Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[creaturestorm]

Another interesting video from resident journo scum Paul Tassi. This time he’s talking about the sponsored kit mode and how it brings Marathon closer to its original concept as a battle royale. He ends it asking if your battle royale mode is the most popular way people are playing the game, what does that say about your extraction shooter?

There is a joke in here about the only thing growing is the divide.

Seriously though Mr. Tassi showing a fundamental misunderstanding of extraction shooters.

 

[King Dead]

It’s so fucking sad. Not to be gay as shit (or power level), as it’s literally coonsoomer level shit here, but D1 and especially D2 surround some of my best memories on this earth. My ex-fiancé and I played it ALOT, did a lot of raiding, my brother and I played the fuck out of D1 when it was out and beat Vault the first weekend it opened up. There’s a lot of people with similar stories, similar memories, similar feelings to mine.

Bungie doesn’t give a fuck.

They don’t care that this series means a lot to a lot of people because it’s what they grew up on or made friends through. They only give a fuck about bungie. Something they used to be against (other than Jones, fuck that nigger). It shows with Marathon, as you said, that series used to be insanely ahead of its time in terms of story telling and lore and its gameplay was as good if not better than even DOOM. And they pissed its legacy away for niggerslop of the month. Fucking angering. Fuck’em, I hope the rumored May 15th shutdown is real.

It truly was an innovative series, something that many people still aren't aware of since it was almost entirely Mac-exclusive for years and never reached Doom's popularity. 2 did get a Windows port, seen as a betrayal by Bungie fans at the time, which is kind of funny in hindsight. But an FPS with full mouselook, dual-wielding (yes, yes, Rise of the Triad did too and came out the same day), and some pretty cool engine tricks to enable pathways and tunnels over each other was pretty revolutionary at the time. And of course, actually bothering to tell a story in a genre that was still referred to as "Doom clones," to say nothing of all of the historical and mythological references and science fiction concepts and alternate timelines, creating a story that people are still debating to this day...as Mandy put it, how could they be this cool?

And of course, dual-wielding shotguns. Hot damn does that ever feel good.

But yeah, I don't think it's gay or cringe to look back fondly on video game memories as long as you're not a sperg about it. I've got tons from Destiny over the years: my first steps in the beta, my first clear of VoG (and then my first time pushing Templar and Atheon into the abyss), beating Crota by unplugging your router, going flawless the very first weekend of Trials with the two guys who I met the first week of the game, beating Oryx, solving the damn Outbreak Prime fourth monitor puzzle, groaning upon hearing "CABAL AGAIN?" for the umpteenth time while waiting for the Whisper portal, the hilarity of deleting people in Gambit with Queenbreaker, the mad dash to finish Zero Hour and solve its crazy vault puzzle, traversing the Corridors of Time and slowly piecing together its puzzle, watching the Almighty crash and the Traveler reform while dancing with everyone in the Tower, the first time I did the spacewalk in Deep Stone Crypt, Rhulk's epic kicks, the utter chaos that was the Craftening, the slightly lesser but still fun chaos that is Excision, the recent chess puzzle in Heresy, and countless other minor moments over the years. Despite their many missteps, Bungie still managed to make something special.

Then they tossed it aside to chase a niche trend assuming they could make it huge, and now they wonder why their longtime fans are taking it personally.

 

[Thomas Talus]

And of course, dual-wielding shotguns. Hot damn does that ever feel good.

Nothing has ever been as good as dual WSTE-Ms.

 

[fml]

Did Bungie do another round of under the table paychecks for retards?




I've seen so many posts recently about how the game is "actually good trust." I'd love to know where the players are if the game is so good.

Also, artificially hated is actually fucking hilarious and very ironic because if anything, when you peel back the curtain a little bit the hype this game had in it's launch cycle was almost entirely manufactured. As soon as those sub 40 IQ streamers got their paychecks they dipped the fuck out almost immediately. I can't think of a single mainstream streamer who stayed around.

Addendum:


Link

lol. lmao even. Comments should be a funny read.

 

[Civillian 18]

Did Bungie do another round of under the table paychecks for retards?

View attachment 8938366
View attachment 8938367

I've seen so many posts recently about how the game is "actually good trust." I'd love to know where the players are if the game is so good.

Also, artificially hated is actually fucking hilarious and very ironic because if anything, when you peel back the curtain a little bit the hype this game had in it's launch cycle was almost entirely manufactured. As soon as those sub 40 IQ streamers got their paychecks they dipped the fuck out almost immediately. I can't think of a single mainstream streamer who stayed around.

Addendum:

View attachment 8938406
View attachment 8938412 Link

lol. lmao even. Comments should be a funny read.

They have been sweeping the player count discussion for at least 6 weeks now, so for 75% of the lifespan of the game.
They do this the exact same way they did it for Destiny, they get marching orders from Bungo to stop the complaining about something, they create a 'Bungie Please' megathread that they pin to the top of the subreddit for 13 seconds and then delete every post about the problem with 'post in megathread for discussion', which obviously just exists as an excuse to cull criticism.

 

[Burgundy Brandy]

Did Bungie do another round of under the table paychecks for retards?

View attachment 8938366
View attachment 8938367

I've seen so many posts recently about how the game is "actually good now trust." I'd love to know where the players are if the game is so good.

They're lying in wait, the perfect opportunity to cash in on the Marathon stocks that are surely to skyrocket in the next couple weeks.

Good chance they were paid but there's a lot of people who genuinely buy into those beliefs too. Do people not realize that Sony bought Bungie for their 'expertise' in live service games? If anything Sony should have several live service games that are topping the charts but there isn't. Destiny 2 has walked off a cliff, Marathon is holding on for dear life in hopes someone with a miracle comes along and Helldivers is doing something over there. There's Concord but that died on launch, I'll admit there's probably a few more that they released but just like the people making the argument I'm not going to look further into it.
Bungie's D2 luggage is definitely a way to undercut their mountain of fuck ups. Bungie must be providing these poor fuckers with some really strong Mary Jane if they're having so much trouble keeping their eyes open to see the reasons why people aren't playing the game.

 

[fml]

Bungie must be providing these poor fuckers with some really strong Mary Jane if they're having so much trouble keeping their eyes open to see the reasons why people aren't playing the game.

One of the bigger complaints I read (albeit from reddit) is that the game is just a pubstomper's paradise. The new player experience is non-existent and while the game says it's an extraction shooter, the maps are so small and shit that it's basically impossible to play and loot passively. Also people seem to be bloodthirsty, some even leaving extract zones just to go to the other side of the map and kill a random dude who has a free kit and just wants to loot or do objectives. And this is without going into the grenade and ability spam which seems to be a recurring issue in Bungie's approach to PVP.

 

[DickMain]

He ends it asking if your battle royale mode is the most popular way people are playing the game, what does that say about your extraction shooter zombie game?

It's like Fornite all over again.

 

[Oliver Onions]

It makes me sad as shit too, to see the death of this studio in real time.

It would make me sad if Bungie was still Bungie, but they're clearly not. I was sad about what's become of Rock Steady after Suicide Squad was amateur hour shit, because the founders of the studio oversaw that project; only jumping ship at the last minute when they saw the writing on the wall.

Bungie's talent clearly left the building years ago, so all we're watching here is the remaining staff parade its corpse around like Weekend At Bernie's.

They know a super hyper majority of people hate it, they know (but never admit) all it's delusional shit .. but still whine about it's denigration.

What I don't understand is why they can't at least find the middle ground and concede that people are sick of being lectured when playing a video game.

The focus is on woke shit because that's what it always is, but I imagine just as many people would complain if you were forced to sit through a church sermon or time share pitch written in the same insufferable quippy Joss Whedon dialogue.

There's a reason everyone wanted to play Doom instead of Super 3D Noah's Ark.

 

[Zenos Yae Viator]

ut I imagine just as many people would complain if you were forced to sit through a church sermon

this is the point of Woke Shit, its their version of forcing you through a church sermon at gunpoint, the gun being them hounding you from your job or any other social damage they can do, its a tedius pledge of allegiance to their Dogma that they enjoy putting people through with that sly, coy look "Men can be women" they say as they give it to you.

They know it isn't true (except for the midwit believers) they just want you to be struggle sessioned with the topics of the day.

 

[Oliver Onions]

this is the point of Woke Shit, its their version of forcing you through a church sermon at gunpoint

That's what I mean. It doesn't matter what dogma is being preached, people don't like being lectured in their recreational media.

Same thing happened in GamerGate where they tried to frame it as men hating women when the actual argument was stop fucking with games to shoehorn shitty characters in for the sake of meeting quotas, or cutting content because some bluehair on Tumblr who'll never buy the game got big mad.

 

[Zenos Yae Viator]

That's what I mean. It doesn't matter what dogma is being preached, people don't like being lectured in their recreational media.

Same thing happened in GamerGate where they tried to frame it as men hating women when the actual argument was stop fucking with games to shoehorn shitty characters in for the sake of meeting quotas, or cutting content because some bluehair on Tumblr who'll never buy the game got big mad.

well that's the trap, they want the big reaction, it signals to the hive the new target to be destroyed, the entire point of Progressive post-modern shit is to bring others into the fold with struggle sessions, signalling that the person is amiable to being told to do and believe anything, and flush out people who would stand against them with absurd dogma to pledge allegiance to, so they know who would oppose them.

The missing key ingredient is the willingness and ability to inflict mass violence on the problem non-believers, and that's why we are stuck in this weird limbo area, where there's alot of talk about killing all the Chuds or w/e, but nothing ever happens, because Humanity has finally created a generation that believes in mass violence, but is simply unwilling to enact it.

 

[Agares]

“Nobody is playing the game! Muh grifters! Muh steam chart spammers! It must be the baggage from Destiny 2!”

Copium overdose. Bungie made a niche game in a saturated genre and the suits thought it was going to be the next Arc Raiders. What did they think was going to happen?

 

[Focken Kiwi]

Come on Destiny 2. You can do it!

 

[BScCollateral]

So to see its corpse resurrected for a flavor-of-the-month live service game in a genre I have no desire to play...yeah, it's a little upsetting.

Dare I say...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF_Ca45JRFs

I do not see why Spoony got shit over this.

 

[Steven Chapman]

“Nobody is playing the game! Muh grifters! Muh steam chart spammers! It must be the baggage from Destiny 2!”

Copium overdose. Bungie made a niche game in a saturated genre and the suits thought it was going to be the next Arc Raiders. What did they think was going to happen?

Oh I’m definitely a scorned D2 player. I want bungie to die for fucking the franchise I liked the most.

i don't think it started off like this but by the time i ever bothered looking at what the fuck the whole destiny thing was all about, the second game had already been out for a few years or so and the community had the same general candor as a beaten wife angry at you for bringing up the fist holes in the drywall. it struck me as a game permanently in the late stages of a dead MMORPG, where old players just tell new players to not bother putting effort in until better gear becomes available, but it never does.

This is essentially correct, but to be fair, even launch D1 (and 2) had issues. But there was something special there that had been grinded down and raped over time. There were some special experiences and fun times to be had.

 

[big pauper]

It’s so fucking sad. Not to be gay as shit (or power level), as it’s literally coonsoomer level shit here, but D1 and especially D2 surround some of my best memories on this earth. My ex-fiancé and I played it ALOT, did a lot of raiding, my brother and I played the fuck out of D1 when it was out and beat Vault the first weekend it opened up. There’s a lot of people with similar stories, similar memories, similar feelings to mine.

Bungie doesn’t give a fuck.

They don’t care that this series means a lot to a lot of people because it’s what they grew up on or made friends through. They only give a fuck about bungie. Something they used to be against (other than Jones, fuck that nigger). It shows with Marathon, as you said, that series used to be insanely ahead of its time in terms of story telling and lore and its gameplay was as good if not better than even DOOM. And they pissed its legacy away for niggerslop of the month. Fucking angering. Fuck’em, I hope the rumored May 15th shutdown is real.

i don't think it started off like this but by the time i ever bothered looking at what the fuck the whole destiny thing was all about, the second game had already been out for a few years or so and the community had the same general candor as a beaten wife angry at you for bringing up the fist holes in the drywall. it struck me as a game permanently in the late stages of a dead MMORPG, where old players just tell new players to not bother putting effort in until better gear becomes available, but it never does.

 

[Cucktry Roads]

One of the bigger complaints I read (albeit from reddit) is that the game is just a pubstomper's paradise. The new player experience is non-existent and while the game says it's an extraction shooter, the maps are so small and shit that it's basically impossible to play and loot passively. Also people seem to be bloodthirsty, some even leaving extract zones just to go to the other side of the map and kill a random dude who has a free kit and just wants to loot or do objectives. And this is without going into the grenade and ability spam which seems to be a recurring issue in Bungie's approach to PVP.

It's more than reddit. The general consesus is that gear quality it too important to the combat. The jump between blue and purple quality gear is huge where people in blues will struggle to fight anyone wielding purple or higher quality gear, and purple is something that the sweats are going to gatekeep. Making an pvp extraction shooter with item lose pvp so focused on gear will chase off the casuals since they will not be able to compete.

When doing a game like this you need to have each tier have its own weapons which have unique uses compared to lower tiers, but keep lower tiers competitive. Or you need to do something like
Grey quality = double barrel shotgun
Blue - pump shotgun
purple - auto-shotty
orange - drum mag auto-shotty

If all these weapons are competitive and don't have HUGE stat differences, then you'll keep casuals around who have only a pump shotty and they at least stand a chance again the sweat with a drum mag.

Although, as I have heard, the major problem here is that there's an insane jump in defensive capabilities between a blue and purple quality shield where the person starts to become unkillable with lower tier weapons.

 

[The Lаughing Man]

Considering how weird and far apart the game is from it's "inspirations", and the various contradictions from the team about the games development, I assume its 2 games that were merged.

Maybe, or they all are convenient excuses to say that they were working on something while fucking around in the office or at home during covid. Marathon doesn't feel like a game that has been in development for too long, probably actual development happened after the new director took over in 2023.

I'm not sure where it got lost in the process but doing any kind of MMO PVP vs someone who has played more than you and has better gear than you is the most likely #1 avoided situation in MMOs.

That list just sounds like he wanted to make Blizzard's Project Titan and ran into the same dev issues as Blizzard's Project Titan and then shit out a game out of the bones much like Blizzard's Overwatch.

Gray zone warfare did a lot of what he wanted in that list pretty well. Granted that game goes for a milsim experience, which means that you aren't immortal if you have better gear, and even then it doesn't protect all of your hitboxes.

 

[big pauper]

It's more than reddit. The general consesus is that gear quality it too important to the combat. The jump between blue and purple quality gear is huge where people in blues will struggle to fight anyone wielding purple or higher quality gear, and purple is something that the sweats are going to gatekeep. Making an pvp extraction shooter with item lose pvp so focused on gear will chase off the casuals since they will not be able to compete.

When doing a game like this you need to have each tier have its own weapons which have unique uses compared to lower tiers, but keep lower tiers competitive. Or you need to do something like
Grey quality = double barrel shotgun
Blue - pump shotgun
purple - auto-shotty
orange - drum mag auto-shotty

If all these weapons are competitive and don't have HUGE stat differences, then you'll keep casuals around who have only a pump shotty and they at least stand a chance again the sweat with a drum mag.

Although, as I have heard, the major problem here is that there's an insane jump in defensive capabilities between a blue and purple quality shield where the person starts to become unkillable with lower tier weapons.

trying to streamline this design philosophy into a diablo-like experience is just dumb. tarkov doesn't have color rarity but it would be easy to break it up into 4 groups based entirely on what attachments you can put on them. But they all do the same damage. exactly the same damage. It doesn't matter if you're shot by a 7.62 ps out of a half broken scav gun or a zenitco AK-103 but the zenitco one has IR lasers and quick irons and an LVPO and high cap magazines and can take supressors directly without a thread adapter (means you can put it on if you find one mid-round)

borderlands was just diablo as a first person shooter and it's a fine game. i enjoyed playing it. that doesn't mean every shooter needs to be diablo, it's a very limited game design toolkit.