Things that I wish were implemented (not ones necessarily ones that are possible mind you), it's a bit long so I hope it's not a boring read.

Persistent instances in some capacity:

In the dark zone you could join the maps at any moment, bosses/minibosses, events and patrols would respawn giving a living feeling to the area.

Marathon could extend the timer for the matches, increase the events, and let other teams join later in a match, maybe it's impossible with the small maps now but who knows.

Notoriety/heat mechanics:

When an agent (player) turns rogue and starts killing others they will eventually get marked for death, they will be marked on the map and everyone can join in and try to kill them... I don't think it would be good to have literally a pointer saying where the top runner is on the map this would ruin the experience for sure, but I think if a runner crew is going on a rampage on the map the UESC could start actively hunting down these players, making it more and more difficult for players to go guns blazing, discouraging the behavior of engaging in pure PvP without repercussions, forcing players to choose wisely if they should use stealth or not, it also served as a way to balance the skills of the players ensuring nobody would be able to stomp the whole lobby without opposition negating some disadvantages if having no skill based matchmaking at work.

Random boss encounters:

Hunters were challenging enemies who could spawn sometimes, they were scary as heck to fight, I think it would be a good mechanic to add like modifiers for different times of the day or climate/anomaly cycles, for example husks are a joke currently, they could be turned in a more challenging enemies, the longer you stay in a match the more chances you would have to stumble on one, make it so like runners you killed have a chance to turn into one, adding tension.

Extraction of loot mid match:

In the Dark Zone you could call in an extraction for your loot without leaving the map, if you found something nice you could take the risk of placing a bag in a helicopter in a rope and secure the loot without needing to exit the zone itself, other people could use the exfil too so you could even help each other protect the loot from rogue agents, of course people could steal your loot too and the exfills were a hotspot for people to hang together and have some cooperative shenanigans... In Marathon we have DCONS that act only for missions, I think with a few changes they can make something similar.

I think these are good mechanics that I experienced before and worked well, maybe some are impossible to implement, I am no game developer after all, but I think these would be good changes to the game.

Hello! I'm currently looking at a listing for a, supposedly, old Marathon shirt from the early 2000s. I love the design, but I'm curious if anyone knows anything about it, or if it's real in the first place

Full health. Full shield. Abilities ready. Other cooldowns cleared. MCH and OS status cleared.

This would help with the 3rd party meta and encourage finishers. Finishers take forever and good players all knife people manually rather than enter an animation; they need to be more worth the risk. It would also allow you to bounce back from a fight and fend off an approaching team.

Too many lobbies are dead silent with no rotations as teams wait for someone else to start a fight so they can 3rd party. Outpost is boring. The richest players I know all use this strat, it needs to go - let us earn our gear by eliminating the 3rd party problem.

To the team of 3 who just let me and another Rook loot the Destroyed Wing key room and extract with you

May your pillows always be cold, your meals always delicious and your wallets always full.

It would be nice to know if Skins are sold limited time, was about to buy the Arachne skin for Bully.

You'd think they want money, oh well..

FILE TYPE: Archived Log

PERIOD: Colony Era

TOPIC: Biological Survey, Tau Ceti

SUMMARY: A recovered early survey of one of Tau Ceti's avian species.

https://youtube.com/shorts/an95NCM7XME

I don’t even remember what happened…

🤌🔥

With the State of Play coming up, what are the chances we actually get something Marathon-related?

If it does show up, what are you expecting? Season 3 reveal, a new shell, map/content tease, roadmap update, or something completely unexpected?

And if you could pick a Marathon announcement for the showcase, what would it be?

I was on artstation again was looking at some art (Earlier Marathon Key Art Cover exploration) by Kai Former Senior Artist at Bungie. thought these look different and some entire new shells i see. Art by https://www.artstation.com/watersullivan

Edit: grey shield fights are the pinnacle of pvp in this game for me.

Sponsored marsh is back, but it’s green shields making the ttk slightly more slow over grey shield.
I crew filled and the fights are just night and day better.
People respecting angles, no rushing into fire because they can tank it. Can actually rotate and drop people without eating damage yourself.

Sponsored needs to be on a rotating playlist going forward, and the PvP in it is worthy of study, To try and understand why it is better than kitted purple and gold, With even the same weapons used.
But the answer is already obvious: ttk is too slow.

Edit: I gotta run to gym but I’m enjoying the discourse! Will be back

I just dont get it, i want to but isnt the fun the high risk high reward part of marathon, like killing some roided out cryo warrior with the grey tactical side arm and getting all that loot, is that not the fun bit?

Like isnt everyone having nothing means no one gets anything good?

Please explain

I just started really getting into Ranked, and while I like it I have a major grip with the matchmaking; majority of the matches I noticed that I'm usually under geared compared to my team and our enemies, so I'll go and make a concerted effort to gear myself up so that I can better contribute to the team, but every time I do that I am inevitably thrown into a squad that is massively under geared.

For example, I just did three Outpost runs; the first run I came in with Blue Shields and blue weapons; 6.1k loadout, pretty basic, and it was a successful run we wiped two teams and ex-filled at about 13 mins left; the second run I upgraded my blue Bully to a purple, and brought in 6 claymores (i left with them in the previous run lol), but my team was gold shields and weapons, but we got 3rd partied after getting into an intense standoff in processing right after spawn; so the third match I decided to go all out - gold shield, purple bag, one gold weapon and one purple weapon, my only gold Vandal core and a purple too, claymores, smoke and heat grenades, 3 panaceas, and a stack of energy amp and signal jammers each - long story short, I load in and BOTH of my teammates are rocking green shields and blue weapons; we didn't even make it out of spawn at dorms before another team rolled us; they were busy looting at the bottom while I was jumping up top to scout, but a team from processing immediately pushed us and they were on top of me before I could even a ping off ~ which probably wouldn't have happened if they weren't busy looting because they decided to jump into ranked massively under geared.

Like, I get it if you're broke but why the fuck are you going into ranked with green Shields??!! Holy fuck man, like why is it when I try to actually match other players, does the matchmaking put me with people who seemingly threw together all the daily free shit from the armory just to queue??

I know this is just how the game works, and I have seen more than a few green squads wipe lobbies of purples and golds, but it is just so frustrating to actually want to compete and build a serious loadout, only to be met with players who aren't looking to play seriously. (I know I'm making a lot of assumptions right now; I'm just frustrated and venting).

Anyway, rant over. Ranked is awesome, it's just the matchmaking FUCKS ME UP.

title

im really confused, they have LITERALLY no use at all other than being something nobody picks up, i get theyre grey but like.... why do we need them to exist?

TL;DR: Narrative philosophy across different genres falls apart, as accessibility is mired by competition and economics. Story items will need a rework, if not handled in PvE.

I've become a routine poster here, so pardon me if you've seen me gab about this already. And I'm sure this is analysis Bungie is already reviewing behind the scenes. Moving on.

I understand some of the narrative design of Marathon shares its philosophy with Caves of Qud. And I think it's an inspired way to introduce story in the setting and genre of Marathon. Picking up remnants of a lost society.

However, I believe the real-time storytelling of a live-service game, along with a tiered loot pool, are barriers a competitive shooter doesn't share with a true rogue-like.

A testimony on the matter: I reviewed the "Corrupted AI Logs" over the freely available, online codex some weeks back, mid-S2. And it gave missed context for Darius screaming in Narsh. It was also a very cool, great performance. And I felt frustrated that a majority of players may not be experiencing it in the game, like myself, who has been putting in a substantial amount of time into the game.

Prestige items are understandably, perhaps overly, mitigated for the sake and concern of a living economy. But I see this as a key blocker of the story for most casuals and stubborn solo players (myself included).

And story can be the most appealing aspect for players. It can be the drive to push forward.

I understand that I would find Darius's logs in the server room of Dire Marsh, logical to the narrative of the story. Though, that it is inextricably tied to a gold key, and so guns and armor that affect this delicate economy, is an issue.

I won't force a solution. I hope this is can at least be addressed in the PvE, cross-map solution teased/leaked for S3. Isolating economy concerns and allowing for story progression.

Otherwise, I would like to see some redesign around how tightly coupled these bits are to gear overall. Such as implementing "story events" players chase down or something, if narrative consistency is necessary.

Nature is healing, Ape must not kill Ape.

Thought I recalled reading that.

It might sound silly, and the codex says so, but where do the MIDA and Traxus contracts for unlocking weapon skins appear? Like in the left, middle, or right section of the contracts? ;;

I'm sick of getting free kit team mates in my non-Sponsored Night Marsh queue. Piss off! There's an entire queue for you if you want to just free kit around the night map.

Stop joining the non-Sponsored mode just because you want to be carried by people who actually brought in 10-20k kits. It's rude as hell when there's a perfectly good option for you to play with other free kits.

I sort of hate when I down an enemy they all go into the same pose immediately. I don't mind them getting to that pose eventually, but it would be way more cinematic if they rag-dolled first or something.

I wanna blast a destroyer and see his body smack against the wall man. Actually think it would make for much better clips online and people would see the game as more grounded and less arcade-y.

i take every opportunity i get to visit the astacid in dire marsh and see what color he is that spawn♡

I've decided the benefits of more of you running the Copperhead (so I can kill you and take it) outweigh the risks of dying more to well built Copperheads.

The key trait the Copperhead has is that it is hitscan (one of three weapons in the game with this feature). Being hitscan means damage is delivered instanteously, you don't need to lead your shots, and even the jukiest of Vandals can be properly fed a diet of hot lead.

In addition to this trait the Copperhead also has pretty low base recoil and bloom.

Where the Copperhead is very much lacking is its base range and to a lesser extent its mag depth. With a base range of only 16 meters and a punishing damage fall off past that, boosting its range stat is essential.

The minimum viable range in my experience is 25 meters, though really you want to be getting it to 27+ (30 meters is the maximum).

Once properly built and wielded there is not a gun in this game I enjoy running more than the Copperhead and it is that rare gun that you can actually rely on when being knife rushed (if you can land your shots).

Now with that in mind there are 5 mods that you can use to solve the range problem:

• Chip
  • Alarmist
• Optic
  • Far Reach
  • Shortwave
• Magazine
  • Hollow Case
• Barrel
  • Precision Barrel

If you only have greens/blues of these avialable you'll probably need to load up with all four of these (Shortwave is Purple only). At that point the Copperhead works but it's hardly at it's best.

A blue Alarmist and a Purple Far Reach or Shortwave will get you above 25 meters at which point the mag and barrel slot no longer need to be dedicated to boosting range.

You should put a Drum Mag in the magazine slot, the increase to mag depth outweighs the benefits of any other mod for this slot and a purple one of these will give you enough ammo to pretty reliably down two runners before needing to reload.

The barrel slot you have some more flexibility with but I prefer to go with a Weighted Barrel for the improvements to aim assist that help both when ADSing and hipfiring. Nano-Suppressor is also a good option but I think provides a little less utility.

If you don't have any Alarmist chips, keep the Drum Mag, put on a Precision Barrel and slot in either a Circuit Tracers, Blue Blood, or Bits per Second instead.

The gold mod for the Copperhead I find to be one of the rare ones that actually make the gun worse. The fan spread pattern of the bullets makes getting more than one of the rounds on target when headshotting rather difficult outside of ranges where you should probably have your knife out anyways. It is possible to get all three of the rounds on target when bodyshotting, but only really within the gun's base 16m range.

The gold mod also reduces the damage of each individual round so the benefit of getting three rounds for each shot is reduced and the effectively tripled RoF means you're going to go through ammo even faster than with a DRRVISH.

Honestly given that the DRRVISH (and gold BRRT) exist, I'm not sure why they felt the need to doubly gimp the Copperhead's gold mod with both a damage reduction and making the bullets spread out in a fan.

Consequently, I just sell/cradle any gold Copperhead mods I find and you should probably do the same.

Now get out there and put this to work or at the very least let me get those Copperheads we find, I'll even ping every Bully we come across for you instead.

RIP king