Mastodawn

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 26

Now Marathon is open to everybody, so I'm going to talk about it.

I played 17 hours solo, and it was a miserable, sweaty experience, with a very low time-to-kill with excruciating respawn/matchmaking times when player count is low. The art direction is beautiful in theory, but the bland flat map design and inscrutable UI does it no justice.

I don't think I went a single round where something worth recording happened. It is just not at all geared for the kind of social dynamics in ARC Raiders

Steve Troughton-Smith

I hope Marathon finds its audience, because it's unique enough that I would be sad if it bombs like Highguard or Concord. I would love to see a singleplayer game in this setting; the trailers have made this thing out to be something completely different from what it actually is, and far more awesome. But I won't be buying this, and would rather scratch my eyes out than play any more of what's there today 😅

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

Guess what game name you can't type into Marathon's chat? 🤡

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

People are saying 'information overload' a lot when talking about Marathon, and that was one of the things I struggled with: every darn texture in this game has writing on it — there's text and numbers everywhere at different angles — so actually figuring out where you're going and what you're supposed to be interacting with can be a struggle

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

Time to kill is especially frustrating; the game gives you tools to see people in infrared from across the map without them seeing you, so the moment you decide to open up they'll be downed pretty quickly. On the receiving end of this, this completely sucks. It'll happen over and over when you have lower-level gear. That's if the overzealous AI doesn't get you first — it can be pretty hard to tell the difference between player and npc

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

Part of the information overload too is the sound; there is constant background noise of spaceships flying overhead, or things being airdropped in, or localized events, or players' special powers going off, with directionality being pretty hard to determine. Just loud, sourceless 'scifi' audio, whirs and hums and clicks and beeps

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

Once you're spotted, all nearby AI has a supernatural awareness of you at all times, and can shoot halfway across the map. Turrets were especially frustrating, and trying to break their focus was annoying. I didn't enjoy fighting these anywhere near as much as the ARC in ARC Raiders

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

There was such a big deal made about adding proximity chat to Marathon, both by the community and by Bungie when they finally did it, but in 17 hours of play not once did I hear somebody use a mic. There were no emotes or social tools, no 'don't shoot!'s, nothing. This game is not going to have anything like ARC Raider's passive community — it's kill on sight

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

Given enough time, I think Marathon could have been shaped into a great game. But not one of its technical tests was well-received. They tried to hide that by keeping the most recent tests under NDA and doing a strong marketing push instead, which I think is pretty dishonest. The game looks amazing in their marketing videos! It feels like they want to give the impression of having turned the game around, without actually turning the game around or indeed listening to feedback

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

I don't think that if you liked ARC Raiders you'll like Marathon. I think if you liked Tarkov, you'll probably just play (or watch) Tarkov. So Bungie is aiming for some kind of middle ground playerbase between Tarkov and ARC Raiders that I think they hope they can draw from the Destiny playerbase, who will expect to kill on sight, get loot, and respawn quickly. I dunno about that…

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

You need a master's degree in Marathon's loot system to figure out how to actually build your character. You have all kinds of different slots to put powerups, attachments, cores, implants, which can all dramatically affect how you play. But you lose all of it and start from scratch every time you die (which will be a lot). All the inventory items look so similar it takes a lot of effort to figure out what is what without reading long descriptions. The lowpoly design does it no favors here

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

I can almost guarantee you that in your first match in Marathon you will be ganked by a camper hiding up a ladder (since everybody has the same first quest on the roof of the same building) and lose all your gear. And then, since you have less and less gear each time, that same quest just gets harder and harder 🥲

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

You will end up staring at the grotesque loading screen video — a moth eating a caterpillar — a lot, before your Steam refund window closes

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

No joke — it took me seven hours to complete *the first quest* in an earlier build

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 28

I will say, Marathon might not be a fun game to play or progress solo, but it makes for great viewing when you're watching a team that knows their shit. The overcomplicated build stuff that most players will bounce off of leads to a very crunchy endgame. If they could make the onramp much smoother, this could actually be a game

Brian Strouselhousen Mar 1

@stroughtonsmith You have just highlighted everything that I struggle with in this game. I was in some of the early NDA'd testing and I died just as much then as I do now, because like then, I don't understand most of what I am looking to find or get. Or what the gear I have necessarily does. It could be a fun game maybe. Or maybe I am just a really unskilled middle-aged dude. Or both? I mean I have over 2,000 hours in Destiny 2 and don't completely suck at that game.

Stian Kongsvik Feb 28

@stroughtonsmith I think it's come a really long way since the closed tests. Now it feels really polished, and I've had a lot of fun both solo (rook/scav) and with a party of friends. I bounced off hard on Arc Raiders and Tarkov, though. Arc Raiders felt terrible to play for me, and made me feel bad for doing pvp. This is more «pvp allowed». It's good to have alternatives, Arc is certainly not for everyone.

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 28

@stianko like I said, I hope they find their audience. Maybe someday I can enjoy a singleplayer narrative game in this world

Stian Kongsvik Feb 28

@stroughtonsmith so do I, but feels like «There are dozens of us!»

Gabriel N Feb 27

@stroughtonsmith that does not sparks joy

Seb Jachec Feb 28

@stroughtonsmith The ‘Beginner’ map queue option for this first quest which seems to load in less people actually seemed incredibly empty in this current server slam

Yadiel Sotomayor Feb 27

@stroughtonsmith That doesn't sound fun at all. It sounds more like work.

@stroughtonsmith I think Arc got carried significantly by the spectacle the game creates, mostly thanks to their "mobs". Marathons mobs are classic Destiny sponges, completely not fun to play and trivial as long as you position well (way more dangerous in close quarters, but there's not much of that on the first two maps). Additionally, I think the first zone - Perimeter - is a very poor introduction. Too open, too boring, too repetitive. It doesn't help that Marsh is not that much different.

@stroughtonsmith that's how I feel as well. It doesn't really feel like much has changed in the last year outside the visuals and they used them heavily in their marketing. It's a shame, I love the art direction and the gunplay juice is out of this world, but the extraction mechanics are shallow, I don't feel like starting another run just to do another boring contract (some of them are even forcing a specific playstyle on you) and gathering pointless items just to upgrade my character.

@stroughtonsmith supernatural awareness? ha I hate that in shooters.

@stroughtonsmith all I can think of after reading your take on it here is... what even is the point of this game? Run around and shoot people? Booooring.

Trezzer (aka Helvedeshunden)Feb 27

@stroughtonsmith 😇

@stroughtonsmith Snickers?

Colin Napier Feb 27

@pauld @stroughtonsmith Came to say this, beaten to the punch :)

Steve Troughton-Smith Feb 27

@Colinnapier @pauld it's been 36 years!

Gabriel N Feb 26

@stroughtonsmith there’s one associated cost with this that I can’t afford, and that’s the Sony PSN subscription.

I still can play part of Destiny 2 without PSN. (I’m not new, just like that game)

Colin Knowles Feb 26

@stroughtonsmith Committing to hardcore PvP when their whole jam has been mostly PvE really feels like a game-killing mistake, especially after ARC Raiders showed the enormous pent-up demand for a PvE extraction shooter.

They could've brought over bored Destiny 2 and Division 2 players, as well as anyone that tried ARC Raiders but bounced after being janked too many times

Instead they're going for a completely different hardcore niche audience that has no real predisposition to try them out.

@stroughtonsmith I think it’s always tough if your core proposition is “lets make winning give you more of an edge and losing take away your edge”

like, thats a barbaric difficulty curve right out of the gate, and thats the appeal for some, but i cant think it’s mass market

I think the genius of ARC Raiders is it does almost everything it can to dial the contrast between winning and losing down. Safe pocket means you don’t lose everything. A free kit is workable. Your chicken gives you stuff no matter what. You have as many reasons to cooperate as you do to betray, maybe more. It’s easy to frame a match as a story and instant to jump back into another one.

Jackson Hayes Feb 27

@stroughtonsmith I gave it a shot and... yep.