Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[The Ugly One]

That's fair, they're not going to blame themselves for their fuckups.

But in the context of this discussion, my assumption is that your management wasn't actively trying to lose money, they were just cretins that made bad decisions.

Meanwhile Bungo, 343 and their ilk actively go out of their way to piss paying costumers off, for no discernable benefit other than satisfying their own petty egos. They know it's not going to help them sell more product, or raise the price of the company shares, yet they still do it.

The only people in the company who care about money are the people who are responsible for revenue. The people who aren't beholden to the almighty dollar need to be tard-wrangled, or they will bankrupt you.

In the case of Bungie and 343, there is another phenomenon at play. When a division of the company has never missed, they get more and more freedom. On top of that, the people in charge have booked enough wins, they start to think their shit doesn't stink and they can't do anything wrong. They'll say stuff around the office like, "We're Bungie. Making a billion dollars is what we do." They'll say this while they casually dismantle the processes, systems, and values that made them a billion dollars. Everyone who understands where those billions came from and how hard it was to get there is gone; the business is now being run by chuckleheads who have never had to struggle for anything.

I have seen exactly this process play out in completely unrelated industries, and I'm watching it play out again where I work now.

 

[Jace on ice]

Anyone who paid for this is a retard. It's absolutely going F2P at some point.

 

[Plagas]

When will companies learn that trying to cater to the "hardcore gamer" audience doesn't work ...

 

[Jarch6]

Anyone who paid for this is a retard. It's absolutely going F2P at some point.

Yeah but then they’re going to give a fweakin’ epic “early buyer” cosmetic and fwee battle passes or some shit. Bet you feel weely siwwy rn

When will companies learn that trying to cater to the "hardcore gamer" audience doesn't work ...

It can work if you budget around a niche audience. This game was budgeted for COD numbers while being able to, at best, appeal to a Tarkov-sized audience.

 

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

When will companies learn that trying to cater to the "hardcore gamer" audience doesn't work ...

Probably around the same time they realize the "Modern Audience" they all keep chasing doesn't actually buy games, and instead just bitches about games on Social Media

 

[Swine Schwein]

Yeah but then they’re going to give a fweakin’ epic “early buyer” cosmetic and fwee battle passes

They're not going to give away anything they can monetize. If they're feeling very generous, they give you an exclusive permission to buy shit from the Bungie store.

In D2, for those blessed enough to avoid the game, you would once in a while get these neat popups where you unlocked an item for purchase. Not for funny money, real money. They made it seem like being able to buy some retarded pozzed t-shirt from their shitty merch store was an achievement.

 

[dame dudi jench]

From what I'd seen it's pretty solo-friendly, especially compared to contemporaries like Tarkov. They just give you a straight up freebie kit to work with so you're never completely lacking for gear. It rotates, and it's low-rarity, but it's free. There's zero reason to have gear fear when tasking here, especially when most of the tasking can be done without requiring extraction (apparently). Honestly it's one of the things that's got me considering buying it (albeit on a sale).

Sadly, you are getting yourself psyched up b/c you want to like the game when you pick it up. The solo queue is fine, it is less aggro than 3v3. but the game feels empty, there is less to interact with on the maps and the environmental threats are way less interesting than in arc raiders which was built as a pve game. the fun part of the game is that you're having halo/destiny/goldeneye-style console FPS fights and you have to manage the terrain and the interaction between all 6 players' abilities to win an engagement. the maps are set up for teams to have sniper cover or to flank in alternate routes behind buildings. the result in solo queue is that it's really easy to get ratted by a concealed sniper or third-partied from a vent. that's fine for an extraction shooter but the issue is that unlike arc or tarkov, the game is built around the fight, not ganking each other.

he current style isn't experimental enough. the comparisons to mirror's edge are pretty apt this is like that same general visual idea but taken to a much more bold extreme and i think this would have been enough to sell me on a multiplayer shooter




i think they're currently targeting the tranny demographic that plays cyberpunk 2077 without realizing that isn't a real demographic, it's propped up by cdproject to fool investors

The style of Mirror's Edge had a clear purpose, beyond the striking explosion of fresh color and brightness after the industry had been hyperfixating on the brown filter for so long. In the game you need to make split-second decisions on where to go and what to do, the gameplay loop falls apart if the player can't maintain the speed and momentum or gets lots, so the minimalist style with bold colors that draw attention to the different paths you can take exists for a specific purpose.

Marathon just looks like vomit, it assaults the senses, it reminds me of that new, gay Jaguar commercial that basically killed the company. It's like they deliberately wanted to offend not just the sensibilities of most players, but also everyone's senses. Doesn't help that the style also has nothing to do with the gritty art direction of the original Marathon games.

They're autistic tranny freaks that hate beauty and worship ugliness. They want to destroy everything beautiful and replace it with ugliness because they think that if everything everywhere is ugly, people will start to think ugliness is beautiful.

Cyberpunk has always had a lot of transhumanism and biological body horror. lots of old-school tech tranny autists saw their transition as a radical experiment in biohacking, like genesis porridge who was basically an irl tzimisce. they may have used female pronouns but they didn't have the AGP fetish of forcing women to pretend they were women or felt victimized if ppl got freaked out. that's why the shells are pretty - the fantasy of being in a non-repulsive body. i think with the environments they just ran out of resources to render more complex environments so figured out a way to justify buildings being glorified shipping containers, which is ludoharmonic with the context of a prefab corporate space colony. that's why all the building interiors are so uninteresting and repetitive. i actually appreciate it from a design perspective and i think they had the same motivation as the mirrors edge team - the bright contrasting colors by design make the fights a lot more legible than arc where everything is covered with procedural greebles.

 

[StacticShock]

I know this is a gossip site, but unfounded rumors are fucking retarded.

that's what a clanker would say.

Anyone who paid for this is a retard. It's absolutely going F2P at some point.

so it's destiny 2 all over again?

 

[Civillian 18]

Polygon: Critics have decided they love Marathon, which means it's on its way to The Game Awards (A) | (Reddit)
IGN: This ruthless, deeply unapproachable ( ) extraction shooter is worth every ounce of hell it puts you through. (A) | (Reddit)

Is it possible to harness this level of cope? I feel like we could replace crude oil with telling Redditors their latest personality trait/consoomable media is bad.

They hit that sub-40k peak though.

 

[hawkisnight]

Anyone who paid for this is a retard. It's absolutely going F2P at some point.

I can see them trying the -50% route first.

 

[moocow]

They're not going to give away anything they can monetize.

Seems like they can't monetize jack shit so far...

 

[Toxic BRAAAAP Mask]

IGN: This ruthless, deeply unapproachable ( ) extraction shooter is worth every ounce of hell it puts you through.

This same loser gave Crimson Desert a 6 because his save wiped before launch. CD has been doing gangbusters and is rollling out fixes for all its problems at a staggering speed, but Marathon can't keep its audience or fix how sweaty it is. Total shill.

 

[creaturestorm]

This same loser gave Crimson Desert a 6 because his save wiped before launch. CD has been doing gangbusters and is rollling out fixes for all its problems at a staggering speed, but Marathon can't keep its audience or fix how sweaty it is. Total shill.

Single player black desert sounds like the kind of slop people would gobble up.

 

[Cucktry Roads]

I can see them trying the -50% route first.

They'll likely do what Suicide Squad does and every other week, the game is 90-95% off, but costs $70 (in this case $40) normally for those stupid enough to buy it off sale.

 

[The Doom Slayer]

Worst day yet. Didn't even hit 35k.

 

[Swine Schwein]

The strangest thing about Marathon to me is that it doesn't have a whole bunch of different game modes right out of the gate, to try to appeal to a larger audience. Even Destiny had a bunch of multiplayer modes, and it was always a game where PvE enjoyers were the majority.

When they pushed back the original release, I was almost certain they were going to give it their best shot, making sure the game is going to have a lot of shit to do. Because they didn't have to allocate any resources for single player shit (and D2 has like three people working on it at most), and because there was most certainly a lot of pressure to "overdeliver", one would expect a real effort and some semblance of actual ambition.

No matter how pozzed Bungie was, no matter how many layoffs they've had, they were still a big studio with a certain reputation. Not to mention how important all of this is for Sony and for Bungie themselves to have any kind of meaningful future.

Marathon just looks so barebones. Probably good at what it is, I don't even have anything against it. I think it looks good and the gunplay must be good. I'm just wondering why isn't it something more. It's not like you can't have the game centered around a core idea but still throw in all kinds of bells and whistles just to make that first impression. Now should have been the time to go balls to the walls.

One could argue the lack of gamemodes and content helps to not fracture the playerbase, but that's usually a mentality reserved for games that are either on a population decline after being out for some time already or then it's a studio already working with very limited resources. Not Bungie.

Yeah yeah, AAA sucks and layoffs and trannies and management. But STILL.

 

[regalterry]

because there was most certainly a lot of pressure to "overdeliver", one would expect a real effort and some semblance of actual ambition

Diversity hire nudevs are too busy celebrating Black History and Trans Month, taking care of their "mental health", grooming minors on their private discords et al to bother working on the game.

I keep saying it, you need 200 of them to accomplish what 20 heterosexual White guys could do in half the time, and better, 20 years ago.

No matter how pozzed Bungie was, no matter how many layoffs they've had, they were still a big studio with a certain reputation. Not to mention how important all of this is for Sony and for Bungie themselves to have any kind of meaningful future.

Bungie is run by retards, Sony is run by even bigger retards. There's no adult in the room.

Everyone at Bungie is also probably too busy guzzling the "We're Bungie, it will work out somehow" Kool Aid, much like BioWare kept fellating the girly cock of the BioWare "Magic" altar for 10+ years, always sure it would all come together in the last stretch.

It's no surprise that a workforce that believes men can be women and that niggers have a history buy into their own hype and myth of invincibility.

 

[Civillian 18]

It is maint, so player count cratering is expected but really, sub 35k daily peak. I did not pay too much attention to when they moved ranked/the endgame map but they split them right? So the two modes are not overlapping and stealing players ( ) from each other at least.


I wonder what Bungo will do to stem the bleeding? I kind of want to know, because their big seasonal update (in 2 months) is just:

 

[creaturestorm]

I wonder what Bungo will do to stem the bleeding? I kind of want to know, because their big seasonal update (in 2 months) is just:

i think it’s just going to bleed players until S2.

There might be a bit of a rally at S2, but it won’t last a week.

the game play loop of “struggle so you can get violently raped in cryo and ranked” killed this game.

S2 needs to double the amount of maps, and quadruple the amount of tasks. The tasks are the best part of the game. PvP for the sake of PvP never feels good in an extraction shooter, nobody wants to spend 10 minutes putting a kit together, to spend a minute in queue, to spend the next 10 minutes looking for a fight that could end in .5 seconds. there are better games for this.

Anyone who paid for this is a retard. It's absolutely going F2P at some point.

You'd have to a fucking retard to think that this game wont be absolutely infested with cheaters if it goes F2P.

 

[Disc]

Worst day yet. Didn't even hit 35k.

And a (pre-maintenance) trough just barely holding above 10k.

It's surprising to me, because it feels like the drop should be levelling off by now. Like we should be seeing declines of 3k or 4k week-on-week, and instead if you compare this tuesday to last it's a ten-thousand drop week over week.

Marathon just looks so barebones. Probably good at what it is, I don't even have anything against it. I think it looks good and the gunplay must be good. I'm just wondering why isn't it something more. It's not like you can't have the game centered around a core idea but still throw in all kinds of bells and whistles just to make that first impression. Now should have been the time to go balls to the walls.

I think about their old 'building a train station vs. building a train, don't overdeliver' stuff when I think aobut this. The problem is, to start a new live service? You really do need to overdeliver, at least at first.