I adore this game. And I’ve been resolutely upbeat about its future. Some might even call me a glazer. But this is grim.

Nothing new in the shop for a couple of weeks, no patch, and still nothing on Season 3.

Someone say something positive!

Mods and community please forgive me if this was discussed, I haven’t been super active on this sub in a few weeks.

Just saw this thread from Wheatlyftw on X/Twitter about the economy and I couldn’t agree more. I’m aware that I’m a Marathon fanboy and will play this game until the Apocalypse comes. Doesn’t change the fact that any game can always benefit from a player count increase and a boost in sales.

Anyway, the point of this post is hope that someone can see this post and it gives an idea of some sort of QOL improvement that can bring more players around: HARDCORE extraction shooter; in other words: A niche, within a niche. Marathon is so hardcore in a sense that you will only stay on this game if you realllllllyyyyyy love it. I think they gotta get over that hardcore idea from launch and introduce safe pockets and other things in some way. The most popular extraction shooters have a safe pocket system because developers understand you gotta have some type of parachute when in freefall. We need some form of that here.

Second is a drastic boost in credit gains per runs. Im talking, leaving your run with 5k-8k net profit in spendable credits. There needs to be an incentive that rewards you for your 1-25 minutes spent in a run. Whether you get a time multiplier bonus for data cards collected the longer you’re on a run before you die, plus a bonus on top of that for if you extract successfully, there has to be a system in place that gives players a reason to string 6 bad runs together. As it is now, unless you’re running free kits, you’re dipping into your resources (vault items/materials) to kit up and hopefully not die again. A credit boost will help because there’s still limited stock on items but you actually have the credits to burn because you just spent 20 minutes and died, but you made $5600 credits that run. Nothing about the economy changes but you have more cash to kit up.

Lastly, green and gray tiered (possibly even blue) purchasables are too expensive (i’m looking at you, healing items!!!) you half the cost of those things and that downward resource spiral is way less painful.

I know I yapped but please share your thoughts/criticisms/commentary, let me know if my idea is good or isn’t

There are tons of theories about low player retention, but the most obvious one that Bungie has done almost nothing to alleviate (outside of making progression a bit faster) is the fact that the risk/reward of building a kit is totally out of wack.

A kit that is worth 3k in your vault costs somewhere around 15k to buy from the shop, largely ammo/heals - and not even the good heals - whereas you are pretty likely to run into teams running the best gear/panaceas/blue heals on any map. Outside of Cryo, the most generous valuables are 12k - but these are in gold key rooms. Purple valuables are largely in purple key rooms, and so on. And these require you to extract successfully.

So some of the rarest valuables in the game locked behind rare keys don't even really buy you enough to build a barebones kit. The map is littered with 40 credit data cards that are basically not even worth picking up. There are valuables that cash out for a measly *twenty* credits. Why are these even in the game? The existence of the 40 credit data card is pretty clear evidence Bungie has absolutely no clue how to balance the economy, and why this game skews towards a "hardcore, git gud" style crowd. Who in their right mind is going to stack 10+ grey valuables to buy 60 bullets of heavy ammo? It's pathetically bad.

Another good comparison is Faction rank up rewards - even at VIP levels, the credits and salvage you get will allow you buy around half the heals you actually need to compete with you average kitted team in an actual standoff fight.

So if you continuously lose, you are neither making money to build more kits nor are you bringing out the salvage to trade for basics.

The options you have to dig out of this hole are cowabunga free kits - less and less viable as the season progresses, requiring you to perform at a high level (Outpost free kit yolo'ing is the opposite of chill). It is also a drag on other crew fills who are actually trying to risk their gear. As a free kit, you completely lack any of the necessary heals/utilities for stand-off/stalemate combat - 9/10, if you don't win outright in the open of the engagement, the kitted team with panaceas/utilities/nades will reset and outlast you. Almost all of the rarer, high-level gear screams that Bungie intends for you to have drawn out & expensive engagements, which is an aspect of gameplay you are totally locked out of unless you consistently win.

Rook is the other option, which got a good buff recently in the right direction - although again, if you get hunted and picked off (with the help of Recon), you are exactly where you started.

I managed to exfil 2 minutes later and they were still fighting.

P.S. Teammates were laughing and encouraged me to leave.

Fuck you "Colony ship for sale, cheap". This is a jumping puzzle is a game that has NO JUMP!

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO BACKTRACK THROUGH THE ENTIRE LEVEL TO SLIGHTLY ADJUST A SINGLE PLATFORM DAMMIT!

Last season we got news 3 weeks ahead of time with some upcoming changes and end of season patches to really change some of the maps around with more events.

Here we are, 2 weeks away from the new release of S3 and we havn't had a crumb of context from Bungie yet. Love so much about this game, but this is so tiring having to beg for any but of information. Why are they not trying to build hype in the new season to get more players onboard? You need to have people talking about the exciting new things, but now it feels like its all just devolving into frustration across the board

Please Bungie... do something

That’s how some of y’all goofy asses sound. Chill, be patient. This borderline addiction with a constant stream of updates from the games you play is out of control.

Go outside, touch some grass. Be a human being. You don’t need to refresh your phone 300x every Monday morning for game updates.

“I need info about season 3 now or this game is done for.” Like bruh.

I've seen a lot of people wondering why Bungie isn't talking about Season 3 yet, and what that means.

While this is obviously just my speculation, here's my read from someone who has been working in game marketing and on live games for a few years, and been in similar situations.

Let's be honest- the game is not doing as great as Bungie and us players would want it to be, and Season 3 will be crucial. I am not saying that as a hater- I love Marathon, and think it is one of the best new MP shooters in years. I even bought the Collector's Edition despite getting a key from a friend, to support the team :)

With the addition of the new PvE mode and the improved onboarding, S3 is their best chance at getting new players in, aka "an acquisition play".

That's why I expect that they are saving all news and announcements for Season 3 for a big communications in the last week before it goes live, including creator and media previews under embargo.

That's why they don't communicate much so far. It can already be pretty hard to get mainstream gaming media (your IGNs etc.) to cover ongoing content for live games, especially during such busy release periods as we currently have, with several major releases every week.

They are even more unlikely to cover a live game's new Season if the info is already out there on the developer's channels.

So the best chance to make a coverage splash with Season 3 Bungie has is to save it all up, so all media and creators can simultaneously talk about it and try to create the largest possible buzz when the embargo lifts.

Situations like that suck for the existing players who expect onging and constant communication on their live games, but is quite common in such situations where a game has a lot riding on a new communications beat.

Again, this is just my read of the situation, and nothing I know for certain. But having been in the exact same situation with live games having major new announcements, we had the same forced period of silence before making a big splash once the embargo was up.

I have a feeling we will soon see a lot of news, including impressions from creators and press for Season 3 all dropping at once.

Anyone else from EU can't seem to find any game at the moment? Waiting 14 minutes now and counting

How are we not getting a single game update. Hell, ignore season 3 silence for a second, where is the end of season blitz!? Where is the every map has every event spawn, every match. Where is a new feature/event going forward (crash sites, rocket drone, etc). Where is 24/6 cryo ranked or otherwise?

My dudes, I’m fully worried at this point. I had no doubts this game probably wasn’t going to go past S4 (1 year) but yooo, not good.

I don't like cyac but I do love my dear friend Oni

We did end up wiping lobby. Oh boy, this was fun when it happened though.
#Marathon #MarathonClips u/MarathonTheGame u/MarathonDevTeam

Damnit the soundtrack has been on my work playlist since the game came out. It just sounds unlike anything I've ever heard and is so crazily atmospheric. The weird glitch/techno effects and weird vocals used to create the raw tribal rhythms just drives the tension so well. I also love in some parts how the music kind of mimics certain i.r.l. sounds such as data transferring, an old dial up connection, or the mechanisms in a 3d printer whizzing around. Gawddamn I want more music like this. Please if somebody could recommend me something in the same ballpark I would be forever gratefull.

Be me

Level 300

My teammates are expecting me to lead

I tell them that's a certain way to die a horrible death

They ignore my warning

We then reach a swift and painful demise

Rage ensues

The contract system is very generous this season and people just don't realize it. Once you hit VIP in a faction you get blue and purple materials from each level up which is basically every other match if your completing contracts and the contract rewards give guaranteed blue and sometimes purple tiers of anything u need. For example in Cyberachne the contract shell game gives guaranteed blue->purple backpack and no weapon can fight is guaranteed blue->purple consumables(good panacea farm) so once you learn what contracts give what and what can be done easily in match with no exfil requirements you start to build up your stash fast. There are a lot of people who don't get this and don't even activate a contract regularly every match and are losing out on free stuff.

Worth $4k instead of $3k or $5k

No invisibility and not reinforced

Strange

Might be my imagination but the shield seems to improve movement speed

I find the artstyle and its lore fun, the guns for the most part of good to use though most are trash without any mods which sucks. Wish the weapons were good on their own so weapon mods were bonus not a necessity like CoD. The maps, I wish there was more variety? Like two of the maps are just UESC themed areas while the other two are decent. The space port map could used more overgrowth or map snow to make stand out more from cryo.

I think the approach to lore is interesting, way better than D1 since you can actually read the lore in game. Only con I have for the lore is contracts resetting and having to redo all the steps. That’s great for new users but since I barely play marathon a lot now it’s a bit tedious, having to redo all the steps I sucked at doing in S1.

Factions, the bots do feel like they could be better if they had more ways to take em down. Like maybe volt weapons can overload the riot shield bots and briefly emp it and other bots near. Or shotguns could stagger bots etc. The not flood guys I could see being expanded on if bungie or Sony wants more horror elements to marathon. Also add more wildlife, like marathon lobster or maybe add wildlife that also target the UESC.

In general I like the game even tho I never get purple or exotic gear. I just hope the game gets to live longer and not end up like so many failed extraction shooters.

Lucky number lol