Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[Disc]

Anyways, getting caught in a bad position or getting ratted is 100% skill issue in 3s, teams are constantly moving and making sound. A player corner camping with a shotgun is dong it because they heard you before you heard them. Third parties are probably your best example, some times multiple teams will hear gun fire and run straight to it. This was an issue in the previous sound change, we had noticed that any time we fought an enemy team there was a high likelihood that we would have to immediately fight another and possibly a third. Still in most cases this is manageable, you just need to withdraw, heal, and re-engage. You might lose a team member or two in the process, but you can pick them back up. If there are 5 dead players with kits on the ground the third party cant take everything.

Basic real world military tactics and maneuvering stop a lot of this nonsense.

I am speaking very generally about extraction shooters, though I'm sure all of this as a counterargument applies generally as well. It introduces a whole new problem, though, which is 'how reliably can you assemble a team of three similarly dedicated, disciplined and competent people'? That's a HUGE throttle on both players' individual ability to skill up and learn the environment, as well as gear up.

At around lvl 70 this stops being a thing.

Any comment I could make about this feels almost unnecessary. It speaks for itself.

If your solution to the problem of 'players losing gear is disproportionately punishing for the scale of the mistakes they make' is 'once they reach the seventies that stops technically being an issue', that's not even weapons-grade copium. That's a level of copium that would be considered a war crime if administered to others.

This doesn't happen in 3s, only solos and maybe duos. Two game modes the game is not designed around, but were included due to player demand.

So what you're saying is this.

For this game, you need three people specifically to team up - one or two is not enough, four is two twos and thus too many. You also need to have all three of those people skilled at military tactical mindsets and actively engaged in such.

You also need to have those three people be patient enough to put up with 70 levels of setbacks to finally get reliable kits going, without losing so many players in the general bubble that you're forced down to duos or solos. Even that only gets them the reliable presence of a kit, not one they necessarily like or click with.

And on top of all that, you then incentivise your own playerbase to interfere with, find and kill each other to try and steal loot from one another.

And Bungie - let alone any players - actually thought this was gonna be a game that lasted any amount of time, let alone was a triple-a success?

 

[big pauper]

Tarkov is just another in a long line of games from BSG and Nikita that are made just so they get closer to their true purpose of making their Single Player Action Survival game called Russian 2028. Contract Wars and Tarkov are all prequels and competency training + fund gathering for this one single goal, and it seems like Nikita still wants to make it years later.
When you think about Tarkov, you gotta realise that the idea of the world and of Tarkov itself already exited before even the war in Crimea.

stop and think about this for 15 seconds. Contract wars was a korean-adjacent browser based free to play call of duty clone that came out in 2012, two years before the invasion of crimea. that user segment was never big in america, it was targeting internet cafes and teenagers in asia. Remember that Call of Pripyat had come out a few years before, which is extremely Ukranian. And yet most westerners are completely unaware and think it's just Russian. Curious.

the contract wars/tarkov story is about a "special economic zone" set up by the russian government to promote trade with the west that gets surrupticiously invaded by western corporate interests who build a bunch of secret laboratories underground and start a proxy war with the russian government. Don't you think that's a little bit curious? That the world of tarkov is an idealized reflection of the war in crimea as seen by russian propaganda in a way that westerners will be totally ignorant to?

 

[The Ugly One]

it's hardly a 'formidable geopolitical foe' when this whole thing was just trying to distract people from playing Stalker 2. the game is called 'escape from tarkov(sky)' like come on

I'm just saying, there are a ton of very smart people in Russia, but their entire system of government & economy is driven by stealing. And that's why they can't build an air force to save their lives, keep a carrier running, or make sure their IFV cannons are built to spec.

 

[ScurvyRat]

(gay rambling)

99999999

Brevity is the soul of wit and all that.
Bungie's strongest soldier over here can't make it short and interesting enough for me to even read this garbage.
Game is bad, stop crying, faggot

 

[creaturestorm]

Any time two players run into each other, somebody is going to lose their kit

Absolutely not true.

More often than not i leave entire kits on the body. I usually snag their meds or items found in raid. Team mates who ducked out will come back to revive team mates who have all the gear they brought into raid, minus healing consumes.

I am not trading down in gear, i will only ever trade up.

There is zero reason for me to take your blue shield when i can buy it from the vendor for 900g, thats occupying two spots in my bag that could be quadruple that value.

 

[Vhailor]

While you can easily lose your gear you can also easily get it by same actions which would make you lose it. You can be one who catches other team off guard, you can be one who patiently waits 2 teams fighting, you can be one who checks locked are and finds good loot not picked up by players who opened area etc. It is part of appeal that sometimes you get fucked but sometimes you are one fucking.

the contract wars/tarkov story is about a "special economic zone" set up by the russian government to promote trade with the west that gets surrupticiously invaded by western corporate interests who build a bunch of secret laboratories underground and start a proxy war with the russian government. Don't you think that's a little bit curious? That the world of tarkov is an idealized reflection of the war in crimea as seen by russian propaganda in a way that westerners will be totally ignorant to?

I think you are digging too deep. It is just a "let's use current thing because we can't imagine better shit". Knowing how Russian propaganda works the Tarkov's story is too subtle and barely patriotic.

 

[The Ugly One]

More often than not i leave entire kits on the body.

This does nothing for the majority of players who do not play with a skilled group of friends. Just speaking generally about these kinds of games, the typical engagement ends with an entire team being killed and, if there are any survivors, they just run away and never come back. Not worth the risk to see if the 1337 pro who kicked your ass is camping your friend's body.

More often than not i leave entire kits on the body. I usually snag their meds or items found in raid. Team mates who ducked out will come back to revive team mates who have all the gear they brought into raid, minus healing consumes.

You don't finish off downed players? Is that not a thing in Marathon?

 

[creaturestorm]

or this game, you need three people specifically to team up - one or two is not enough, four is two twos and thus too many. You also need to have all three of those people skilled at military tactical mindsets and actively engaged in such.

Basically yes. You need to be in a squad of 3, with people who are cognizant of the most basic combat fundamentals to do well in this game.

This is true of every extraction shooter ever made

If you group up with retards who want to shoot bots, loot everything they see, and have no awareness you will get shit on hard. If you think this is bad game design move onto another genre.

You also need to have those three people be patient enough to put up with 70 levels of setbacks to finally get reliable kits going,

You don't need end game gear to play the game or to even kill other players, green quality equipment is adequate in most situations. Rook players out there are regularly killing entire runner teams with green kits.

If you can not over come your gear fear you will need to hit lvl 70, then you have regular access to purple stuff.

And on top of all that, you then incentivise your own playerbase to interfere with, find and kill each other to try and steal loot from one another.

The only game mode that incentivizes this is ranked. Ranked has a scoring system that rewards killing players and taking their loot. Ranked is also limited and not the normal game mode.

The regular game mode incentivizes players fulfilling tasks. PvP friction is likely occur doing tasks, teams will bump into each other as they flow through the map completing tasks.

The task reward rep and rep unlocks gear. Gear leverages your ability to defend yourself when you encounter another runner team.

And Bungie - let alone any players - actually thought this was gonna be a game that lasted any amount of time, let alone was a triple-a success?

Tarkov and games like hunt showdown are all this and even more unforgiving. This is, in my opinion, the most forgiving extraction shooter ever made. It's baby's first extraction shooter.

It's just not a game for casual shitters like @ScurvyRat

If you go back through my posts, if you add up every first person extraction shooter's peak player counts it's still not enough to justify dumping hundreds of millions into this game. A game that is barely finished for the budget that was spent.

They fucked up bad picking this genre.

You don't finish off downed players? Is that not a thing in Marathon?

In this game, getting killed/siphoned/thirsted/finished what ever you want to call it does not mean you're sent back to your stash.

It's just another down state, a team member can revive you should they survive the encounter. It's not uncommon to just bail on a fight you know you've lost. There are classes like Vandal who excel at getting the fuck out of a bad situation. Most maps have huge underground/tunnel sections or alternate means of egress to escape.

If it starts to look like a 3v1 situation against a squad that came kitted, you always encourage surviving team mates to flee.

The gear in this game isnt as valuable as people are making it out to be. Picking up some one's rifle (8 slots) thats maybe worth a couple thousand dollars doesnt make sense when you can stuff your pockets full of highly valued loot or loot you can barter with.

If you for some reason did get looted a team mate or two can toss you their back up gun and some meds, you can then proceed to go get your gear back from the people who took it.

 

[The Ugly One]

While you can easily lose your gear you can also easily get it by same actions which would make you lose it. You can be one who catches other team off guard, you can be one who patiently waits 2 teams fighting, you can be one who checks locked are and finds good loot not picked up by players who opened area etc. It is part of appeal that sometimes you get fucked but sometimes you are one fucking.

Most players are just not that good. Basic bell curve thinking:

50% of the players get fucked 50% of the time.
20% of the players get fucked 80% of the time.

It's not fun at all to be in that bottom 20%. Since the stakes are so high - when you lose, you lose everything, and when you win, you only sometimes get good stuff, that middle 50% isn't very fun for a lot of players. The majority of firefights you win will be against shitters carrying garbage.

If it starts to look like a 3v1 situation against a squad that came kitted, you always encourage surviving team mates to flee.

Most players do not have a regular group of friends to play with that communicate well. They're just all going to die. It isn't fun.

 

[creaturestorm]

Most players do not have a regular group of friends to play with that communicate well. They're just all going to die. It isn't fun.

This is true, but also regular players really over estimate how easy it is to find people to play with.

Bungo needed to install something to make sure average players made friends. The game is absolutely lacking in this, bad decision.

 

[The Ugly One]

This is true, but also regular players really over estimate how easy it is to find people to play with.

Bungo needed to install something to make sure average players made friends. The game is absolutely lacking in this, bad decision.

What is needed is for the bottom quartile players to have fun. There is no amount of advice, training, or tools that will change the fact that the bottom quartile by definition must exist. One thing I like about Grey Zone Warfare is they have a pure PVE retard mode for retards like me. I might dip my toes into PVP a bit, but I like killing bots just fine, and the important thing is the PVE mode contains the full upgrade path, missions, etc. It's not a stripped-down piece of shit designed to punish you for thinking you should be allowed to have fun by yourself. Frankly, every PVP game should do this.

 

[ScurvyRat]

Bungo needed to install something to make sure average players made friends.

[fartsniffer69 and XxgoonertownxX have joined your party]

 

[big pauper]

This is true, but also regular players really over estimate how easy it is to find people to play with.

Bungo needed to install something to make sure average players made friends. The game is absolutely lacking in this, bad decision.

These spaces are no longer for people to socialize in. it's not 2007 anymore. This isn't a bungie problem this is an industry-wide problem as the entire landscape of the industry has changed. Partly it's because communications channels are so heavily policed that you don't even have to call someone a faggot to land yourself in the penalty box, but also because people just aren't logging on to these games to have fun. they're chasing a dopamine treadmill. They're for addicts. Junkies don't talk to each other while they're shooting up in an alleyway. the people who want to socialize just do it in games for socializing like vrchat

the real nugget, the real problem, that everyone is failing to grasp at in the industry at large is that *game design* doesn't just refer to how you design the slot machines in a casino, it also refers to how you design the casino itself, if you understand my analogy. It's very possible to create spaces where both of these things are possible simultaneously you just need a structure that supports it. Runescape does this effortlessly every patch. Pretty much all of the big ticket studios these days have no concept of how to do it. They know interior design, they don't know architecture. They've invested billions into the optimal wallpaper but don't know how to put new walls up.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

[fartsniffer69 and XxgoonertownxX have joined your party]

hitlerstylerapist88: You guys wanna keep in touch for future games?

 

[Zenos Yae Viator]

These spaces are no longer for people to socialize in. it's not 2007 anymore. This isn't a bungie problem this is an industry-wide problem as the entire landscape of the industry has changed. Partly it's because communications channels are so heavily policed that you don't even have to call someone a faggot to land yourself in the penalty box, but also because people just aren't logging on to these games to have fun. they're chasing a dopamine treadmill. They're for addicts. Junkies don't talk to each other while they're shooting up in an alleyway. the people who want to socialize just do it in games for socializing like vrchat

the real nugget, the real problem, that everyone is failing to grasp at in the industry at large is that *game design* doesn't just refer to how you design the slot machines in a casino, it also refers to how you design the casino itself, if you understand my analogy. It's very possible to create spaces where both of these things are possible simultaneously you just need a structure that supports it. Runescape does this effortlessly every patch. Pretty much all of the big ticket studios these days have no concept of how to do it. They know interior design, they don't know architecture. They've invested billions into the optimal wallpaper but don't know how to put new walls up.

Its amazing really, the Internet through leftist lens and control, has fragmented and isolated people more than ever before in human history.

having a real human connection, even in a game, is ever more unlikely, and since the internet is how people interact with the world more than ever, they are actually more isolated than ever.

Its like that gay ass Ready Player One, but no one plays or talks with anyone else in anything but the most fleeting moments.

 

[The Ugly One]

the real nugget, the real problem, that everyone is failing to grasp at in the industry at large is that *game design* doesn't just refer to how you design the slot machines in a casino, it also refers to how you design the casino itself, if you understand my analogy.

This is a good analogy. Craps is a social game. You gather around the table, you throw dice, and even if you personally aren't betting, you cheer when somebody else wins. Slot machines are antisocial. You sit there, fixated, and pull the handle. Most games now are like slot machines. Maybe we're all sitting in the same room, but each of us is fixated on his own one-armed bandit, cranking the arm over and over to make the battle pass advance or the lootbox drop.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

having a real human connection, even in a game, is ever more unlikely, and since the internet is how people interact with the world more than ever, they are actually more isolated than ever

I think I got more interaction playing old games that have community servers than anything that has SBMM.

If I play TF2 official servers, you’ll more than likely have a bot clone your name, play some obnoxious music or sounds that will annoy you or everyone in the game. But if I play TF2 community servers, you’ll get a lot more real interaction. Granted some of these people are troons and pooners.

Whereas I go play Cold War multiplayer on PS4. If I hear someone on the mic, it’s almost always a wigger who has his gawd awful mumble rap playing in the background.

 

[creaturestorm]

If I play TF2 official servers, you’ll more than likely have a bot clone your name, play some obnoxious music or sounds that will annoy you or everyone in the game.

I miss the weabootique server

 

[Voop]

it’s almost always a wigger who has his gawd awful mumble rap playing in the background.

Dude I can’t stand it when someone has their mic on while their awful music is blasting through the awful low quality microphone. If you’re gonna blast your music, keep your mic muted, that’s all I gotta say.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

I miss the weabootique server

I missed when you could say no no words with your buddies and not get kicked from servers.

HRT really did devastate gamers like crack did to blacks.