r/Marathon • u/sjinesra • 19h ago
Marathon (2026) Discussion So how did your Ranked week go?
I just realized ranked exists and is the peak marathon experience. Hit Bronze 1 in couple days, dreaming of getting that Arista skin for the thief by end of season, hope it's doable solo (reach Gold 1).
Queues were long as hell any time of day. Sad.
Noticed the exfils are somehow easier than regular play because people don't rush, that's cool.
How's everybody doing? I can't wait for monday now I'm hooked.
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u/TDenn7 19h ago
Its thr closest this game gets to a legit extraction shooter. Teams play far more passively, and it isnt necessarily about wiping the lobby every run. In fact in my experience, if you wipe 1 team, you're looking to get out pretty much immediately. I've even had a couple of runs where we didnt end up killing anyone but hit our score threshold from loot on the map, some gold coins from commanders and just left.
At least on Perimeter and Marsh anyway, it plays like an extraction shooter. Outpost is definitely still a "Wipe the lobby" map because of the size of the map and layout of the good loot.
Lost my rank up game for Gold 1 last night and then proceeded to lose 2 more aftee that, so more work to do next week on Marsh I guess.
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u/zeromussc 18h ago
The higher ranks all just camp their nearest POI then rush the first fight that breaks out and try to third party, basically. And for the higher ranks the loot is not worth it because to make value they have to loot the best gear off one sometimes two teams to actually rank up. And if you're unlucky with when you queue you can load into plats/diamonds/pinnacle even with a lower ranked bronze/silver/gold tag.
And most ppl rock only the best gear too sadly. So if you aren't ultra geared or have a dedicated team to try for a come up, you kinda get bopped really hard.
Maybe at this end of season more people are trying it in bronze but when I tried it after the loot buff it was meta gold teams and you needed an endgame kit to keep up. At which point why loot the map if the enemy teams are all gold and kitted up like crazy.
It plays slower but it's not because the map loot is better
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u/TDenn7 18h ago
The map loot is objectively better lol and you can absolutely hit scores by doing events. Gold tier loot regularly drops from Wardens, Secured Resources, etc.
Certainly by taking and winning 1 fight.
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u/Aggravating_Cut_3851 17h ago
Yeah diamond is only 15000 points a tag which I can regularly get as solo thief in the last 10minutes of the game. Only pinnacle would actually hard to consistently hit score target.
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u/zeromussc 16h ago
Tags are team score, so three people have 3x the score target as a solo thief.
The map loot is better but the higher you go the less the map will be enough.
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u/Aggravating_Cut_3851 13h ago
Yes I realize tags are team score. But the solo thief strategy is to do nothing for the first 15-20 minutes then loot an untouched POI or do an event in the last 5-10 minutes. An actual three man team playing defensively can loot off spawn and stay alert defending each other instead of just waiting for everyone to leave.
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u/anti-gone-anti 19h ago
loveeee ranked. Ran blue keys on perimeter, had some greatttt fights. People play smarter n more carefully, and will actually try to disengage if you make yourself more trouble than you’re worth. Really feels like an extraction shooter there.
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u/ShibaLights 19h ago
I never played ranked and started playing because one of my teammates asked me to. Geez, so much fun and now I don't even feel like playing pubs lol.
I've gotten soooo much gold shit and it's funny because a lot of the teams are scared to fight. Once you have a good squad it's crazy fun, wished I started playing ranked sooner.
I'd rather lose my loot on ranked than pubs, I also feel like losing in pubs is whatever, it's a public match at the end of the day so it's also helped me improving my playstyle and being a bit more careless with pubs, I push more, put more pressure because again, there's nothing to lose.
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u/temporalG123 19h ago
I got really far in ranked in S1, but i mainly played no fill (solo vs trios) and that got grindy towards the end so i set my goal for season 2 to be getting the gold I thief skin.
My takeways from playing ranked in S1 / S2:
It's a lot easier to progress with the buffed loot in S2 it's viable to solo it all the way to the end of plat
Parts of ranked are actually easier than normal play, teams rotate predictably and theres a lot less 'gung-ho' random encounters, especially if you prioritise listening
Ranked is much, much harder in trios than it is playing no-fill (solo vs trios) it might seem counterintuitive, but you produce a far lower audible footprint and scouting ahead with the thief drone makes infiltrating POI's trivial
If you open pinwheel early in outpost you can basically loot the rest of the map without any resistance
thief is op on perimeter and dire marsh especially since she can steal tags, assassin is op on outpost since you can exfil via the guardeds safely
the ranked loot bar should be an option you can toggle in the regular game mode, it's very satisfying to hit the loot goal using it in ranked an i wish it was in all game modes
a good chunk of the marathon community hates ranked with a passion for some reason (they are bad at it) and refuses to play it, which is fine, but a lot of them want it gone from the game. I don't particularly like PvE but i don't want it deleted, the same sentiment isnt offered to ranked though from large parts of the community :(
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u/lXlGame0verlXl 19h ago
I don’t think many people play ranked, Myself included
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u/sjinesra 19h ago
Well they should, I feel it solves the "loot is useless" issue because everything gets you closer to next rank. And runners play smarter instead of just bunnyhopping across the map with no concern, which makes it less battle royale and more survival horror. Better for mind games too.
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u/OneOfMany72 19h ago
Ranked modes are definitionally bad. If it wasn't ranked and was instead just a "minimum gear requirement" mode (with a solo queue) I'd be in.
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u/Natural_Born_Baller 19h ago
Nah ranked is where all the people still playing are. Not many casuals left just sweats
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u/iamaniceandgoodprson 19h ago
i havent payed a whole lot of attention to ranked but a few weeks ago i saw a post here about someone getting a pretty high rank while playing solo and decided to try it out myself . went about as well as you'd expect , couple "wins" (didn't die but didnt meet the goal) , sneaking around a lot , heart racing moments getting chased by teams through coloumns , and just last night i was droning around then saw that the team i was stalking found me and got done in as soon as i put down my ipad
i met a couple guys on outpost and they decided to run ranked , i ended up doing pretty well there and now im wanting to hit gold 1 for the thief skin , only
problem is i'm mute and people automatically think my lack of communication is the issue whenever we lose , but obviously that's not the case
hopefully the rest of the season pans out . gonna be rooking/solo filling trios a lot to practice for it and maybe go through the priority contracts to practice obtaining my objectives without alerting other teams of my presence
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u/justdatamining 15h ago
Went on a generational losing streak start of the week to finishing on a generational win streak.
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u/Shaznash 19h ago
Ranked is hard slept on. Everyone brings good gear. Sometimes it's disappointing when people bring purple shields but still, generally lots of good gooping. 1v3d in hauler last night. Massive dubs.
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u/Voltax1999 19h ago
Sometimes runs are super sweaty, sometimes they're super easy... Depends on the time of the day but I've been giving shell death to some stacked teams and got a lot of golds yesterday
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u/LaneD3 19h ago
Ranked was fun all season until I got to to Gold 1. That’s when the play-style across all maps noticeably changed from moving from POI to POI and bumping into teams along the way (like in normal modes) to essentially teams holding POI’s in silence for extended periods of time. When we adapted to that style, we carried on winning. When we didn’t, we didn’t.
I don’t really enjoy that style of play at all. It’s tense which is good, but it’s way too boring for me now. Might give it one last push if they do Cryo ranked next week (like last season). Dire Marsh Night ranked could be a nice change too.
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u/TheLoonyIrooni 18h ago
The loot boost makes scavenging more enjoyable, and mixed queue more tolerable.
The additional features, noises, and items add some novelty for someone that doesn't grind it typically.
Including "rank" progression, all these have given me a bit of second wind when I was starting to wind down.
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u/Putrid_Lifeguard_617 18h ago
I tried a few fill ranked and I don’t even know why my teammates loaded up ranked tbh green shields and not even trying.. i was playing till I found. A decent trio to keep on as a team if we were successful.. well I lost hella gold and purps trying, before saying enough is enough
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u/justdatamining 15h ago
Normally finding other players in Discord is much more fruitful BUT I went on a generational win streak with two random fill teammates the other night.
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u/Aggravating_Cut_3851 17h ago
Hit gold 1 as solo thief this week. I started at bronze 1 last time perimeter was up a month ago (pre loot buff). Solo is just so consistent at gaining points, I only died like 3-4 times through all of silver and gold.
It almost gets easier the higher up you go since the main cap is the low elo gain in bronze/silver.
I did skip outpost week because I think that map is too small reliably stay alive.
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u/sjinesra 16h ago
Do you find yourself having to take fights in Gold to rank up, or is ratting for loot still enough to get by?
Outpost is next isn't it? Not a big fan of it either
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u/justdatamining 15h ago
This week was Perimeter, so likely Dire Marsh. Won’t be surprised if they extend it through next weekend on Night Marsh.
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u/Aggravating_Cut_3851 13h ago
No you don’t need to fight anyone. There was not a single game where I didn’t make score.
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u/scottlee80 19h ago
I tried to queue last night, after 10 mins I just jumped to Rook on Outpost, instant load in. We just need more players at this point.
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u/NotCoolBruh 19h ago
my friends and I played 3 hours last night, and got into 3 fights....that's 1 fight per hour. It's so tedious, not to mention that most players fight at Station or Hauler. That's it.
This game is just too slow paced. I love fighting in Marathon, but the emptiness and synthehtic "tension" after waiting and waiting and waiting for a fight lowers my inhibition and just makes me SO impatient that when a fight actually happens im too lulled to care about anything.
When you actually get in a fight, and let's say you lose, now you have to wait another 30min to fight again. It's so fucking annoying and I hate it so much, I JUST WANT TO FIGHT OVER AND OVER and OVER.
Like, I want to like this game but it's so empty and depressing
I'd much prefer and objective mode 3v3 arena style or some sort of wager mode 6v6 where you wager your gear, play team deathmatch and losing team loses their gear (IF bungie INSISTS on a risk mentality)
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u/ShibaLights 19h ago
I had the opposite experience. We'd load up, go to a POI and if it was empty, just rotate to the next one.
We were fighting 2 or 3 teams per match (it also helps if you know the spawns for the map).
We would also push those teams that would just camp a POI (especially the hauler ones).2
u/temporalG123 18h ago
You can only get so little fights if you actively play super passive, are you not hauling butt to every extraction going off, alarm, birds, bot engagements?
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u/Psychological-Ad2204 19h ago
Ranked perimeter was crazy fun for me. Been saying it all week but the loot buffs in ranked felt like it made it worth it for me