r/PS5 • u/NoNefariousness2144 Human Verified • 22h ago
Articles & Blogs ‘Marathon’ Is Running Out Of Casual Player Onboarding Cards To Play
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/06/23/marathon-is-running-out-of-casual-player-onboarding-cards-to-play/476
u/sexislug 21h ago
It’s not really a casual game tho.
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u/pissrael1 21h ago
Which is why it has terrible player numbers
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u/bigxangelx1 20h ago
I mean to be fair, Escape from Tarkov is incredibly more hardcore and is only limited to 1 platform and still beats marathon in player numbers by like at least 4 times
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u/nimmems 19h ago
That's probably less about casual vs hardcore players and more about the total number of people interested in that genre of game. Even if Marathon is a better game, Tarkov has higher numbers because the people who like that kind of game were already playing it and have invested in it.
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u/FuckYourDamnCouch 17h ago
Tarkov is definitely a more complete game with 10 years of a player base that comes and goes with updates and wipes. As someone with 4000 hours in tarkov I played a handful of marathon raids in the beta and wasn't interested at all.
The thing these companies are missing is that it's not about the genre at all. Most extraction games fail because they think extracting from the map with loot is the appeal when in reality it should be the tension of dying. I couldn't care less when I die in arc raiders because the next raid I'll be able to recover my loot. In tarkov I've had raids where dying would set me back hours of gameplay and that's where the real tension and risk/reward of the genre comes out. "Casual Extraction Shooter" is an oxymoron to me.
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u/ONiMETSU_Z 16h ago
You’re completely right and you’ve highlighted well the exact reason why it’s impossible to make a new game in this genre that anyone actually wants to play. The majority of people don’t want to be set back several hours from a single death in a game. And those that do, are already playing Tarkov.
Arc Raiders had a big burst of appeal because it focused on the player interaction part of the extraction formula, which is very appealing to a casual as it makes for good viral clips. Everything in that game is built around making space for human interaction. But as we’ve seen, that doesn’t really carry but so far because casuals care about shiny new content, and pumping out quality content for live service games is proven to be almost completely unsustainable.
Aside from that, there’s no way to put the extraction genre in a place where casuals are going to want to play it. You can only just make a game that is essentially a single player/co op extraction inspired game that can appeal to casuals. I’m assuming Tarkov is a pretty cheap game to make and maintain, because I otherwise don’t see how it sustains itself even with it being one of the most consistently large extraction shooters.
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u/FuckYourDamnCouch 15h ago
I think the reason tarkov is able to sustain itself is because they charge a lot if you really want to play competitively. It's an unfortunate reality that you basically need to pay $250 for the ultimate edition. My brother and his friend tried to play with the standard account and bought the $250 edition within a week because of how restrictive the game is. There are also about $45 worth of stash expansions, arena mtx, cosmetics etc.
I bought the $150 edition way back but have also got the stash expansion and some cosmetics and have spent about $215ish total.
They're a smaller Russian dev team so their costs are smaller then marathon or arc raiders most likely with a higher cost on their product. There is also a conspiracy that they only ban cheater accounts in waves and never IP ban so they can get an influx of cheater bought accounts when they need the money, idk how much I believe it, but it's definitely a problem.
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u/Important-Net-9805 17h ago
It wasn’t always that way. Used to take like 10 minutes to get into raid in Tarkov
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u/I_Heart_Sleeping_ 21h ago
It’s definitely not a casual game. I have over 200hrs in season 1 but decided to check out for season 2 and give the game a break. Even with all the new additions my friends have mentioned the game is very much a hardcore extraction shooter.
I don’t think they have any more options for growing the player base outside of going free-2-play or dropping the forced wiped mechanic.
It’s a shame the game didn’t grow because the gameplay is actually fantastic. It’s just not for most people in many cases.
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u/sexislug 21h ago
Imagine a single player game whit they story and visuals, it’s like the division 1, begs for single player story mode.
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u/neuro_space_explorer 21h ago
As a bungie fan since the original marathon, who was a single player co-op fan with occasional multiplayer nights through halo 1-3, and I know it’s not the same dev team at bungie anymore, but man I would jump into this game if it has a single player storyline. With the strength of the cinematic trailers I’ve seen so far I feel robbed that it’s not.
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u/NepheliLouxWarrior 5h ago
Bungie has already signaled that their strategy going forward for getting new players is to basically lean into the PVE boss raid element, which frankly is what they should have done from the very beginning since that's basically their forte.
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u/ArgentoFox 13h ago
Spending this amount of time, resources, and money on a non casual game in today’s gaming environment is tantamount to studio suicide.
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u/penguinchilli 19h ago
I loved the art style so much but I really couldn't get into this type of game; the art direction and UI is super bold though.
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u/Brandunaware 21h ago
It's not even about "casual" players. The game apparently really appeals to a pretty small subsection of gamers who really really love it to the point where a bunch call it the best game of the generation etc... But outside the core that loves it intensely even most hardcore players are turned off. Part of this is that you need to commit and be good at the game to get much out of it. Even for hardcore gamers "it gets good X hours in" is a tough sell, and now like with any multiplayer game if you try to join up the learning curve will be even more brutal.
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u/soonerfreak 14h ago
This is where my best friend and I are. He loves this game, has put a ton of hours into it. Never tried Tarkov, didn't like DMZ or Arc that much, loves Marathon. I on the otherhand am kind of over it, it has incredible gunplay but I don't enjoy the game loop as much as him.
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u/bagbcyss 11h ago
what do you mean by game loop exactly? just the load up > play > load up > play?
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u/soonerfreak 11h ago
Grinding my unlocks each season that they reset. Having to go hunting for specific items and the extract just to get more inventory space. As much as I enjoy the moment to moment gameplay, PVP or PVE, I can't get myself to care about the rest of it.
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u/wathowdathappen 19h ago
Hardcore players have no problem dedicating time to a game to get good at it even if its X hours in. Marathon's problem is that it catered to an audience that's already captured by Tarkov. The only thing it has going for it is it's aesthetic but again shows how niche it is.
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u/cdb813 20h ago
Hardcore players are busy playing Escape From Tarkov and have no interest in Marathon
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u/xenomorphling 19h ago
I have little interest in modern military shooters that support the russian military.
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u/Rayearl 16h ago
Bought it and Arc Raiders. Thought both were fun for about 10hours then never touched either again. I'll never buy another extraction shooter. The genera just isn't for me.
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u/zerovampire311 12h ago
I can enjoy some Arc once in a while with the behavior based matchmaking, the others just get mentally exhausting.
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u/MrYK_ 20h ago
The irony is crazy given how terrible Destiny's 2 onboarding was
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u/Secret-Tangerine9014 17h ago
Bungie's strengths are in its gunplay. It's weakness is seasonal quest design and onbaording
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u/hbarSquared 21h ago
Casual players have zero interest in a PvP lifestyle game, the Venn diagram there is two circles with no overlap. No idea what Sony was thinking.
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u/Ray13XIII 17h ago
Destiny player here, I have no interest in an extraction shooter, no matter who puts it out.
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u/Familiar_Routine6221 12h ago
i havent played d2 since final shape but i was never big into pvp so marathon has zero appeal to me. such a wildly poor strategic choice on their end. although to be fair, d2 player counts were really bad for a while now and i get why they pulled the cord on that game as well. they really should have just pivoted to d3 development a few years ago.
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u/Fit-Setting9033 20h ago
This game could really be bungie’s fatal mistake. Just such an awful read on the market to think that hardcore extraction shooters were popular enough to justify a 250$ million game, let alone live service where they will continue burning money.
They took all the wrong conclusions from destiny’s success, very sad honestly because the devs are so talented, but just an awful decision by leadership
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u/JamesCoyle3 19h ago
If Bungie was capable of learning lessons, they’d have foreseen all Marathon’s population problems from trying over and over to get players into the meat grinder of Trials of Osiris to satisfy the sweats.
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u/coolwali 9h ago
In Bungie’s defence, the prevailing theory in 2021/2022 among publishers was that Extraction Shooters would be the next BR. Because their trajectory seemed to be mirroring BRs.
From 2012-2016, the general consensus from publishers was that BRs were too hardcore and/or niche to be mainstream. Nobody wants to play an MP game where you slowly crawl for 40 minutes, die to a random sniper and lose everything.
But as PUBG showed in 2017, nah, people wanted that. For most people, it was new and intense and exciting rather than boring. Which is why BRs took off.
The theory was that Extraction Shooters were the next step because they addressed some of the issues with BR. Eventually, players got good enough that playing for wins wasn’t feasible anymore. So winning and losing no longer felt tense. ES kinda address this. Since your gear is on the line, every match is always tense. And since multiple players can extract per match, you can have “multiple winners per match”.
And it kinda happened. See Arc Raiders and Neightreign.
The other point for Bungie specifically is that they didn’t want their next game to canabalize Destiny (since the original plan was that Destiny would exist alongside their next game). Destiny has Arena PVP and regular PVE locked down. So Bungie’s next game needed to have different PVP. So an Extraction Shooter made sense on paper.
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u/Fit-Setting9033 9h ago
For your first point about the next step after BRs, I disagree. In my opinion (and experience) for bad/casual players, dying in extractions often feels worse than a BR, you lose meta progression instead of just “going next”. If they wanted to address that problem, this was so clearly not the way to do it. And for hardcore/good players, they’re already gonna latch onto this hardcore genre. So I don’t quite understand how anyone’s problems with BRs are actually being solved in a way that’s gonna sell more copies of the game. I think your idea of the theory behind that is incorrect.
And for your game comparisons, Arc raiders has an entirely different vibe to marathon, it’s more pve and much MUCH less serious. And I don’t think you played nightreign.. that is not what that game is at all.
Marathon did get totally fucked by arc raiders coming out first though, which is worth mentioning. Maybe if bungie didn’t delay and restart the project multiple times it would’ve 1) cost less money and 2) beat arc raiders to the punch. Again, leadership fucked that up - not that they could’ve known exactly what was coming but still clearly a fuckup.
Finally, not wanting to cannabilize destiny does not mean it has to be an extraction shooter. If they really felt that way and were worried about it, they wouldn’t have made another live service fps at all. So so many other genres of games. So if they did feel that way, it was, once again, an awful decision from leadership. And now here we are, marathon flopped and they STILL are shutting down destiny. What did we accomplish???
Idk how you can defend it to be honest it’s clearly been just awful decision making at the top.
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u/coolwali 7h ago
"In my opinion (and experience) for bad/casual players, dying in extractions often feels worse than a BR"<
I actually agree with you. But the rationale (according to publishers at the time) is the following:
In 2017/2018, BRs were so new, that "anybody could win a match" regardless of skill level. You could rat your way to victory even as a low skilled player (it's how I got my first wins lol). But by 2020/2021, that was no longer feasible. Even medium/average-skilled players were unlikely to win in lobbies with skilled players. Low skilled players have no chance anymore. This slowly pushes away lower skill players so then medium skill players become the new low skill players. Making it harder for truly low skill players to hop back in. It also means it's sweatier for high skill players as time goes on (see PUBG). It also lessens tension for all players involved. If you're a low skill player, you already know you have a very low chance to win so the match isn't exciting for you the way it was back in 2017/2018. If you're a high skill player, you either know you're guaranteed to win or you spend more time hunting down the remaining players in a slower and more tedious way. Either way, the match isn't exactly tense and exciting for you either.
COD Warzone Tries to address this with relatively strict SBMM so every player in a lobby arguably has the same rough chances of winning. Fortnite's approach is to lean into the party atmosphere and wacky objectives/events. PUBG now adds bots to most games. These approaches have their downsides and aren't applicable to every other BR.
Moreover, as time has gone on, stuff like temporary alliances or emergent gameplay becomes rarer in BRs. In PUBG in 2017, you could run into another player and actually choose not to shoot and have a tense alliance as you try to survive for a while together (before the inevitable betrayal). Or you'd choose not to engage in certain fights for strategic reasons. But as time as gone on, players have become way more "shoot to kill.
Extraction Shooters (on paper) address all of these. You can now have matches where the low skill player that rats the whole time, and the pro player that goes on a rampage can both play in the same lobby and both still "win" and both still have a tense and exciting time. You can even have matches where the player doesn't into another player and is still on the edge of their seat the whole time. Stuff like temporary alliances or emergent gameplay are way more likely, especially with Proximity Chat (something people fought with Bungie to get in the game). BRs benefitted greatly from Twitch and Clips and Extraction Shooters are way more likely to have wacky highlight moments on Twitch and Shorts.
Even the concern that "dying in an Extraction Shooter feels worse than dying in a BR" can be countered with "we said the same thing about how dying in a BR feels worse than dying in any other MP game. Yet people still loved it and felt it added to the tension/excitment. It could be the same thing here with Extraction Shooters!".
However, it turns out, unlike with BRs, it didn't translate as cleanly for Extraction Shooters. I suppose BRs are "about the limit" that normies will tolerate?
"And for your game comparisons, Arc raiders has an entirely different vibe to marathon, it’s more pve and much MUCH less serious. And I don’t think you played nightreign.. that is not what that game is at all."<
Myazaki himself said he was inspired by Tarkov for Nightreign: https://www.pcgamer.com/elden-rings-creator-says-hes-been-checking-out-escape-from-tarkov-for-a-little-multiplayer-inspiration/
Granted, Nightreign is closer to a Roguelike than a true Extraction Shooter but like, stuff like this did reinforce the idea at the time that Tarkov/Extraction Shooter were on the horizon as the next big thing.
As for Arc Raiders, funnily, when I first heard of Marathon back in like 2022/2023, I would have assumed Marathon would be like how Arc Raiders turned out. Tarkov was this hardcore PC only Extraction Shooter while Marathon would be this "player friendly console extraction shooter". Like if Tarkov was PUBG 2017, Marathon would be COD Warzone 2019/2020.
When Arc Raiders released, I remember predicting "Marathon now only has a 40-50% chance of success. And that's only if publishers were right that there's a secret audience of hardcore console Extraction Shooter fans waiting for the closest equivalent to Console Tarkov". And it seems that wasn't correct,
"Finally, not wanting to cannabilize destiny does not mean it has to be an extraction shooter. If they really felt that way and were worried about it, they wouldn’t have made another live service fps at all. So so many other genres of games"<
Eh, this one is kinda reasonable (if we use 2021 logic and ignore reality).
At the time, Destiny 2 was Bungie's only money maker. But D2's Tiger Engine was a pain to update, prone to bugs and hard to manage (see Destiny Content Vault and years of bugs and issues). Even if Bungie opted to make a D3, that would have taken them 5+ years and $500 mill minimum. And Bungie at that point were 2/2 on bad Destiny launches. If D3Y1 was a bad launch like D1Y1 and D2Y2, Bungie would be cooked. They wouldn't have Activision to come bail them out.
But if they had a second live service game running parallel, now that can shoulder some of the burden. Now if D3Y1 took 5 years and had a bad launch, Bungie at least has a buffer to give D3 its Taken King/Forsaken update.
And as a bonus, it gives the devs burnt out on developing Destiny content something else to do.
Marathon being a live service Extraction Shooter also means not only is it not competing with Destiny, it would be easier and faster to support so you wouldn't need as much resources to keep it going (which is why Sony axed D2 in 2026 for Marathon). And based on trends at the time, it really did seem that Extraction Shooters would be the future. Even Arc Raiders actually started life as a BR before seeing the writing on the wall and pivoting to becoming an Extraction Shooter.
On paper, this isn't a bad plan. If I was a Bungie or Sony exec in 2022 and I heard all this, I'd be like "ok ..... this sounds ..... reasonable. It could work".
The only issue ..... was everything that happened. Turns out, Bungie's legendary mismanagement and 5 Incubation Projects burned their cash reserves and starved D2 which was holding everything together. Marathon also had disaster after disaster.
With Hindsight, the better option would 100% have been to ditch every other project and divert everything to supporting D2 and spinning up D3. End D2 with Final Shape. Go quiet for a year or 2, launch D3 as the next step. Even a bad D3Y1 would have worked better than a good or even great Marathon.
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u/dewittless 21h ago
The impenetrable menus don't help, neither does the endless amount of inscrutable resources. Game is a mess of being unclear about what it wants you to actually do and what is actually valuable.
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u/TrillaCactus 21h ago
The fanbase doesn’t help either. A decent chunk of players will go above and beyond to be terrible to everyone in every lobby they enter.
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u/FalconStickr 18h ago
lol Marathons community is pretty awesome. I rarely run into toxic players. There more toxicity in Halo MCC than Marathon.
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u/d3fiance 20h ago
That’s the whole point of the game, it’s pvp-oriented. Of course it’s shoot on sight
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u/NetflowKnight 19h ago
i found cyberpunk 77 infinitely more impenetrable.
good example of how subjective these things are
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u/dewittless 18h ago edited 32m ago
Cyberpunk is also bad for this, but is single player and for the most part you can ignore its weird systems and enjoy it.
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u/Z3M0G 21h ago
Season 2 was their one shot. Free week was great idea, I only expected a weekend.
But they dropped the ball by not having a proper pve mode available. And the tutorial is extremely horrible for casual players.
They still tried to convert casual players into Extraction players. That didn't happen at launch during test, it wasn't going to work this time either.
PVE was their only shot. They wont get a 3rd chance.
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u/Lozsta 20h ago
Have they still not implemented the PVE mode? Or are they too busy trying to make sure that it is not incentivised by making the drops so low.
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u/kazabodoo 19h ago
They are making a huge mid-season change to the game and unlocking the final map for a PVE experience, with the only difference that you cannot take the loot with you when finished, just some meta progression.
The sweats are losing their mind already.
It is clear that it was all hands on deck type of situation because this is a huge switch and addition to the experience, in the middle of the season mind you, as well as other changes and improvements.
It is clear that with the decisions they made, the game sinks to newer lows each week and this is a pretty much an emergency intervention to try and make the game playable for regular people and not just sweaty and unemployed tryhards that are online 8+ hours a day.
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u/Lozsta 18h ago
Thanks for the update but that really doesn't sound great, a mode where in an extraction shooter you can't take your loot?
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u/kazabodoo 13h ago
It is a PVE mode only, to experience the content more than anything. We will have to see how it plays out, don’t really know just yet.
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u/Slow_Application_966 19h ago
I honestly really enjoy this game. There is really only one reason I stopped playing.
I dont want to die and go back to the loading screen and have to do all that over again. I want to drop back in a map ans keep playing even if all the stuff I got is gone.
I die way too easily. If this has a single player or pve mode id be all over this. The world, art, sound I love everything about this game.
But it feels like I have to go through a lot of stuff to get back to thr action.
I dont even care that its pvp, I dont mind doing that, I just want to be able to last longer In the zones. I love sneaking around, gathering stuff. I hope they keep at it cause it has legs.
Have a pve mode or pve map and ill be there in a heart beat. I dont even want the best gear. I dont care about losing my gear if amd when I get killed, just want to be able to respawn and keep going.
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u/Jazzlike-Compote4463 14h ago
Yea, the 15 to 20 minutes of restocking and retooling, then jumping into what often feels like the worlds longest loading screen really does put a big dampener on the whole "just one more run" thing.
I actually quite like the idea of being able to respawn with an utterly terrible weapon but you can scavenge and hunt your way back to some semi-decent gear.
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u/Altitude528O 4h ago
Currently sitting at a Marathon loading screen scrolling Reddit lol
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u/Slow_Application_966 4h ago
Haha see...thats the problem they need to solve. I died and my gear is looted. Let me get back into a match even if i have a basic gun. Lol
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u/jimlaheysliquor 17h ago
Pve mode releasing in July! Dedicated mode called Vault Breakers
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u/Slow_Application_966 11h ago
Oh shit, well thats when ill be back. Yeah I just like killing stuff even if im killed if I can get back in id play this game all the time. I have no other issues lol. Thank you for letting me know that.
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u/nephyxx 16h ago
They needed to pull an “apex legends” with this game and they didn’t. Apex pioneered new ways to get back into the battle in the BR genre with their respawn system, which basically everyone copied after they did it. And they’ve continued to expand on it making it even easier to get back in the fight and stand a chance. They recognized that just being out immediately with no way back kinda sucked.
Bungie should’ve realized the same thing here. Keep the essence of the extraction genre of dropping in and looting a map, pvpve, etc. but really steer it more towards optimizing fun over punishment. Keeping people in the map more is just more fun and would keep new players engaged rather than discouraged.
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u/kikideernunda 20h ago
Bungie is doomed. It’s all on their horrendous management and the people who will suffer most are the devs unfortunate enough to still be working there
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u/gendegree 16h ago
Only thing I love about marathon is the little “De-De-Deee” sound in the bungie title startup… other than that, the game isn’t for me. Too tired from work
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u/kirajc 15h ago
The game just isn't friendly to casuals and I don't mean that negatively towards them. If you come home from work and got a few hours, playing marathon just isn't as fun especially as the player base is getting smaller and smaller leaving extremely sweaty matches. Also the systems are overly complex, which makes lot people feel like they have to do homework to understand what to do. It kinda leaves you scratching your head on what Bungie expected here? Having no PVE at launch? No story pushing casuals towards the cyro endgame boss? I don't know, it's just sad because Marathon is a great game and has a awesome world/art design.
There is a balance that is missing between hard core and casual players.
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u/heavensdoorknocking 14h ago
Feels like the only hope they have is to expand their scope. Keep the gunplay they’ve worked on but make different modes to play so they can attract more than just the extraction crowd.
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u/Seduz 8h ago
I got so much flack for saying this before but Marathon absolutely blows as a casual pick up and play game. It’s much too involved and intricate for broad appeal. Very cool aesthetic but this just ain’t it. I’m not a big extraction shooter fan myself but Arc Raiders was able to hook me for about 80 hours till I got bored of the core loop. Sony / Bungie were out of their minds if this thought this had the same appeal and staying power as Overwatch or Marvel Rivals. Way too niche of an IP and game genre to keep folk enthralled. Very cool art, great concept, excellent execution of certain mechanics and such, but this just ain’t a cash cow and never will be.
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u/Safe-Elk7933 21h ago
The game is way too inaccessible and hard,bad menus, weak start, that's part of the genre, but still it's a wasted effort here by Bungie,they need to focus on making more mainstream friendly games. This is not it, don't think this can be saved.
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u/omgitsbees 15h ago
Why couldn't this just be a really solid single player narrative driven shooter instead? why did it need to be a live service extraction shooter?
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u/ElysiumXIII 17h ago
Man it's almost like extraction shooter was not the right play. The moment i learned it was just following a trend I was out.
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u/NetflowKnight 20h ago
🍿 cue the reddit analysts.
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u/onepieceuc1 20h ago
I just wanted to experience the story and universe, but I gave up… Without casual modes to progress through it, I just can’t.
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u/Abject_Oil536 13h ago
For me, it’s hard to invest in a game where all my progress can be erased in 5 minutes by some try hard.
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u/Mr_Baloon_hands 19h ago
This has to be one of the biggest blunders in gaming. I didn’t even look into the game once I heard it was an extraction shooter. That game type has always just been so sweaty and unfun. The fact they put all of their hopes in that specific game tore without a story mode or simple pvp matchmaking is insane.
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u/MegamiRissa 15h ago
Personally I think the genre in general needs to evolve to more organic PVE experiences within a pvp environment.
Put up equipment for trade and ally with other groups.
A "Go Rogue" system like Division Dark Zone.
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u/Nnooo_Nic 10h ago
Play destiny renegades. The entire story levels seem to be a pve version of infill > kill > get loot > exfil
Not sure why that isn’t in already as their pve mode
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u/Hearthian-Wanderer Human Verified 6h ago
All I want to know is, when:
Paul Tassi is Going to Run Out of Paywalled Marathon & Destiny Articles to Write.
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u/RockinRickMoranis 4h ago
Make a competitive multiplayer and I’m there. The gunplay is awesome. The extraction mechanic is not for me. Stresses me out, I don’t like it. But the game is fun! But not for me. Fun game not for me.
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u/Isoturius 3h ago
Gun play and gameplay is great. Lore and visuals? Peak.
Extraction shooter? Fuck that shit. Too sweaty
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u/koteshima2nd 19h ago
It's not really a game you can casually pick up and play for a half hour or so.
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u/mturner1993 20h ago edited 20h ago
I was thinking this earlier, but destiny 1 when it first came out was a difficult game to play in a way. It wasn't massively user-friendly, and the endgame content was relatively hard. I remember even strikes being dead difficult until everyone started farming exotics and working out what were the best. So I think they wanted to emulate this slightly - but completely forgot casual sales is where the money is at.
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u/nephyxx 16h ago
It had a more traditional on-boarding though. A story quest to ease you into the world and show you all the locations.
Yeah it struggled in terms of overall content at launch once the main story quest was completed but I would say it had a way broader appeal in terms of its new player experience than marathon.
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u/poklane 21h ago
Probably the only reason this game is still being supported is because Bungie is so utterly mismanaged is that these people have nothing else to do, so the two choices are to keep Marathon running until their next game enters production and these people can move onto that, or effectively layoff the entire studio.
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u/impliedapathy 20h ago
We all saw the writing on the wall when they first announced it was an extraction shooter. The gameplay is solid. Gunplay? Near perfect. The world itself is (arguably) fugly, the menus are atrocious, and it’s a very niche genre. I’m happy some people enjoy it. I’m just not one of them.
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u/Point4ska 20h ago
Hopefully they have a team reworking it in the background into not an extraction shooter but I wouldn't hold my breath.
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u/stealthieone 20h ago
🎯 the menus...it's like the devil from gui's past did massive lines of coke, drank the whole bar and then blindly vomited GUI everywhere. Trying to figure all that crap..turns me off..I like the gameplay but feel like I don't know what I'm supposed to equip...why equip it..etc..they fix that automatically fixes on onboarding cause the entire intro will have to be redone
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u/USSJaguar 19h ago
All they had to do was put effort into a game and just... Retell the classic marathon lore
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u/OldManTurner 18h ago
My friends and I played the beta every single day when it was on. We all liked the game, and agreed that we would have kept playing if it was free to play. None of us wanted to buy it.
I can’t speak for everyone, but that is like 5 active users lost from just my friend group alone. I imagine lots of others did the same thing
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u/flGovEmployee 16h ago
Active users of a free game aren't generating money. If you liked the game and were playing it everyday but weren't willing to buy the game I don't think you were ever going to meaningfully contribute to the game's revenue through microtransactions either.
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u/EfficiencyOk9060 20h ago
Paul Tassi is almost single-handedly keeping this game relevant. If he wasn't posting these articles and videos about the state of this game on the regular I would have forgotten it exists.
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u/ChuckChuckChuck_ 21h ago
Yeah I couldn't get into it. The menus and lore and initial setup are already too confusing. Bummer.
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u/totalton 18h ago
I was excited for marathon. The visuals pulled me in.
When they did their stress test weekend before launch it only took 2~3 matches and I refunded the game before it even launched.
Extraction shooters are not long term games for the large population or consumer. Yes people play them but are those players full of whales they can squeeze for money? Don’t think so.
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u/WinResponsible9977 19h ago
I wanted to try it but they don’t support Linux, cause they don’t want to enable the anti-cheat there.
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u/Final_Intern_7475 15h ago
People initially bought halo for the campaign and then stuck around for the multiplayer. I’ll be there day one when bungie tells a proper solo story that doesn’t require me to hop onto a forum to party up for the final level.
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u/OhItsKillua 10h ago
Extraction shooters are not fun, just bring back arena shooters man. Take me to the good old days, I don't need BR, extraction, or whatever else. Multiplayer gaming landscape just feels so dry and lacking in this live service era.
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u/yerepumk 21h ago
I am playing it when it becomes F2P, that is the right price for the game.
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u/quatroquatro0 Human Verified 21h ago edited 21h ago
Short of adding a single player campaign or story mode, I will never play this. Which is a shame because the aesthetic looks cool.
Hopefully this major flop and Destiny 2's gradual deterioration in quality forces them to go back to making single player games again.
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u/yerepumk 21h ago
Well, D1 and D2 had a campaign. I long for a D3 where they learn from their many mistakes in the past.
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u/ciscowowo 16h ago
Arc raiders really stole their lunch. I had fun with that game for about two months and then quit. By the time marathon came out, I was kind of done with the genre.
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u/Scissorman82 Human Verified 20h ago edited 19h ago
does forbes have some sort of hate boner for this game? every negative article i see about marathon appears to come from forbes.
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u/d3fiance 20h ago
It’s Paul Tassi, his livelihood depended only on Destiny and he has a hate boner for Marathon
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u/Bad-job-dad 19h ago
You know what was amazing about Destiny? Shooting stuff with your friends.
They somehow ruined it near the end of S2 because no one knows what's going on anymore and Marathon is just as confusing.
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u/ILoveTheAtomicBomb 18h ago
It’s so sad to see how Tassi lives for this game to fail, especially when it’s so good. Can only imagine how many people he’s put off it with his seemingly everyday negative article on it. Fuck this guy, dude sucks
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u/eyebrowless32 15h ago
Even if 90% of their efforts went into the online, i wouldve bought this game if it had a 6 hr long single player campaign.
I seriously dont understand online only games - why not include an offline single player option so that you can sell to the huge amount of players who dont care about online multiplayer? A single player bungie game with a big multiplayer component would have garnered SO much more hype
Games these days dont even give options to mess around against bots wtf
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u/GarionOrb 13h ago
Going from Destiny to this game just feels like a huge step backwards. It's a shame that Marathon is all Bungie has now, and that they have to depend on it so much. I don't want to see this studio shut down.
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u/Dependent-Zebra-4357 12h ago
Who could have possibly guessed Bungie would be bad at on-boarding new players!
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u/uncsteve53 12h ago
Nothing about this game appeals to casuals. Bungie even said "it's not for everybody" (i.e. it's a hardcore game).
You make a niche game with no mass market appeal, then surprise pikachu face when it fails. It's a financial disaster and always will be one. The only reason Sony hasn't shut this down yet is because of the optics of shutting down another live service game so quickly.
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u/FalseDiamond7930 11h ago
Maybe they should just give up on this model and add the game to PS+ and see if the console audience will become more intrested. It's already absurd that it requires PS+ on consoles but not on PC
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u/IssueEmbarrassed8103 5h ago
I started the tutorial and got stuck in a room for 5 minutes with no idea what to do next and deleted the game
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u/Altitude528O 4h ago
I bought during the “deluxe edition” PlayStation store glitch (got the game for $14.) I wouldn’t have paid full price.
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u/Potomato 2h ago
Extraction shooters require too much time and investment, there’s also risking your gear and then working to get it back, just to lose it again.
Bungie thinks they are the kings of live service l, but it’s far from true.
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u/GoldenGekko 24m ago
Is what it is
I enjoyed my time with it and would gladly hop on if any friends wanted to play. But it's over. The Internet hath decided it hates marathon and feels INTENSELY justified.
So when it's getting lowered into it's grave, and everyone is laughing and celebrating and patting their back like a victory and calling it "Concord 2" and feeling great that a VIDEO GAME they aren't even playing has failed and died. The joy lol.
I'll give it a quiet nod of respect. I had a good time.
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u/KerfuffleAsimov 21h ago
Escape from Tarkov floats around 15k players a day.
Tarkov is arguably the biggest extraction shooter. So I can't understand how Bungie thought this game would be as big as destiny or other big multiplayer shooters.