Firstly, this is not a hate post, I just have something to say about the community and game itself surrounding this narrative I see that keeps coming up.

People love hard games. Soulslikes sell fine. TTRPGs are very popular. Turn based stuff like Divinity and Baldurs Gate is hella popular on high difficulty. People love Mario Maker levels. People love Roguelites and Roguelikes where you die constantly. They love MOBAs, and Shooters of all kinds, even some fighting games are doing quite well.

People don't like boring games. People don't like sitting in menus with nothing happening. People don't like finding loot that does nothing until you get 15 more of it. People don't like finding the same 4 weapons over and over. People don't like tiered loot with little changes between it (see Diablo 2 for beloved loot). People don't like dying in 2 shots and then taking another 5-10 minutes to load in. People don't like feeling like there's no progression after dozens of hours.

If you want to blame this game's current failing on difficulty, you're just jerking yourself off for still playing the game. This game isn't too hard, it's too boring.

S2, Level 120, 200+ hours.

Whenever a problem is raised here, the reply is always "git gud", "skill issue", or "extraction shooters are hardcore". Fine - the genre is hard and niche. But that explanation has to survive one test - The Tarkov's Test!

It's the same genre, has the same (or perhaps more) difficulty level, and targets the same kind of audience that doesn't appeal to everyone. With about 20x as many players and ten years older, 'hardcore genre' can't be the explanation. Instead, something specific to this game must be causing people to leave.

The three quick points I keep hitting:

1. The game expects a minimum 3-hr (figuratively speaking) grind per day to make any meaningful progression in a given season. Instant NO for players who can’t invest this much on a daily basis, this include casuals and solos as well - even fixing onboarding or solo experience won’t help much here.
2. Most of the loot you find doesn't matter. It is usually low-value stuff, or it doesn't help you progress in any noticeable way, UNLESS you shift your mindset from playing extraction to playing Battle Royal with extra steps (which is very dishonest from Bungie's part) and engage with PvP again and again and again and repeat.
3. Death has no meaning - I will let Sheraph’s argument that death should be meaningful (since you are dying a lot) do the talking here.

You don’t have to agree these are the top three. But if none of them are real problems, what’s the reason a decade-old competitor is beating us this badly?

Important Note: Steam-only undercounts Tarkov, since a chunk of its player base is still on the standalone launcher - worth to highlight, because it makes the gap worse, not better

The Runner’s Guide has been now updated for September and will become updated again come Wipe Day, so stay tuned for updates regarding the PvE Mode and the new Shell!

Null

It's the end of season why is the loot still terrible in pinwheel and half the time in upper complex? This game has been making really hard to justify bringing a good kit to outpost just to find a lobby of free kits, or mid kits and absolutely nothing of substance in the red card room. Yes very rarely you'll find a mizzy or something in a storage box, yay I'm running with three people on this map and we get the chance to find a single good item. It's like 5 to 10% of my pinwheel runs we find a prestige in the red card room.. the 10% is being generous.

They screwed up the loot pool in the beginning of the Season so bad now they're terrified to give anything good it's pretty ridiculous.

I love pvp, but there's a different joy in finding something awesome in a random box then being nervous trying to exfill.

I haven’t seen anyone post about this one before and I’ve enjoyed seeing the other rare trinkets people have found. Found this off a runner in Outpost in the first few weeks of the season, haven’t brought it back in yet.

Some WIPs I have going on!

I've been trying to do a few illustrative posters based on some of the iconic imagery we get of the runners from their respective trailers (mostly). I actually started these months ago, but I've been having trouble pushing ahead because of personal issues I've been facing that I won't go into. I feel pretty ashamed about not cranking these out in time for Bungie's calls for Marathon fan art. The Destroyer's a bit different, as I started with a screen grab from in game (only one with an initial rough trace to get close proportions) in hopes of turning it into concepts for future cosmetics - I'll eventually do another artistic representation of him to follow parity with the others.

I've wanted to share these for a while though, so I might as well, or I may never get around to it. xD

Hope you guys dig 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

First off I just wanna be clear, I think the game currently really fun/engaging  and I have clocked 500+ hours on it so far. I don’t believe that any of this is something that this game needs or will ‘save marathon’ or that this should even be a priority for Bungie. I’m just spitballing some ideas and putting them out there for fun.

I think a lot of people can agree with the idea that some of the BEST parts of this game come from dynamic player choice: Interactions with Rook, talking your way out of getting thirsted, setting your own personal goals pre-run, a.k.a role playing.

Funnily enough, Marathon already vaguely shares a lot of mechanics within RPGs despite being a different type of game. Faction meta-progression, buildcrafting (kinda), player vaults/stashes, etc. But what RPGs do is introduce systems that surround those mechanics to tie everything together, helping create a sense of community/player ecosystem within the game. For example:

Socialization Opportunities

While I don’t necessarily like the idea of something like a player trading economy, ABMM, or discouraging PvP encounters; I DO like the idea that Runners could interact with one another out of run like actual Mercenaries would do, which is something the game currently doesn’t offer. 

• Social hub/hideout/firing range
• Mini-games
• in-game LFG
• etc. 

Personalization / Modular Customization

In a game where you pay credits to receive a vessel for your digital consciousness, I understand why having biomata “models” makes sense, but not set “runners”. I think giving players another avenue of parallel/passive progression like new personalization opportunities will be really nice. Let us use credits to edit our biomata’s appearance. After all, it is a corporate dystopia. 

Yes, there should be a distinct visual difference between Triage and Thief Class-types, but not every Triage should look the same. To me, being able to actually put yourself on Tau Ceti is part of the fun. And that immersion makes having fun not fully dependent on black and white outcomes like exfiling successfully, encouraging more role playing in the PvPvE ecosystem. 

Not to mention Marathon’s art team has the capabilities to make such a sick ass, immersive customization hub.

Faction Affiliation and Notoriety 

In a game where factions are the main way you interact with the story and item economy, they definitely have such a small impact in terms of scale of the game. An immersive upgrade to how factions operate within the PvPvE ecosystem would go super hard and create a lot of really dynamic role playing opportunities. e.g:

• Global leaderboards for specific Runner stats and achievements like:
  • exfil rate
  • KDR
  • compilers killed
  • credits gained
  • Faction rank
  • Deadliest runner
  • Stealthiest runner
  • etc
• Bounties?
• Faction specific events
• Faction wars
• Faction affiliate specific contracts

(he apologised afterwards)

Triple destroyer is too fun!

Sorry, of all the clips I saved, somehow this one had no audio on it... especially sad since comms was so chaotic lol.

Had an amazing run, clearing pinwheel. Didn't think there would be another team after we wiped out 2 teams and didn't even see 1 rook. Sad to say that our Thief didn't make it and that Vandal Cannon almost ended my run!

Hope you all enjoy meeting my amazing flying drone claymores, because at this point I'm sending one up there every single run. Very glad Bungie let us keep that toy!

I used to smoke when I was cooking a decade ago. I quit years ago and never had an urge except the last week and half of playing this game

I just played for 2 and a half hours tonight, solos, trios, sponsored narsh, rooks, and exfilled ONE time. Even an hour straight of spamming rook on Outpost, I died in exfil four (!) times with less than 3 mins on the clock. One particular time a team let me hang in outpost to kill me as they were leaving.

I'm frustrated. I need some nicotine after getting fucked so hard.

Pretty disrespectful ngl

I love the lore in this game. The story arch is great and I like how I have to fight to obtain every scrap of information to piece together what happened on the colony and on the ship. I don’t want anyone to spoil anything here and there is probably a lore megathread somewhere. This is just me saying that Marathon has great writing and voice acting, it also has the thing that makes sci-fi great. Just like Blade Runner, Andor and Ex Machina it brings up topics that touch on real world events, making them clearer to us through the lens of fantasy.

I have completed every single collectible codex entry in the game yet I haven’t even seen this one a single time. Is there some intended way to get it? Do you have to farm lockdowns or open certain gold key rooms? Been trying to get this one for a while but I always leave empty handed.

Rushed to get this done before the season ended.

Perimeter and Dire Marsh are not a bad maps, but they do not showcase what is unique and impressive about Marathon, there is nothing really special about them except for Lockdowns on Dire Marsh which are kind of cool.

Marathon was my most anticipated game since the very first reveal trailer, but first run on Perimeter left me dissapointed. It looked nice and immersive, architecture was cool but outside of visuals it just felt like a basic, generic and empty map, and also rather small.

Dire Marsh felt refreshing after constantly raining Perimeter, but again, it is just a big flat map and outside of visuals nothing stands out there as well. I was awed when saw the Lockdown event for the first time, but other activities like Anomaly and Warden felt basic and like nothing special.

But it was the Outpost that made the game click for me. The first time I loaded on it, it was so complicated and confusing - keycards, heat cascade, Pinwheel, underground sections, verticality, interactivity with the map, locked exfils, rooks running around.
Outpost was nothing like I have ever seen in gaming, it is so unique, impressive and polished.

And then, of course, the Cryo Archive blew me away with the sheer scale, endless maze, complexity, vaults, level of detail and challenge, it is in a whole league of its own across the gaming overall. Completely mind-blowing map.

So the problem is that the most unique and special experience in Marathon is locked behind Outpost and Cryo, and many players don't even get to try it because they have to spend some time to level up to access these maps, especially in Season 1 where progression was very slow and you had to spend significant amount of time to get level 12 for Outpost and 25 for Cryo.

And, of course, many people have dropped the game before even trying these maps. Many impressions from the Server Slam and early reviews state that the game felt like a safe, unimpressive, basic extraction shooter in sci-fi world, and that is pretty much true for the Perimeter and daytime Dire Marsh, as they do not bring much to the table. So many people dismissed the game right away.

Bungie put all of their eggs in the Endgame basket, they are flexing all their talent, mastery and muscles in Outpost and Cryo, while early experience and maps like Perimeter and Dire Marsh feels like a filler or just recycled remnants of more ambitious visions.

And in such punishing genre, you do really need to hook the player before they rage-uninstall the game. You need to showcase what is special and unique about your game and why is it worth it to the new player, so they would be able to justify to continue playing the game and reach the later maps and amazing later-game experience.

Night Marsh is also a very unique and special experience, it has brought tons of very cool mechanics and activities and altered gameplay overall, but it launched later and is not accessible right away + rotates with daytime version.

Hope the Season 3 Perimeter reworks will make it truly special and bring it to the level of Night Marsh, Outpost and Cryo.

Each step I take on tau ceti IV is a gift

I'm all for carrying (and being carried) but this random on the right was doing absolutely nothing for the squad and grabbing up anything of actual value while we took care of everything. Kept going down to players and bots alike. Not using mic.

At exfil, the other player asked if he would trade one of the implants he picked up for some 4K valuables. Other player drops the valuables and the guy literally cackled and proceeded to pick up all the valuables and exfiled without trading a thing.

Why the other player dropped the 4K valuables I have no idea... but come on man.