• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Marathon |OT| A Shell of its Former Self.

I shall come clean on some things:
-Clarky and I lost 98% of our 30+ runs today. Absolute anus blasting.
-I have either severely leveled down, all similar or lower level players have left the game, or I was doo doo all along because I couldn't clutch up at all today. Drop a pairs shields, down a guy, kill a guy, never lead to us being able to snowball the advantage.
-I am a far better solo player in general. Certain aspects I don't even think to call out because they just seem like natural things to do- take high side asap, get into a building for cover asap, shoot first before enemy can react, etc.
-I suck more at playing slow. Leads to more self frustration waiting 10 minutes and then dying versus free kit YOLO rush and go again.

—-

clarky clarky I'm not the chosen Juan. You need a better player than me to take us to dub city.

Also I'm down to 13k credits, and a joke vault. Gonna take a week of solo mode to farm 100k and good loot again without going on another ass blasting spree.
 
Arsic said:
-I have either severely leveled down, all similar or lower level players have left the game, or I was doo doo all along because I couldn't clutch up at all today. Drop a pairs shields, down a guy, kill a guy, never lead to us being able to snowball the advantage.
Click to expand...
I feel this man. Feels like I have gotten worse and everyone else has gotten better. I've never believed myself to be an amazing player, maybe average or slightly above in most games. But on here I reckon I've slipped from average to the bottom third now. Not sure what to do, keep playing and trying to make better decisions I guess. I've always thought I had a tactical outlook but now I'm not so sure /shrug
 
dreamstation said:
I feel this man. Feels like I have gotten worse and everyone else has gotten better. I've never believed myself to be an amazing player, maybe average or slightly above in most games. But on here I reckon I've slipped from average to the bottom third now. Not sure what to do, keep playing and trying to make better decisions I guess. I've always thought I had a tactical outlook but now I'm not so sure /shrug
Click to expand...

The phenomenon makes sense if MM prioritises season level. You're more likely to match against more knowledgeable players as level increases. I've definitely noticed an uptick in blue and purple teams in my matches and fewer free kits. The loot table seems more generous too.
 
^ if the MM algorithm works as intended or noobish players drop, then it's natural matches are tougher. Nothing you can really do about it.

When I got back into playing COD Black Ops 1 and World at War much later when the old games became BC on Xbox One, it was like night and day. I used to clean up when the games were much more popular on 360. I play BC with a smaller pool of gamers and looks like the noobs left to play the latest COD games, while the vets who have every map pack logged back in on Xbox One. I still did pretty good but my WL and KD noticeably dropped. So much tougher.
 
Had a handful of fun games with clarky clarky and our other friend, wouldn't say they were "successful" per se but we did exfil lol 😆 Sorry to leave the party boys, told you I had lunch duty:

p26T3nJj4rfQERXa.jpg


Bacon double cheeseburgers (Gouda & Havarti) grilled onions, European mustard, ketchup, toasted buns, think I'll skip dinner 👌
 
TheDarkPhantom said:
Had a handful of fun games with clarky clarky and our other friend, wouldn't say they were "successful" per se but we did exfil lol 😆 Sorry to leave the party boys, told you I had lunch duty:

p26T3nJj4rfQERXa.jpg


Bacon double cheeseburgers (Gouda & Havarti) grilled onions, European mustard, ketchup, toasted buns, think I'll skip dinner 👌
Click to expand...
Any excuse not to run another one. No bother TheDarkPhantom TheDarkPhantom tiped up and held the line
 
I'm jumping off Marathon, tried to get a trio play just now in the UK and waiting time is to long, crossplay full on PS5. I honestly don't think Bungie can fix the player count.
I prefer Marathon to Arc but at least on Arc I can get games.
Also people should try Hunt Showdown too, that is incredible also.
 
Last edited:
Forth said:
I'm jumping off Marathon, tried to get a trio play just now in the UK and waiting time is to long, crossplay full on PS5. I honestly don't think Bungie can fix the player count.
I prefer Marathon to Arc but at least on Arc I can get games.
Also people should try Hunt Showdown too, that is incredible also.
Click to expand...
Weird, you should find matches within a minute in that region
 
I need to watch an All 22 replay for when matching players based on Runner Level, rather than Skill Level, was talked about and decided upon at Bungie.

The sweaty lobbies problem seems to be cresting now.
 
Literally down to 165 credits lol.

Actually just sold a bunch of gold cryo keys I had on me for 2000 credits each. Will never use them anyway so I was at least able to buy a green shield again. 🥲
 
Branded said:


What the fuck is this?
Click to expand...


One thing you can do to improve your odds on the trade is pre-aim when hitting corners. Your cursor at 00:07 should be on the blue part of the wall rather than aiming at somewhere you know is safe. Your crosshair will naturally move to where the rook's head is at 00:08 letting you beam him immediately rather than needing to retrace. You can optionally pre-fire if you heard the guy there. Popping up either as you peek or after taking your first shot forces the target to re-trace aim to get headshots. It looks like he just railed you straight in the head a few times while you were stationary. #KillAllRooks.
 
Forth said:
I'm jumping off Marathon, tried to get a trio play just now in the UK and waiting time is to long, crossplay full on PS5. I honestly don't think Bungie can fix the player count.
I prefer Marathon to Arc but at least on Arc I can get games.
Also people should try Hunt Showdown too, that is incredible also.
Click to expand...
I just played a match and the MM time was like 30 sec on dire marsh and im pretty sure im in the same region as you
 
TheDarkPhantom said:
Had a handful of fun games with clarky clarky and our other friend, wouldn't say they were "successful" per se but we did exfil lol 😆 Sorry to leave the party boys, told you I had lunch duty:

p26T3nJj4rfQERXa.jpg


Bacon double cheeseburgers (Gouda & Havarti) grilled onions, European mustard, ketchup, toasted buns, think I'll skip dinner 👌
Click to expand...
Did that order come with ambulance on the side?
 
My trio matches are like 2-3 minutes in Asia daytime and 1 minute during my peak hours in Asia fwiw. My longer wait times seem to be when I have a full stack for god knows why.
 
Branded said:


What the fuck is this?
Click to expand...

Shots 1-5: Clearly missed.

Shots 6-9: Missed due to recoil (bad spray control).

Shots 10-11: Very close, but recoil and inaccuracy make these reasonable misses.

Shot 12: Likely didn't actually fire because you were already dead.
 
Last edited:
Wiping a squad on Cryo:



Now, story time because this run was like a movie. We start the match, I bring in a key for Vault 1 since I have three and say fuck it, let's give a try. I tell these 2 Chinese guys our goal is the get to the vault, play it real cool, don't engage unless necessary. These two enter Control and go down within 1 minute, well done. One guy disconnects, I slowly make my way towards other dudes corpse, being camped by full squad , they open fire on me, I pop smoke and go down, manage to self rez, still alive.

Cue a full 5 minutes of cat & mouse of this squad trying to hunt me down in Steerage, they never see me once though I see two of them, stay real frosty, biding my time. I hear them engage with UESC, I take the opportunity to rez the dude who is still waiting around. Midway through the rez I hear footsteps running towards me, pop smoke and pull out that thang, boom boom in the smoke, I drop a purple shielded destroyer, they are firing wildly, I'm letting my shit ring off, more smoke dropped, they have the sense to realize they don't want it with an invisible Assassin wielding a shotty in smoke, they leave, I revive my teammate.

The squad I smoke must be the same squad because I remember both a Destroyer and Triage, revenge is a dish best served cold. Unfortunately we run out of time, can't find the final exfil, die in the cold floor of Control holding a Vault key and a Dormitory key I picked up during the run but man it was pure cinema.
 
Last edited:
Had a lot of epic items so decided to do a cryo run. With the current meta, i dont think its a fun map at all. Loot is great, but pvp is really boring here
 
Branded said:
Went from 165 credits to 8000 in one match. Can't complain there.
Click to expand...

How did you get so low in the first place? I've done 20+ Cryo runs, each time with loadouts valued between 8k-12k, only exfil'd 3 times and with loot that wasn't far superior to stuff I've gotten in Pinwheel, still have 380K in the bank and vault at 250K 🤔
 
Ran like 10 matches on outpost w randos yesterday only exfilled 2 or 3 times. Seems like almost every match we get ganked by chucky wannabe rooks running around knifing everyone taking no damage while being shot by three people at once. The very last match i played yesterday me and randos raided pinwheel commander wing etc killed off two teams after a hard fight near exfil... only to be ambushed while we were healing up by literally no less than 4 or 5 rooks that were teaming up on us. So frustrating. We had killed some solo rooks along the way too. Should be a limit to how many rooks can spawn on a map during a run cause that just sucked.

Later in the day I had a match w randos amd happened to have a perimeter storage key from a previous match. A teammate got super excited said he'd never been in a room like that before. We exfilled w tons if loot. He added me to friends list. We ran a couple more matches together... on the third match he seemed to be running behind constantly and started complaining his fingers weren't fast enough and he wasnt getting loot.nsaid he was just starting out in the game. He was a level 40, I am a 33. My headset battery half dies or something I could hear audio but mic wasnt working so couldn't communicate so I put my headset on the charger to try and fix it. Their audio was super muffled on the TV. Got to exfil and this guy started complaining he got no loot amd he couldn't play the game anymore cause we're all a bunch of loot goblins. That part I heard on the TV. I stood in front if him and dumped all my blue and purple items and he thanked me but sounded upset. After round ended I found that he defriended me. I sent a friend request to him again to try and explain that I couldn't hear shit during the match (I am legit not greedy) and he never accepted. Really weird...
 
Luipadre said:
Had a lot of epic items so decided to do a cryo run. With the current meta, i dont think its a fun map at all. Loot is great, but pvp is really boring here
Click to expand...
It's the worst map in the game (by far).

The higher loot quality, higher difficulty, and limited access prevented a lot of people from recognizing that.

I think it still has a place in the game but I'm hoping S2 has an all new, much better end game map.
 
Apologies fellas. Had more than a few last night. Ironically as my wine intake went up, so did my exfil rate.

Normal service can resume.
 
3 successful Cryo exfils in a row with randoms, last one we didn't even encounter any other squads and I found myself a gold implant 🥳

1XRdq3JOZUuWrGe2.jpg
MtxnzNb52huoWCMk.jpg
iF302hh3tQ0zMB1k.jpg
LuUGH1fVuoFCettU.jpg



Edit: make that *four* successful exfils in a row, on fire tonight but I need some rest, see you next week Cryo 👋
 
Last edited:


Could have been an interesting article but it pins the potential turnaround on...

- Do another free weekend.
- User & critic reviews are good.
- Hate campaign is dying.
 
Men_in_Boxes said:


Could have been an interesting article but it pins the potential turnaround on...

- Do another free weekend.
- User & critic reviews are good.
- Hate campaign is dying.
Click to expand...


The article aligns with what has been said in this thread all along. Concord failed because it was a bad game with an uninspired design style. Highguard failed to find an audience because its underlying concept of mashing three different game types in one round was too weird. Neither game had a meaningful foundation to iterate from. Marathon is an excellent game mechanically which has found a core audience. SoT went from being a failure to one of Microsoft's most enduring modern games and Siege became one of the most played shooters after ubi went back to the drawing board to fix its launch issues. Everything is in place for Bungie to build and grow marathon. Sony's patience is the only real wildcard.
 
Just ran a ton of outpost this weekend w randos. Pretty much facing shotguns. Snipers. Thermal everything. Knives. Rooks. Frustrating experience. Still fun but this game mentally exhausts me.
 
Sorry Lem! Dad duty awaits.

—-

Today was a "ok" day. Won some ranked games, got some upgrades on the skill tree, and am level 92. Hoping to ding 100 this week, and maybe hit silver 3?
 
LyricalShrike said:
The article aligns with what has been said in this thread all along. Concord failed because it was a bad game with an uninspired design style. Highguard failed to find an audience because its underlying concept of mashing three different game types in one round was too weird. Neither game had a meaningful foundation to iterate from. Marathon is an excellent game mechanically which has found a core audience. SoT went from being a failure to one of Microsoft's most enduring modern games and Siege became one of the most played shooters after ubi went back to the drawing board to fix its launch issues. Everything is in place for Bungie to build and grow marathon. Sony's patience is the only real wildcard.
Click to expand...
Right. I'm just saying the article had no real solutions and I don't think a free weekend is going to do anything right now.
 
Men_in_Boxes said:
Right. I'm just saying the article had no real solutions and I don't think a free weekend is going to do anything right now.
Click to expand...
You also don't play the game and want games to actively support your admittedly poor standard of play so what you say carries less weight than a plate of raw veal.
 
Did they up the rook count on Outpost last week? All freakng weekend it was insane. I was just looting low level stuff to sell and get some money banked. Outpost in particular was just a lot of camping by teams.
 
Last edited:
Sushigod7 said:
Did they up the rook count on Outpost last week? All freakng weekend it was insane. I was just loot low level stuff to sell and get some money banked. Outpost in particular was just a lot of camping by teams to.
Click to expand...
Seems the same today. As a Rook myself took out 5 just hanging around flight control.
 
I think I'm in a position to finally challenge Cryo Archive this weekend. I'm stocked up on blue/purple implants from spending my time in the Dire Marshes Mines doing quests. The map becomes manageable as long as accept never crossing north to south.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Marathon had a budget of >$200M
2 3 4 5 6
299
3K
yurinka replied
Marathon Developer Insights | Runner Shells
15
785
clarky replied
Marathon Developer Insights - Runner Shells + Bonus Soundtrack
2
74
2K
RPS37 replied
Marathon Season 2 Trailers
2
76
484
Zacfoldor replied
  • Poll
Which Marathon Runner Shells are you most likely to play?
10
504
L*][*N*K replied
Top Bottom