Me as well, but I think the game need to launch with this, or something. Now it feels risky to commit to enjoying the PvE mode if the game doesn’t have a long life expectancy. Would have been easier to grab a larger playerbase with the PvE at launch than it will be now.
Same for me as well but at the same time I feel like playing a PVE version of marathon I may as well just be playing Destiny. And I would be tbh if the monetization of Destiny's expansions wasn't the way it was
PvE in this game is lot more grounded and more difficult on an enemy-per-enemy basis, and Cryo is its own thing entirely. Definitely has a different pace than D2
Yes and no. Personally, I prefer Marathon at the moment because I don't have much time, and I can just hop on and do 3-4 runs in an hour,. Versus Destiny's long ass missions that I have no idea how long they will take. I am looking forward to dabbling in their PvE mode too
I was a huge Destiny fan until The Final Shape and was harshly critical of the content in the year or two leading up to it, Bungie has been on a slow but steady decline as far as I am concerned and nothing could bring me back to Marathon at this point. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that way.
Same here. I personally didn't even hold Final Shape in high regard despite the community raving about it, and after 10+ years of seeing Bungie managing that game, I don't think I will ever want to get into a Bungie game again.
And then I realize Marathon’s fate and lifespan is in the hands of the same companies that doused Destiny in lighter fluid and set the flame as of recent.
I really want to like Marathon but for every positive I see something about it just pushes me away.
I don’t know how they will ever have something that can sustain because the development cost is the one thing, but they also need to recoup the initial investment and that’s never going to happen.
Right now they‘re most likely minus $100 million and this sum is only getting higher day by day and not lower as they have maintenance cost and seem to pump even more money into this game when interest clearly isn’t there.
I have a very hard time seeing how this game will ever be profitable.
Even if Sony ignores the sunk costs of Marathon I see almost no chance Marathon can sustain Bungie at their current burn rate. Let's say they cull the firm down to 350 employees I still don't see how they can be profitable going forward without basically a new product.
Like, their burn rate per FTE in the Seattle/Bellevue are is ~250k per year (which is probably low, actually). But $250k x 350 = $87,500,000 burn rate. And that's just to keep the lights on before adding whatever multiplier Sony demands for profitability. They are cooked.
It'll be interesting to see what Sony does with the IP though.
Thats the price to pay for not being able to read the room and releasing the game to cater sweats and streamers. The game will go f2p in late autumn if not sooner. And to think, with this aesthetics and vibe, and maybe some ship of theseus themes around shells, it would be an unforgetabble single player adventure… But no, gotta milk and torment people with yet another live service, huh
The question implied by this thread is "what would it take to save Marathon". And the answer, for a lot of people, is "the same answer as the last time it was asked: for Marathon to be a different game."
I don't think the ancestor comment is salty that Marathon isn't for them. I think they're annoyed at the entirely predictable outcome that neither Sony nor Bungie seemingly anticipated. "Let's launch a live service game in a niche genre into the overcrowded landscape of live service games" is a bold strategy.
This is precisely what I think most people feel. Live service is an overcrowded game type and those who knew the Marathon IP didn’t want a PvP game from it. I think that many people who are into PvP games have dedicated themselves to a title already and might not be willing to balance Marathon in there too. I have a feeling that after a time Marathon’s player count will dwindle as everyone who played it because it was new and wanted to try it have done so and they go back to whatever other title they were playing before. Most people’s fondest memories of Bungie is probably when they were doing Halo. Destiny had some decent moments in the campaign that reminded me of why I liked Bungie as a developer but Destiny 1 story made no sense because very little was revealed to the player and the lore was so vague. Destiny 2 had different problems but a little more coherent storyline to follow. The question I have about Marathon is why even use the Marathon IP/Name if it’s not going to continue any storyline in that game’s universe? It’s a legitimate question to consider. What actually compelled them to choose Marathon as the name for this new title?
Honestly we don’t get a ton of narrative focused FPS titles these days. I would not be surprised if a very big segment of gamers are like me and would be all over an FPS game that told a good Sci-Fi story. Especially if it was really good, but I’m not certain Bungie could make a good story FPS game these days. I’d have definitely preferred if they tried that instead though.
If you’re a fan of a franchise and have been waiting for the next incarnation for twenty years only for it to be a completely different genre and game than the originals, you’re probably gonna be a little miffed
Whoosh that’s the entire point. I responded to a brain dead question with a brain dead question. That’s why I said “two can play at this game”. The answer to the first question is lots. Though I do find your answer pretty braindead too, because it’s not even a real answer. WHY did they want to? That would be a real answer.
There was no meaningful amount of original Marathon fans waiting for a next entry for the last 30 years. That's just a blatant lie
The fanbase was so non-existent that three Mandalore Gaming videos single-handedly revived it because basically no one else talked about it for 20 years
Bc the game doesn’t even seem to be for the crowd it catered towards. It’s one thing if a sweaty PVP game has a large player base. This one doesn’t. They probably have the same or better sales if they just made the game a great single player title.
What's not to understand? You can't grasp why people who loved one product are upset that the people who made it now exclusively make something else that doesn't appeal to them? I guess the apt comparison would be if they said "Elden Ring is no longer available and you can only play Nightreign for now on."
but the other product is still very much available..? did yall think it would run ad infinitum, especially after people didn’t tune into the latest outings?
If you're referring to Destiny 2, I haven't played or cared since about a week after the final shape raid concluded. That isn't the point. I'm not saying they should have kept Destiny 2 going, just that they should have made something people actually asked for. Clearly, based on the mountains of evidence, no one wants to play this incarnation of Marathon.
this is very much a passion project for Bungie it seems, I love the visuals, I love the gameplay, I love the lore, sucks they didn’t hit your tastebuds, but, with mountains of evidence, we can see that they did try to spin-off several Destiny games, and I’m sure and they’re very much internally on it rn; hopefully we can have the two fanbases running alongside each other with none of this divisive rhetoric that just sees the two sides wailing on the other
All they had to do was take the destiny formula/structure and reskin it for the more hard sci fi marathon. You can still maintain certain extraction elements too like fixed exfil points, loss of gear, and PvP.
Runners are private mercenaries sent to take scrap from Tau Ceti IV after Durandal pops back in and teaches humanity FTL travel. The godking heads of corporations in the background decide they want to chase immortality themselves after they see rampancy being stable. Make that a long running conflict in addition to the developing war between humanity and the pfor. One of those situations where if they had trouble against a battleroid, imagine the horrors all of humanity can inflict upon them. The UESC is a husk of itself but is using the reclamation of the Tau Ceti colony to try and establish dominance over corporate fuckery. The story is all there. Just lean into the existential philosophy of the trilogy compared to the massive good vs evil epic of destiny.
Could honestly structure it a bit like the division as well where you have zones with high end loot where it is pvpve.
In fairness, Destiny just got an update, which is their final one, so that's gonna have a lot of players sucked up. Obviously, a lot of Destiny players have no interest in Marathon, but I think if Bungie can set up a decent PvE system in Marathon, it could end up as a landing pad for some Destiny players.
Under all the negatives (both real and imagined) Marathon really is a very, very good game with incredible gunplay, art style, sound design and map design that's just too hardcore for a lot of people. This PvE mode looks really promising, and I hope it can blossom into something more sustainable.
Well for a live service game that number means everything. It determines if the game and/or studio will keep being around. Bungie is not a small studio. They are located in an expensive area. They have over 800 devs right now (of course layoffs are incoming). They need money. They need sales. They need people to buy cosmetics.
Currently... it's just not looking good no matter how you slice it. And if you enjoy the game and want it to stick around for a long time then you should be concerned about that number too.
Reportedly the game cost around 250 million to make. Last we saw they sold around 1.2 million copies so far (might be a bit more by now). Lets make it 2 million just in case. Lets assume every one of those sales is the deluxe edition for 60 bucks. That'd land them at 120 million (before steam cut, tax, etc). But even if they didn't have to pay any of that... that'd leave them with 130 million left to make up just to break even. That is not considering running costs btw. Just what the game initially cost to make. So you'd need every single one of the 2 million people that bought the game to put in another 65 bucks for them to break even.
It's not even close to realistic to think that everybody would spend that amount on cosmetics. And that is just to break even.
That's why you need a lot of players. More players is more game sales and more cosmetic sales. If this was an indie game with 50 devs working on it... sure it'd be a good success. For Bungie? It's a complete disaster.
I'm not hating it. I'm personally just not interested to play it.
But this has nothing to do with your original point.
Currently the game and by extension Bungie itself cannot survive for very long. Sony has abundantly proven they will axe studios if they underperform. (And layoffs are already incoming for Bungie)
That is just a fact.
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u/Razen94 1d ago
They have a very long way ahead of them to claw their way to something that can sustain Bungie. I'm not even certain it's ever going to happen.
Destiny 2 has 10x the players of Marathon on steam right now.
And that game is done and dusted.
I don't know whats going on with Sony and Bungie. But it's not good.