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[cormack12]

I think people need to stop grasping at straws with this steam reviews thing as well. Nightreign has 87% positive reviews and the problems that game has with repetition is insane. In fact I'd say it's getting carried due to the association of FROM, in the same way Marathon is being carried with the association to Bungie. All it proves is that they have evangelist fanbases who would buy turds from the devs and display them on their mantle.

The current players who like the game need to stop deluding themselves that there are 50k secret players to onboard that just need to play it for ten hours and unlock faction rewards to acquire the taste for the genre. The game was free for 4 days. The game has an accelerated bleed rate since its cherry on the top was dropped.

None of that stops you liking the game, or even invalidates your opinion that it is a good game, serving a niche audience. But the genre is not popular and the format that Bungie has chosen has not gripped players. It hasn't enticed new players and it's losing its own audience day by day.

Bungie are already looking at ways to casualise the game, but prior to release they focused on all the whining about proximity chat, solo mode etc. All the wrong things that most people could see if they wanted to diversify this audience. I think it's too far gone now, unless they do something where they release a season roadmap and have things like other modes dropped etc. to have a second release.

It may stick around for a while of it settles at 20/25k but then is the cost of devs, updates and maintenance really breaking even? How many shit passes and skins will they actually sell at that point.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

~43k tonight

I think you'll be right. Or pretty darn close. My estimate of 46k should be way off as I used a past -14% Sun to Mon trend. But today the drop is probably -20%+ all day. The cryo drop is big as those gamers arent sticking aroud to grind it out today. But you never know. Maybe cryo grinders will jump on more Weds or Thurs as doing it today is too early to prep for next weekend cryo.

Even just using the numbers I pasted just above with 5 pm stats, it goes up on weekdays from 5 pm hour to peak CCU about 10-15%.

At 37k completed 5 pm hour, add 10-15% and you get around 41k to 42.5k.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I think people need to stop grasping at straws with this steam reviews thing as well. Nightreign has 87% positive reviews and the problems that game has with repetition is insane. In fact I'd say it's getting carried due to the association of FROM, in the same way Marathon is being carried with the association to Bungie. All it proves is that they have evangelist fanbases who would buy turds from the devs and display them on their mantle.

The current players who like the game need to stop deluding themselves that there are 50k secret players to onboard that just need to play it for ten hours and unlock faction rewards to acquire the taste for the genre. The game was free for 4 days. The game has an accelerated bleed rate since its cherry on the top was dropped.

None of that stops you liking the game, or even invalidates your opinion that it is a good game, serving a niche audience. But the genre is not popular and the format that Bungie has chosen has not gripped players. It hasn't enticed new players and it's losing its own audience day by day.

Bungie are already looking at ways to casualise the game, but prior to release they focused on all the whining about proximity chat, solo mode etc. All the wrong things that most people could see if they wanted to diversify this audience. I think it's too far gone now, unless they do something where they release a season roadmap and have things like other modes dropped etc. to have a second release.

It may stick around for a while of it settles at 20/25k but then is the cost of devs, updates and maintenance really breaking even? How many shit passes and skins will they actually sell at that point.

Steam reviews mean absolutely zero to sales and CCU. If good Marathon reviews are such a big boost, the trend for the game should be going up. CCU is majorly trending down. Also its Steam % is going down too. Almost dropping off the site's Top 5000 page now.

Just look at all the junky games with zero gamers with similar reviews. You got a game called HBDIE 2 with a picture of a dog that has a peak CCU of 34 with a higher rating.

 

[rkofan87]

I'm surprised Sony still hasn't admitted defeat yet.

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

Wow 7k on right now for destiny 2...that is such a shame to see, wow

But not surprising as Bungie has almost entirely abandoned the game for Marathon.

If they and Sony weren't retarded, they would have started working on a Destiny 3 as soon as the buyout went through.

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

If they and Sony weren't retarded, they would have started working on a Destiny 3 as soon as the buyout went through.

Oh I know, just didn't think it's that that low... And I agree I even said that exact thing verbatim in here somewhere

 

[Arsic]

 

[Conflict NZ]

They're getting desperate now, removing regional matchmaking. I know people in New Zealand are taking 15+ minutes to find a match at this point.

 

[Fake]

Oh yeah, posting on Bluesky will reach more players.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Oh yeah, posting on Bluesky will reach more players.

The Correct Ones.

 

[Fake]

The Correct Ones.

The correct 75 'likes'

 

[StreetsofBeige]

8 pm completed hour. 42.5k.

Last Monday it was 52.5k, ending with a peak of 53.8k, so it didnt edge up a lot rest of night. The previous 8 pm low was Thursday at 45.2k, peaking at 48k.

This game might end up about 43-44k if it creeps up a bit more. Final peak number should be within the next hour.

 

[Plague Doctor]

Oh yeah, posting on Bluesky will reach more players.

According to the post itself,

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Looks like the peak has reached, since it's been trending down already. It'll be 44.4k.

Vs last Mon 53.8k (-9.4k or -17%)
Vs prev low last Thurs 48k (-3.6k or -7.5%)

So starting with today's peak of 44.4k, this is the new starting peak for the week. Typically, this game has been trending down weekdays at around -5%, then on Friday and weekends it perks up a bit where the best peak will be a Sunday. Then it drops hard on Monday where the two Monday vs Mondays have been similar at roughly -20% each.

What this shows is cryo did zero. It popped it Friday as gamers wanted to try it. But Saturday it was already going down. And Sunday was flat to Saturday. Today Monday rolls around and it's around the same ~-20% drop week over week. So it shows casuals or hardcore gamers trying cryo, or grinding to get back to stacked inventory for next cryo weekend havent increased the CCU (or at least minimize the declining growth). It's like cryo drop did net net nothing.

Since cryo is over and no other big content tweaks are coming, the trend should normalize back to where it was going down week over week as it seems the cryo test hasnt retained gamers as today's peak is lowest ever at 44.4k. So if that -20% continues next Monday, then its peak will be about 36k. But who knows, that's a week out.

 

[Pollux]

Looks like the peak has reached, since it's been trending down already. It'll be 44.4k.

Vs last Mon 53.8k (-9.4k or -17%)
Vs prev low last Thurs 48k (-3.6k or -7.5%)

So starting with today's peak of 44.4k, this is the new starting peak for the week. Typically, this game has been trending down weekdays at around -5%, then on Friday and weekends it perks up a bit where the best peak will be a Sunday. Then it drops hard on Monday where the two Monday vs Mondays have been similar at roughly -20% each.

What this shows is cryo did zero. It popped it Friday as gamers wanted to try it. But Saturday it was already going down. And Sunday was flat to Saturday. Today Monday rolls around and it's around the same ~-20% drop week over week. So it shows casuals or hardcore gamers trying cryo, or grinding to get back to stacked inventory for next cryo weekend havent increased the CCU (or at least minimize the declining growth). It's like cryo drop did net net nothing.

Since cryo is over and no other big content tweaks are coming, the trend should normalize back to where it was going down week over week as it seems the cryo test hasnt retained gamers as today's peak is lowest ever at 44.4k. So if that -20% continues next Monday, then its peak will be about 36k. But who knows, that's a week out.

Ya love to see it - call me a hater, and I absolutely am, but I want this to fail because they murdered Destiny for this....mediocre product. If they did a single player campaign, did the whole loot grind with both PVP/PVE with Marathon, etc. I wouldn't hate it, but killing Destiny for a niche within a niche is so stupid.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Ya love to see it - call me a hater, and I absolutely am, but I want this to fail because they murdered Destiny for this....mediocre product. If they did a single player campaign, did the whole loot grind with both PVP/PVE with Marathon, etc. I wouldn't hate it, but killing Destiny for a niche within a niche is so stupid.

Pretty much.

What they assumed is Marathon being in full production for years would be a better reviewed and selling game. Didnt happen.

They also assumed the past bunch of years, Destiny 2 would still be on fire where Steamdb shows some of those old content drops would zoom up the CCU to 300k. The past year the drops are a fraction of those old ones and now the game trends at a range of 5 -10k CCU per day on PC.

What they could had done is skip Marathon and focus hard on Destiny 3, but that would kill off D2 for good. What they wanted is a 1-2 punch of D2/Marathon. And assuming D3 is in the works, it'd release in a bunch of years and the tandem would shift to be Marathon/D3.

Now that D2 is tanked and Marathon is trending down too, unless something big happens to prop both up they'll have two low CCU games for years (and Marathon is heavy skew to PC too making it worse without lots of console users). And they'd have to limp along with that until D3 launches in lets say 2029 or whatever.

 

[Pollux]

Pretty much.

What they assumed is Marathon being in full production for years would be a better reviewed and selling game. Didnt happen.

They also assumed the past bunch of years, Destiny 2 would still be on fire where Steamdb shows some of those old content drops would zoom up the CCU to 300k. The past year the drops are a fraction of those old ones and now the game trends at a range of 5 -10k CCU per day on PC.

What they could had done is skip Marathon and focus hard on Destiny 3, but that would kill off D2 for good. What they wanted is a 1-2 punch of D2/Marathon. And assuming D3 is in the works, it'd release in a bunch of years and the tandem would shift to be Marathon/D3.

Now that D2 is tanked and Marathon is trending down too, unless something big happens to prop both up they'll have two low CCU games for years (and Marathon is heavy skew to PC too making it worse without lots of console users). And they'd have to limp along with that until D3 launches in lets say 2029 or whatever.

They crazy part is they could have looked at D2 post Final Shape and said, "Here's the next 1-2 years, it's an epilogue while we roll out Marathon and work on D3" That version of Marathon could have been HEAVILY PVP focused, had a decent campaign and some PVE activities (hell, it could have had the extraction shooter with the tuned up AI but no PVP, just "fireteams" against the bots) and I doubt anyone would have cared too much. But b/c they went all in on the Trials crowd, here we are. It's just insane to me, and I can't get over how they screwed it up this badly.

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

Ya love to see it - call me a hater, and I absolutely am, but I want this to fail because they murdered Destiny for this....mediocre product. If they did a single player campaign, did the whole loot grind with both PVP/PVE with Marathon, etc. I wouldn't hate it, but killing Destiny for a niche within a niche is so stupid.

I feel ya, I want it to fail badly.. I feel for the fans that enjoy it but a game that I thought was one of the more special games in history was abandoned basically for this and it sucks.

 

[Pollux]

I feel ya, I want it to fail badly.. I feel for the fans that enjoy it but a game that I thought was one of the more special games in history was abandoned basically for this and it sucks.

NOTHING hits like peak Destiny, and that fucking sucks.

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

NOTHING hits like peak Destiny, and that fucking sucks.

Was quite a time man, I definitely miss it

 

[Hollywood Hitman]

If you skip ahead to where Joe and them talk marathon... Just listening to Joe talk about how cryo is and the way this game plays and it's sweaty nature hahaha it literally is a fucking genre for masochists, it really is

 

[themonk]

They're getting desperate now, removing regional matchmaking. I know people in New Zealand are taking 15+ minutes to find a match at this point.

If steam numbers are real you should have no problem finding matches I have a feeling these numbers are fake as hell.

 

[themonk]

If you skip ahead to where Joe and them talk marathon... Just listening to Joe talk about how cryo is and the way this game plays and it's sweaty nature hahaha it literally is a fucking genre for masochists, it really is

I love the game mode I just think marathon is them trying to casualties the genre which is the main problem it doesn't attract the core player base…..

 

[StreetsofBeige]

If steam numbers are real you should have no problem finding matches I have a feeling these numbers are fake as hell.

I think the problem is more for console players in low user base areas. Skimming forums, console players doing crossplay on/off is a risky move. On hand, they want it off so they avoid PC gamers. But what happens is the matchmaking time goes through the roof so they need to turn it on. I dont think Steam users are in that kind of situation.

Also the steam numbers might be fudged too. No proof, but someone on Steam forums made a thread noting when the servers are down for maintenance both times the number of gamers still logged in as CCU were about 2500 each time. So even when the peak CCUs dropped in the second server maintenance, the low point when servers were down for gamers was still some reason about 2500 like the first server downtime.

Another guy said that is odd because when Final Fantasy was down for server maintenance, the CCUs dropped to 100. So why is Marathon still 2500?

Some people speculate Bungie has 2500 bots they paid for to keep logged in.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Late nite low should be about 15k. It's possible it may break to the 14s.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Make note if you sign into Steamdb using your Steam login, you can download all the data in an excel. It even includes avg hourly gamers. And today, Marathon avg hourly gamers about 30k. It's dropping per hour as each day brings the avg down.

That data shows old data from a week out in hourly rows, but for recent weekly data in 10 minute increments.

So if you ever want to fully analyze data for any game, log in, go to Charts and click the download arrow. The time stamp they use is UTC time. You can see the exact interval the daily high of 44,371 was at 1:50 UTC

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

Make note if you sign into Steamdb using your Steam login, you can download all the data in an excel. It even includes avg hourly gamers. And today, Marathon avg hourly gamers about 30k. It's dropping per hour as late night comes in.

That data shows old data from a week out in hourly rows, but for recent weekly data in 10 minute increments.

So if you ever want to fully analyze data for any game, log in, go to Charts and click the download arrow. The time stamp they use is UTC time.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

 

[Cakeboxer]

If this keeps going, this thread will eventually have more posts than the game has players.

 

[Roman Empire]

Oof, 44k peak is bad when it hit 56k yesterday. I think some just saw what the endgame is with Cryo Archive and ditched the game as it's pretty unforgiving on that map. Casuals are running from it and Bungie will not have enough of a crowd with only sweats. It will enter a death spiral.

 

[Mr.ODST]

The copium on here hoping Sony go back to making Single Player games if Marathon fails, they have been killing off single player studios .... unfortunatley this is the world we live in where GAAS is the absolute money maker, its shit but thats the industry now.

 

[Life Diff]

Really don't get the hate for marathon at all and hoping the concurrents go down is weird behaviour. I never thought I would dig an extraction shooter but playing this the past week has been such a blast. The tense standoffs and making it back to an extraction point only to find a rook or two has been waiting in an ambush is such a fun experience. I know people want Sony to stop making GAAS style games but you only need look at the top 10 games every single month in terms of revenue. That's what they're chasing, they only need one to hit big time.

I'd be honestly bummed if this game goes away, the gunplay is outstanding, maps look great and are well designed. Runs amazing on PC too, sound design is also incredible.

 

[Moridianae]

Wasn't Cryo fairly ill-recieved? It seems like it wasn't particularly good.

This reminds me of FFXIV and once-a-week raids or capping Tomestones and you're done for a week.

We'll see how this goes, but that's not a good sign.

 

[SmokSmog]

 

[Negotiator101]

85% positive is amazing

 

[Negotiator101]

The copium on here hoping Sony go back to making Single Player games if Marathon fails, they have been killing off single player studios .... unfortunatley this is the world we live in where GAAS is the absolute money maker, its shit but thats the industry now.

Agreed, but not Marathon it's unequivocally failed already, the game looked terrible from the beginning and instead of scrapping it and doing Destiny 3 they've put themselves on the chopping block.

 

[Hixxy]

Wasn't Cryo fairly ill-recieved? It seems like it wasn't particularly good.

This reminds me of FFXIV and once-a-week raids or capping Tomestones and you're done for a week.

We'll see how this goes, but that's not a good sign.

Cryo in its self is a really great map that really broadens what an extraction shooter map can be. Unfortunately it also (for me) introduces a major issue with the way Bungie are going with Marathon. I firmly believe Cryo should not have been released this early in the season, it has blown the economy apart where the rich get richer (good players / no lifers) and poor get poorer. I think we will have a situation this week where all the players that were running Cryo consistently will have so much amazing gear that they are going to stomp on all the casual's with not all of it being down to skill but having better shields etc.

Shields of become a major issue that needs solving. When Marathon first launched the ttk felt fair because everyone was on the same level (shields wise) but now that of the top players are running purple shields if you have green or heaven forbid grey, you are going to lose. And what do you get from Cryo in abundance? Purple shields…

If my prediction of what is going to happen this week, with the top players stomping all the "normal" players because of the gear they have accumulated, we could see a big exodus of players.

I've put over 100 hours into Marathon, it really is brilliant, but it also is very flawed.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Really don't get the hate for marathon at all and hoping the concurrents go down is weird behaviour. I never thought I would dig an extraction shooter but playing this the past week has been such a blast.

Oh no, he said the thing

 

[Cumulus]

It´s really gonna end up with "Hunt" numbers isn`t it....

Oh boy, I wouldn`t want to be a Bungie employee at the moment.

 

[Von Hugh]

That is so fucking bad.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Even worse, it's at 13,792.

6 am time is when things rebound for this game, so it'll start trending up all day till peak time 10 or 11 pm.

If it peaked at 44.4k yesterday, and the game is hitting new lows as cryo did zero, doing it's usual -5% weekday spiral will make this game go down to about 42k today. and if it keeps doing that till Friday/weekend rebound time, the game will definitely peak under 40k one of these weekdays.

Looking back, cryo made it worse IMO. Bungie tried its best to scam customers into lingering on not telling gamers what cryo was till the last minute. Game was still trending down, but not a big dump like this.

I think what happened is a lot of Marathon gamers stuck around, was meh about the requirements but gave it a chance. Hence the big Friday bump. The fact Saturday CCU went down and then flatlined Sunday shows it didnt retain gamers or grow it. So whether it was a normie gamer who tried it, or hardcore gamers itching for it all weekend, it looks like many tried it Friday and started bailing.

But since yesterday was such a big drop, I think what happened is a lot of normies just bailed. It's back to weekdays instead of a weekend bump and they realized that extra map is pointless for them after all. And making it worse, any really good gamers amping up on gear doing cryo just made normal matches even harder. The good gamers with stacked gear from cryo love it. So now they can slaughter the normies even better.

What Bungie can do to help alleviate this is just have Ranked Mode 24/7. No unranked or anything. The game puts everyone into a typical SBMM system like other games so the good gamers stick together and the crappy gamers do too.

BUT, there's a key difference. In other games if you die in either mode who really cares. You respawn for the 18th time and lose nothing. In extraction games, you lose your gear. So they cant apply ranked all the time or else it'll piss off the good players whining why they got to always play against other good gamers because they'll lose their good items. Unless they want to play a crappy loadout which defeats the purpose of getting good gear to dominate. And because Marathon has smaller maps than ARC or Tarkov, the game has way more COD-ish gunfights, so you kind of need good gear to beat better players in the same SBMM algorithm. You already get some people in COD who hate SBMM when you got nothing to lose except a shittier k/d playing against equal players. Now imagine that in COD, but adding in losing your fav gun or killstreak. Some people would hate it.

They can also just make cryo available all the time and adjust it based on whose in it with little/no restrictions. If a solo level 1 guy with a shit gun wants to try it go ahead. The game adjusts the lobby to have similar players and the bots and loot are shit. A team of awesome players with great gear is harder to get in with requirements, but they get matched up with similar great opponents but the cryo run has tougher bots and awesome loot. But Bungie prefers to skew the game to hardcore gamers.

So Bungie is kind of trapped what to do. Growing the user base is going to be very hard (aside from price drops or F2P etc...) due to the nature of the game. But because the game is structured in a harder way, they dont want to piss off the hardcore gamers.

 

[Guilty_AI]

unfortunatley this is the world we live in where GAAS is the absolute money maker, its shit but thats the industry now.

Is what investors try make others believe, but the reality is that only a very, very low percentage of GAAS manage to become such absolute money makers. The vast majority either flops or, in the second best case scenario, can only bring as much money as a traditional, lower profile, release would.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Is what investors try make others believe, but the reality is that only a very, very low percentage of GAAS manage to become such absolute money makers. The vast majority either flops or, in the second best case scenario, can only bring as much money as a traditional, lower profile, release would.

Exactly.

Problem with investors and studios is they think they can all hit the bullseye. If you give them enough time and money, they'll eventually hit it.

Vast majority wont. And as people say regarding customer time and money, it's physically impossible for tons of companies to rake it in. That bullseye spot is only so big to fit darts. You'd need some of them to drop to the floor before any new ones can land. But everyone tries for the GAAS bullseye even though the spot is pretty maxed out. They see a sliver of open space and think they can land a perfect shot in.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Game is dropping so fast, it's peak low is now 90th. Almost off the top 100.

Historically, this game during launch days when it had highest CCU would have a rank of about 15th during peak time and the bottom might still be around 30-40th. I dont remember exactly, but pretty close to that. Then it'd get worse bottoming at 50th, 60th, 70th etc....

As it trends down, so do the hourly rankings. It's never this low at 90th.

Haha. Hey I was right. Days ago I said at some point due to trending Legends of Idleon would pass it. Yup.

 

[cormack12]

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Make note it's another weekly server maintenance morning.

Servers down from 8 to 11 am EST, so they'll be down in about an hour.

 

[cormack12]

So realistically gaf fam, and guardian monke guy. What number does the steam ccu get to before the game becomes near enough to dead in matchmaking?

 

[Guilty_AI]

"Hey guys, CCU doesn't actually mean anything you know?"
"My god, you're such no-life losers to be paying attention to a graph like this"
"QUIT HAVING FUN"

 

[The Cartographer]

I think people need to stop grasping at straws with this steam reviews thing as well. Nightreign has 87% positive reviews and the problems that game has with repetition is insane. In fact I'd say it's getting carried due to the association of FROM, in the same way Marathon is being carried with the association to Bungie. All it proves is that they have evangelist fanbases who would buy turds from the devs and display them on their mantle.

The current players who like the game need to stop deluding themselves that there are 50k secret players to onboard that just need to play it for ten hours and unlock faction rewards to acquire the taste for the genre. The game was free for 4 days. The game has an accelerated bleed rate since its cherry on the top was dropped.

None of that stops you liking the game, or even invalidates your opinion that it is a good game, serving a niche audience. But the genre is not popular and the format that Bungie has chosen has not gripped players. It hasn't enticed new players and it's losing its own audience day by day.

Bungie are already looking at ways to casualise the game, but prior to release they focused on all the whining about proximity chat, solo mode etc. All the wrong things that most people could see if they wanted to diversify this audience. I think it's too far gone now, unless they do something where they release a season roadmap and have things like other modes dropped etc. to have a second release.

It may stick around for a while of it settles at 20/25k but then is the cost of devs, updates and maintenance really breaking even? How many shit passes and skins will they actually sell at that point.

That's total bullshit on Nightreign. Insane repetition? From managed to create an amazingly varied and completely random game system that lets players run completely different sorties everytime they play. Moreover the relics system allows players to completely wild and respec characters to create builds that shouldn't really work but somehow they do. And if you somehow get bored of using your favorite characters you can just switch to others that you barely use; going from Avenger to Guardian is almost like playing a completely different game!

 

[Sohurmk833]

The copium on here hoping Sony go back to making Single Player games if Marathon fails, they have been killing off single player studios .... unfortunatley this is the world we live in where GAAS is the absolute money maker, its shit but thats the industry now.

Money maker? Sony has lost north of 4 billion on GaaS by now.