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[diffusionx]

starting to look like even people who really like the game don't see the point of investing more time in it.

 

[falconhoof]

I saw Shroud uploaded a video of his group beating the Cryo boss first time. I didn't know he was playing again as he's been playing Crimson Desert. After beating it he said "I'm done now, probably won't play any more"

I don't know if there was any expectation of him playing this for long. Quick review of his VODs and it looks like he played about 14 days plus some for things like server slam. For comparison, he has about 40 days streaming ARC.

 

[HRK69]

I saw Shroud uploaded a video of his group beating the Cryo boss first time. I didn't know he was playing again as he's been playing Crimson Desert. After beating it he said "I'm done now, probably won't play any more"

I mainly watch Summit1G but I follow a few creators who are really into extraction shooters as well.

Funny enough, none of them are playing Marathon right now

 

[PeteBull]

I am so baffled by their lack of care for destiny 3... The fucking series has lasted over 10 years, what exactly does a game have to do to merit a 3rd installment? We get so many sequels, how does a game like that not justify a green light? D3 if they were to shove all their focus into it, would make bucks... We're taking just get the best writer's, get the best pvp team, just go nuts...the game would sell through the roof

To make Destiny 3 bungie would have to put actual effort, tons of it, huge singleplayer campaign with variety of visuals/animations, proper pve coop modes etc.
Why put that much effort if they can lazy-off at making marathon with probably 4-5x less work and still get similar salaries, even months after launch, its simple profit deal like our antinostradamus michael pachter used to say

There are none or barely any ppl with purpose in the studio, and if they are, their purpose isnt to make best quality product anymore, or maybe they arent at the top positions aka cant make decisions
That devstudio isnt passionate group of talented friends, they are simply zombie-coworkers in a corpo now, pretending to do their best while in reality doing bare minimum just to clock out day after day and siphon nice 6 or sometimes even 7figures salary

Hell i dont even blame them coz given the choice i would likely act same way- halfass ur work for 6-7years at 7figures salary then retire at 40-50yo after that- that way u arent sacrificing ur physical/mental health, family time/social life and u still get max possible profits, sounds like perfect job and im jelly af tbh
There is difference between hungry wolf climbing to the top by any means nessecary and fat lazy cat that already achieved all it wanted

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

Damn it's really crashing out now. 16k on a standard afternoon?

Thought it'd take months to get here.

 

[BurningNad]

Damn it's really crashing out now. 16k on a standard afternoon?

Thought it'd take months to get here.

oof I better get my blasts in while I can still blast

 

[Kronark]

You can if Bungie and Sony said "Marathon won't be ready until 2027" and Sony said, "Let's release it in Early Access but not call it Early Access."

Sony could have easily delayed this another 6 - 12 months, but they wouldn't have gotten the 1.2 million in sales revenue and they wouldn't have access to the highest quality player engagment data, which is better for development.

It's something to consider.

The idea behind early access is that you get a limited audience in and then use that capital / engagement to shape your game direction. The key there though is the limited audience because you really only usually get one shot to make an impression on people in most cases. With smaller titles it's very easy to slip under the radar and then build word of mouth as you build positive engagement. It's why so many indie games on steam somehow have 90%+ positive ratings with very small communities, they found a niche and built around it. Bungie doesn't have that stealth factor at their size. Even if they had done zero marketing and just put the game out there for sale randomly with an early access tag, people were going to be talking about this game, it was going to make headlines, and people were going to judge it for what it was at that launch. If Bungie really wanted to be early access, they needed be VERY public about that standard, take feedback very seriously, and should probably have gone early access in 2023/2024 so they could actually make large scale design changes, instead of minor polish / balance / QoL tweaks at the last minute.

I still think the best Bungie could have done was workshop Marathon internally and delay it. They had the resources and attention needed to get players to engage with their game behind closed doors for feedback. The problem I think is that they already did that for a year and still ended up releasing the game as is. It kind of needs to be understood that Marathon got feedback repeatedly and still ended up being the product it is today, for better or worse. What Marathon is, is what Bungie intended it to be. It's hard for me to say that early access would have been some kind of magic bullet. They were already getting feedback in 2024 that people were not loving the game. I can't really come to any conclusions about what went wrong during that internal feedback process though. It could be that the core concept of a mainstream mass market extraction shooter is flawed, regardless of any minor tweaks Bungie made. It could be that Bungie got a lot of valuable feedback and ignored it because they knew better (This would not surprise me as an ex-Destiny player). Maybe they needed the wake up call of launching to get just how bad the situation was so real change can happen from here on out.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

I saw Shroud uploaded a video of his group beating the Cryo boss first time. I didn't know he was playing again as he's been playing Crimson Desert. After beating it he said "I'm done now, probably won't play any more"

I don't know if there was any expectation of him playing this for long. Quick review of his VODs and it looks like he played about 14 days plus some for things like server slam. For comparison, he has about 40 days streaming ARC.

#payToplay

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

You can if Bungie and Sony said "Marathon won't be ready until 2027" and Sony said, "Let's release it in Early Access but not call it Early Access."

Sony could have easily delayed this another 6 - 12 months, but they wouldn't have gotten the 1.2 million in sales revenue and they wouldn't have access to the highest quality player engagment data, which is better for development.

It's something to consider.

There is nothing to consider as delaying it another 12 months was not saving this game without a massive overhaul almost to the point of starting over

This dude knew they were cooked

 

[Kronark]

I am so baffled by their lack of care for destiny 3... The fucking series has lasted over 10 years, what exactly does a game have to do to merit a 3rd installment? We get so many sequels, how does a game like that not justify a green light? D3 if they were to shove all their focus into it, would make bucks... We're taking just get the best writer's, get the best pvp team, just go nuts...the game would sell through the roof

It's simple. They don't have the money.

Activision bankrolled Destiny 1 and 2 with their support studios High Moon and Vicarious Visions. Bungie "freed" themselves from Activision after Forsaken and then gave us excuse after excuse for why Shadowkeep had to be such an underwhelming expansion that reused a D1 map, and they only got stingier from there. We just got gaslit as a community "We know you paid $100 for the expansion + pass this year but we really can't afford to make a single crucible map or core armor set this year... Please understand.". Any money Destiny was making seemed to get funnelled into Marathon or other projects in the background. Destiny 3 would be a huge undertaking for Bungie to tackle alone given how bad their content produced per dollar spent on labour ratio is. They're terribly inefficient.

The only way a Destiny 3 is happening is if Papa Sony believes in it at this point and offers up the capital to make it happen.

 

[Plague Doctor]

There is nothing to consider as delaying it another 12 months was not saving this game without a massive overhaul almost to the point of starting over

This dude knew they were cooked

This looks like Rich Evans, the sweaty bad ending.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

The idea behind early access is that you get a limited audience in and then use that capital / engagement to shape your game direction. The key there though is the limited audience because you really only usually get one shot to make an impression on people in most cases.

Isn't the overwhelming issue with Marathon right now it's "limited audience"?

If you look at Marathon through an Early Access lense, it definitely reframes things more positively.

With smaller titles it's very easy to slip under the radar and then build word of mouth as you build positive engagement.

Actually, we've seen a ton of Early Access games blow up in popularity. Fortnite held on to its Early Access label well into 2020. It grew substantially over its first 3 years on the market.

It's why so many indie games on steam somehow have 90%+ positive ratings with very small communities, they found a niche and built around it. Bungie doesn't have that stealth factor at their size. Even if they had done zero marketing and just put the game out there for sale randomly with an early access tag, people were going to be talking about this game, it was going to make headlines, and people were going to judge it for what it was at that launch. If Bungie really wanted to be early access, they needed be VERY public about that standard, take feedback very seriously, and should probably have gone early access in 2023/2024 so they could actually make large scale design changes, instead of minor polish / balance / QoL tweaks at the last minute.

I don't think this is accurate. Too many popular Early Access games grow over the long term. Marathon and Sony sold 1.2 million copies and now they're working with mass user data to improve the game. The distinction between Early Access and Full Release for a game like Marathon is almost meaningless because they both result in full development.

Paul Tassi, who's been reputable, has said nothing has changed post launch and Bungie is working full steam ahead on future seasons.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

There is nothing to consider as delaying it another 12 months was not saving this game without a massive overhaul almost to the point of starting over.

That's the overwhelmingly thought from the Marathon haters.

I'm skeptical.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Actually, we've seen a ton of Early Access games blow up in popularity. Fortnite held on to its Early Access label well into 2020. It grew substantially over its first 3 years on the market.

And Fortnite started off as Save The World and didn't blow up until they changed course

 

[diffusionx]

I still think the best Bungie could have done was workshop Marathon internally and delay it.

they did that… multiple times. Let's face it this project was misguided and the people who designed it lacked understanding of the market and who they were designing it for. Which is funny considering Bungie was purchased partly for their knowledge of gaashit. They thought there was a large market for sweaty tarkov gameplay but tarkov was too unpolished and rough. They were wrong.

People need to come to grips that Bungie isn't what they used to be. It's hard to believe that Sony will give them the $500+ million they will need to get Destiny 3 done.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

And Fortnite started off as Save The World and didn't blow up until they changed course

Now do Hunt Showdown and Escape from Tarkov.

Sometimes you tweak the formula by 10% and increase popularity by 300x.

 

[viveks86]

and than there's fairgames ....

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Now do Hunt Showdown and Escape from Tarkov.

Sometimes you tweak the formula by 10% and increase popularity by 300x.

Unless I am looking at something wrong Hunt Showdown peaked a year and a half ago at 60k and Tarkov peaked 5 months ago at 48k

Are these the bars we are shooting for?

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Unless I am looking at something wrong Hunt Showdown peaked a year and a half ago at 60k and Tarkov peaked 5 months ago at 48k

Are these the bars we are shooting for?

No, I'm using Hunt as an example of a game with low year 1 numbers, but grew significantly because they didn't believe the core game needed to be overhauled.

I don't think the March 2026 version of Marathon its peak form.

 

[Bernardougf]

Oh I hope so ... imagine all the fun lost if this shitshow is canceled

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

 

[Pollux]

Sitting at just under 19k right now is absolutely wild

 

[PeteBull]

There is nothing to consider as delaying it another 12 months was not saving this game without a massive overhaul almost to the point of starting over

This dude knew they were cooked

Thats a face of a guy who is questioning all his major life choices, rip, on a possitive side u are at least rich and can retire as soon as inevitable layoff gonna come from sony hq, still much better than suffering from incurable deadly disease or spending years in prison

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Thats a face of a guy who is questioning all his major life choices, rip, on a possitive side u are at least rich and can retire as soon as inevitable layoff gonna come from sony hq, still much better than suffering from incurable deadly disease or spending years in prison

Oh he is dead inside

That whole stream looked like the type you send your loved ones while someone is pointing a gun at you

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

I don't think the March 2026 version of Marathon its peak form.

Oh boy, oh boy. This game was delayed a year and they are still going to launch a beta... Marathon is not peak, is not aura farming, it's just.... BETA. 6/10.

I don't think Bungie and Sony have the bandwidth and patience to sustain MIDARATHON for a year until addressed all the criticisms

Marathon's final graphics aren't "peak" nor "aura farming" they still look unfinished, they don't make justice to the concept art and cinematics... In fact, the cinematics are being used to compensate for somehting...

I think this game's shallowness will become more evident as time passes. That CCU will start to struggle if Bungie is unable to address the complaints

.... My feed went form "Marathon is so peak, aura farming, aesthetics, the music made me gawdg, haters went missing, even haters are loving the game now." to this:










I still can't belive how much trouble I'm having to enter the game....again... Indie (the bad indie) vibes with this one.

So, in other words: Only 1/4 of the game is PvP.

So, when I look at how all these elements come together, I can't help but to see a disappointing game overall.

And the hyperbolic praise comes from the classic mindset of: "the thing that I like, must be a masterpiece, must be peak and aura farming".

It lacks that final 20% of work that ties everything together into something truly cohesive, with a real sense of greatness and aura.

So, you're generally right about how a PvE-only option could be beneficial… but I would say not necessarily only for "casuals." The issue is that, as it stands now, that 75% of the game is MID AF.

Regarding the game's superficial quality which, for all intents and purposes, could be "peak" and "aura farming". At 4 weeks and beyond (after the best extraction map has dropped..so they say) the actual quality, or lack thereof, will start to really show.

Real, deeper criticisms and issues will start to become even more evident and prevalent

We need a Marathon CCU bet thread where the losers have to change their avatar to Michael Pachter for a month.

ChorizoPicozo , are you in?

I mean, people are going to make the CCU thread anyway, right?

In terms of a bet, I think this game needs at least 300K at minimum for the narrative to be considered a successful launch. Around 100K, and people are going to catfight over whether the game is a success or a flop.

But personally, while I would love for this game to flop and be ridiculed by the Internet Army due to Bungie's wokeness, I'm more interested in what decisions and game design choices the game will make that cause people to praise it or bash it.

300k is realistic. That open beta, with progress that carries over + PlayStation marketing, is going to lead to a massive first weekend.

So you think the game will be at edge of flopping and barely succeeding


They better, at 100K the game could be dead before the one year anniversary. (especially knowing Bungie's financial situation).

But this aspect of game retention will be another battle in itself. I don't see the game having enough meat to keep casuals hooked.

I enjoyed the core loop, but I dont think the game is tuned for solo players overall.

So on and so forth...

 

[Timberwolf25]

No, I'm using Hunt as an example of a game with low year 1 numbers, but grew significantly because they didn't believe the core game needed to be overhauled.

I don't think the March 2026 version of Marathon its peak form.

I thought you were in the acceptance phase of the grieving process and was happy for you, but you seemed to have regressed and are now back to the bargaining and possibly even the denial phase.
It'll be easier for you in the long run to return to the acceptance phase and put all your chips on the next Gaas hopeful (that will probably fail).

All of GAF loves you and are pulling/praying for you to recover and return to being a productive member of our community once again.

 

[LuxFixxins]

Just wanted to give props to whatever this dude is...

 

[cormack12]

Honestly - after reading a lot of stuff the last week - I think D2 is the end of their engine, and I think Marathon is a desperate attempt to try and capture lightning to buy some breathing room.

Scary version is I don't think the current engine is capable of shipping a D3 and they don't have an alternative. It sounds like all the heavy modifications to grow D2 and vault content was squeezing everything possible from it.

 

[gundalf]

Sorry to hear for Bungie and the dev team specifically, hope they get another chance under the Sony and perhaps this time a Halo like single player title.

 

[Zacfoldor]

Just wanted to give props to whatever this dude is...

coachmcguirk91 in his natural state:

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

Dude the game is currently struggling to hit 20k.

It's cooked.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

4 pm completed hour CCU
All time peak was launch day 88.3k. Yesterday peak 27.7k is -60.6k or -69%

Today vs yesterday: 19.2k vs 21.2k (-2k or -9%)

Yesterday's low 8k. If the rate holds, low tonight will be 7.3k

Huge drops so far today. Eyeballing the morning hours vs Monday (yesterday was server down day), it was tracking more like -15%+ during Asian/Aussie hours. Euro peak right now looks to be 19.2k at -9%. Not surprising since a dwindling online base will hit smaller regions hardest with queue times and people quitting. USA peak tonight should improve. Maybe it ends at -5% today??? We'll have to wait and see. Yesterday, peak CCU was only -2% at 10 pm EST.

Alternate method to estimate peaks and valleys (ballpark ratios)
On normal weekdays, 3:1. For example, a peak 30k will have a low of 10k. For Fri/Sat, gamers stay up playing so the ratio is 2.5:1

Steam Rankings
Daily Active Users 75
Global Top Sellers 60
Weekly Top Sellers 41 ending Apr 7 (was 32 last week)
Top Rated Games 5,476 (84.69%)

 

[zaga]

Dude the game is currently struggling to hit 20k.

It's cooked.

Killing duo mode pissed off a lot of people

Can only hope they are building a duo more for Cryo and it just needs more time

 

[zaga]

Honestly - after reading a lot of stuff the last week - I think D2 is the end of their engine, and I think Marathon is a desperate attempt to try and capture lightning to buy some breathing room.

Scary version is I don't think the current engine is capable of shipping a D3 and they don't have an alternative. It sounds like all the heavy modifications to grow D2 and vault content was squeezing everything possible from it.

Doesn't Marathon use an upgraded version of the D2 engine?

 

[OuterLimits]

Dude the game is currently struggling to hit 20k.

It's cooked.

The game only makes it into the top 50 now during U.S. peak hours.

 

[Tams]

Where are you now, those who said we were wrong to say this would be a failure?

No crow for us.

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

I predict it goes f2p in the next 3 months

They're losing way too many players to not do something desperate like going f2p

 

[Kilau]

Is now a good time to jump in?

 

[DAHGAMING]

Is now a good time to jump in?

No, but its a good time to jump out

 

[ByWatterson]

starting to look like even people who really like the game don't see the point of investing more time in it.

I really, really like it.

But it's almost out of gas.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I really, really like it.

But it's almost out of gas.

This game will still hold up for US gamers since most of the CCU is still there. And PC gamers too, since most are there too.

But other regions which play at that their local hours that arent US/Can evening hours, cross play off console gamers, you hear about gamers in more low CCU or isolated places in Asia or island nations, good luck.

I think for people who dont like gamers goofing on CCU on various forums (it's not like this gaf thread is the only Marathon CCU thread on earth) is that the dropping CCU is only part of the fun. Tons of games have dropping CCU. Making it easy for numbers nerds like me and anyone else is that the trend is pretty predictable so it kind of becomes a game of it. If the game had wildly swinging CCU up or down, it's hard to talk about numbers because you dont know what will happen. But Marathon is pretty easy for anyone to have fun and guess a number and be pretty close without needing a stats degree.

I think practically everyone in this thread whose tossed out a CCU guess has been pretty darn close +/- a few % or few thousand here or there. Sometimes some of us have even been spot on right to the number.

But given it's Bungie, last years bad beta and stolen art, high costs, a narrow focused and content light extraction shooter whose biggest content bump is a hardcore cryo map and a Dire Marsh night map in two months etc.... Add it up and it's a pretty odd and spectacular fail which people are puzzled how this can even get greenlit and released now, when Bungie has been known for 20 years for Halo and Destiny bangers.

If Marathon was made by some noname studio with a fraction of the budget trying their luck being the millionth shooter, nobody would care.

 

[MayauMiao]

starting to look like even people who really like the game don't see the point of investing more time in it.

Marathon fans:

 

[Plague Doctor]

Marathon fans:

I love a good meme thread pyramid.

Marathon fans, a month in of a steady decline, be like:

 

[MayauMiao]

If Marathon was made by some noname studio with a fraction of the budget trying their luck being the millionth shooter, nobody would care.

That's right, nobody would care and it would have died along with many cookie cutter extraction shooters.

Unfortunately this was made by a 3.6 billion dollar studio at the rumored cost of at least 250 million.

 

[MayauMiao]

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I thought you were in the acceptance phase of the grieving process and was happy for you, but you seemed to have regressed and are now back to the bargaining and possibly even the denial phase.
It'll be easier for you in the long run to return to the acceptance phase and put all your chips on the next Gaas hopeful (that will probably fail).

All of GAF loves you and are pulling/praying for you to recover and return to being a productive member of our community once again.

"He who stands in the middle of the road gets hit by both sides - Wayne Gretzky" - Men_in_Boxes

 

[rkofan87]

does Sony have an idea what the Xbox PlayStation numbers are and they're better than the PC numbers?
because that is the only reason I can figure we have had the announcement of a shutdown yet

 

[MayauMiao]

does Sony have an idea what the Xbox PlayStation numbers are and they're better than the PC numbers?
because that is the only reason I can figure we have had the announcement of a shutdown y

Of course they know the numbers. The only reason why they couldn't shut down the game is because people paid for it and any attempt to kill the game that's barely a couple of months old would mean massive lawsuit.

 

[rkofan87]

Of course they know the numbers. The only reason why they couldn't shut down the game is because people paid for it and any attempt to kill the game that's barely a couple of months old would mean massive lawsuit.

Concord says hi