Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[King Dead]

A problem I personally have with the game is that while I do really enjoy the pvp, the game isn't worth playing for the pvp alone. Killing other players is all well and good, but getting killed totally slams the breaks on your enjoyment. I've actually went back and started playing Titanfall 2 again, its basically the same type of game play but a better experience win or lose. Marathon is at it's peak when you completely stomp out a lobby, do all the raid events, and leave with a back pack full of loot.

At least a dozen other players need to have their hopes dashed and dreams shattered for 3 other people to experience the game at it's best. This is not a sustainable practice or a daily reality for most players. I'm 100% certain that Bungie does not realize that this is the core issue of the game, every match ends with clear winners and clear losers. The winners stay winning and the losers stay quitting.

It's literally Trials of Osiris all over again. Talk about Bungie refusing to learn from their mistakes.

For those unaware, Trials is Destiny's pinnacle/sweatiest PVP mode where you have to win a certain number of matches in a row to get the greatest rewards. I'm simplifying things, but a flawless streak of seven wins with zero losses was necessary to get the best loot. Naturally, anyone can see the problem with this; namely, for a single team to go flawless, seven others are knocked down and forced to start over. And of course, you could still get matched up with people who had already gone flawless, meaning your odds of getting there were even less.

This led to a bunch of issues that all fed into each other over the years. Higher-skilled players could utterly dominate lower-skilled ones who would never get anything from their time in the playlist, and after getting curbstomped a bunch, they'd give up on it entirely. The average skill of those still playing would go up, and now there was a new lowest tier getting farmed and unable to progress. They'd quit, and a new batch would find themselves at the bottom. Repeat until only the turbosweats remain, who aren't finding it fun anymore either because they don't have noobs to curbstomp. Not to mention lower population means longer matchmaking and worse ping.

They did eventually make improvements to the loot distribution, with the week's shiny weapon being guaranteed after seven wins regardless of losses and flawless being more for bragging rights, but those improvements were about a decade too late. The general playerbase still wants nothing to do with Trials due to their perception of it being a sweatfest, and that's how it continues to be.

When your fun is contingent on many other players' sessions being utterly ruined, to the point they feel like they completely wasted their time playing, that is a recipe for disaster.

Ultimately i feel that pulling the plug on Marathon or Destiny feels like the wrong move to me. Whatever Sony decides to do, the priority should be rebuilding trust with the players and fixing the problems that were made, owning the mistakes, and showing a real commitment to making things right before they do anything else.

Anything less than this and we will have another thread full of gleeful chart posting.

I hope you're looking forward to more chartposting, because if the current state of Destiny communication is any indication, Bungie is going to keep on deflecting with weasel words or flat out ignoring the problems. Looking back, I've cut them far too much slack over the years through their constant cycle of fuckups, halfhearted apologies, minor fixes, and then back to fucking up again. I don't think I have it in me to give them one more chance.