Marathon Alpha Impressions

I mean i only played vanilla destiny 2 and like one expansion and d2 was kinda famous for having dogshit ai...

No idea how bungie went from halo ai to d2\marathon ai...
Destiny AI isn't that far off Halo imo.

What's more crazy to me is they haven't really advanced it since CE.
 
Definitely agree on this. Does the current reveal really look like four years worth of effort? They have Destiny base animations. They would have had to animate abilities etc. but essentially most of the work is creating a map and assets. There is no way creating grimoires or codex takes that long.

Reminds me of the old source map SDK with more colours and textured environmental detail.

fy_strongholds_unlimited_24773_2.jpg


I'm more betting most of that time has gone into the economy, store and MTX which we are yet to see.

I'm not fussed if the game isn't for me, but this is a game for nobody. People will point to a few streamers and say look they like it after a few hours. The overall reception to this is significantly negative, the willingness of players to outright dismiss paying for/trying the game is high, and none of the streamers will be adding this as their main game or rotation without a huge raft of changes.

We can argue between ourselves as to why that is, but ultimately the problem here is why Bungie thought this type of game would land and be a success. The most generous receptions have been 'I'll give it a go'. If your kid loves cheese and you serve them turnip, don't be surprised if they leave the turnip uneaten.
Looks like VR missions from MGS.
 
COD has a magnetic aimbot too. They've been doing it for years. If the enemy is within a certain radius of the screen, it will attach to the player. I actually don't know of a modern shooter that doesn't do that now. And it's no wonder the FPS genre is going the way of the RTS quickly.

Controllers, I get and have experienced a lot.

This is the first time I've seen such heavy aim assist with a mouse. (I haven't played destiny 2 so I don't know if it's the same there).
 
Destiny AI isn't that far off Halo imo.

What's more crazy to me is they haven't really advanced it since CE.
I clearly remember d2 being trolled at launch because the ai was way too easy, and halo is famous for the challenging ai.

Maybe they fixed that after i stopped playing but d2 ai was nowhere near halo ai when i played it.

Halo ce ai is still better than 80% of fps and tps that come out today unfortunately.
 
Last edited:
I feel this is a major problem with modern shooters. They want to make these games like a store and the moment people quit buying, it gets shut down. Older shooters still are active for a reason and its because they're still up. They're not going to shut the whole thing down because people aren't buying some eBucks. The fact I can still find people playing Q3A or UT99 is amazing. Heck, I can even still find people playing Duke3D!
UT99 and the others of that era are fantastic and truly the golden-age. When developers provided you with a server client so you can host your own servers, that way they can't ever force shutdown to herd people into the "new version" they want to sell you. You know, the EA way.
 
Last edited:
UT99 and the others of that era are fantastic and truly the golden-age. When developers provided you with a server client so you can host your own servers, that way they can't ever force shutdown to herd people into the "new version" they want to sell you. You know, the EA way.
I'd love for this current admin to make a consumer's rights bill for gaming where a multiplayer game has to be patched to at least have offline or direct IP connections if they shut a server down. There's so many good games you can't play anymore thanks to them shutting down servers.

A prime example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhawk_(2007_video_game)
 
I have no idea. I don't play these games anymore. If the game feels like a store, I'm out. COD feels like a weird store and I quit playing when they added Nicki Minaj to the roster.
I barely play COD anymore. More because of boredom and they also kept adjusting the maps to be ratmazy and making SMGs act like ARs.

But never the less, the COD app got so clusterfucky with a million boxes to choose, older games, current game etc... it became to unwieldly. Nothing will beat MW2 2009. Choose the option to boot to MP mode menu, and after a few taps you're already into a match. And as you said, all the e-store stuff where there's constant promotion of knickknacks to buy, pop up reminders etc.... forget it.

It's amazingly how fast and clean older COD menu screens were. It's like here's a title page and a list. SP Campaign, Multiplayer, Options. Then you get in MP and there's a handful of choices like Find Game, Class Set Up, Stats, Options. That was kind of it.
 
Last edited:
Times have changed. It's pretty difficult to have universal praise as a new game let alone a relatively new IP (yes I know it's not actually a new IP).

Gaming has never been in a more negative space than it is today.

You have to navigate that as a developer/publisher and even more so as a platform holder.
They really have and that's very true.

That as well. I feel like the gaming space has become so incredibly negative over the past few years and it's honestly pretty disappointing. Why is that? I'm not sure, but you can see it in almost any thread about any game in some way, shape, or form.

Looking at that Depression vs Gaming thread, it's like almost every Gaffer suffers from a despression.

Wouldn't be surprised if the covid pandemic mentally broke 80% of society and people just lash out at everything that doesn't fit their ideal.

I'm only honestly curious about how much overlap there is between those admitting they are despressed and those that whine about games all the time.
Yup.

Honestly, that's something I've thought about for a long while. Because I've sworn before Covid it wasn't like that. I just noticed an almost "social shift" in social media across various hobbies and topics. I tend to swarm music and video games as they're some of my favorite things, and I noticed a huge spike in negativity in both. I'll also admit that at one point during/after Covid was when I was hit with a, "do I even enjoy gaming anymore?" moment for the first time. The reality is that I do, but because I wasn't seeing anything that was extremely exciting and interesting to me I felt like gaming just wasn't for me anymore. That of course subsided and things got better with time.

Yeah, same. I've seen multiple posters here practically shit on every single thing that's previewed and released. Be it on their preferred platform, or not. It's just weird to me to love something like games, but rather than look for things that excite you, just be negative towards almost everything. There's something out there for everyone, you just gotta look as it may not all be AAA.

I'm not surprised that some people are being overly harsh on Marathon as a result, there's a lot of reasons for this. I think the realistic perspective right now is that it lingers around the average/okay area. At least that's the majority. The extremely positive and negative sides are both minorities it seems.
 
Destiny AI isn't that far off Halo imo.

What's more crazy to me is they haven't really advanced it since CE.
Every time I see Marathon PvE I think of how fun it used to be to watch those drop ships land on the 2nd level of Combat Evolved. You'd throw sticky grenades up there as the doors opened. It had a fun, cinematic, repeatable feel to it. It looked right and it offered a bunch of fun sandbox ways to engage with it.

Non of the PvE in Marathon comes close to that imo. 25 years later and it's significantly worse...
 
Every time I see Marathon PvE I think of how fun it used to be to watch those drop ships land on the 2nd level of Combat Evolved. You'd throw sticky grenades up there as the doors opened. It had a fun, cinematic, repeatable feel to it. It looked right and it offered a bunch of fun sandbox ways to engage with it.

Non of the PvE in Marathon comes close to that imo. 25 years later and it's significantly worse...
They need to ramp it up from what I've seen. A drop ship comes in and drops like 3 enemies? What the fuck is that? Drop like a full squad with different types of grunts etc. Proper pin you in somewhere, backs against the wall type shit.
 
Last edited:
They really have and that's very true.

That as well. I feel like the gaming space has become so incredibly negative over the past few years and it's honestly pretty disappointing. Why is that? I'm not sure, but you can see it in almost any thread about any game in some way, shape, or form.


Yup.

Honestly, that's something I've thought about for a long while. Because I've sworn before Covid it wasn't like that. I just noticed an almost "social shift" in social media across various hobbies and topics. I tend to swarm music and video games as they're some of my favorite things, and I noticed a huge spike in negativity in both. I'll also admit that at one point during/after Covid was when I was hit with a, "do I even enjoy gaming anymore?" moment for the first time. The reality is that I do, but because I wasn't seeing anything that was extremely exciting and interesting to me I felt like gaming just wasn't for me anymore. That of course subsided and things got better with time.

Yeah, same. I've seen multiple posters here practically shit on every single thing that's previewed and released. Be it on their preferred platform, or not. It's just weird to me to love something like games, but rather than look for things that excite you, just be negative towards almost everything. There's something out there for everyone, you just gotta look as it may not all be AAA.

I'm not surprised that some people are being overly harsh on Marathon as a result, there's a lot of reasons for this. I think the realistic perspective right now is that it lingers around the average/okay area. At least that's the majority. The extremely positive and negative sides are both minorities it seems.
I think some of the negativity is that gamers have just had it.

If you look at a lot of the negative points people bring up, it often lumps into a few points:

- MTX nickel and diming
- Politics, including any employees openly ragging back against gamers from social media account about topic 123
- Really buggy needing a patch (esp important for MP games with bad net code)
- Boring
- Every once in a while, game prices go up and console prices jumped big too

So add it up, and there's going to be push back. In general, the things I listed werent much of a thing if you go back in time, but seemed to really amp up the past 5 or so years.

But funny how just about every company seems to have lots of time and resources getting that e-store up and running on day one taking gamers mtx money no problem!

And to top it off, getting a refund is still a hassle going through CSR and that assumes they even approve it. And any disc gamers are out of luck right off the bat. In other industries you dont get these kind of negative points and just about everything can be refunded if they dont like it. So I think in general, gamers just expect more quality and less lectures for their dollar. And for something like media, they got creative liberty to make anything cool they want. But instead can often try copying what other companies are doing or make their own crappy game without gamer feedback. Media companies have creative freedom and 1000x more opportunity for gamer feedback making their game from conception to launch to post launch. A company making pot and pans doesnt have that liberty. And if the product sucks, someone can return it no questions asked for a refund.
 
Last edited:
They need to ramp it up from what I've seen. A drop ship comes in and drop like 3 enemies? What the fuck is that? Drop like a full squad with different types of grunts etc. Proper pin you in somewhere, backs against the wall type shit.
Exactly!

And also, the drop ships in Marathon move at 10x speed which makes it look like a cheap Benny Hill scene.
 
I think some of the negativity is that gamers have just had it.

If you look at a lot of the negative points people bring up, it often lumps into a few points:

- MTX nickel and diming
- Politics, including any employees openly ragging back against gamers from social media account about topic 123
- Really buggy needing a patch
- Boring
- Every once in a while, game prices go up and console prices jumped big too
So basically "things don't go my way"(apart from buggy releases).
 
Controllers, I get and have experienced a lot.

This is the first time I've seen such heavy aim assist with a mouse. (I haven't played destiny 2 so I don't know if it's the same there).
Ya, that doesnt even make sense. Mouse gamers already have pinpoint control vs gamers aiming with analog sticks. They shouldnt need aiming boosts.
 
No idea if it can be turned off in this game off the mouse as I have it on the Playstation

But you know most wont turn it off if its a laser "aimbot" like some of the videos thats coming out
Feedback about the "feature" seems really negative, doesn't affect me as a controller player mainly but I don't see why it would be included in the first place.
 
AI can be so much more than simply being relegated to "sound traps".

I find the AI in Hunt to be a chore / bore so it's crazy that someone would prefer it over Marathons AI.
They're not relegated to that, they're specifically designed that way to facilitate PvP fights. That implies that Hunt devs just couldn't think of anything better or more. Each enemy type in Hunt has a specific way it can screw you in PvP fights for that reason. Hives will poison you and disable healing, dogs will cause bleed and essentially make you a loud and stationary target and so on.

I feel like you're misunderstanding the core loop a bit here if Hunt's AI even factors in other than a way to track, trick or get tricked in PvP fights. The bosses exist to bait a server fight and increase the tension and chance of that by forcing a team to essentially stand still and be loud, again to facilitate more PvP. Nobody plays it FOR the vE element.
 
They're not relegated to that, they're specifically designed that way to facilitate PvP fights. That implies that Hunt devs just couldn't think of anything better or more. Each enemy type in Hunt has a specific way it can screw you in PvP fights for that reason. Hives will poison you and disable healing, dogs will cause bleed and essentially make you a loud and stationary target and so on.

I feel like you're misunderstanding the core loop a bit here if Hunt's AI even factors in other than a way to track, trick or get tricked in PvP fights. The bosses exist to bait a server fight and increase the tension and chance of that by forcing a team to essentially stand still and be loud, again to facilitate more PvP. Nobody plays it FOR the vE element.
PvE might as well be removed from the game completely in Hunt, outside of the targets.

You just run up to any enemy and ohk them with an axe, 2 hits for those bulky enemies with wires. Those hives are easy to avoid/kill as well.
Takes practically no skill.

And nobody really cares about the soundtraps, like the dogs, birds or cows. They mostly get killed out of boredom because you run past them anyway.

The entire gameplay loop in Hunt is rush to the targets, cheese them (braindead EZ tactics to kill them) and maybe kill an enemy team or two if you encounter them, which doesn't even happen every match.

Edit:

I do like Hunt, but in regards to PvE it's a complete joke.
AI of enemies is almost non-existent as well. Like the most basic AI there can be.
 
Last edited:
They're not relegated to that, they're specifically designed that way to facilitate PvP fights. That implies that Hunt devs just couldn't think of anything better or more. Each enemy type in Hunt has a specific way it can screw you in PvP fights for that reason. Hives will poison you and disable healing, dogs will cause bleed and essentially make you a loud and stationary target and so on.

I feel like you're misunderstanding the core loop a bit here if Hunt's AI even factors in other than a way to track, trick or get tricked in PvP fights. The bosses exist to bait a server fight and increase the tension and chance of that by forcing a team to essentially stand still and be loud, again to facilitate more PvP. Nobody plays it FOR the vE element.
That's like saying the ice cream parlor that plays EDM music at 100 decibels is good because no one goes to the ice cream parlor FOR the annoying music.

You can facilitate more interesting PvP engagments using AI that has more interesting behavior. The AI in Hunt basically just stands still (basic pathing) until you trigger them and then you're given two choices - run away or DPS them down.

The reason the AI in Marathon (and Hunt) is so disappointing is because we have 30 years of SP games that illustrate how to facilitate engagment in more interesting ways.
 
Top Bottom