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Marathon approaching 15k CCU low (sponsored by coachmcguirk91 - still having a blast)

Arsic said:
My mind is baffled by those who get a chubby that want it to fail and Bungie be shut down.

I totally get not being into the art, or the genre, or feeling (me included) why Bungie didn't include a campaign and pve firefight like mode which is their bread and butter.

This game would've been a real winner with a full blown campaign added to flesh out this wonderful lore.
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Unfortunately for not fault of bungie or marathon this game/studio became the pinnacle of the gaas strategy/push by Sony ... for Sony fans pissed about this whole thing and feeling that this strategy fucked up this gen (which it did) seeing marathon fail is the ultimate "boss" .. it would be the final nail on the coffin of sony gaas shift.

If this will hold true or not .. it remains to be seen.. but the ill feeling towards marathon comes from the idea that if it fails, gaas fails, sony push fails... its over. And then Sony can comeback to its former self.
 
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Bernardougf said:
Unfortunately for not fault of bungie or marathon this game/studio became the pinnacle of the gaas strategy/push by Sony ... for Sony fans pissed about this whole thing and feeling that this strategy fucked up this gen (which it did) seeing marathon fail is the ultimate "boss" .. it would be the final nail on the coffin of sony gaas shift.

If this is will hold true or not .. it remains to be seen.. but the ill feeling towards marathon comes from the idea that if it fails, gaas fails, sony push fails... its over. And then Sony can comeback to its former self.
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Bernardougf said:
Unfortunately for not fault of bungie or marathon this game/studio became the pinnacle of the gaas strategy/push by Sony ... for Sony fans pissed about this whole thing and feeling that this strategy fucked up this gen (which it did) seeing marathon fail is the ultimate "boss" .. it would be the final nail on the coffin of sony gaas shift.

If this will hold true or not .. it remains to be seen.. but the ill feeling towards marathon comes from the idea that if it fails, gaas fails, sony push fails... its over. And then Sony can comeback to its former self.
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Pretty much this. I've never been a huge Bungie fan but they could've spent the last 5 years working on something actually interesting with a story mode and arena multiplayer.

Instead we got a garbage collection simulator where all the garbage you collect can be stolen before you finish the game, and every 3 months you lose your garbage and all your progress. With a horrific neon colour palette.
 
Arsic said:
I hope I'm not being included in whoever is doing this. I imagine it's men in boxes who I have muted on here lol.

I'd like the game to succeed and I've had a lot of fun with it but it's no secret this shit could be dead in a few weeks unless Bungie performs a miracle to inject a mass flood of players.
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you're fine again no hate to the people who actually like the game.
it's just that men in box is just coping way too hard.
 
Zacfoldor said:
Honeymoon phase is over starting today. That's for sure.
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It's funny the core things to fix are small and easy but it doesn't change the destination of the game.

Unless Sony says to Bungie go add some pve stuff and a campaign within a year and a half… what's the point?

Nothing iterated on now will make a mass flood of casuals pick it up.
 
Zacfoldor said:
Honeymoon phase is over starting today. That's for sure.
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Yeah discourse on the game is far more dire even on forums that were initially positive and then sympathetic. Game is still hemorrhaging players. Forget initial development cost, there is no way this game is covering current overhead for Bumgie with these numbers even with the most generous math.

Edit: I hope the defense force is buying all the cosmetics.
 
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HeisenbergFX4 said:
You nailed it on COD SBMM, it swings too wildly

I know in COD if I get 3 or 4 good matches I am artificially going to be brought down to earth and fast, facing people I should never be in the same lobby with

When I played a lot of Rocket League I would dance between Champion and high level Diamond but it was much more gradual when I would see superior players

Another pitfall for CODs SBMM is the reverse boosting you would run into so people would get bot lobbies

I admit even when I started getting insane lobbies it was time for me to practice weapons that were crazy hard to do and I would go 3-15 say for 4 or 5 matches than back to easy lobbies
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Rocket League has fewer players in the match, and much greater skill expression compared to COD. It makes it quite a bit easier for SBMM to do its job. I do miss the days of hard rank resets in Rocket League where in the first week of a season I'd get matched with/against pro players. The SBMM would still eventually do its job, it just added a lot of color to the early season.

I don't even know what COD is trying to do these days, I guess they look at KD now? One problem with COD is most of the time most of the players aren't making an honest effort to try to win games. Hard to do effective MMR when half the players' win condition is "I got muh 4.0 k/d camping an irrelevant lane while we lost the actual game miserably".
 
2 pm completed hour. Maintenance was over hours ago.

Compared to yesterday (Tue vs Mon): 24k vs 24.1k (-0.1k or -0.4%)

Yesterday's peak was 34.1k. If it holds all day, the peak tonight will be 34k. We'll see how it goes. I dont think it'll hold to this as last time there's a rush in the afternoon as I think some gamers are just clustering togather to play as the servers were down or hours, then it falls off. I'll stick to the usual -5% by day's end when the US peak happens. So about 32.5k.
 
Avid Reading Horse said:
I don't even know what COD is trying to do these days, I guess they look at KD now? One problem with COD is most of the time most of the players aren't making an honest effort to try to win games. Hard to do effective MMR when half the players' win condition is "I got muh 4.0 k/d camping an irrelevant lane while we lost the actual game miserably".
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IMO, I think for COD, K/D is the best measurement of skill ranking.

Ya, I guess the algorithm could try analyzing your W/L and how many capture and defend pts you do etc.... but the games are focused so much on pure run and gun killing to win in any mode and the game's weapons, killstreaks and perks are pretty balanced and open for all to unlock . The shittiest gamer in the world will eventually hit level 60 or 70 unlocking everything but certain attachments goals to meet.

Games like Marathon critically need SBMM of some kind 24/7. Not just because of pure skill and stat gaps, but players can have shitty loadouts or uber gear making the gaps even bigger. That makes it even worse. At least in COD, anyone whose pretty good in shooters starting as a Level 1 noob with default loadouts can still do well. Some of the best guns are actually default guns IMO! It should be much tougher for a noob in an extraction game that has to go against team based mechanics and opponents with decked out loadouts. SBMM would help solve this as much as possible as the good players with stacked gear and crappy players with shitty loadouts stick to their own lobbies.

The steamrollers will hate SBMM, but the regular fans will appreciate it. Marathon is a hardcore game, so it even has hardcore extra modes/maps like Ranked and Cryo, but for standard matches it seems everyone gets thrown together like a free for all. Marathon is supposed to have some kind of MM based on level. Makes no sense. That would be like COD grouping people of similar character level, but some players are great, but some are crap. It just so happens at that moment they kind of got the same level. So they are put in the same match. Weird way to MM.

No wonder so many gamers complain about Marathon lobbies. Some are getting thrashed, and these kinds of games are designed with nothing else to really do. There's no SP story mode, no other modes, and no offline bot mode to practice or have fun on your own. Making it worse for Marathon, they add a special Ranked mode and Cryo. And these are geared towards trios in harder matches. So it leaves the casual fan with even less content to try.
 
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HeisenbergFX4 said:
You nailed it on COD SBMM, it swings too wildly

I know in COD if I get 3 or 4 good matches I am artificially going to be brought down to earth and fast, facing people I should never be in the same lobby with

When I played a lot of Rocket League I would dance between Champion and high level Diamond but it was much more gradual when I would see superior players

Another pitfall for CODs SBMM is the reverse boosting you would run into so people would get bot lobbies

I admit even when I started getting insane lobbies it was time for me to practice weapons that were crazy hard to do and I would go 3-15 say for 4 or 5 matches than back to easy lobbies
Click to expand...
To me SBMM is actually easy to do. Problem is games like COD take it too far with their bogus positive engagement matches for the first few to get you jacked up winning, then toss you to extra hard lobbies just because you went on a win streak with good KD.

All a game has to do is look at your profile and immediately put you into buckets when there's a decent range of players that might be a bit better and a bit worse. You arent getting equalized matches. And also, once in a lobby the system allows players to stick to a lobby or 5 or 10 matches if they want. Then the algorithm recalculates your SBMM spot. But COD does it after every match bogging down the menus and youre never going to remember or find friends to join if everyone is whisked away to a new lobby of players every match.

It should be like old NHL online leagues. Not sure what it's like now, but back then you play online with your team and start from the bottom division. The better you win, you move up in the division. If you keep winning, you move up a division etc.... You dont start out raw, win a couple and suddenly youre plunked in division 3 out of 50. It should give you time to grind it out and earn your spot.

It's like sports. You were a player. I follow hockey the most, but based on performance you got the 4 lines of forwards. Skill guys on line 1, shitty grinder guys on line 4. If a team still has an old school enforcer he'll be line 4. Line 2 is a also a scoring line and line 3 is a grinder line that is better than 4. Coaches got set lines that hold pretty well for the most part. But if a 3/4 player gets hot a few games, nobody suddenly puts him on line 1. And if a line 1 guy with great stats is in a slump, no coach dumps him on the 4th line playing half the minutes. But if players are trending a while better or worse, then ya the coach might adjust a guy up or down 1 line. You dont constantly flip flop players different lines every shift or game just because he had some lucky hot or cold streaks here or there. The guy's overall performance and stats will give an idea where he should be at all times, unless he truly breaks out good or bad for long stretches of time.
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
2 pm completed hour. Maintenance was over hours ago.

Compared to yesterday (Tue vs Mon): 24k vs 24.1k (-0.1k or -0.4%)

Yesterday's peak was 34.1k. If it holds all day, the peak tonight will be 34k. We'll see how it goes. I dont think it'll hold to this as last time there's a rush in the afternoon as I think some gamers are just clustering togather to play as the servers were down or hours, then it falls off. I'll stick to the usual -5% by day's end when the US peak happens. So about 32.5k.
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Yeah after each maintenance period the numbers stay high compared to the previous day (in terms of not as much of a decline). Points towards there being a (small) audience that wants to play for a set amount of hours a day and they still play all those hours even after a maintenance window forces them to play later.
 
MMaRsu said:
Like i said before game is dead and done within two months
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Marathon players may not want to read this.

Bungie made a hardcore game in an already niche genre, KNOWING they have a pipeline incapable of reacting quickly and knowing that can't possibly be what Sony was bargaining for. That the player drop still hasn't stabilized, streaming numbers should have stemmed off at 50k and looked like they would for a time but they have kept falling and the rate they are still falling is beyond concerning at this point. It has happened quickly but seeing it today it is not just "not looking good" anymore it's a disaster. The playerbase is turning all at once from full defense to complaints and all we have on the immediate horizon is a balance patch in 2 weeks. From what I've read cheating, believe it or not, also seems to be a concern for the playerbase(though I'm not sure how widespread this is).

At this point how does it break out? They can't make a SP campaign quick enough and doing so or even introducing SBMM would piss off the existing playerbase who is signaling they need help but can't pinpoint exactly what needs to be done. The only thing people seem to agree could help isn't marketable. Adding bot runners would help but also would not draw new players in.

The game should just focus on serving the people who already like it and forget about the more casual audience. It's the only way to proceed but also not likely the way they are leaning. It won't make the game get big fast or even medium term and probably not ever. Their matchmaking and cryo archive have been met with consternation. They have no path forward but to grind. Aztecross is basically single handedly holding the game up on streaming and it has dire streaming numbers too. I don't see any good news here. Oh brother, I never really expected the Marathon haters to be right but I'm seeing it now. Bungie made a game they wanted to play but the appeal is too niche to be evergreen.
 
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Zacfoldor said:
Marathon players may not want to read this.

Bungie made a hardcore game in an already niche genre, KNOWING they have a pipeline incapable of reacting quickly and knowing that can't possibly be what Sony was bargaining for. That the player drop still hasn't stabilized, streaming numbers should have stemmed off at 50k and looked like they would for a time but they have kept falling and the rate they are still falling is beyond concerning at this point. It has happened quickly but seeing it today it is not just "not looking good" anymore it's a disaster. The playerbase is turning all at once from full defense to complaints and all we have on the immediate horizon is a balance patch in 2 weeks. From what I've read cheating, believe it or not, also seems to be a concern for the playerbase(though I'm not sure how widespread this is).

At this point how does it break out? They can't make a SP campaign quick enough and doing so or even introducing SBMM would piss off the existing playerbase who is signaling they need help but can't pinpoint exactly what needs to be done. The only thing people seem to agree could help isn't marketable. Adding bot runners would help but also would not draw new players in.

The game should just focus on serving the people who already like it and forget about the more casual audience. It's the only way to proceed but also not likely the way they are leaning. It won't make the game get big fast or even medium term and probably not ever. Their matchmaking and cryo archive have been met with consternation. They have no path forward but to grind. Aztecross is basically single handedly holding the game up on streaming and it has dire streaming numbers too. I don't see any good news here. Oh brother, I never really expected the Marathon haters to be right but I'm seeing it now. Bungie made a game they wanted to play but the appeal is too niche to be evergreen.
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What's crazy is if Marathon originally released in September as intended, it'd be worse. Crappier visuals, no prox chat, no solo queues, and cryo/ranked would come out 6 months later now.
 
it's really telling that Sony has not talked about the numbers yet and all we have is some stupid PR bullshit from Bungie on Twitter and blue sky.
if Sony thought the numbers were good they would be praising it with a press release.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
What's crazy is if Marathon originally released in September as intended, it'd be worse. Crappier visuals, no prox chat, no solo queues, and cryo/ranked would come out 6 months later now.
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That delay likely brought them a couple hundred thousand extra sales and a CCU start point in the 80Ks instead of the 60Ks. Was the extra six months of salary worth that?
 
5 pm completed hour.

Compared to yesterday (Tue vs Mon): 26.9k vs 27.3k (-0.4k or -1.5%)

As suspected between myself and Conflict NZ, the higher CCU rate earlier today would sink down as gamers amped up to play after servers were back on dissipate. Now were back to normal gaming among gamers not affected by early morning server shut down.

Yesterday's peak was 34.1k. If it holds all day, the peak tonight will be 33.5k. I'll stick to the usual -5% by day's end when the US peak happens so I'm not changing it last minute. So about 32.5k.
 
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10 pm completed hour. Peak final 33.8k. Looks like Marathon barely went down after all. My prediction of 32.5k was way off by 4% (or 1,300 CCU).

Compared to yesterday (Tue vs Mon): 33.8k vs 34.1k (-0.3k or -1%)

Yesterday's late night low was 10.2k. If the trend continues it should be 10.1k. Possible it may dip below 10k.
 
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Plague Doctor said:
Yeah discourse on the game is far more dire even on forums that were initially positive and then sympathetic. Game is still hemorrhaging players. Forget initial development cost, there is no way this game is covering current overhead for Bumgie with these numbers even with the most generous math.

Edit: I hope the defense force is buying all the cosmetics.
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The main problem with the store is the cosmetics are absolutely awful, so even if I wanted to support the game further, nothing on there is appealing.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
To me SBMM is actually easy to do. Problem is games like COD take it too far with their bogus positive engagement matches for the first few to get you jacked up winning, then toss you to extra hard lobbies just because you went on a win streak with good KD.

All a game has to do is look at your profile and immediately put you into buckets when there's a decent range of players that might be a bit better and a bit worse. You arent getting equalized matches. And also, once in a lobby the system allows players to stick to a lobby or 5 or 10 matches if they want. Then the algorithm recalculates your SBMM spot. But COD does it after every match bogging down the menus and youre never going to remember or find friends to join if everyone is whisked away to a new lobby of players every match.

It should be like old NHL online leagues. Not sure what it's like now, but back then you play online with your team and start from the bottom division. The better you win, you move up in the division. If you keep winning, you move up a division etc.... You dont start out raw, win a couple and suddenly youre plunked in division 3 out of 50. It should give you time to grind it out and earn your spot.

It's like sports. You were a player. I follow hockey the most, but based on performance you got the 4 lines of forwards. Skill guys on line 1, shitty grinder guys on line 4. If a team still has an old school enforcer he'll be line 4. Line 2 is a also a scoring line and line 3 is a grinder line that is better than 4. Coaches got set lines that hold pretty well for the most part. But if a 3/4 player gets hot a few games, nobody suddenly puts him on line 1. And if a line 1 guy with great stats is in a slump, no coach dumps him on the 4th line playing half the minutes. But if players are trending a while better or worse, then ya the coach might adjust a guy up or down 1 line. You dont constantly flip flop players different lines every shift or game just because he had some lucky hot or cold streaks here or there. The guy's overall performance and stats will give an idea where he should be at all times, unless he truly breaks out good or bad for long stretches of time.
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EOMM inherently doesn't work in Call of Duty because it is a casual twitchy arcade shooter where ping should always be the first consideration. If you put time into the game and get better at it, you are rewarded with a worse experience as you start getting matched with people a thousand miles away.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
10 pm completed hour. Peak final 33.8k. Looks like Marathon barely went down after all. My prediction of 32.5k was way off by 4% (or 1,300 CCU).

Compared to yesterday (Tue vs Mon): 33.8k vs 34.1k (-0.3k or -1%)

Yesterday's late night low was 10.2k. If the trend continues it should be 10.1k. Possible it may dip below 10k.
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I'm nominating you for "NeoGAF Poster of the Year 2026". You're updates on this stuff have been great. Though, would it be too annoying to track Marathons rank in Steams Top Sellers too?
 
ValiantInstance said:
EOMM inherently doesn't work in Call of Duty because it is a casual twitchy arcade shooter where ping should always be the first consideration. If you put time into the game and get better at it, you are rewarded with a worse experience as you start getting matched with people a thousand miles away.
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Crazy to say this. There isn't a studio who understands matchmaking more than the CoD teams on earth. The problem people seem to run into is that no strategy is perfect and individual preferences matter little when it comes to this topic.
 
Zacfoldor said:
At this point how does it break out?
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How did the Wright Brothers invent the aeroplane after crashing a dozen of them?

Make small but effective improvements based on data gleaned.

IMO, they need to stop feeding the high skill John Wick players (they don't like hearing this) and start feeding the low skill players.

Cryo Archive needs to be a more welcoming, compelling end game goal.

Add more effective (and fun) tools to the sandbox. Keep improving the sense of progression every season.

Bungie is a lot closer than most of you realize.
 
Avid Reading Horse said:
I don't even know what COD is trying to do these days, I guess they look at KD now? One problem with COD is most of the time most of the players aren't making an honest effort to try to win games. Hard to do effective MMR when half the players' win condition is "I got muh 4.0 k/d camping an irrelevant lane while we lost the actual game miserably".
Click to expand...

You know I was surprised when I went back to COD, they've done a good job of pushing kdr further away and just letting people play. Its still important but it's a far cry away from everyone tabbing every few seconds back in the day.


StreetsofBeige said:
The shittiest gamer in the world will eventually hit level 60 or 70 ..
Click to expand...

Can confirm
 
Marathon is boring to watch on stream because of how the cooldowns work vs other games, the ttk and the meta. It's about getting the drop and doesn't provide good firefights in the meta as regularly as other games.

The match length is also rather long which makes it more susceptible to lower player count. The game is also reliant on coms which makes high player count in other regions, ie oceanic, something that will become a point of contention.

I think streamers are rejecting it both because of the negativity but also because of what I outlined above.

Some of even the more hardcore gaas things in the game are daunting man. Like so the first several missions each week give bonus season rank right? But what if I get owned those 8 times in a row. I have wasted my bonus runs, right? Shit sucks. Even for sweats I have to imagine. That might not be how it works but another thing is it is hard as fuck to figure out how anything works just like Destiny 2. This is not intentional I almost guarantee it but it probably seems like to to those not around Bungie lately. Bungie was never able to fix onboarding in Destiny 2 either.

The beginning thought was the game got good after you got good, 20 to 50 hours, ect, but this is a larger amount of people leaving that could be accounted for by just casuals. It's everywhere that is leaking so that first thought was not correct. It isn't JUST that onboarding is broken, there is something broken in the retention mechanisms that is causing a cascading failure in the playerbase. It is not just one subset of players.

The time of worry is right after the end of season 1.

After season 1 on the first day of season 2 will be a tough day for Bungie unless they fix this now.
 
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Zacfoldor said:
Marathon is boring to watch on stream because of how the cooldowns work vs other games, the ttk and the meta. It's about getting the drop and doesn't provide good firefights in the meta as regularly as other games.

The match length is also rather long which makes it more susceptible to lower player count. The game is also reliant on coms which makes high player count in other regions, ie oceanic, something that will become a point of contention.

I think streamers are rejecting it both because of the negativity but also because of what I outlined above.

Some of even the more hardcore gaas things in the game are daunting man. Like so the first several missions each week give bonus season rank right? But what if I get owned those 8 times in a row. I have wasted my bonus runs, right? Shit sucks. Even for sweats I have to imagine. That might not be how it works but another thing is it is hard as fuck to figure out how anything works just like Destiny 2. This is not intentional I almost guarantee it but it probably seems like to to those not around Bungie lately. Bungie was never able to fix onboarding in Destiny 2 either.

The beginning thought was the game got good after you got good, 20 to 50 hours, ect, but this is a larger amount of people leaving that could be accounted for by just casuals. It's everywhere that is leaking so that first thought was not correct. It isn't JUST that onboarding is broken, there is something broken in the retention mechanisms that is causing a cascading failure in the playerbase. It is not just one subset of players.

The time of worry is right after the end of season 1.

After season 1 on the first day of season 2 will be a tough day for Bungie unless they fix this now.
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Sounds like they wanted this game to be a lifestyle to their players.
 
Men_in_Boxes said:
And yet, it won't close up shop as quickly as you think. They'll give it a 6 month runway at the absolute minimum.
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They'll make it F2P before shutting it down. On the bright side, at least they can take the W that Marathon has already outperformed both Concord and Highguard.
 
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