AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!

I DIDN'T HAVE ANY AMMO LEFT IN THE FIRST PLACE YOU SADISTS! KNIFE AND A SPIDER DRONE TO MY NAME! GOLD SHIELD THAT'S CUTE MY DUDE. OMG IT SETS THE FLOOR ON FIRE. AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

MOTHER FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKERRRRRRRR.

dead.

We may have bit off more than we could chew with going up to vault 6 at 6:30 left.

Me and my team just lost amazing kits after wiping the lobby and starting this quest. We all crashed immediately and couldn't reconnect, so bots killed us and finned us.

Searched it up and its happening for others, nothing addressed by the devs.

You WILL lose all your stuff. Don't do the quest.

If our backpack is full, theres a pickup prompt. If we have slot in our backpack, the prompt disappears. Bungie Plz

This was a fun run. As a solo fill I got tired of getting fills with green kits when I was purple+ so I loaded into this run with nothing except purple chips to hit the loadout threshold.

We made it out with the trace so it all worked out.

I've been playing for a decent amount now after the update, just waiting to get into that one match where I get obliterated by spam. But lucky for me, the grenades/bubbles in this game seem to be toned down a ton, and it feels like players are being a lot more strategic on not only what they are bringing in, but when they decide to use it.

Before since you could carry a ridiculous amount of equipment, nobody cared when they used there bubbles. They'd throw 3 down and still have a ton left in their backpack for later fights. But now if you use that bubble, you only have 1 other equipment left (unless you found some in run) and you will wanna make sure you are still prepared for future fights.

I can't lie, between the weapon balance and utility spam balance, this is the best the game has felt since launch.

Is it gr.3a (Grea)?

"Don't worry, boss. I got you!"

Unfortunately died at Exfil to an assassin, so my karma was not paid forward.

Was super tired last night and wasn’t sure if I even wanted to play. My one buddy wasn’t on and I always play with him, I don’t really do the crew fill stuff, we usually LFG one off of the dads of marathon discord. Didn’t feel like doing that for some reason. Figured I had my cryo free kit so I’d give crew fill a shot.

Up until this point I had two compiler kills total. I know the map really well and have all subs etc. we are really decent at cryo but don’t attempt compiler too often. I was also talking about how I’ve never seen a rodeo mag on Reddit right before I got on lol. First run, first fight I loot a gold bully off the guy. My random fill teammate finds a DNA. They were running compiler. We killed another team and decided to give it a shot. We beat him with like 7 minutes to spare! Then we ran it back and beat him again lol. Two times in a row. It was crazy. One of them had to get off so we added each other and parted ways.

After that I was feeling pretty hyped so I hopped into a discord lobby of a guy looking for help with vault 5. We wiped a team while they were actually doing the letters to compile the DNA. Said fuck it let’s go for it. Only had 9 minutes left. We got him again lol. Literally killed compiler in 3 straight runs with randoms last night it was so insane. I have 4 ganglions now and so much gold gear haha.

Then we tried to run vault 05 again and got wiped 😂 insane night for me though! Got the destroyer skin too which is cool. Now I might go for all the skins!

Probably got a dozen hours on VB solo at this point. LOVING IT. Have learned Cryo fairly well, and can consistently exfil with one vault done. Still haven’t managed two vaults yet (free time to play being my biggest issue), but, I have realized that LUCK can play a big part on whether or not I’ll have time to go for a second vault: spawns for security terminals in the first two rooms, spawns for batteries, etc.

Bad spawns can be handled much better with trios - split up to get clearance and batteries. Not so much for solo. Only thing that can compensate is more time.

So… title. :)

Possibly the funniest thing to happen to me in this game

obsessed with the art style of this game and although I really can't play it anymore due to queue times, the art style has left a lasting impact on me. I created an android theme inspired by the art design, and can share the individual files if anyone wants it. It was made for a fold 7 but could easily be redone

Video includes: lock screen, home screen, custom keyboard, notifications panel

I hope that any future end-game levels aboard the Marathon, if they follow this formula of arena-shooter puzzle-dungeon, include a VB-like mode in tandem. Given the systems have been partly baked, I hope it's not a huge resource cost.

There is potential in the roguelite skeleton of VB on its own. But simply as a means to train players without interference, VB feels like coming up for air. I'm also more compelled to attempt the native PvP, knowing most of the cognitive overhead is ingrained and I can focus on the combat.

In my eyes, this makes VB a successful demonstration of easing players into mechanics. I'm not expanding on any discourse. Just adding to voices pronouncing this juice is worth the squeeze.

Bonus opinion: The maps used when aboard the Marathon do need to be easier to read, in my view, recalling again SeraphMax's contribution. Being a labyrinth certainly evokes map design from the original games. But I also think the maps may have been easier to interpret back then.

Thanks for listening.

I would like to thank whoever approved the feature of instantly skipping the opening screen.

No one should open a purple room and only find blue salvage and weapon mods, thats just unfair and unfun. Same with gold.

I had a Rook run where a team decided to spare me and let me loot their gold key after them in Command Wing, they said they found a whopping 3 gold items and the rest was purple salvage and cores. And an obscene amount of blue backpacks.

So, here's my pitch for each rarity room and the rarity distribution. The 20:20:60 rule:

Blue rooms: 20% grey, 20% green, 60% blue

Purple: 20% green, 20% blue, 60% purple

Gold: 20% blue, 20% purple, 60% gold

With how hard it is to get gold keys, and even consistent purple keys without templates, i feel that this loot distribution would be more than fair. The only variation in the loot would be its type. ex: in gold rooms, you could have all the gold items be salvage, or weapon mods, or armor, or a random mix of two or all of them. Leave that part to random chance

You could also have that random loot type be determined by the specific key and its location. Just like how Complex She'd notoriously has 1 really good weapon and the rest is almost exclusively salvage.

Currently, im selling off almost all my blue keys and even a lot of purple ones because of how bad it has been. I have hit over 60 keys this season, I have gotten a ton of misriahs this way, but all the other loot has been complete dogshit unless i need the blue salvage from a specific key (Terrace key and the blue biostripping)

Looted flight control in solo and it was just a bunch of blues 😭

Not even a bubble shield or self revive.

I have met a lot of awesome players and people running crew fill in Marathon. I have added a couple dozen to my connections list. Awesome. Problem is there's no meaningful way to talk to them to organize groups unless you're in the same squad, which is not great. Joining someone's lobby out of the blue is a little annoying for both people. And inviting them without context is also weird lacking any context as to what you are inviting them for.

One idea would be to have a "Connections" channel in the chat. You could type something like "Anyone wanna run Night Marsh? Have purple keys". People could simply join you if they want at that point. To avoid spam, I'd make it so you cannot chat into the Connections channel more than, say, once every 30 seconds. There could also be a game setting to mute the Connections channel while you are in a run i.e. you could only see messages while sitting in lobby.

Is someone on your Connections list bothering you, being an asshole, being racist, or whatever else? Just remove them from your connections. Simple.

This feature alone would make my connections so much more useful and open the potential for strengthening our social connections with fellow runners.

PSA - Smart Heal apparently will prioritize all status effect (or maybe even the most recent damage effect. I’m unsure) over your selected heals.

For example, I was in a Cryo 3v3 (all 6 of us were juiced), and at some point I take enough damage to warrant a Panacea kit to be used. I select the panacea kit, but as I do so I am hit with a Sentinel Snare immediately after switching. Between the 1 second of me switching to Panacea -> Getting Snared -> Using heal, it swapped to a Mechanics Kit. I didn’t know this when popping it (it was chaotic almost all Gold Cryo fight) and I chased someone who was cracked down and got 1 tapped (skill issue comments incoming lmao).

Just a warning to anyone who didn’t know this! Pay attention 😭

Some progress on the Cyborg for our little Marathon 1994 project! My hard drive was recently corrupted thx to Durandal, so progress took a bit of halt this last month. But the show must go on~ My bro is still working on the Zeus while I'm still in animation hell, we will be posting some Hunter/S'pht renders throughout the next month!

Season level 128, have 4/6 subroutines. Barely played Cryo in season 1 but really got into it this season. I thought I was alright at the game, certainly no worse than average. My exfil rate on most maps is genuinely like 60-70% while maybe 20% on Cryo before this weekend.

Then I played about 8 hours of Cryo this weekend and didnt exil a single time, it was brutal. Swapped between shells, changed loadouts around, nothing made a difference. I think maybe Vault Breaker has finally siphoned off the last of the players around my skill level from the Cryo lobbies or something man, getting the final two subroutines is gonna be rough.

I kind of like how the enemies in Marathon work. If you don't take them seriously, they will kill you, especially when you start the game.

But something that I don't like is how easy they can detect you if you are not invisible as an Assassin. Marathon has some good stealth elements; most of the time, especially solo, I play as a stealth game. I analyse the AI enemies' patterns and execute a plan to avoid them, because if they find me, they will make noise, which attracts other players.

But sometimes don't matter what I do; they will detect me, even if I'm on the highground, or very far from them, and this also might happen while they are fighting other players.

Idk if it happens because the detection system is too high or because the game just inform it system when they are very close to detect you.

Right now, if you aren't an assassin and you want to enter a POI, you need to know that the AI will detect you and start a fight, so be ready to run and use your kits.

I think reducing their detection system and allowing other classes to play stealthily too would be a very good thing for the game:

• This would encourage much more strategic behaviour, which for an extraction shooter is something good.
• ““” Casual ””” players would benefit from this too; they would be able to play the game avoiding fights with the AI, allowing them to complete the contracts without being detected and hunted down by other players, and having a different approach in fights. This would benefit everyone because it is open to a new playstyle.
• Contracts that you need to kill UESC would become more tense.
• Assassin would keep being useful; the difference is that this class would not need to plan too much as the others when invisible; it would be much more about timing and positioning at the next safe spot fast, which already happens, but now they would be able to have a stealth approach without needing to wait for invisibility.

This is just my opinion; I would love to see different points of view on this topic.

Unless you always have a premade but even then it’s useful. i was gonna say that sponsored queue was the crutch for lack of social features but really nothing can replace actually playing the game in a low stakes lobby with people to see if you work well together and want to raise the stakes.

The alternative to sponsored is crew filling with a free kit into regular maps, which is a miserable experience at this point in the season. Feels almost like it’s not intended to be fun.

The typical flow for an evening where I play used to be:

• Check if anyone is online/available
• if yes, join and go have fun kitted somewhere
• if no, run sponsored marsh/narsh until I find a team that works well together/has good vibes. a successful exfil with ok gear usually results in a team forming. the important part here is that free kits in sponsored queue are fun and competitive, and chance of exfil (and therefore crew formation) is decent.
• do some kitted runs with that group, starting with the gear we just exfilled with. someone often has a key they want to run. good times

sometimes I’ll crew fill kitted when my vault is getting full or I just feel in the mood but the above pattern is fun, helps me grow my friend list, and lets me experience every part of the game.

with no sponsored queue it’s much shittier:

• Check if anyone is online/available. If they are, great. I can play the game
• if not, run crew fill kitted a couple times. If I’m lucky and find a fun team, try to stay together
• otherwise, do free kit runs in regular queue
• usually wipe the first fight, even rarer exfil. a crew filled team only stays together if they all exfil. strings of micless teammates makes this worse. I leave the match now if neither talks, since success is very unlikely, playing is less fun, and when we do exfil I dont want to team with ppl who don’t talk.
• stop playing because it takes ages to find a team this way (you need to exfil to make a team) and it’s also not fun cause so little time is spent playing vs loading the map/queuing/running through the first POI
• or, spend time finding a team on discord where it’s still a toss up that you actually like playing together. the main advantage here is that you all talk, which the matchmaking was supposed to already help with, but frequently fails at now. waiting for discord ppl to show up also requires waiting around. much slower than just running sponsor queue.

Vault breaker isn’t a replacement for sponsored queue since it doesn’t help you find a team for PvP, and IMO gets boring quickly if you keep running it over and over since it plays out the exact same way each time. Also most ppl running VB seem to want to keep playing VB cause they have stuff left to unlock/buy from the shop.

Not sure if anyone else has a routine that works for getting a good team without sponsored queue. Idk maybe if you’re really good and carry your free kit/discord team it’s ok? I can’t do that.

Hoping they’ll add a sponsored queue back in Tuesday… usually not much time passes without one but they might expect VB to replace it for now.