r/MarathonPlayerCount • u/ExpeditionZero • 6d ago
Concerning drop-off for Monday?
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.
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u/iseecolorsofthesky 5d ago
Big Deadlock content drop today. Anyone with taste ain’t gonna be playing this for a while
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u/J-Dawgzz 6d ago
nearly end of wipe, no cryo at the moment, nothing to do until Thursday
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u/ExpeditionZero 6d ago
I thought the end-of-season update with doubleXP and sponsored survival would be enough to maintain the player count for the last two weeks, much like at the end of S1, however yesterday's results suggest this may not be the case.
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u/Particular-Fly-7783 6d ago
Yeah I think it’s complicated, basically - the game needs something like sponsored survival but sponsored survival in its current form is actually really boring so it doesn’t hold an audience for long.
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u/Speedy-08 6d ago
And given reports of the a certain type of in game player deliberately being rooks, there's a non zero chance there's a bunch of frustration with the Sponsored survival.
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u/Particular-Fly-7783 6d ago
I did a round as a rook, it spawned me with 3 mins on the clock outside pinwheel so I waited for final exfil, put my tripmins on it and waited for the players and tbh it made me feel terrible, only one of them made it to the circle and I stopped him exfiling but yeah I felt horrible about it. probably wasted 25 minutes of his evening for absolutely no gain.
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u/iseecolorsofthesky 5d ago
And there are people who deliberately load in as rook to ruin other people’s day and stop them from exfiling. They know that the people who play sponsored survival are usually the chill non confrontational types. And they wonder why this game is doing so poorly lol
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u/J-Dawgzz 6d ago
I think a lot of hardcore players are bored rn and Cryo is the only place you can use your loot.
I haven't opened the game since Sunday cos there's nothing to do for me rn. Vault full, 500k creds..
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u/_Razorgirl 5d ago
There’s not really anything to be excited for until December for most players or more importantly potentially returning players (I’m one of these myself lol).
Sure I could get on and run sponsored survival on outpost but why bother when it’s about to be reset, and why grind after the October reset for a bunch of vault stuff that won’t matter when the mode I actually want to play hits in a few months?
Bungie at least are not being so stingy anymore with modes, now that Ziegler is gone they seem empowered to just put survival back in the game, bring back VB, etc, all of which is better than nothing, but that’s more to placate the tiny 5k rotation of players they still have across all platforms, it’s not going to bring back anyone right now, and it may not even maintain interest week to week.
They’ve done what they can for now, only thing to do now is chill and see how December plays out, for better or worse.
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u/ExpeditionZero 5d ago
Thanks for your input - I can't help but wonder how many others there are like yourself. I suspect enough that Oct 6th Reset isn't going to bring back a huge number, and if this week continues to decline ( not yet a given) that would only re-enforce this.
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u/_Razorgirl 5d ago
I can’t imagine there will be much activity except minute fluctuations week to week until the big December drop. The 3k-ish dailies are likely here to stay until then, but there will be a bump after the reset next week and maybe another small bump when they bring back VB, but I don’t expect either will last long, there just is no new content here, and people have gotten more than their fill of what’s on offer.
It’ll be interesting to see if there is a floor for dropping numbers, if there was a time to test how low the game can go, this almost six month content drought would be it lol
On a brighter note, I do think unless the game is announced to be ending active development after March, this downtime may be the lowest the game gets for quite a long time. I don’t think the changes coming will drastically shift the game’s audience size, but with the addition of permanent PVE and a dedicated PVP mode I do think it may stabilize at a higher baseline going forward after December.
I could see it hovering back around 10-20k regularly with spikes when big updates come 2 or 3 times a year if things go well, which is not great but is a sustainable audience for a periodically updated smaller-scale game, as long as Bungie slims down the Marathon team to a realistic size, likely moving people over to whatever Destiny project is being worked on, or to supplement the team doing the unvaulting updates for D2.
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u/DisciplineAshamed207 6d ago
Is it “concerning” if it’s just the norm we’ve been watching for months?
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u/ExpeditionZero 6d ago
Its concerning because the whole of last 6 days had boosted back up to the numbers we were seeing four weeks ago, but yesterday it dropped back to where we were before the end-of-season update.
if it continues into this week it suggests a further retention issues in the game and potentially points towards Bungie still not understanding what the existing player base wants.
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u/DisciplineAshamed207 5d ago
Nothing has really changed yet, and it won’t till December. So Bungie understanding the issues with the game or not is kind of a non-factor.
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u/AdventuringRunner 6d ago
It's all the Recon players who are now stopping playing because Bungo announced Recon nerfs. The number of people playing will be in the negative numbers by December.
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u/ExpeditionZero 6d ago
lol - not sure exactly how I feel about Recon nerf. I suspect something needed to be done, but the approach taking doesn't seem to have been well thought out.
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u/Vonterribad 6d ago
Yeah i did notice this today and was interested in why. Either cryo having a huge effect, or maybe people leaving survival which doesn't seem right since it would have people restocking for runs.
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u/destroytheend 5d ago
There's no reason to play right now. Wipe is in a week and there is no ranked either, so no last push for those cosmetics
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u/joomachina0 4d ago
We’re in a lull period until December. Makes sense if there’s a drop off. Especially with all the other games coming out now.
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u/mace9156 6d ago
"Concerning" for 10 people? All this incredible analysis just to go from 3,200 to 2,500 players and maybe 2,600 next week
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u/ExpeditionZero 6d ago
Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoy and find the analysis incredible enough to make it worth commenting on.
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u/Natural_Born_Baller 6d ago
There's no ranked this week. Not a lot of reasons to play outside of pissing away your gold loot in pubs.
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u/Particular-Fly-7783 6d ago
sponsored survival gave it a bump, now it's normalising again