I will say that you can say something positive about the game here with out getting banned, you just have a sea of knuckle dragging retards leaving stickers on your post.
You say something negative about the game on a discord or reddit and you end up being silenced or banned.
4chan is about the closest you can get to having a honest discussion of the game, but it gets derailed pretty quickly by shit posts.
New Tassi video (and Aztecross reacting). Seems like the two biggest ball lickers are now shilling for D1, which I don’t blame them for, the game is still great and I play it every so often. But it feels like they know the writings on the wall.
If I was being cynical, I'd say they're poison hope-pilling Bungie dickriders into thinking Bungie could still pull up, using D1 as a positive example of what they can do going forward.
That's proven to be a mixed blessing, though. In hindsight, it seems clear that Destiny 2 (and probably D1 as well) was not designed with an indefinite lifespan, and was probably only meant to be worked on for a couple years at most. That shift from developing a game with a short lifespan to a long one has had consequences. In order to keep overall file size down, content has had to be removed that players already paid for, which has left a permanent stain on the game's reputation. Those removals have also ended up leaving the new player experience entirely disjointed, and it's difficult to get anyone new to stick around when it's such a confusing mess. And although it's nice to keep all our stuff and not have to start from scratch again, more and more players are of the opinion that they would take that tradeoff if it meant D2 could be a complete and consistent experience like D1 still is. Hell, half the top posts on the sub these days are people praising D1 in comparison to the current state of D2.
I think if they were smart about it, they could have developed a single complete game that was gradually built on for years to come. But they figured that Destiny was going to play out like Halo with a new game everyone would migrate to every couple of years, not really wanting to commit to the idea of it being more like an MMO than a regular shooter. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess.
The whole "planning a 10 year franchise run in a volatile environment" thing basically never works out. Gamedev is often a real fucking mess, it takes some top tier tard-wrangling to beat gold out of studio like Bungie.
They bit off more than they could chew, and greed played a role in that. I'm just having fun watching them suffocate while shitting themselves.
A lot of people, including Tassi and Cross in the video I posted above, are now starting to lament that this game feels like a mode that would’ve been a bungie game proper 10-15 years ago. I tend to agree; if Marathon had a 10 hour campaign, a traditional multiplayer arena mode, AND this extraction mode, I feel like it would’ve sold gangbusters.
I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but that was more or less what The Division was, a primarily PVE-centric looter shooter with a sizable campaign to play through that had an optional PVP extraction mode. It's been ages since I played it so I don't remember the specific mechanics, but you might not even have risked what you brought in, only what you found inside before extraction. I could be wrong, so don't quote me on that.
But that game did well enough to have DLC releases and a full sequel, and I believe another one is on the way (assuming Ubisoft doesn't go under, anyway). And considering Bungie's success with Destiny, to say nothing of their earlier titles, they clearly could have created something similar and done well. Instead, they sank all these resources into releasing solely an extraction shooter, and now we see the results.
The whole "planning a 10 year franchise run in a volatile environment" thing basically never works out. Gamedev is often a real fucking mess, it takes some top tier tard-wrangling to beat gold out of studio like Bungie.
They bit off more than they could chew, and greed played a role in that. I'm just having fun watching them suffocate while shitting themselves.
It's honestly hilarious to me that they even agreed to that contract with Activision in the first place. I don't think there's been a single game Bungie has released that there haven't been some kind of development issues, frequently causing delays and/or crunch. And despite knowing their own track record, they still agreed to pump out a whole brand new game every two years while simultaneously supporting the existing title with multiple DLC releases. Insane.
But like I said, if it had been developed like an MMO from the start with a sturdy foundation to build off of indefinitely, they might have done better in the long run. But trying to shift development from full sequels to a long continuation didn't really work out, and at this point it would probably be better to do a clean break and leave the absolute mess that D2 has become behind.
How do you feel about these changes, personally? As our official KF Marathon ambassador the people need to know. Now seeing the Bungie loss number blow up to $765 MILLION, per Geoff Keighley and several other Twitterers:
(L/A)
I don't know what impairment means in financial terms though so this might not be as bad as it sounds, but I am confident it isn't good news for Bungie.
It means a reduction in value. So, PlayStation has lost 765 million dollars in its company's value because of Bungie.
The official definition of impairment in terms of finances is
Impairment describes a reduction in the value of a company asset, either fixed or intangible, so as to reflect a decline in the quality, quantity, or market value of the asset.
Get used to seeing those impairment losses, it's going to be a recurring theme with PlayStation acquisitions. The bungie buyout was too big to write it off too fast but they're already after knocking off nearly a quarter. Now they need to decide if they try to keep marathon alive with everything they've got or move on
This is going to be a wall of text for a pretty simple question. I tend to over explain because I feel like I'm one of three people actually playing this game who also has experience with other extraction shooters. Sorry if this is a bit much.
tl;dr: The free kits are both good and bad for the game, I think they make the PvP feel pointless and the loot less exciting.
One of the worst parts of a game like Tarkov is how much time you spend outside the match. You can easily waste 30 minute sorganizaing your stash, getting a load out, or waiting on a team mate to finish up what ever they are doing. In games like Tarkov or Marathon, you can die in 60 seconds into a raid and then spend another 30 minutes getting back into another. Imagine if an arena shooter had a 30 minute respawn timer, imagine if that same arena shooter had cheaters every match. It's a terrible feeling.
Most of t he time you're running kits you could easily buy from the vendor and so you can always replace them when you lose them, but losing them still feels bad anyway. There's some psychological aspect to it. Even when the gear is disposable, dying still sucks. So people start avoiding PvP altogether, or they just stop playing.
That issue exists in Tarkov too, but Marathon takes it a step further because avoiding PvP is basically impossible. In Tarkov, you can slip away from spawn, hide in a bush, loot quietly , or focus on PvE while the early fighting dies down. The first 5 to 10 minutes are usually the most dangerous. Marathon's map design, movement speed, and sound traps will not allow for this kind of playstyle.
The free kits solve part of the problem. They reduce downtime and eliminate a lot of the gear fear, which sounds like a good thing. I was thinking about how the game might work better if you had a baseline loadout that you could could gradually improve through unlocks. If you die, you're just back to your baseline. This is basically what's already happening anyway, it's just reframed differently.
The real issue is how Marathon Handles loot and progression.
In Tarkov, there are hotspot POIs where high value loot will spawn. Confident/Experienced players will gravitate toward these areas, which indirectly leaves other parts of the map safe for newer players. As a bonus, if enough time passes and if your a bit sneaky you can scavenge the remains of the players who lost the gun fight. I digress, the point is there is always loot on the map that is'nt locked behind doors, bosses, or events.
Marathon does not work like that.
In Marathon, most meaningful loot comes from PvP, locked rooms, or in-game events.
When everyone spawns with the exact same an infinitely replaceable free kit, PvP stops feeling rewarding. It starts feeling more like a chore or a grief.
Imagine spending five minutes waiting for your squad to ready up, sitting in queue for another three minutes, and then running into another team 60 seconds into the raid.
If you win, your only reward is getting to continue the match. There's very little to gain from killing those players. But if you lose, it's straight back to the stash and another 8 minute wait. It becomes a high stakes fight with no reward.
Also: What the fuck is the point of the rook now? I spent 150 hours grinding this guy up so I could have a runner with an infinite green kit. The catch is this runner had to 1v3 other teams or make shakey alliances with other rook players.
If you can just load in with gear better than what the rook has and also have a team... whats the point?
Anyways....
While this was true in the previous free kit mode, there was some still extraction shooter charm to it. Being completely broke and ungeared means almost everything had value. The worst weapons suddenly feel great, finding them feels rewarding. Part of what makes extraction shooters fun is improvising, using the shit you find in a raid, and slowly building yourself back up. Ideally you leave the raid with a kit you can bring into the next one. Every team you encounter becomes a loot pinata, they will have something you are looking for.
While the gear in these new kits isn't anything to write home about, they closely match what I was aquiring over the course of a raid and leaving with. This small joy has been totally robbed from me. I now spawn with what I had previously worked hard for.
Any ways, The rest of the loot on map is heavily conditional. Some rewards require keys or consumables you can't even bring into the raid with the free kits, so these are no longer an option, while others are tied to in raid events.
The event rewards usually don't feel great either. There often isn't enough loot for the whole squad, so it turns into awkward horse trading over who gets what. Most of the time, the rewards are just a weapon and maybe a few progression items for vendor unlocks.
And some of those unlock requirements are absurd right now. You don't need one or two rare items, you need seven or more. So finding a single rare crafting item at the end of a difficult event doesnt exactly feel exciting. There is gear in the game that can multiple the amount of rare loot you extract with, but you are unlikely to find it in a run like this.
What made raids exciting before was the combination of PvP, the loot reward of having killed players, and the gear fear itself. Ideally you would load into a map, wipe other squads, take their shit, hit the locked rooms for even more stuff, and then maybe do the in raid events as a bonus.
A lot of the time you had to convince people to do the events because compared to PvP they just felt secondary.
A problem with these free kits is that were late wipe now and the low tier gear cant compete with the teams I'm consistently matching into. I'm stuck in this weird spot where the free kit mode is more fun to play, but the gear I extract with is pointless because I cant use it in future runs.
I could return to regular matches, but they are just a bit too high stakes for me at this juncture. More high stakes than anything I've ever done in Tarkov. I don't want to sweat my balls off for a chance at a piece of gear that would only contribute towards my progression. I'm missing out on the entire loop of the game thanks to these kits, but the do have me coming back to the game i suppose. The alternative is I just stop playing.
How do you feel about these changes, personally? As our official KF Marathon ambassador the people need to know. Now seeing the Bungie loss number blow up to $765 MILLION, per Geoff Keighley and several other Twitterers: View attachment 8974272
(L/A)
I don't know what impairment means in financial terms though so this might not be as bad as it sounds, but I am confident it isn't good news for Bungie.
This is just impairment losses from Q3 and Q4. If you look back at Q2, they also had impairment losses of $204 million. So overall Bungie lost $969 million in value over the past fiscal year.
This is just impairment losses from Q3 and Q4. If you look back at Q2, they also had impairment losses of $204 million. So overall Bungie lost $969 million in value over the past fiscal year.
