Marathon

Bungie

Destiny 2 is now over, and even if its lingering player count is encouragingly high, nothing is going to change on that front any time soon. Now, Bungie, whatever is left of it, will be banking almost entirely on Marathon, short of some incubation project finally getting approved.

Marathon has one main issue at this point and that is…getting players to play. Expectations that this is going to be some huge flagship game for Bungie may have been unreasonable, but that’s the position it was put in. But now, we are getting to a point where it’s sinking even below “hardcore niche,” as the numbers keep dropping with no signs of reversal.

The name of the game within Bungie right now is attracting more players through onboarding. That’s a great idea, though the problem here is that Bungie has done almost everything possible to do that with the season 2 launch of Marathon, and it still hasn’t worked. Among the changes:

• A new Cradle skill point system that allows you to junk gear in exchange for early, easy-to-grab upgrades that are no longer hidden behind lengthy vendor grinding, including valuable, quality-of-life stats like Heat Reduction.
• Overall improved acceleration of seasonal/vendor XP for faster movement through the season, offsetting at least some of the backtracking from a full seasonal reset.
• What is effectively a permanent Sponsored Kit mode across a few different maps that allows players to go in with a free kit, against everyone else using a free kit, that allows them to risk no loot from their vault, only what they find on the map.
• Almost accidentally, the new map variant, Night Marsh, which opened with a Sponsored version, was the game’s first look at a near-PvE mode, with only one team on the map. It was supposed to be swarmed with rival Rooks, but that did not pan out most of the time, and most runs were just fighting bots to extract, a glimpse at what a true version of PvE Marathon, a much-requested option, might look like.
• There was a free, 10-day trial for Marathon at season 2 launch that allowed access to effectively the entire game. This is the second time something similar has been done, with the free server slam for partial game access available ahead of release.

There are a lot of genuinely good ideas in there, but each of them has come with significant problems, and they are cards that cannot really be played again, given what’s happened. Such as:

• Cradle/XP – While good for new players, veteran players found they could rack up high-value loot quickly, and many had maxed out their stat points within days, meaning new players were even further behind more quickly than usual. Cradle points, in terms of pure gameplay, are arguably more important than the sped-up XP/Vendor changes. Bungie also then nerfed Cradle progression so players felt the ladder had been pulled up from behind the early grinders.
• Sponsored Kits – They do create a level playing field above and beyond anything else in the game. The problem there is that you are effectively removing half of what makes an extraction shooter in the first place, loading up with a good kit, and taking on other geared players at the risk of losing everything. The idea with Sponsored was to get good gear to take into the “real” modes, but often players would just stay there and not make the leap. If they did, that’s where they would run into the aforementioned incredibly strong, more veteran players.
• Free Trial – On the second attempt, this one more elaborate than the server slam, it simply has not moved the needle. There was little retention and few converted sales. The problem shown here is not just that free trials don’t do much, but the often-cited “emergency button” of making the entire game free-to-play likely wouldn’t do much of anything. And when we cite turnarounds like what happened with Rainbow Six Siege, that conversion was a key part of that.

From here, Marathon is about to trial a PvE mode that is actually meant to be fully PvE, rather than what Sponsored Night Marsh ended up being. Again, many players continue to request such a mode, and once such a thing arrives, if it impresses people, that could be a good result. Though for players who don’t own the game, it would have to be $40 good.

There is also the once-unthinkable idea that Marathon could slowly shift its genre. We’re quickly learning that there’s really no such thing as percieved non-hardcore extraction in Marathon, and it may have to bend and bend to create “new experiences” that draw in players allergic to the genre. Many are already wondering if it might introduce arena or battle royale modes. Though that is wildly harder than it may sound, with the game not designed or balanced for such a thing. As current players note, focusing on that would take away from those who do love the game for what it is now, and want to continue to see iteration on that side, rather than potential abandonment.

With Destiny 2 dead, even in the wake of large-scale layoffs, there will be hundreds of people working on Marathon, including the “lucky” few pulled over from Destiny already. That means the potential is there to create more content more quickly than other games in the genre, as that is a large team compared to most of its genre competitors. So that can work in its favor.

As it stands, many current Marathon players are upset with the direction of season 2, namely how initial gearing and progressing issues sort of sank it from the outset. And Marathon is also being battered around again as a result of Destiny 2 putting up 10x its numbers in its final update, a fresh round of anger than it was “chosen” over D2, though obviously, content production costs are a fair bit lower.

Sony is giving Marathon time, but even pulling out a number of stops already, the game will have to really dig in to find something that works. Soon.

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