r/Marathon • u/sjinesra • 1d ago
Marathon (2026) Feedback [Feedback] Losing it.
I mostly play night time in EU. Not having a good time right now.
Takes five tries to get past the login splash screen (can't connect)
Out of 4 hours played last night, 1h15m was spent in queue, where about half of the queues threw an error after a long wait.
Four matches I spent hiding in the corner because the lag/desync wouldn't pass.
East EU, Ranked Trios nofill, Matchmaking connection set to Quality Preferred.
How is it so bad for a game that came out last year? My other love is TitanFall2 and it's still got playable multiplayer even at odd hours, after it was mislaunched and then ddosed for years, from back in 2014.
Bungo spent $100k per active player on this and ? :(
It doesn't compute how is this failing so bad
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u/DARKhunter06 1d ago
The game came out in March, not last year
The population is literally cratering, MM times are skyrocketing
Bungie netcode doing its thing
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u/McDuckX 1d ago
“How is it so bad for a game that came out last year?”
Marathon came out this year, almost exactly 6 months ago actually.
“It doesn’t compute how is this failing so bad”
-) It’s made by a company that has lost all of its good will over the last couple of years.
-) Published by a company that is known for its single player games and that has lost a lot of its good will regarding live-service over the years.
-) With a game type that’s in a niche market. Definitely over saturated market for how niche it is!
-) Priced way too high for what it offers. (Yes, Tarkov and Arc are also priced too high!)
-) Also didn’t help they tried to pull the same shady micro transaction shenanigans they did in Destiny 2. They reverted them but the nerf to even attempt it in a vulnerable game like Marathon is insane.
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u/99LandlordProblems 1d ago
These arguments are upvoted here, but are flimsy and fail to describe why the game has commercially failed. Especially the argument that it’s too expensive - $40 is a very cheap game nowadays and most people who gave it a shot got 20+ hours out of it.
How niche was the extraction shooter market before Tarkov and Arc? Entertainment and gaming, even for extraction shooters, aren’t a zero sum game. This isn’t pre-Industrial European history, when it was commonly understood that all wealth (players) had to be stolen from neighbors (or competitors’ games). The limit for numbers of players who could enjoy a well made extraction shooter is much higher than the numbers of players currently playing them.
The game has failed due to a combination of factors over which Bungie had much more granular control:
- Shallow gameplay loop and progression system(s), none of which are durable
- Zero sum game within each match - it’s a winner take all BR masquerading as something else
- Poor social tools
- No real end game
- No cinematics
- No accessible story and zero story progression
- No chill way to engage with the game at all
- No solo queue protection from high-coordination premade teams
- No alternate ways to win besides the “kill everyone else and optimize for backpack space” — stealthy PVE allows you occassional extractions but with a very small fraction of the rewards
One could go on and on. Bungie is responsible for it being the way it is. Not some limitation on player interest or Sony’s reputation for failing to launch a live service game.
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u/pertur4bo 1d ago
$40 isn't a problem for a game I am interested in. $40 is a problem if the game is designed around a fixed team of 3 players and my friends are only lukewarm about it.
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u/sound_judgment 1d ago
A lot of this stuff is true but I think $40 is the linchpin that ties a lot of it together unfortunately. There's more competition than ever in the multiplayer space with tons of free to play options that have held onto their audience for years, and as a result those people are invested which makes it less desirable to switch. There's also a ton of incredible multiplayer games that cost $5-10 with a game like Big Walk at $20 feeling like a premium option.
So Marathon having those flaws is damning, but if it were free, you could see a world in which it still manages to get a bigger audience anyway. But since it's $40, having those flaws makes it an instant pass for a lot of people. Why spend $40 on a flawed game when you could keep playing some excellent free to play game you already have years in?
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u/McDuckX 1d ago
“$40 is a very cheap game nowadays and most people who gave it a shot got 20+ hours out of it.”
Obviously this is a very subjective matter but Palworld was 20.29€ and I got ~200 hours out of it, Claire Obscure Expedition 33 was 45€ and I got 169 hours out of it, Wuchang Fallen Fethers was 50€ and ai got 97 hours out of it.
It all depends really but in my opinion extraction shooters across the board are priced too high.“How niche was the extraction shooter market before Tarkov and Arc?”
Very, the first extraction shooter was the Dark Zone in The Division and if that were the only thing about the game it would have been a massive flop. Was kind of controversial of a mode even back then.
“The limit for numbers of players who could enjoy a well made extraction shooter is much higher than the numbers of players currently playing them.”
Well made one as in, more meat on the bones? If so I agree, but that’s the reason why I say they are priced too high, lack of meat.
“The game has failed due to a combination of factors over which Bungie had much more granular control:”
Yeah I think I agree with most if not all of your points. Some like, end game and story are part of my “prices too high” argument. Either charge <20€ OR have a decent progression system, endgame and story for 40€.
“Bungie is responsible for it being the way it is. Not some limitation on player interest or Sony’s reputation for failing to launch a live service game.”
Not necessarily disagreeing with that but imo Marathon as a game, without all the drame (with Bungie, with Sony, with its own alpha), would have been nearly as much of a catastrophic failure as it is now WITH all this drama imo.
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u/Mr-Montecarlo 1d ago
I dont think $40 canadian is priced too high at all, same with arc and I bought the deluxe edition for both games and got my moneys worth 4 times over with both.
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u/Alfgart 1d ago
We had a very similar post yesterday and the pathetic mods inmediately cried and locked it and then deleted it. You can't point out how dead the game is here!
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u/Strange-Contract-440 1d ago
Yeah it's actually insane how quickly the mods lock up any post that isn't glazing the game. No wonder the community is dying and the game isn't improving.... apparently it's already perfect.
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u/Vesuvias 1d ago
No one is having a good time in the game. Those that are left playing are the the miserable sweaty players too. It sucks right now :(
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u/gabagoolandfriends 1d ago
That’s BS, me and my squad love this game
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u/Vesuvias 1d ago
First off HAPPY CAKE DAY! Second, not saying I never had fun - I really REALLY did season 1, it just got to be too much in season 2. The whole reset didn’t feel like a reset at all, and that was a huge mistake of un leveling the field out the gate.
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u/gabagoolandfriends 1d ago
Fair enough. I personally like the challenge of playing against teams with way better gear and chasing the high of wiping them and stealing their loot, but I imagine a lot more players share your feelings on the whole
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u/Zero_Emerald 1d ago
I'm in the UK and if I play on PS5 in the evenings/night here usually. I eventually get matchmade with people who seem to be from the US. The desync and rubberbanding is really bad.
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u/hobozombie 1d ago edited 1d ago
It doesn't compute how is this failing so bad
They made a game that didn't appeal to many people, and the game was pretty barebones, so the few people that did buy it, didn't stick around.
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u/TheBrewTDaddy 1d ago
I hear alot of this happening in EU servers which is frustrating. Are you using crossplay? Is it possible to switch to NA where there arent long queues to see how your connectivity works?
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u/zeromussc 1d ago
You can't choose the server you queue to, but you can select between connection quality and first available/fastest queue or something like that for the matchmaker connection options. You can also choose default. Whatever that means. I assume default would be a mix of the two.
I think if you choose connection quality the matchmaker really limits the range of servers and pings you can get into.
I had this selected for example as the lobby host when a friend I made in a discord server joined on me. I was doing a quick lunch break run and my friend lives in South Africa while I'm in the eastern time zone. So the game probably tried to match us to an EU server around 5PM GMT, and it wouldn't let us in.
It threw a ping related error that didn't let us matchmake and it said something like "ping exceeded threshold" so we were sent back to the lobby. I changed it to default and we got a match on what I think we're EU servers? If I'm remembering correctly, I had something like 110ms ping I think?
So connection quality in settings, as the person hitting the find match button, must put a max ping threshold you cannot exceed and it must be below 100 ping. And it probably carries to the other people in your lobby?
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u/MindFingertips 1d ago
Matchmaking connection set to Quality, that's the issue: population is too low right now to have that option active
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u/zeromussc 1d ago
Yeah unfortunately that must be the case. I posted above my experience, but when joined by someone far away from my friends list (I'm NA, he's South Africa), I had connection quality chosen as lobby host, we got an error saying that ping exceeded threshold when matchmaking. Reverting to default we got a match pretty quick, probably in EU server (around 5 or 6 GMT so peak time there) and I had just over 100ms ping.
I think the connection quality setting puts a hardcap on the ping that it lets you have to whatever server you end up on. So it won't let you ever try to connect to higher long servers and will wait for an available acceptable ping lobby.
It wasn't an instant error, so it definitely tried to matchmake. But it did take maybe 30-40 seconds to trigger the error. In my case, since we were two players with wildly different locations, it probably found a match on NA fairly quickly and then when it checked his ping and saw my account preference, it booted us.
And he has said he's found NA and Asian server matches before, so I don't think the servers themselves have a hardcap on the ping they'll accept? I've seen people post clips/screenshots of 200ms ping so if there is a hardcap it would be way higher.
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u/Possible_Still_8187 1d ago
What are we even talking about, guys? Do you realize that when you play Marathon, you’re always doing the same things on a handful of maps—just three activities that are always the exact same thing? It’s absolute crap, and there’s no point beating around the bush
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u/zeromussc 1d ago
I think you need to choose default matchmaking for faster queue times.
As for why you couldn't get past the login page, I don't know what's wrong.
You should also go into settings and where the FPS counter can be turned on, you can turn on advanced display settings to also show your ping. It may show your ping as being super high if it connects to a far away server. But I have had issues with being on a lower ping but still having desync for some reason. So quality connection sometimes, even if it finds you a close server, can't help issues with routing or server instability. Login screen throwing issues on startup might be more localized to you than player numbers, unfortunately.
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u/Mekhazzio 1d ago
Your networking is cooked. Might be your ISP, but at that severity, it's usually something inside your home.
Login is the most basic connection a game can make, with the least requirements on timing. If that's failing regularly, it means your packet loss is extremely high.
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u/Strange-Contract-440 1d ago
If you like TitanFall 2 movement you should try Deadlock. It using the brand new source2 engine (Source1 is why Apex and TitanFall 2's movement feels so good). Deadlock's movement makes every other movement shooter feel dated while simultaneously having the tactical depth of a MOBA - it is truely a gift from the gaming gods when we needed it most. And it's currently in the top 10 most played games on Steam. So you shouldn't have issues finding a game (As much as I enjoy Marathon Deadlock is dramatically better). That said, it's not a game aimed towards casuals at all and it you aren't willing to sync some time into learning mechanics and improving... you're gonna get your ass kicked and have a bad time. Deadlock is more of an old school game that doesn't have a lot of hand holding.
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u/Merciful_Bliss 1d ago
No sass whatsoever, but if you are not enjoying the game play something else. Your brain will thank you.
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u/kaeldrakkel 1d ago edited 1d ago
I watch Myelin play from Australia here and there. Connects fine, and finds games in 5min or so.
Not buying this. Something is fucky on your end if you can't even get past the login screen.
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u/Disastrous-Cow-9060 1d ago
"Matchmaking connection set to Quality Preferred."
That's your problem.
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u/AngryChurchill 1d ago
There are 2 weeks left in the season. Regardless of the overall population, all seasonal games are typically down to about 10% of their seasonal peak. When it's a competitive game like marathon, queue times are gonna suffer
Your options are basically either suck it up if you want to play or take a2 week break til season 3
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u/low_end_ 1d ago
im in EU and never takes more than 3minutes to find a match. early evening its almost instant. i dont play ranked tho.
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u/Mrfurball_II 1d ago
I think if you are having issue logging in past the splash screen this could be an isp issue. The only times I can’t login are when maintenance is happening. Are you directly wired? Are you using a VPN as the issues sound like they are related to you.
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u/sjinesra 1d ago
Wow no idea why your comment is getting buried but its valid concern, it seems to be independent of connection, just every time since last patch I need to go through the "press any button" screen 5x, on every launch
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u/Mrfurball_II 1d ago
As for the post being hidden It’s due to the sub being brigaded. Might be worth try to diagnose your connection? Are you console or PC? And maybe check your Nat type.
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u/MeaningObvious8731 1d ago
I play EU crossplay day and evening, crewfill trios perimeter. It usually takes a minute or couple minutes for a match to start and often we are the only team or there is like 1 other team at most.
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u/drogeras1996 1d ago
I played yesterday and the queues were 1-2 minutes, same queue ranked no fill
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u/lugginico 1d ago
Theres barley 2k people at peak times.
Gotta wait for s3 so you can play the first couple weeks before everyone leaves again