Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

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People are just now starting to get home from work. It's already gone up to 72,000 as of writing, will probably get higher as the night goes on. Reports are saying it sold 250,000 on Steam day 1, and generously doubling or triple that for consoles leaves them only racking up around 10% of the reported 250 million budget.
IDGAF about the art style or anything, but is the game any good? And if it is good, is it 30 dollars good
If you have ADHD, enjoy Tarkov, and have friends to play with but hate how much time you waste managing your stash then it's great. Otherwise avoid it entirely.

The whole aesthetic of Marathon is what they imagine the world will be like after gender is solved and the hierarchy of aesthetics is levelled, like swedish minimalism being all shades of grey
This is one of the themes of cyber punk yes, it's not a world you want to live in.
 
I think largerly because i didnt play the shooter slop called destiny and so I'm not eternally butthurt over it.
So people who are familiar with modern Bungie warn you, and you just ignore them and believe Bungie anyway? Enjoy your slop sir.
Tarkov I think has an estimated 22k players.
It has far more than that. Nikita posted on twitter the other day how many people have completed endings on PVP and PVE, and this indicates far more than 22k concurrent players. Now he could be lying of course, but I would not be surprised if Tarkov had as many pc players as Marathon has right now.
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Consider Tarkov's peak player count is 40k-ish, tarkov started the genre and it's being dwarfed by Marathon.
And ARC Raiders dwarfs Marathon. And we don't actually know peak Tarkov player counts, Nikita never shares that. Funny enough, we won't ever know peak Marathon players across all platforms since Bungie decided to lock down the API for Marathon, unlike the Destiny API which everyone can see. Wonder why?
It's been speculated by others in the thread that a Sony higher-up saw Tarkov's streamer numbers and decided Bungie should get in on that. Which tracks with how retarded corpos are.
Marathon was in development at Bungie long before they were purchased by Sony. Don't fall under Bungie brainwashing and believe that Bungie's faults are the mistake of their owners. They blamed Activision for YEARS for the state of Destiny, when the reality was it was all Bungie's fault the whole time. Activision actually saved Destiny multiple times, when they forced Bungie to make 'Rise of Iron' with a support studio. Activision also pulled in Vicarious Visions and High Moon Studios to help Bungie, and they were the ones responsible for Rasputin, Warmind, Niobe Labs, and even large parts of Forsaken, the best expansion and raid Destiny ever had. Never forget that Bungie leadership was so fucking angry that Rise of Iron and SIVA were so well received, that they never mentioned them again in Destiny, and went so far as to refuse to ever bring back the raid Wrath of the Machine to D2. When they brought back the plague lands location in the latest expansion, they even went back and removed Devil Splicer flags and logos from corpse piles, and literally told everyone that "SIVA is dead". Never mind that in-lore Exodus Black has a whole SIVA replicator still alive on Nessus but oh well.
You’re completely right that none of them want to actually work for reward. What’s the number of people that play raids? 5% of the total player base? Probably because they’re all retarded and socially inept. It really isn’t hard to both find and mesh well with an LFG team if you don’t have enough friends.
Bungie removed text chat from their games because a female dev got 'sexually harassed' over voice chat in Halo 2 once. They refused to put in a LFG system for raids, never developed a ping system, and generally never allowed players to learn things in game, just delegating it out to their community. Bungie's company motto used to be "We make games we want to play," and they changed it to "We create worlds that inspire friendship." This is especially amusing considering Marathon is a very competitive toxic game in arguably the most toxic genres possible. They even marketed the game as competitive, and not as friendly as ARC Raiders.
If you don't like Marathon it's a YOU problem. I've had a blast with it. It's a true return to form by Bungie. They have captured lightning in the bottle. It's too good to be true.
Were you jamming?
 
If you have ADHD, enjoy Tarkov, and have friends to play with but hate how much time you waste managing your stash then it's great. Otherwise avoid it entirely.


This is one of the themes of cyber punk yes, it's not a world you want to live in.
I want to be a badass in game, not a androgynous nigger Jeffrey Epstein paid to be the ideal citizen for modern sweden

Cyberpunk 2077 let me make that badass and have a little rockstar in my head tell me to Kill the President because she threatened my Korean Waifu
 
For those that have been playing the full release I have a question, how much is the season pass or whatever gay shit they're calling it.
 
ARC Raiders dwarfs Marathon
I'm not sure of the point your making.

The problem isn't that there are currently 70ish thousand people playing Marathon on the PC right now, that's incredibly good for an extraction shooter. It's a success amongst it's peers.

Marathon - 85k

Tarkov - 48k peak

Hunt Showdown - 60k peak

Arena Breakout - 66k peak

Marauders - 14k peak

The total audience for people who want a hardcore extraction shooter is small, if you add up all those games its still less players combined than Arc. Bungie was writing AAA checks the Extraction audience couldn't possibly cash. Even if this thing has 2/3rds the popularity of Arc it's still fucked.


Arc raiders barely occupies the same genre space as Tarkov and Marathon. It's a 3rd person PvE game where you go to PvP jail for being unfriendly. They have leaned into the friend slop aspects of the game and in doing so it has become a commercial success, It has the broader appeal.

The people who are playing Arc would never leave that shit to come play Marathon, but the people who play Marathon/Tarkov will definitely leave to play Arc.

They simply spent too much time and too much money making a game that uncs wont play.

It has far more than that
Same case for Marathon most likely, the only thing that would save bungie is if console players all bought 2 copies.

For those that have been playing the full release I have a question, how much is the season pass or whatever gay shit they're calling it.
I'm not sure what they call the monopoly money, but it looks like $10

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I'm not sure what they call the monopoly money, but it looks like $10

View attachment 8665452View attachment 8665453
They're also adjusting the prices

In the near future, we're making an adjustment to the amount of LUX you get for the $10 (or regional equivalent) LUX bundle to grant 1120 LUX (1000 + 120), up from 1100 LUX (1000 + 100). As a part of this whole process, we'll be crediting 20 LUX to players for each $10 LUX bundle they purchased before this change occurred.
 
I'm not sure of the point your making.

The problem isn't that there are currently 70ish thousand people playing Marathon on the PC right now, that's incredibly good for an extraction shooter. It's a success amongst it's peers.

Marathon - 85k

Tarkov - 48k peak

Hunt Showdown - 60k peak

Arena Breakout - 66k peak

Marauders - 14k peak

The total audience for people who want a hardcore extraction shooter is small, if you add up all those games its still less players combined than Arc. Bungie was writing AAA checks the Extraction audience couldn't possibly cash. Even if this thing has 2/3rds the popularity of Arc it's still fucked.


Arc raiders barely occupies the same genre space as Tarkov and Marathon. It's a 3rd person PvE game where you go to PvP jail for being unfriendly. They have leaned into the friend slop aspects of the game and in doing so it has become a commercial success, It has the broader appeal.

The people who are playing Arc would never leave that shit to come play Marathon, but the people who play Marathon/Tarkov will definitely leave to play Arc.

They simply spent too much time and too much money making a game that uncs wont play.


Same case for Marathon most likely, the only thing that would save bungie is if console players all bought 2 copies.
I see where you’re coming from, honestly I do, but it doesn’t matter who caters to what and who is more “PvP oriented” vs “PvE oriented. The problem is the fact that these are all live services. I only really have 2-4 hours after work to do things like gaming, probably less with chores and housework and shit. If I really like Arc Raiders (I don’t but it’s a fine game), why would I leave it for a very similar game? These games are all vying for your TIME and money, not one or the other, both. My argument has never been quality, it’s bungie, they have billions of dollars and a general game developing quality and style, the game was always gonna feel good and look good, the problem is a saturated market.
 
The problem isn't that there are currently 70ish thousand people playing Marathon on the PC right now, that's incredibly good for an extraction shooter. It's a success amongst it's peers.

Marathon - 85k

Tarkov - 48k peak

Hunt Showdown - 60k peak

Arena Breakout - 66k peak

Marauders - 14k peak
It's peers? Marauder is made by studio of like 10 fucking people. Bungie has a headcount of 800 people and it's "peers" are studios that have a fraction of its size.
 
It's peers? Marauder is made by studio of like 10 fucking people. Bungie has a headcount of 800 people and it's "peers" are studios that have a fraction of its size.
Peers as in games that are literally it's competitors. it being a triple a game doesn't matter with regard to it's "peers".

Acting like that's something that matters is some stupid shit. "Oh The Finals isn't a peer game with Call of Duty because Embark is an indie studio. " That's not how that shit works. The game is competing for the same players other extraction games are competing for, they're it's peers
 
oh yea your completely right, I was just saying that many D2 dickriders will tout how difficult their raid encounters are.
this is so fucking funny once you remember the "scarab lord" was responsible for D2's raids.
honestly comparing D2 with FF14 is retarded, one is a rpg and the other is a shooter, you can't really do much other than put the fucking mote in the hole and shoot things and maybe use some abilities here and there, melee optional if not a mandated phase so at best you get fucking arenas for shooters, the problem is making them fun,
D2 at least banks on the whole "fun with friends" shit though rather than let you queue with randoms.
 
it doesn’t matter who caters to what and who is more “PvP oriented” vs “PvE oriented.
It matters to the audience, the consumer.
It's the whole reason Bungie is in this fucking pickle. They are courting an audience that simply doesn't exist in the numbers needed to turn a profit. Even if this is the best hard core extraction shooter ever made for PC/Console the numbers just aren't there.

The only alternative is to go back in time and either drastically cut costs by like 90% or make a pve game that so many people here are crying for, clearly there is a demand.
I only really have 2-4 hours after work to do things like gaming
I'll say it again:

They simply spent too much time and too much money making a game that uncs wont play.

Different players allocate time differently and some have different priorities. The market isn't saturated because you're a adult with a casual gaming hobby, you're just older now. You arent the audience for this game, thats sort of the problem.

Think about how many 2d fighting games exist and yet year after year they keep churning them out. These games appeal to largely the same core audience. Fans of one fighting game are usually also aware of and sometimes play the others, but the audience is limited. It doesnt matter how many billions of dollars a developer spends making a 2d fighting game they cant expand the player base. Instead these developers are just taking turns shuffling players around.

Arc Raiders is too different a game for Tarkov and Marathon to enjoy that kind of fluidity in it's player base, of people coming and going from Arc and boosting sales.

Unlike 2d fighters the extraction shooter genre is younger and smaller so a new release doesn't mean over saturation and it doesn't mean a new game is destined to fail.

A studio who spends a few hundred million on such a title is destined to fail however.
 
I have met one Marathon fan IRL in a class. They're not a very socially adjusted person with a tendency to blurt out their thoughts or continue speaking to the professor, trying to hold open conversation after answering one of their questions.
When I asked them about why they liked Marathon and that I've heard only middling things about it, they replied "Oh that's just because of right-wing grifters on Twitter." They then proceeded to play Umamusume, browse Twitter, and message on Discord, constantly flipping between the three acts for the remainder of the class.
This is the only interaction with the Marathon fanbase I've had, and I can completely see this game being Concord 3.
 
I saw Joe Ziegler at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him to play Marathon with me or anything.
He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”
I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen copies of Arc Raiders in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the games and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each game and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
 
the last update added an offline mode
I'll have to give them credit for that. But you can't download migraine medication, which should definitely come with that game.
I expect Marathon will do better than the upcoming Horizon Zero Players, the true Concord 3.
Isn't Horizon Zero Salads a fully PvE action game? I don't think it's a Concord
 
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