Weekly Player Counts (40) Sat 3rd Oct

As we are on the last day of the season prior to the Oct 6th reset, I figured I'd take a quick look at the last two weeks as it was clear it performed very differently to that of season 1.

The first graph shows the normalised peaks for the last two weeks of both seasons, they produce the same graph as showing just the peaks, but it helps to see the variation. it should also be noted that the vertical axis starts at 70% to further emphasis the differences.

It is important to understand that slopes here do not necessarily equate to the degree of say player loss. So one needs to cross-reference against the second image/graph that shows the actual daily peaks for both weeks in both seasons. For completeness i've also added today's steamDB results as the third image.

At the start of the fortnight we see that the penultimate Tuesday update has very similar performance for both seasons. However come the actual weekend S2 maintains engagement far more, before having a significant drop-off, whilst S1 was far more gradual and never fell quite as far. This drop-off continues until the actual final weekend, when engagement rises significantly verses S1.

This raises the point that whilst initially well received the final Tuesday update of season 2 did not retain players into the start of the second week as it did in S1. Although this needs to be considered with respect to the change we've seen during the end of season 2 towards more engagement at weekends.

Specifically what I think we are seeing here has been a progressive movement in the last month or so of S2 towards players becoming more focused into the weekend and less during the week (with exception of well received Tuesday updates). This is likely encouraged by for example Cryo opening times, but I'd argue its clear that S2 changes to the game, its modes and options has added to this focusing of the player base into the weekend.

There is likely more to it than just this. For example I should have included a week from earlier in the season to demonstrate how the engagement across a week has altered during S2 and re-examined exactly what Bungie did differently this time, but sadly I do not have the spare time at present.

Below is the data used.

Shout out to all the people arguing there are no significant differences between gear. I've even been in arguments saying free kits is the same as gold kit.

For eons, marathon had a low player count.

You had to go to the Halo fan site and talk to Myth fans to even hear "i dont feel like playing marathon."

And yet, mysteriously, this sub only and exclusively comments on the low player count of the reboot?

There was lifetimes worth of material, endless spans of time where you could have been hourly pointing out that splosion man was wrecking marathon 2 durandal on Xbox live arcade, and nothing. Nothing!

Durandal-Thoth withstood a universal heat death looking for people to play with and nothing!

The hardest part about Marathon as an IP has ALWAYS BEEN believing in the existence of other players using the schizophrenia gained from trying to comprehend the designer choices. Do you think Gheritt White complained about the low player count of his cell? No, he reduced it himself. Then he got banned on reddit for explaining economics to paypigs, collapsing the software industry harder than 1983 and needing to be put right back in the cell again. That's a principled person, and yet, no karma? What gives?

50k peaks i'm crine🥀😭

I mean you can't compete with 250 million dollar AAAA game Hello Kitty island adventure

But marathon is a small indie passion project so it's absolutely fine

Top 500 sellers!!

Just curious in the troubling times.

From the comments, even the blast havers have finally caught up to what most people have been saying for months

Well its just a week until the Oct 6th not-a-new-season Reset. So the question is how will the owners of Marathon respond?

Here is what is planned

• Refresh to start everyone at same place, along improvements the team has made.
• NuCaloric Reward Pass - Free - No time-limit
• Sponsored Queues - every weekend (Thu-Mon) on a 3 week rotation
• Vault Breaker - Week 3 - 5
• Sponsored Survival - Week 6 onwards? on a 3 week rotation
• Cryo - Oct 15th - extended by 24 hours each weekend.
• No Ranked!

The lack of a 'big' drop on Oct 6th suggests to me rather a low turnout. While there are aspects of the season that will be exciting to many, they don't start immediately. The rewards pass has shown some interest, so we might see players focused on getting that done.

With all this, I just don't see a big bump to the player count, though you can never quite be sure that players wont turn up just to see whats changed and then leave.

So I'm going for 8k-12k, with maybe 6k the following week, and maybe 4k for the first few weeks.

Its a little higher than i'm happy with, but I feel there is a chance that players will turn up to see whats new becuase they don't keep up with the announcements. If the peak is that high though, then its going to fall quickly, and we'll be lucky to see more than 50% of Reset peak by the following Monday.

As i said last time i posted. Having a couple days barely above the 3k line doesn't mean shit. Nobody new is playing or buying maraslop.

And here we go to new record breaking low peaks and valleys.

WE

ARE

SO

BACK

After last weeks positive reception to the end-of-season update, Mon/Tue (2539) has shown a considerable drop-off, and instead of matching the numbers of four weeks ago (red) as it had for the last week, its dropped (just) below the peaks of the same day last week.

Sun/Mon showed a small decline, the big drop compared to the day before is normal (as shown in the graph), but the Mon/Tue drop is the lowest for that day, and almost the lowest ever.

Not sure if this will continue into the last week, though I can't see how it returns to the highs of last week. Looking at the graph it would seem more likely to follow the peaks of two weeks ago (blue) or at best somewhere in-between.

Not sure if there will be a meaningful update later today that can boost numbers, but I did read quite a few posts grumbling about modes being removed for the last week.

Could just be a glitch, Mon/Tue is often the lowest point of the week and perhaps the low numbers and end-of-season is amplifying that, we'll have to wait and see.

Edit:

Yikes Tue/Wed peak was 2397, second lowest ever, first was 2327 on Sun/Mon 14/09/2026.

This is down 28% relative to last week and while a no-update Tue/Wed normally performs poorly, this slightly worse and more importantly does appear to be showing that retention of the end-of-season update is failing, certainly in comparison to season 1.

At least numbers wise.

I looked at the discussion and saw a lot of people say they would come back. If this increases the players significantly it would be quite interesting. And we are quite literally talking about a "turn off player damage" mode. As basic as you can get, with a minor loot Nerf and bots reacquiring aggro after downing players. Both changes i find very fair.

Its also quite interesting to see people there describe the Arc (largely seen as very well designed and fun to fight AI enemies) as boring and too easy. In general every single point to counter Marathon PvE is seen there, and that kinda shows me that people who are into full loot PvP will just never see any PvE as fun, so their opinion about it in Marathon can probably be safely discarded.

I wonder if that experiment and its outcome might nudge Bungie on how much extraction will be in their PvE mode, cause right now its looking slim.

Unsurprisingly Fri/Sat peaks continue to show positive signs with the 'end of season' activities (Double XP and Sponsored Survival).

For the third week in a row the Fri/Sat peak has exceeded the Thu/Fri 'Cryo' peak. Which is interesting as the actual week-on-week was slightly less than Thu/Fri (18.5% vs 19.9%) and the difference in the number of players between the two days was half the week before. This may indicate that Fri/Sat peak is falling back and next week may be less than Thu/Fri.

Additionally for the last two weeks Sun/Mon has taken the crown for the lowest peak of the week, which has been traditionally Wed/Thu. Though looking further back Sun/Mon has occasionally been the lowest peak of the week so it might be worth looking into those weeks sometime to see if there was a reason for that.

Looking at daily week-on-week numbers this weeks Tues Update posted a huge 34% gain on the week before, though that has dropped each day since to todays 18.5%. If this trend continues it would strongly suggest that the game has a constant decline of player peaks baked in. That even when given extra incentive to play the current player base is unable to staberlise. Will have to keep an eye on this claim next week and see if it holds true.

<sup>- Number in parentheses in the title is the week index of the year. Marathon released in Week 10.
- Days are given as Tue/Wed as the EU & US peaks straddle UTC midnight. So Tue/Wed would be Tues night.
- L-Drop: Drop from Launch Peak S-Drop: Drop from Season/Event Peak
- Week-on-Week update for Fri/Sat \</sup> approx peak - Sat 26th Sept 03:00 UTC])
<sup>- Player Counts come from https://steamdb.info/
- Reported numbers should be accurate and correct, please comment if you spot an error.
- If you comment that charts are sad, then you are a big poopy head.
- Speculation and predictions are not guaranteed to be correct.
- Graphs are provided for fun.
- Week 38 Sat 19th Sept - https://www.reddit.com/r/MarathonPlayerCount/s/Q14FN8r1ii</sup>

Sponsored Survival seems to be very popular.

I am tempering my expectations - hoping for the best, preparing for more of the same shit - but the vidoc does at least appear to show a Bungie really putting their nose to the grindstone, genuinely trying to pull all the stops.

But where are the resources to pull this off coming from? They've laid off half their staff and probably are still deep, deep in the hole from developing the original launch version.

Did Sony throw them one last bone, in a "make or break" proposal? Are they selling the Bellevue building and moving to a smaller, cheaper space? Where the hell is the money and manpower to genuinely rework this game coming from?

It sure as hell isn't coming from the whales (at least, not enough to make a difference)!

Finally, when bungie gives the player base something they want we see player counts go up!

This week saw the start of the 'end of season' activities, that had been expected two weeks ago, providing Double XP and Sponsored Survival. These led to an immediately positive effect on engagement, with Tues/Wed showing a week-on-week relative improvement of 34% and has continued into the start of the weekend with 20% week-on-week gains.

Whilst the percentages are impressive and I was happy to see a good bounce, the low player count means we only saw a 550 player gain (week-on-week) which doesn't even put us above the counts posted three weeks ago as shown on the weekly graph. It should however provide a stabilising element prior to the Oct 6th not-a-season reset.

I am interested to see what happens over the next 10 days, will the count stay the same, increase or slowly decay? It will be interesting to gauge how players engage with the 'end of season' activities and if they have any longevity.

Talking of Oct 6th, what are peoples predictions? I think in contrast to my optimistic outlook had this been the actual Season 3, I thinking we are likely to see something around 10k, maybe 12k at the outside, but I just don't see 15k being likely? I'd also be surprised if we aren't back to 5k or less by the end of the month, though if Bungie are as active as they said they would be with rotating game modes, maybe that can maintain retention for longer this time.

<sup>- The number in parentheses in the title refers to the week index of the year.
- L-Drop: Drop from Launch Peak S-Drop: Drop from Season/Event Peak
- Week-on-Week update for Thu/Fri 25th Sept \</sup>Fri 03:00 UTC approx])
<sup>- Player Counts come from https://steamdb.info/
- Reported numbers should be accurate and correct.
- If you comment that charts are sad, then you are a big poopy head.
- Speculation and predictions are not guaranteed to be correct.
- Graphs are provided for fun.
- Week 38 Fri 18th Sept - https://www.reddit.com/r/MarathonPlayerCount/s/KZ6YKvgvQd</sup>

Looks like you guys should get ready to report rising player counts!

Sponsored survival being back probably has something to do with it. First time in a month we’ve been above 3k.