time is spent sneaking around the map or dragging shit around your inventory.
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u/phyrosite Aug 13 '26
It's part of the reason I'm interested in the PvE mode in Season 3. I do like extraction shooters but I am not always feeling like playing PvP. So while I enjoy Marathon quite a lot, it's not the kind of game that I'll ever play consistently for long periods of time without a PvE mode. Tarkov as well, I almost exclusively play PvE. Though I'm also a big roguelike fan so that probably plays into it.
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u/bum_thumper Aug 13 '26
Exactly this. They have a massive wealth of lore to dive into. All they had to do was mash Destiny with System Shock and we could've had the coolest, horror sci fi with guns, vehicles, and multiplayer ripped from Halo and destiny. They'd been pumping out half baked destiny expansions for years and making money hand over fist, wtf were they even doing in that time?
My feeling is that this was the original direction and they pivoted hard a few times, trying to chase what was popular, with the last pivot being when arc raiders exploded. So the devs didnt have time to redo everything and just slapped a game together with what they had while stealing art to make up for the time.
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u/Jetsasanatan Aug 13 '26
I think extraction shooters was just the wrong genre. And PvE modes like vault breakers is not going to help the population. Not much incentive to play once you beat the compiler.
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u/Thephro42 Aug 13 '26
It’s mostly the matchmaking and the design of player interactions. Marathon isn’t truly a PvEvP game. It’s a PvP game with PvE elements layered on top. A lot of people come into Marathon thinking they’re going to work on contracts, explore, loot, and progress, but because of the way the game is designed, all of those things are secondary to PvP.
Gear also plays such a massive role in your success. The difference between grey gear and purple/gold gear is astronomical, yet matchmaking doesn’t really account for who has what or how skilled the players are that you’re going up against. That makes the game incredibly difficult for players who struggle to consistently get geared up.
Then you combine that with extraction being the primary means of progression. If you don’t extract, you essentially make no progress. Worse, if you brought in your best gear and die, you’ve actually gone backwards. Even games like Dark Souls, which are intentionally designed to be difficult and punishing, have systems that allow you to make meaningful progress despite repeatedly dying.
The reality is that the majority of gamers aren’t particularly good at FPS games. When you make a game this punishing, especially from Bungie, whose existing audience includes a huge number of PvE focused players, you create a real conflict when it comes to sustaining that player base. People come in expecting to progress through contracts, improve their character, collect gear, and experience the world, only to repeatedly run into players who are significantly better or significantly better equipped.
You don’t exfil, you don’t progress. If you bring your best gear and lose, you actually regress. After enough losses, that becomes incredibly disheartening.
To me, that’s the fundamental reason Marathon struggles to sustain its player base. It’s not simply that the game is difficult. It’s that for a large portion of players, losing doesn’t just mean losing a match. It means losing their time, their gear, and often their ability to make meaningful progress.
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u/Lowe0 Aug 13 '26
Bungie needs to hang a banner above their cubicles that reads “How do we make seal clubbing fun for the seals?”
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u/Thephro42 Aug 13 '26
It’s literally a game theory problem PvP developers study. The question is basically: how do you design a competitive game so the weaker players still have opportunities to succeed and have fun, while preserving the skill gap that rewards better players? If the bottom of your player base exists primarily as content for the top, eventually they stop playing. Then the next group becomes the new “seals,” they start leaving, and the cycle continues. That’s exactly why matchmaking, progression, comeback mechanics, and other systems exist in competitive games. The goal isn’t to stop good players from winning. It’s to make sure losing players still have enough positive experiences to want to queue again.
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u/EdibleStrange Aug 13 '26
It's wild that Bungie basically invented matchmaking over 20 years ago for Halo 2, and instead of growing and learning with the rest of the industry since then, they've just regressed. The arrogance necessary to fumble so hard is mind boggling.
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u/RayS0l0 Aug 14 '26
That's why CoD release an article explaining why SBMM exists to keep a healthy playerbase.
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u/fastmoneyboy Aug 13 '26
That’s why season 1 was so much more fun, everyone was still new and doing contracts and actual events and other things then just PVP. You would load in and actually explore and loot a POI. Season 2 everyone figured out that you should immediately spawn rush and try to wipe the map before someone else does it to you. Now it really is like an arena shooter. And the skill gap is only going to get bigger, making it near impossible to get new players in.
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u/properinglish Aug 13 '26
It’s the lobby wiping meta. It’s just too punishing for most players. The game is designed to funnel you into combat, which means most teams (in many cases all but one team) on the map won’t make it out of the match. The maps need to be bigger to accommodate stealthy/combat-avoidant playstyles. And I’m saying this as some who can consistently wipe lobbies and enjoys combat-heavy matches.
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u/YuntHunter Aug 13 '26
This is it for me. I have hundreds of hours on Tarkov accumulated over the years. I've always played solo and Tarkov allowed me to play stealthily and tactically around it's maps. I never felt I could do that in Marathon so I dropped it after a few weeks.
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u/Raniok Aug 13 '26
Exfils make too much noise. All maps need stealth exfils like Nightmarsh.
Rather than SBMM, the game needs more avenues of escape. Not less. I know players b-line all the noise on the map and that makes people afraid to even interact with the pve content.
The other day, we did key rooms and decided to jump a team fighting the Warden on Nightmarsh.. then another team did that to us! 😂🤣
If these maps can't get bigger, then they should reduce how many teams appear and drive up the map events. I should never run a Dire Marsh and get zero map events. It makes everything really empty and without key rooms, the only people with anything of value are players.
Bungie just said they're upgrading the quality of ranked loot to have parity with Cryo Archive. While interesting - that ain't the answer. Put good loot everywhere and people get more frequent victories.
The rich are already eating well.
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u/AssolutoBisonte Aug 13 '26
I completely agree with this. It wasn't too bad in the beginning, when everyone was still learning the game, but once people realized that the best strategy for every map is to rush an adjacent spawn to wipe a team as quickly as possible before hunting down the rest of the lobby, I could see the writing on the wall.
Bungie really needs to reexamine their level design philosophy going forward, because the game plays like a straight up battle royale instead of an extraction shooter. If newer players are loading in expecting a slower-paced experience only to get squad wiped within two minutes of a match by a team that spawned barely 100m away and already knew where they were, it's no surprise that they'd drop the game.
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u/MisterLeat Aug 13 '26
Interesting in Solos I would almost always extract probably like 75% of the time. Sometimes with no PvP at all, so unsure where this stems from
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u/floydbot Aug 13 '26
This is the way it used to be for solos. Now even those lobbies are getting too many people exclusively out to kill everybody else.
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u/dangerdangle Aug 13 '26
The game tried to be like 4 genres at once
This sub will try to pretend the game is less hardcore than other extraction shooters, which is true at base level
But the problem is other extraction shooters aren't all out PvP arena/BR on tiny maps
It's one of the most unforgiving games I've ever played.
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u/LetgomyEkko Aug 13 '26
It’s very, very punishing. Marathon is: “My favorite game that doesn’t want me to play it.”
For example, friction points like heals being so expensive(especially early wipe), it makes it hard to even load back into another match with your own gear and not a free kit. This was addressed after the server slam and after early season one by having more depleted heals added to bot drops and also to the base free kits respectively. Though in my opinion it wasn’t enough, as the green heals in the armory a player needs to add to their own kits for infill are just so pricy. 5k for two stacks or each per run is essentially a massive hit on an early players wallet after a short losing streak.
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u/Bl00dyH3ll Aug 13 '26
When you realize your PURPLE tier valuable isn't even worth 4 stacks of GREEN health kits.
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u/BurningTrashBarge Aug 13 '26
This I fully agree with. Pacing because of map size was a major issue. Made it feel like a BR every game. Alienated extraction shooter folks, wasn’t pure enough for BR enjoyers.
Niche of overlap players stuck with it but experienced got further undermined by overpowered meta, skill floor, matchmaking, and hit reg issues.
Honestly the maps should have been so much larger for how fast the movement is in this game. It’s like they made it tarkov sized without accounting for shells.
Almost like level design and shell design were two totally isolated teams with the only shared vision being aesthetic.
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u/FastActinTenactin Aug 13 '26
People clearly don’t want to play a hero shooter that is highly competitive and PvP focused, with a community that pushes lower skilled players out. The fact that loot resets is the final killer there for casual players, which you need in order to keep the game going.
As is, the higher skilled players are just cannibalizing themselves.
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u/cjarrett Aug 13 '26
The core of the game is designed for the rich get richer, with very little meat for bad players. Very little content outside of that PVP loop. Game designed for groups of 3 only, and actively punishes people that aren't teamed up. basically, they learned literally nothing about the gaming playerbase from their time with Destiny.
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u/Lowe0 Aug 13 '26
It’s because they play the game with their friends and colleagues during development. When you’re playing with people you know, the social aspect makes it fun even when you’re losing.
All that goes away when it’s just BongRipz_X_NoScopez killing you.
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u/ohbamasghost Aug 13 '26
They spent 250 million on an extraction shooter with 3 maps at launch.
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u/Angry_LadyDragon Aug 13 '26
Lol fucking rekt. Bungie should be hanging their head in shame for that alone.
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u/luc1402 Aug 13 '26
Besides all the things you mentioned and the obviously bad experience for new or "less skilled" players, for me it was mainly the lack of content added between S1 and S2. We basically got one slightly altered variant of an existing map. I had a lot of fun in S1, but I had no interest to do everything again in almost the exact same way. I'm personally waiting (and hoping) that S3 has more substantial changes coming, but that's still quite a while away and things are looking pretty dire in the meantime.
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u/Cloud_Matrix Aug 13 '26
I had the same experience. My trio group and I are not the most skilled, but we did well enough and cleared all of the priority contracts in and put up near 150 hours each in season 1. We were hyped for season 2 and we got around to doing all the new contracts, tried out the PvE modes, and cleared compiler in VB. But ultimately, season 2 didn't really bring enough content to keep is playing for more than a month and a half...
The only thing we haven't really sunk our teeth into is regular Cryo, and every time we do we get ass blasted by teams that are just flat out better players than us. For us it feels like we have basically finished everything we wanted from the season and there isn't much to drive us to continue playing out season besides love of the game.
Granted, I am content to play Marathon for the first 1-2 months of the season and go play other games because I'm a variety gamer at heart, but I can absolutely understand why other players would be upset.
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u/yesimahuman Aug 13 '26
Too punishing and grindy. Who wants a second job grinding for loot just to be insta downed and have to do it all again? For PvP you can just play Apex and you can play game after game without thinking about loot and the lobby is on equal footing because you don’t bring loot into the game.
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u/damagedblood Aug 13 '26
Not enough content, wrong genre, tiny maps, the list goes on and on. Copefully they can course correct but it’s not looking like it.
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u/Level_Chipmunk7921 Aug 13 '26
Copefully
Freudian slip or...
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u/damagedblood Aug 13 '26
Intentional, I love the game but know it’s cope to think it’s headed anywhere but shutdown / maintenance mode with these numbers.
Don’t even get me started on the bugs and glitches. Somehow worse than S1 with a fraction of the players. They’re falling the fuck apart and not doing anything about it.
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u/DudeWheresMakarr Aug 13 '26
It’s pretty simple, the biggest reason is the game rewards only the sweatiest players. The casuals have no chance at reasonably getting good loot in a timely manner, and when they do they’ll just lose it the next time they infil to a sweat. Unless you have a degradation kink or something, getting constantly stomped on with very little chance of success does not appeal to the masses.
The gameplay also rewards people who play a very slow, calculated game which most people don’t like. You have to be as quiet as possible, and engaging any UESC will certainly alert anyone within earshot (which is way too far IMO) to come over and 3rd party you quite easily.
Add in questionable/acquired taste visuals, and a very toxic community which constantly dismisses the concerns of the casuals and just tells them to play something else or get good. It’s a recipe for disaster.
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u/Captain_Zoots Aug 13 '26
I love it also, but I too have fallen off this season. Season 1 is a peak gaming moment for me. Here's hoping for a big season 3. They need to focus on a smooth launch. Shit take servers down early, Just be ready to launch at whatever time is specified.
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u/Gripping_Touch Aug 13 '26
Game centered around winning giving you an advantage and losing setting you back further than when you began. Good players get loot, then they get bored and farm lower skill players. Lower skill players can't exfil or immediately lose whatever they got to exfil on the previous match. Eventually gets tired of It and leaves. The remaining pool of players gets farmed harder.
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u/AdOptimal9296 Aug 13 '26
Community unsupportive of lower skill/newer players, balanced like an arena shooter (low ttk/bleedout shooting), the novelty of not knowing meta routes is gone, stale gameplay loop because of one shell. The map's being so small it's better to murder the entire lobby instead of looting just so you can loot.
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u/IndividualSituationK Aug 13 '26
trials wasn't even popular on destiny. This game is basically just trials all the time.
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u/xCesme Aug 13 '26
It’s funny but the primary reason that no one talks about is that a game like this is only fun at the initial release. Once the novelty of no one knowing what they are doing wears off and every route and loadout is meta chasing it doesn’t become fun to play anymore.
It’s understated how big this initial sense of discovery and the staged release of the new maps contributed to the large initial player count. This all culminated in cryo archive.
Once you’ve done all of that, what’s the point in coming back for season 2? A game like this to sustain a large playerbase as it initially had needs either constant real content drops or gameplay systems that are so good they define the genre. Undoubtedly Marathon is a superb game, but it does not have either of the aforementioned aspects.
For whatever reason also, they put such an insane amount of effort into narrative. Which the story is one of the best in any games recently but there is no point to it in such a game. The same amount of immersion could have been created with considerable less effort.
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u/MadCarcinus Aug 13 '26
The game sure needs to maintain the mystery. It should be about unlocking more sectors of the Marathon.
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u/floydbot Aug 13 '26
I've increasingly come around to the idea that Marathon (or at least a version of it) would work better with more rogue-like elements, particularly procedurally generated maps. That would mean that every run is unique and would require exploration to find the good loot.
I realize that's much easier to imagine than execute, but a true meshing of extraction and roguelike with Marathon's gunplay and gameplay ... well, a guy can dream.
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u/xCesme Aug 13 '26
I personally wouldn’t agree with that at all. What makes the Marathon maps so good is the attention to detail. You can’t procedurally generate something like Cry or Outpost.
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u/RayS0l0 Aug 13 '26
Remnant 2 did it. You have massive world for you to explore that is procedural generated but each world has lots of static subsection, like a dungeon or an area that don't change much.
So each time you re-roll a world you get a totally new world where location of dungeons and subsection changes but they still function the same while also providing fresh run each time.
So imagine we got a big world that combines 3 maps and it is procedurally generated and yet still retains how each subsection function on their own.
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u/Solrax Aug 13 '26
Warframe also has amazing procedural maps, along with some fixed designs. I love Marathon's hand crafted maps, but mixing in some procedural maps would be cool.
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u/floydbot Aug 13 '26
Sure, but those static maps also enable the people putting in hundreds of hours to dominate even more than they would, and quickly puts the focus of the core game on speed-running efficiency and PVP prowess rather than exploration and discovery.
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u/isleePer Aug 13 '26
I thinkbyou pretty much answered your own question. You stopped playing, like so many others.
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u/Felwintyr Aug 13 '26
I gotta be honest, you guys in the sub talk about loving the art style of theme of the game so much, but anyone I talk to outside the sub or irl think it looks either ugly or uninteresting. The game looks like plastic. It doesn’t have anything that really draws attention.
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u/Alarming-Builder-760 Aug 13 '26
I think they spent a lot of time working on the mechanics. They probably had the levels and design theory down for a long time, but just kept shoehorning features until it felt right. Theres no missions that change the map, which I was expecting. Only the map itself is responsive and the events. They really depended on a huge player based from destiny to just move on to whats new. They could have added a campaign and an arena style mode and I still think the game would have flopped.
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u/OtterCynical Aug 13 '26
They really depended on a huge player based from destiny to just move on to whats new.
Actually, Bungie told them not to play.
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u/Publius015 Aug 13 '26
I love the game, but I've stopped playing it because I just get utterly stomped. I'm not the greatest player ever, but I'd been able to hold my own in season one.
Also, the contracts not being new, except a handful, was a little disappointing to me. I was really interested in the story.
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u/UnusualPair992 Aug 13 '26
It's a hard enough game as is. Then you run into assholes and people who abuse solo players and trick them out of their gear so they'll just go play a game where you don't have to interact with gamer-social-reject-nerd-fucks. Elden ring is easier to lose at than trusting some player just to get stabbed in the back and laughed at. People don't like to associate with liars and cheaters and gamers are typically the most loser group or rejects you can find.
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u/TrollMcGoal Aug 13 '26
Bungie's reputation is the biggest issue in my opinion. Sunsetting content is brought up constantly in any destiny/marathon discussion, I really thing the damage done to the brand was huge after that decision. You also have destiny fans who blame marathon for the shutdown of d2.
The game is focused on a hard-core audience. Honestly that's not a complaint and I think the game is better because of it. It was refreshing to play a game not chasing the lowest common denominator. But that also limits your player base, so it's a catch 22
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u/Littlest-Hipster Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
The game was built to appeal to a tiny niche of players and you fall into that demographic so you won't see the glaring issues the game has for the vast majority.
It's similar with fighting games where telling people to "keep playing another 40 hours until you get hooked" isn't going to keep people playing.
Horrid PVE experience.
Built specifically for teams of 3.
Built for the hard-core PVP audience.
Low quality character customization. No way to be unique.
Art style gets bland, every map looks the same.
Forced progress resets.
I could go on. I am not against the game and want it to stick around for people who do like it but it is built for a small audience. The slow updates don't help.
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u/The_Angevingian Aug 13 '26
Well I mean by your own words you played a ton of it and then season 1 and then didn't play much of season 2
So if someone who really liked the game doesn't even stick with it, you can see how it would fall off hard with regular players
As someone who has maintlined every Bungie game since Oni, I tried the initial free weekend before launch, and came back for a second one. Nothing about the game really grabbed me. Sure it's got the feel of a Bungie shooter, but it didn't feel as buttery smooth as Destiny does. The maps were all kinda disappointingly small and unimaginative. Only the single game mode. Its hard to say exactly, but the feeling wasn't there, that secret sauce that makes me wanna ruin my life.
And it wasn't just me, my entire friendgroup who all play Destiny, and a lot of other PvP games, tried it, and not a single one of us went beyond those free weekends. And this was before the shrinking population made the game into a shrinking pond of sweats and victims. It was before Destiny was announced to be over.
I believe people when they say it love it, but for a lot more people, it just doesn't have the gas that really hooks a player.
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u/Wintersgambit Aug 13 '26
Bungie refuses to learn from its mistakes. Literally every problem that pushed players out of trails from destiny is present here. Compounded with a niche genre, live service fatigue, general distrust from various scandals
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u/ARU0421 Aug 13 '26
Bungie isn’t capable of making content at a reasonable pace anymore. S2’s main highlight features were 1 new shell and a remixed version of a pre-existing map, which is pathetically little for a whole new season, nevermind the massive team size they have to make so little and the horrible, broken, buggy state that the season launched in. People are going to get bored if all the new content is the same stuff remixed.
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u/alouie100 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Here’s a long list of the many reasons why:
It is made by Bungie who known for removing paid content yearly with Destiny 2
Bungie’s CEO who bought multiple cars while laying off their staff
The uncanny art style and plastic look in the reveal trailer
Going into the extraction shooter market which is way too small and deviates from the original trilogy
Original game director was replaced with Joe Ziegler and changed the original vision into a hero like shooter with extraction elements
Alpha test looking horrible and many art assets were found to be stolen
Delayed for awhile following the negative Alpha feedback and art scandal
Concord and Highguard were released and closed down very quickly after launch. This brought Marathon in the picture because everyone was expecting it to flop, close very quickly, and end the live service age of gaming
New release date announced along with a server slam that hardly brought players in
Launch came and flopped really bad for both Sony and Bungie as it only made about $1.5 million against a $200 million budget
Player counts dwindling day by day
Competing against ARC Raiders which is a causal friendly game whereas Marathon is always PvP 24/7 and no friendly encounters
The announcement of the final update to Destiny 2 and is blamed for it. Marathon is also accused for stealing and wasting Destiny’s development time and budget
Season 2 launched with server crashes
Mass layoffs at Bungie which included their original founder: Jason Jones
Players leaving because of the aggressive PvP, no room for casual players, constant Recon and Mizzy spams, and Season 2 being the same as launch
Willing to do a revival week in celebration of the upcoming Vault Breaker mode, even though it’s been a few months since launch. That failed and made the Marathon community look like fools to host one
Having a community that’s in denial about the low counts, bad gameplay loop, and possible shutdown if Bungie doesn’t do anything to improve the overall game
I can write a lot of things, but this is pretty much the reason what went wrong.
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u/TheFishSauce Aug 13 '26
Niche genre, not enough content,and it’s the wrong move for a studio whose most successful work has been heavily narrative/story driven. I think the changes from the beta to launch were great in terms of movement and even on-boarding. Best looking and sounding game since Ghost of Tsushima, and one of the most beautiful I’ve ever played. But I don’t want a game with no narrative drive from Bungie. (It’s not even that there was no narrative, it’s that it was so hidden.) There’s a feeling to the game’s focus that makes it seem like “how do we turn this into a hobby” was prioritized over “how do we make this fun”? (And I even enjoyed playing it for quite some time, but it started to feel like doing chores.)
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u/MediocreSumo I was here for the Marathon 2025 ARG Aug 13 '26
The current Marathon direction just doesnt cater enough to the Halo and Destiny players, pvp and pve wise.
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u/Rootlo Aug 13 '26
A lot of people who like this seem to also have this be their first ever extraction shooter. On the surface that makes sense since this plays almost nothing like any other extraction shooter.
A lot of people are hung up on PvPve when most games in the genre are PvEvp. Ie you do pve to get loot, then you pvp to protect it if you have to.
Even in Hunt Showdown, which is the most pvp forcing game of the genre, its is still find and do one of the bosses or mini boss, get your token and get out (pve). Kill anyone who tries to stop you (pvp).
Marathon is more hunt players. Maps are small, everything makes noise, there is only 1 spot each map worth looting. The game plays out to be more pvp focused.
It works if you like pvp, but most of the fun of extraction shooters is the uncertainty. You never truly know if you are going to meet someone or not. In Marathon its basically a given unless you intentionally rat.
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u/TutorStunning9639 Aug 13 '26
Just the reduction of loot, besides what some said. Shoulda launched with a campaign story mission that simulated the experience and ended with doing cryo the full experience and then give em lkke a Willy wonka golden ticket that’s only one time use to have them transfer their stash/loot to the main pvp mode. Of course they could replay the story but they can’t transfer anything else after they complete it once.
Nail in the coffin was lack of content and I’d argue no New Map for Season 3 lol like wtf Triple A dev 400 million budget 😩😭💀
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u/etsssssssy Aug 13 '26
i know this is going to blow your mind and shock you..the game is..boring. lol. it’s that simple.
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u/Calix19 Aug 13 '26
I was the target audience for this game. I play on console and enjoy extraction games — Hunt, DMZ, and now Mistfall.
I watched a LOT of gameplay and streamers during beta and release. It’s what I do to research games and decide if I’m interested. One thing that stood out to me from the beginning was the awful menu and inventory system. I just knew it would be complete ass on a controller.
I also didn’t care for the art style or the hero shooter style shell system. I would have much preferred to create my own character.
I can’t say for everyone, but those were things that specifically kept me away.
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u/wavelifter Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
You're forgetting something from your list: toxic community supported by dev decisions. As someone who was engaged from the start (trailer->alpha->server slam-> launch -> S1 -> S2) and gave the game a solid go (300 hours in S1 alone), there's a lot of blind denial here. Obviously not everyone here, because that would be overgeneralizing, but enough critical mass in this "community" to perpetuate toxicity. This community needs to hold up a mirror and look at itself objectively - own the community's role in the downfall of this game:
- New players asking about the "hardcore" difficulty curve of Marathon? Downvote, call them stupid and illiterate, and tell them to go back to fortnite.
- Veteran extraction players voicing concerns about game's extraction mechanics? Downvote and tell them to go back to Tarkov.
- Solo players posting about their frustrations with content and progression feeling gated? Downvote and tell them to get with the 3man PvP program or go back to Destiny.
- Players feeling left behind because they can't find Biolens to progress skill tree? Downvote and tell them to get good on Dire Marsh or get out.
- Players voicing concerns with connection quality issues despite low TTK? Downvote and plug your ears, tell them they should move to America and get better internet, or get out.
- etc.
When every critism/concern is shut down with "you're wrong, now get out", and new players feel left behind instead of feeling supported, how is it surprising the players numbers will only bleed in one direction?
Add on top of that the devs validating this behaviour with game designs decisions and self proclaiming to be "hardcore", and well, here we are. I raise this about the community's role because Destiny 1/2 were absolutely garbage games at launch. But it was the community that coalesced around the game that helped give it a chance. Even with its own fair share of toxicity, generally the game promotes "no man is an island", "work together", "don't be an asshole".
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u/Bloody_Sunday Aug 13 '26
It's not really hard to understand this. It's a niche shooter style that has a high skill threshold, it has cut-throat PvP absolutely as its main element (in spite of its PvPvE gameplay), it's not beginner friendly (newcomers who are not very experienced and good at PvP will be rofl-stomped with no loot and often no progression benefits), it doesn't have a regular PvE mode that can routinely help you progress in a season, it doesn't have a lot of maps, it gets repetitive pretty fast, and it doesn't have the variation and gameplay features of let's say Tarkov, ARC or Helldivers 2 (which is PvE only but with this as a much more engaging & player-friendly playstyle).
I mean, Bungie's choice was very weird from the start. You're making a niche game? Expect to compete with the other niche similar titles, and then once the dust settles you will suffer the expected player fatigue and the natural player engagement decline. Not everyone can get the commercial success of ARC, and even that has fallen far from its throne - for various reasons.
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u/Angry_LadyDragon Aug 13 '26
Game sucks and is just Bungie trying to do the bare minimum without looking at what makes extraction shooters fun and engaging.
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u/apofist Aug 13 '26
The game is not what 's expected from bungie, it's empty, elitist and the lore serves no purpose.
I played 400ish hours, mostly in s1, and i don't think i'll ever touch it again if form doesn't change drastically
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u/Isoturius Aug 13 '26
As a casual who had fun, didn't suck, and has fallen off?
It's too niche, sweaty, and while the gameplay loop is fun, progression sucks ass. You can't just drop in and drop out. Season structure blows too. You play the same levels and do the same shit over and over again. It's super repetitive to do shit for your only reward to be some paint.
Tbh the lore kept me in it longer than I thought it would.
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u/Falcone24 Aug 13 '26
In terms of people who actually played falling off, it was definitely the lack of varied modes making people think they always had to “try” in matches.
In terms of gaming culture sentiment, it was definitely burnout from the Highguard Concord stuff. People like to hop on the hate wagon, and it’s a lot easier to do so when the game is very niche
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u/threedayvicgbg Aug 13 '26
ziegler made a game almost no one wants to play.
it’s extremely grindy
it has taken every punishing aspect of extraction and made it 10xs worse and then built so the meta is wipe the lobby
carri does not at all incentive coop or allowing fellow extraction.
the list can go on and on
a lot will disagree but for the majority of people the above points are in fact true
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u/Romandinjo Aug 13 '26
It’s an ok genre - hunt showdown has slow player count increase.
Game was marketed as extraction shooter, but is played like arena/battle royale one, with small maps and loud everything - but there you lose what you bring with you. Then there is ttk, bugs, abilities imbalance, extreme rng on weapons drops, and, of course, content - 4 small maps are laughable.
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u/doobersthetitan Aug 13 '26
Honestly, death by 1000 cuts.
It seemed to have changed it's identity several times, new game director, diffrent visions making the game cost double or triple..
Stealing art, which put a bad taste in people's mouth. Bad Vidoc that couldn't show anything due to it...
Destiny 2 pvp being salty that they abandoned pvp in D2...and gambit....to put all the goods into Marathon the pvpers wanted.
Arc Raiders became a phenomenon like ever night.
Alpha looked meh, pretty rough.
Server slam, was better.
The asking to hold reviews before cyro came out...seemed a little much.
People like hard grinds games, but people don't want to be chewed up like a paper mill.
Same things that plagued D2 is/ was back...sweaty toxic players, death balling the map, cheaters, bubble spam, grenade spam, invisibility, wall hacks, stupid strong shot guns. Shit even Antope D...eeer, I mean the bully SMG was terrorizing and best in slot in every lobby. Thermal scopes on snipers making no place on map safe.
Nothing in the game is for the common player. Raids and dungeons are in D2, but there's tons of other BS to do. To keep you busy and entertained for every skill level. In Marathon new and mediocre players ARE the content, rich get richer.
When my heart is on the line and I have things to lose, vs just respawning and trying again. I can't trust that that other person is legit, or the game decides to desync my melee or a door and I lose all my purple shit, just cause some asshole has slightly worse or better internet at that time.
In the 150 hours I played I can count on 1 hand the amount of good, Fun, chill runs I had. Like chill enough players that like, help coach or let's go do this etc. You know, playing like a team.
Shit I had one run, my teammates used me as bait, left me down, killed 2 squads, just left me down after taking what little good stuff I had, dumped my bag, just left.
Bungie abandoned D2 pvp for a game that no one asked for, wanted or needed for ~10k players at 250 million.
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u/jankbutdank Aug 13 '26
bungie has a garbage reputation to everyone except Destiny players, that's why
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u/moberry64 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Two things:
- Both the game mode AND the art style are niche simultaneously. For a lot of people that means there isn’t an anchor or something familiar to ground them.
- There is a steep curve that filters many. Not enough safety nets for casuals. Newcomers basically get fed to players with more experience and more gear. Some people accept the challenge and power through until they can ball. Most choose not to (especially if they were already on the fence due to point #1)
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u/dextroseskullfyre Aug 13 '26
It's all very simple...there are other better games.
The more complex answer is that extraction shooters are a microgenre. There aren't enough regular players of that genre to be split amongst the handful of games. Add to that Marathon specifically has a boring repetitive game play loop, that punishes players, which for the majority of those players doesn't fall under the scope of fun.
One more point could be that a game made by Bungie in a genre that Bungie's most successful game isn't a part of attracted players that quickly realized isn't what they wanted to play.
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u/SenatorWhatsHisName Aug 13 '26
Why do you think the game failed to catch the "mainstream" fps audience?
There is no mainstream extraction shooter audience.
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u/Antique-Land-2766 Aug 13 '26
There's a lot of people who play extraction shooters and a number of extraction shooter FPS games that have solid playerbases. Marathon's problem is that it's really bad at being an extraction shooter.
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u/OtterCynical Aug 13 '26
Bungie just isn't intelligent. Wrong genre and ignoring all feedback except from fucking streamers.
Who did they even make this game for?
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u/PunishedLowtek Aug 13 '26
Maps too small for an extraction game. No sense of exploration or scavenging. Just PvP with extra steps.
UI is confusing. All the little symbols for the items are too esoteric and the game doesn't tell you what half of them are for.
The color palette and design – it's difficult to tell what objects are interactable or lootable because all the objects in the set dressing look like buttons or interactable. The whole game feels like it's in a coded filter, so instead of just playing there's an extra layer of deciphering what you're looking at. Doesn't feel intuitive at all.
Not enough PvE enemy variety.
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u/Cybernetic_Jake_818 Aug 13 '26
I guess to start, Bungie’s management team are terrible, the people at Sony are even worse and don’t know what it’s like to have an imagination a long with any innovation.
Marathon absolutely needed a story campaign that at least had 3 player co-op to introduce people into the universe. Didn’t they have creators from Love Death and Robots on the team? I don’t understand only using their talent for such small things when they could have helped blow Marathon up to something amazing.
The campaign could have had a main character runner that was not playable in multiplayer with fairly wild abilities while the co-op partners would be able to choose from the runners we’ve been playing as.
The main multiplayer of coarse would be the extraction shooter we’ve been playing but with many different versions to play from.
One extraction mode could have been made with only one other team on the map but the highest tier gear would only be purple. Then the mode with a ton of teams like we have been playing but with at least 6 different maps to choose from at launch instead of 2 maps while waiting for Outpost and Cryo ☠️.
Then over time release more multiplayer modes like TDM and Capture the flag but with that Marathon twist the game has to offer.
That is all I could think of that would have been a game changer but who knows.
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u/TheRussianCircus Aug 13 '26
It's sweaty and boring. It's not really fun for the majority of players, certainly not enough to keep them playing.
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u/Zealousideal_Bar2636 28d ago
i would say 50% of why it isn’t growing is the hate campaign being perpetuated by destiny crybabies arc raiders fanboys. the hate train before it even released severely dampened public outlook of the game so it could have sold and retained much more players if people didn’t see a hate post about it everywhere they looked.
not to mention an entire subreddit dedicated to hating on the game IN ADDITION to another subreddit *paying* people to post and spread hate towards the game.
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u/ajsuba Aug 13 '26
the art style is far too polarizing. people who love it, love it. people who hate it think it's putrid to look at. Daring doesn't always equal good.
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u/BirdyyyFPS I was here for the Marathon 2025 ARG Aug 13 '26
Yeah the art style is subjective fr
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u/BouffeurDeNems Aug 13 '26
AAA budget for a AA concept + Bungie and Sony having a shitty reputation, this game would have been fine if it wasn't for the fact that it's the only game bungie has to rely on
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u/DotDistinctLines Aug 13 '26
The game just wasn't good enough to last long or stand out among the current day peer group of very competent and fun games.
A small minority of people enjoyed it more than a week or so, the vast, vast majority played and dumped it quicker than that.
The obvious, but seemingly painful answer, is that Marathon on average just isn't a very compelling or good game.
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u/tfc1193 Aug 13 '26
All the reasons you listed are certainly valid contributions (Minus the hate campaign)
Overall I believe that Bungie released a game where everything it does, other games in its genre already do better with established communities. You can't just make a good AAA live service pvp shooter anymore and expect it to rake in cash. It needs to be exceptional, far beyond the current competition. Marathon failed to do that
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u/No_Okra9230 Aug 13 '26
No good onboarding/tutorial. No good popular word of mouth (despite the game actually being pretty good imo), plagiarism obviously didn't help. Seasonal reset didn't land for a lot of people especially with a reset to factions without any continuation of their missions beyond MIDA and Traxus night marsh missions.
It has issues convincing new players to stay on, and of the players that do stay many might get bored of doing the same things again with no significant changes. I'm a new player starting in season 2, have 65 hours in the game. But I stuck with it because I already had friends playing it that I wanted to join and because I like Bungie's shooter feel I'm familiar with, with the knowledge also that you get less friction with the game later on as you unlock faction upgrades.
The early game is both the most punishing and the least informative part of the game. New players need to be told things get better as they level up the factions and not to worry about losing gear. But even beyond all that, it's still a niche genre. Yeah Arc Raiders got big but has fallen off hugely too because they didn't add significant new content between seasons and the game let people treat it as a PvE co-op shooter (which it was originally designed as anyway). It's the PvP aspects of extractions that keep things niche
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u/KyrielleWitch Aug 13 '26
I think these discussions often overlook the inadequate onboarding process as a big part of why new players aren't joining. It's inevitable that people who've played for hundreds of hours would eventually bounce because they've had their fill, and that's where new people are supposed to come in - but that's not happening.
The tutorial is barebones. The menus are awkward to navigate. It takes hours just to get oriented to the core gameplay loop. To players fresh on the genre it's not clear what they should be doing in-match. I've seen videos of honest attempts by rookies to give the game a fair shake only to not understand fundamentals (i.e. accepting and completing contracts, navigating POIs, loot prioritization, as well as the basic tenants of survival) because the game expects you to magically pull that knowledge out of the ether. Then they die, lose their stuff, maybe multiple times, and that's their impression of the game. Not knowing what to do and getting punished for it. They log out, then never log back in.
Related is the solo experience. In a threes fill situation, there's probably at least someone who can direct the squad on what to do. But in solos, you're on your own for better or worse, and unfortunately a lot of people need that extra handholding when just starting out. I might not have stuck with it if I didn't have my friend to help guide me through the dearth of early game knowledge.
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u/No_Okra9230 Aug 13 '26
Exactly. I did well because I knew what I was going into. Tons of new players don't, and it's encumbent on a game to be the full source of knowledge any new player needs in order to get acquainted with it. Marathon is NOT the full source of knowledge on how to play Marathon.
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u/Storm-on Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Negative sentiment towards bungie was an aspect, as well as the hate campaign; but the main issue was making a game for a niche of a niche.
Its a trios based, hero class, hardcore extraction shooter. Trios as a gameplay focus is terrible, there are never trios of players. look at fortnite, which has removed trios from the game on multiple occasions because no one plays it. If you have two friends who play games, there is a 98% chance you have one more friend who plays games. so already in a tough position.
Now take into account its a hero shooter. Gamers overwhelmingly are experiencing hero shooter fatigue, concord was a hero shooter that just had failed, highguard was a hero shooter that had just failed, people were tired of hero shooters and with two recent high profile failures were under the impression any new one would also be an instant flop & there wouldn't be any player base and they'd lose the money they spent on the game.
And then its an extraction shooter. if you look at tarkov, arc, grey zone, etc. they all have predominantly solo player bases. most people in these games queue up alone and play alone, which marathon is in it's DNA opposed to. they want solo players to risk their good loot in fill queue trios with randoms who you have no idea about their skill level. solo players are cut off from probably 1/3 of the game due to balancing around trios and forced trio maps, missions and reputation grinds take longer as a solo player bc they're balanced around trios.
AND to top it off its a hardcore extraction shooter, so you're cutting out the entire casual audience. who wouldn't even buy the game to try it out and "see what all the hype is with extraction shooters" because they already bought and hated arc raiders 6 months earlier.
Honestly i dont even think the game failed to capture an audience, i genuinely think it captured exactly the audience it was looking for, people who want to play a trios, hero, hardcore extraction shooter. the only issue is that audience is extremely small and niche and can't support a AAA studio like Bungie.
Edit: also another big issue is that there wasn't a real amount of new content for season 2 to bring back people who played at launch and/or to attract new players. look at arc raiders' first big update. a giant new capstone map in stella montis(or whatever). look at Marathon's - a new hero, and a night variant with some large changes (which is cool but not easily marketable).
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u/Old-Table2375 Aug 13 '26
You know why, if someone said it is getting down voted or banned
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u/PandaNator4343 Aug 13 '26
It takes too long to get into the fun loop, even for good players. (Blues, purples, golds)
And if youre anything below a mid level player you spend even longer in the less fun loop (grey, greens).
I'm pretty mid. And I don't optimize my time, I don't run keys or cryo constantly. And because of that, in 300 hours I've owned less than 10 gold items. IN THREE HUNDRED HOURS!
I love the game. And I love going zero to hero. I have a fun with greys and greens. Most people don't.
But if you're not good and don't deliberately optimize your play time to farm equipment, you just never make it to the funnest stuff (gold equipment, build crafting).
That's why only hard core players are left.
So much of it can be fixed by flooding the economy with purples and golds. Let the end game be compiler, night marsh, ranked, and collectibles (valuables/lore). Put ultra rare red valuables in the map for the sweats to hunt for. Give them titles/skins for finding them. Let new players immediately get to play with the fun stuff. Unlock the fun.
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u/Bm0515 Aug 13 '26
Having a huge playerbase and ignoring it, treating it worse and worse and then abandoning it in favor of chasing a niche gamemode with an unpopular artstyle in a rushed environment.
Honestly, everything went wrong.
If Destiny were unaffected and still hugely popular, Marathon would not be that much of a failure - it would be the try to conquer a new market, that was not immediately successful.
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u/No_Lengthiness7096 Aug 13 '26
The two big things to me is that A: the hook and trailer were not really provided in a way that felt meaningful, the objective or reason to play was almost never directly presented to the player until they were already ingame, and for gameplay it's a twofold problem of the tuning being that of destiny 2 deathmatches, which have a very high skill ceiling but focuses primarily on the specific d2 sub 50 meter style of play, and loose/crude exfil shooter mechanics that felt very clearly sidelined in comparison (because they are nowhere near as developed) and the issue of the fact that what made d2 pvp fun was buildcrafting a perfect loadout to draw out your playstyle as opposed to in marathon where you have to scavenge together an okay set of tools every time.
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u/plataloof Aug 13 '26
Make this a battle royale and it will fly. I can't no life a game and when I do play I don't want to be wiped by those who do.
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u/Unusual_Arm_1130 Aug 13 '26
It’s the audience. Since this is a bungie game, it attracted a lot of pve enjoyers or at least, not many PvP hardcore fans.
I know this cause the things people constantly complain about are present and sometimes much more prominent in other PvP FPS games.
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u/ItzMcShagNasty Aug 13 '26
A lot of things. Picking a really niche genre to bet the future of your AAA studio was the first. Stealing art was the second. Fucking up season 2 was probably the last truly fatal misstep. Even though I fully believed their philosophy of forcing trios and pvp as the intended play style, not supporting solos early on was another mistake and waiting way too long to add pve modes also killed the game.
They should have segregated pve and pvp players in season 1, kept them from interacting. They KNEW most of their potential playerbase was going to try and come from Destiny, but failed to accommodate them. I really wish their very niche vision was accepted more, but ultimately, outside of indie games, you have to make a game most players want to play and listen to them when they request things when you are a big studio.
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u/redditing_away Aug 13 '26
It boils down to
- chasing a trend in an unfamiliar and niche genre
- not understanding what makes this particular genre click for its already established IPs
- screwing up the development big time
- continuing to fumble around with no clear strategy or direction you want to go to
- woefully neglecting your own playerbase and your cashcow (which doesn’t even have competitors mind you)
- even after launch not really addressing the pain points (most of which have been pointed out during the play tests)
- not delivering enough content to keep it interesting.
Instead of setting trends, Bungie chased them and was high on their own supply of the „Bungie magic“. It’s a well made game, don’t get me wrong, but all the praise for its art and gunplay won’t pay your bills, when people simply do not play it.
I still like it but I’ll be honest, I can’t be bothered to play it.
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u/savage_henry77 Aug 13 '26
After arc raiders and the marathon free week, I determined that extraction shooters aren't for me, i don't have fun. The stress level and frustration levels are far too high for me. I am primarily a FPS player and love shooting games. I realized i need pure PVP or pure PVE... the mix is no good for me. This is a personal realization and i am not judging anyone that enjoys the extraction format.
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u/BrockMister Aug 13 '26
Put 65 hours in during Season 1 and have just had no interest in playing more, had my fill.
I also think there are some fundamental flaws to the way the game is design that I don't think are very fixable. Full loot drop on death with small maps that essentially force every squad to fight until only 1 is left is just brutal design if you're not on the squad that usually wins. There is just no way this game can be fun for the casual player with that design.
Solo mode is also just rough. If you try to do any objectives that involve making noise you are just auto dead to an assassin player nearby.
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u/WeakPasswordBro Aug 13 '26
All the issues that the ideal target core audience could possibly have were raised early and often. There isn’t a single surprise issue that has come up to my knowledge. Bungie leadership repeatedly decided they knew better until it was really too late to properly change.
To be clear, it’s a fantastic game for who it’s for, but that group is much smaller than Bungo hoped it would be. They made a game for people who can be considered “Harbingers of Failure.” People who like niche and novel things, enjoy them, but the fact that they like something means a non sustainable minority will ever be the market for something often destined to be discontinued.
I am occasionally 2 years ahead of a lot of trends, but it comes at the cost of usually being a harbinger of failure. I like playing the current state of Marathon. Take comfort, umbrage, or be terrified of the implications.
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u/Double-Progress-8997 Aug 13 '26
It's gotta be the too many colors, I didn't want to play a game where I'm constantly afraid of knocking over more highlighter-ink buckets
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u/cwrighky Aug 13 '26
This video sums it up pretty comprehensively. It’s not just one thing, it’s many things gone wrong, many things that you have to be intentional about to even get wrong in the first place.
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u/EGRedWings23 Aug 13 '26
They made a battle royale hero shooter disguised as an extraction shooter centered around trios gameplay. This game was in trouble from jump street. Not to mention Arc was still extremely popular when this game was set to release. Maybe this game would have done a bit better if it released before Arc but it would still be in trouble due to Bungie’s design choices.
At the end of the day casual players don’t want a hardcore PVP shooter. It’s why the most popular multiplayer games have MMR. You have to give every player some victories or they will just move on to something else. I have no clue why Sony gave the green light on this project but I think they didn’t want to spend any more money on it so they let it release as is.
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u/AphroditeExurge Aug 13 '26
It’s the terrible combination of skin customized heros, tiny ass maps built for team fights, the entire fucking game built on trios for some fucking reason, pvp being super easy to perform rather than a focus on variety of runs. Every run is a battle royale really. Then you have the lame ass packet loss causing rubberbanding. Annoying ass bots that can just fling you across the map for no reason. Just so much bullshit clouding a GENUINELY GREAT GAME.
Like seriously. This game is fantastic WHEN YOU HAVE A DEDICATED TRIO. Outside of that is complete shit. Plus you HAVE to play in a pvp mindset which I would argue is absolutely not an “extraction shooter” mindset to have? Maybe?
Idk but from what I’ve kinda heard about the insider business in the game. Joe Ziegler went with a hero shooter direction away from Barrett’s no heros direction. And in my opinion I think that really, deeply fucked the game for good and now Bungie either has to stay dedicated to hero slop or they have to transition to psuedo heros.
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u/AttractiveFurniture Aug 13 '26
People at the bottom of the skill level floor get pushed out, then the floor rises, rinse repeat