Marathon Alpha Impressions

realcool said:
Reviving/resurrection is not standard in BRs?
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not originally.

reviving was introduced by Fortnite afair. before that every other BR just had you die and your team had to go on without you.
then Apex Legends introduced respawning by letting you take the respawn card from a killed team mate, bring it to a respawn beacon and respawn them.

as time went on, most other BRs slowly added these features to their own games. so now most BRs have respawning and reviving features of some kind. like Fortnite REALLY quickly copied Apex's respawning feature.
Apex was also the first game to have a comprehensive Ping/Marking feature, and its quality is still unrivaled... which is kinda crazy.
 
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adamsapple said:



His final negative




How many people playing the Alpha here feel the same?
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The closed alpha only have 2 maps. Perimeter is the easiest and Dire Mash is a little tougher. You go into Perimeter if you have absolutely nothing and work your way up from there. If you have a gun, some medkits and shields you're ready for Dire Mash. Contracts are sparse and samey because of this. Marathon also has progression-based matchmaking, so you'll team up and play against others who've progressed in the same tempo as you.

Taking all this into account, it's a great early demo to show off what Marathon can become. Gameplay loop for an alpha is really good - say, compared to Destiny alpha for example.
 
MMaRsu said:
Can I buy a bigger backpack?
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Dunno if you can buy them on the black Market as things are but I've been watching Drlupo's stream in the background while I work the last couple of days and he's around lvl 40 and his vault is huge now and while rare he has a few bigger backpacks that he's found in the wild.

I will say this from what I've seen the last few days. The game needs fleshing out a bit to give it that "hook" because right now apart from the shitty graphic's outside everything else seems decent or easily fixable (aim assist, 1 contract per match etc).
 
clarky said:
Dunno if you can buy them on the black Market as things are but I've been watching Drlupo's stream in the background while I work the last couple of days and he's around lvl 40 and his vault is huge now and while rare he has a few bigger backpacks that he's found in the wild.

I will say this from what I've seen the last few days. The game needs fleshing out a bit to give it that "hook" because right now apart from the shitty graphic's outside everything else seems decent or easily fixable (aim assist, 1 contract per match etc).
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I have a feeling that the real hook will be the Marathon map and ranked mode.

But they need to make the base game more exciting, because those won't even be there at launch and not every player will be into that.
They basically need to make outside areas more appealing and irt PvE more like Destiny's destinations (like Cosmodrone).
From what I've seen anyway. Can't imagine that being too much of an issue to change.
 
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Killjoy-NL said:
I have a feeling that the real hook will be the Marathon map and ranked mode.

But they need to make the base game more exciting, because those won't even be there at launch and not every player will be into that.
They basically need to make outside areas more appealing and irt PvE more like Destiny's destinations (like Cosmodrone).
From what I've seen anyway. Can't imagine that being too much of an issue.
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I think they said they have Ranked planned for launch and the 4th map is coming in season one so basically at launch as well.

Like I was saying a few tweaks and I think we are good to go.

Fake Edit: On a side note the outside is clearly not finished as it looks like ass compared to the interiors, which look really nice. I take it take will be sorted also.
 
8BiTw0LF said:
Map 4 will be Marathon's "Vault of Glass"
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In my experience this studio produce their best work when their back are against the walls. I think this negative reaction (from players who likely wouldn't have played it regardless ironically) will do the game some good come launch.
 
clarky said:
Fake Edit: On a side note the outside is clearly not finished as it looks like ass compared to the interiors, which look really nice. I take it take will be sorted also.
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That's what I think as well.

And they should, because I don't think I'd be playing the game much if they don't drastically improve the outside areas.

But like I said before, I thought the Destiny 1 alpha was placeholder as well and it turned out to be the actual game, so you never know with Bungie.
 
HeisenbergFX4 said:
I put several rounds in and it 100% is not a purchase for me

Many other games I would rather be playing
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What's are your biggest drawbacks with this game knowing that it is an alpha in limited scope that is still 5 months out? I'm asking since the initial reveal we have both done an 180 on the game in opposite directions.

My thoughts, While the alpha which is limited in scope, is far from perfect in current it doesn't seem to be that far away from being polished. It seems the game allows a certain bit of flexibility on approach. The game, I feel will be an end up looking good. There is too much of a discrepancy from interior to exterior for me to believe that the outside world will receive some sort of glow up (maybe quite literally). While the NPCs encounters do feel a bit flat currently. I almost wonder if there will be scalability here. The gunplay is classic Bungie, having put multiple thousands of hours into Destiny series, this seems solid. My largest negative that I feel going into the game is the menu and search function of dropped packs needs refinement. The current seems of just going pack to pack seems a bit tedious.

Overall, I feel this is just the base game that we haven't seen the fully fleshed out version. I also believe that like Destiny this will go through a large number of QOL changes as the game matures. I guess we will see.
 
clarky said:
What is it with Bungie and Vault space? it was fucking tiny in Destiny as well.
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Men_in_Boxes said:
The only thing I can come up with is "Our loot table is so small that we want to artificially stretch the grind as long as possible."
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I've not watched enough of this game in action to know, but I got the idea that loot is somewhat ephemeral in this game, it's not the things that drives engagement as Destiny did (and management of that vault was often quite painful, even though I never even fired 90% of those weapons I obtained, they were just things I hoarded 'because'"). My understanding was that it was all about unlocking/upgrading the character and earning rep with the factions as the marker for progress. Stuff is just stuff - you use it, you lose it, whatever. Your character always stays upgraded.

If that's how it works I think I might get on with it. It looks somewhat similar to the early part of Helldivers II in a way, in terms of having goals/unlocks that bring more to the table and more possibilities, but instead of where that game failed by going all in on "stuff" (that was pretty fucking bland) it has a firm understanding that gear is just gear, consumable, disposable, and therefore not the main motivator after an initial 50 hours of fun.

Maybe I've got it all wrong, I dunno. I just think of stuff like Sea of Thieves that some people couldn't get their head around. "sideways progression" or whatever. It was different to what some people expected in terms of motivation to keep playing. Maybe this will be similar in the way it achieves that. Or maybe it's just a shit game, lol. I'm going to be there to find out for myself day one, but would prefer to see it F2P to give it the best chance, then do different kinds of monetisation like PoE with its stash space or whatever - stuff that makes the day-to-day playing more friction-free and less painful.
 
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panda-zebra said:
I've not watched enough of this game in action to know, but I got the idea that loot is somewhat ephemeral in this game, it's not the things that drives engagement as Destiny did (and management of that vault was often quite painful, even though I never even fired 90% of those weapons I obtained, they were just things I hoarded 'because'"). My understanding was that it was all about unlocking/upgrading the character and earning rep with the factions as the marker for progress. Stuff is just stuff - you use it, you lose it, whatever. Your character always stays upgraded.

If that's how it works I think I might get on with it. It looks somewhat similar to the early part of Helldivers II in a way, in terms of having goals/unlocks that bring more to the table and more possibilities, but instead of where that game failed by going all in on "stuff" (that was pretty fucking bland) it has a firm understanding that gear is just gear, consumable, disposable, and therefore not the main motivator after an initial 50 hours of fun.

Maybe I've got it all wrong, I dunno. I just think of stuff like Sea of Thieves that some people couldn't get their head around. "sideways progression" or whatever. It was different to what some people expected in terms of motivation to keep playing. Maybe this will be similar in the way it achieves that. Or maybe it's just a shit game, lol. I'm going to be there to find out for myself day one, but would prefer to see it F2P to give it the best chance, then do different kinds of monetisation like PoE with its stash space or whatever - stuff that makes the day-to-day playing more friction-free and less painful.
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I've been watching Drlupo's stream in the background while I work these last couple of days and the Vault space thing looks like a non issue once you rank up the factions a bit.
 
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A common complaints seems to be that loot feels so meaningless and there's no shared boss or objective so PvP and pretty much anything you do in runs feels super random, at this point just call it a hero co-op game with some PvP
 
SnapShot said:
A common complaints seems to be that loot feels so meaningless and there's no shared boss or objective so PvP and pretty much anything you do in runs feels super random, at this point just call it a hero co-op game with some PvP
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Sounds like Hunt, so that doesn't have to be a major issue.
 
SnapShot said:
A common complaints seems to be that loot feels so meaningless and there's no shared boss or objective so PvP and pretty much anything you do in runs feels super random, at this point just call it a hero co-op game with some PvP
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Not really a Hero game from what i've seen, more class based like Destiny.

Unless I miss understand what a Hero shooter is, Overwatch is my only experience with that type of game.
 
Guardian Monkey said:
What's are your biggest drawbacks with this game knowing that it is an alpha in limited scope that is still 5 months out? I'm asking since the initial reveal we have both done an 180 on the game in opposite directions.

My thoughts, While the alpha which is limited in scope, is far from perfect in current it doesn't seem to be that far away from being polished. It seems the game allows a certain bit of flexibility on approach. The game, I feel will be an end up looking good. There is too much of a discrepancy from interior to exterior for me to believe that the outside world will receive some sort of glow up (maybe quite literally). While the NPCs encounters do feel a bit flat currently. I almost wonder if there will be scalability here. The gunplay is classic Bungie, having put multiple thousands of hours into Destiny series, this seems solid. My largest negative that I feel going into the game is the menu and search function of dropped packs needs refinement. The current seems of just going pack to pack seems a bit tedious.

Overall, I feel this is just the base game that we haven't seen the fully fleshed out version. I also believe that like Destiny this will go through a large number of QOL changes as the game matures. I guess we will see.
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The looks of the game doesn't bother me as for me personally if a game has a great hook and makes me want to fire it up when I decide to start gaming then I don't really care how a game looks

Guns feel really good which is no shock with Bungie

Its hard for me to say what I don't like outside of its just not addicting enough to pull me away from other games

As the game stands I can ask myself am I having fun and the answer is not especially

The game is ok but this releases end of Sept and Ghost of Yotei is like a week later and I will enjoy GoY much more
 
HeisenbergFX4 said:
The looks of the game doesn't bother me as for me personally if a game has a great hook and makes me want to fire it up when I decide to start gaming then I don't really care how a game looks

Guns feel really good which is no shock with Bungie

Its hard for me to say what I don't like outside of its just not addicting enough to pull me away from other games

As the game stands I can ask myself am I having fun and the answer is not especially

The game is ok but this releases end of Sept and Ghost of Yotei is like a week later and I will enjoy GoY much more
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Fair enough. Definitely not for everyone.
 
I think the key question after all this is how much money will Bungie/Sony throw on top of their investment already given the quite mixed reaction.

It's clear that some people want changes, some changes are needed and some will need to be overhauled.

And that's fairly common. Look at Diablo and The Division for examples, but those games had enough of an influx of cash to chase. Im not sure this gets there.
 
cormack12 said:
I think the key question after all this is how much money will Bungie/Sony throw on top of their investment already given the quite mixed reaction.

It's clear that some people want changes, some changes are needed and some will need to be overhauled.

And that's fairly common. Look at Diablo and The Division for examples, but those games had enough of an influx of cash to chase. Im not sure this gets there.
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As long as it get a half decent audience to start off with I think the game will be fine.

It won't be a massive game as is though that's for sure.
 
HeisenbergFX4 said:
I for sure don't have any ill will towards Marathon and honestly I applaud Bungie taking a chance as I think this genre is ripe for the picking if a game is done right
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I agree. It has to be different. Destiny has been around for over ten years. I love the game will always have fond memories of it but I'm just kind of done with it. It's gotten stale. It was necessary for Bungie to change direction.
 
I wonder if more than half of the alpha players that didn't bother to come back the next day is a troubling sign.

TwCrBpJ.jpeg
 
kevboard said:
not originally.

reviving was introduced by Fortnite afair. before that every other BR just had you die and your team had to go on without you.
then Apex Legends introduced respawning by letting you take the respawn card from a killed team mate, bring it to a respawn beacon and respawn them.

as time went on, most other BRs slowly added these features to their own games. so now most BRs have respawning and reviving features of some kind. like Fortnite REALLY quickly copied Apex's respawning feature.
Apex was also the first game to have a comprehensive Ping/Marking feature, and its quality is still unrivaled... which is kinda crazy.
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So, just to be clear, the revive mechanic is... standard?

Hulk Hogan Sport GIF by WWE
 
I was originally interested in this when announced because I assumed given Marathon's history, it would be a single player FPS game with multiplayer added on.

When it was announced it was a multiplayer extraction shooter, my interest level started going down. I'll admit I am not really into multiplayer games anymore, would much rather prefer to focus on SP games.

I was still curious so I went through some of the videos of the alpha. I think the word that comes to mind for me to describe the game is disappointment. The visuals are really a like or hate sort of thing. Don't care for the neon color scheme. Just feels cheap. Gunplay looks fine which is something Bungie has been good at for a long time. However, the overall package doesn't seem to provide any sort of major draw that would get me to put down my current playlist to spend time on that regardless of pricing. Map design doesn't strike me as anything particularly special.

I'm more baffled by why they have 300 devs working on this one and it looks like a mediocre AA game. I'm not going to wish failure on Bungie or Sony because it's not really my thing to do. I do think this game is going to have a short shelf life. Concord level? Who knows. But how Bungie has fallen from the 90s. I know there's been a lot of turnover there over the years, but it still blows my mind this company gave us Halo Reach 16 years ago which was a hell of an experience. Bungie now bears little to no resemblance to the Bungie that used to make solid games. Even though I won't be playing, I will be following just out of curiosity to see what this game does when it releases later in the year.
 
cormack12 said:
I think the key question after all this is how much money will Bungie/Sony throw on top of their investment already given the quite mixed reaction.

It's clear that some people want changes, some changes are needed and some will need to be overhauled.

And that's fairly common. Look at Diablo and The Division for examples, but those games had enough of an influx of cash to chase. Im not sure this gets there.
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I don't know if I would throw more money at this if I was Sony, tbh. I think the genre itself will hold this game back from mass appeal, regardless of the quality. This thing should be a mode in a bigger game.
 
I have played about 12-15hrs of the beta at this point. I was lukewarm at first, but I have enjoyed it the more I play. I will surely be playing it throughout the whole beta. The foundation of the game is incredibly strong. And even tho there are a bunch of small issues, I am confident they will be resolved over time


Pros
Great feeling gunplay
Nice methodical pace of each run
Art design, especially indoors, is amazing
Loot and weapon progression

Cons
AI should drop more meaningful loot
More AI boss encounters
More enemy AI variety
No team based objectives, like Helldivers 2
Loot can be hard to decipher
No console only matchmaking

After people played the first day, random teams actually did a decent job sticking together. People understand the need to do that because soloing this game is near impossible.

The potential for this to be something amazing is there. It definitely won't be DOA, especially for console players looking for something different
 
Herbspiceguy said:
Ignore the current CCU and offline part, the point is that the max CCU got more than halved after 1 day regardless of any downtime. It's not engaging enough for at least of the players who tried it.
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No it was on its way back up then it got taken offline.

We know the game is a turn off for most but lets not just make stuff up to suit a narrative.

People really want this game to fail eh?
 
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Is the gameplay loop even fully setup in the game right now? I know a lot of stuff was missing. Chris over in LSM really liked it but he did say it took a while to get into and learn all the systems.
 
JPSLotus97T said:
I was originally interested in this when announced because I assumed given Marathon's history, it would be a single player FPS game with multiplayer added on.

When it was announced it was a multiplayer extraction shooter, my interest level started going down. I'll admit I am not really into multiplayer games anymore, would much rather prefer to focus on SP games.

I was still curious so I went through some of the videos of the alpha. I think the word that comes to mind for me to describe the game is disappointment. The visuals are really a like or hate sort of thing. Don't care for the neon color scheme. Just feels cheap. Gunplay looks fine which is something Bungie has been good at for a long time. However, the overall package doesn't seem to provide any sort of major draw that would get me to put down my current playlist to spend time on that regardless of pricing. Map design doesn't strike me as anything particularly special.

I'm more baffled by why they have 300 devs working on this one and it looks like a mediocre AA game. I'm not going to wish failure on Bungie or Sony because it's not really my thing to do. I do think this game is going to have a short shelf life. Concord level? Who knows. But how Bungie has fallen from the 90s. I know there's been a lot of turnover there over the years, but it still blows my mind this company gave us Halo Reach 16 years ago which was a hell of an experience. Bungie now bears little to no resemblance to the Bungie that used to make solid games. Even though I won't be playing, I will be following just out of curiosity to see what this game does when it releases later in the year.
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Even worse.... if you're someone who likes SP campaigns or play MP as a solo lone wolf gamer (I play that way in COD TDM doing my own thing as all that mode cares about is just killing people), this game isnt that either. It's a 3-person team based extraction mode game. You can play as a solo guy doing your own thing but there arent even any solo only lobbies so anyone wanting to play solo (or as a duo) is put into the same lobbies as gamers partied up as trios. So unless you're really good at extraction shooters, a solo gamer will likely get trashed by all the AI grunts and competing teams of 3 people.
 
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