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Marathon Alpha Impressions

StreetsofBeige said:
Right off the bat the alpha was doomed, and it had nothing to do with bad graphics, boring gameplay, aim assist or anything like that.

The game is supposed to be team based in trios, yet didnt even do friends codes. So anyone wanting to buddy up with friends had to hope their friends all got codes too. Even going by these GAF threads, not everyone got a code.

So you got a slew of solos playing a game not even meant for solos. So I bet most gamers either just winged it as solo dabbling, or they had a shit time playing with randoms teammates who dont want to go on mic.

In other games and modes, a gamer can totally get by being a lone wolf muting everyone. When most people play TDM, BR or some kind of simple objective mode like domination, you can technically still do great and win the match by kill farming. You can sit back and snipe while racking up kills in TDM or let the rest of the team go through the meat grinder winning domination or hardpoint objective pts.
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There's a degree of truth to your post here.

The counter to it would be...

Bungie knows a high percentage of players queue into team games as solo players. They felt that percentage was so high that it needed to be tested over friend group data.
 
Jinzo Prime said:
It either has ro be delayed or go into early access; they can't change the perception before September.
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I think they shouln't delay it. If the rumors about the Fortnite extraction shooter game mode is true, they could have a huge problem if they come close to that release.
 
Cakeboxer said:
I think they shouln't delay it. If the rumors about the Fortnite extraction shooter game mode is true, they could have a huge problem if they come close to that release.
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I doubt they will.

Releasing in Sept fits perfectly with Xmas holidays coming, beating out COD, and any other shooters that come out. Bungie has already been a money pit since Sony bought them. They need them to release Marathon to make back some revenue asap.

You can tell that's their intention as there's things that they are still thinking about and by the sounds of it wont get it out by Sept launch.
 
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HeisenbergFX4 said:
It was a terrible idea not giving friend codes and forcing randoms together which (for me at least) usually wasn't ideal

Granted I know it was a closed alpha that was originally supposed to be under an NDA but still someone there had to know this would not go over well
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Its a terrible marketing strategy to be honest.
 
Fake said:
Its a terrible marketing strategy to be honest.
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They surely did that because if they focused on teams of 3 playing they wouldnt even get enough interest. So might as open it up for anyone to fill the alpha servers even if playing solo or un-micced randoms are not ideal.

You can tell nobody cared about playing it because the Steamdb peaked on day one at just under 7,000. Immediately starting the next day, steam users dropped like a rock and kept trickling down to the end of the test period at around 300-500 mid day and crater to about 100 late night.

even when they extended the alpha a few more days, it still kept going down. So it shows nobody wanted to keep playing it.
 
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I'm expecting a character in the game to say, "dear diary, today life was bad", in some kind of emo voice, brushing the emo hair out of their face.

I laughed.
 
Anyone got the invite for the next test starting on friday? I probably wont get it since its NA only, but im curious about the improvements they made since october
 
Luipadre said:
Anyone got the invite for the next test starting on friday? I probably wont get it since its NA only, but im curious about the improvements they made since october
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I've tried to get into 2 or 3 tests, this is the last one I'm opting for until it's fully open with no hoops to jump through.

This is the dumbest testing I've seen a game do ever. They are clearly super not confident in this game , and the limitation makes large and actually needed feedback never reach them.
 
Arsic said:
I've tried to get into 2 or 3 tests, this is the last one I'm opting for until it's fully open with no hoops to jump through.

This is the dumbest testing I've seen a game do ever. They are clearly super not confident in this game , and the limitation makes large and actually needed feedback never reach them.
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Its weird because the last test was worldwide and much bigger than this. This is NA only and only a few hours open per day. What are they testing? Why its so limited now? Game wont come out for a few more months, but its weird that they gone back to this limited test after the latest one, which was much bigger
 
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Luipadre said:
Its weird because the last test was worldwide and much bigger than this. This is NA only and only a few hours open per day. What are they testing? Why its so limited now? Game wont come out for a few more months, but its weird that they gone back to this limited test after the latest, which was much bigger
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North America is loud and critical. Likely scared of leaks and bashing. Flaws being the only focus.

The more intelligent thing would be is mass flood now, get all the hate out there and what's wrong, then just update it and delay if needed. Get it right. Don't hide.
 
Arsic said:
North America is loud and critical. Likely scared of leaks and bashing. Flaws being the only focus.

The more intelligent thing would be is mass flood now, get all the hate out there and what's wrong, then just update it and delay if needed. Get it right. Don't hide.
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Thats what they did in october. It was a pretty large test. Thats why i was surprised when i saw this limited one
 
Luipadre said:
Its weird because the last test was worldwide and much bigger than this. This is NA only and only a few hours open per day. What are they testing? Why its so limited now? Game wont come out for a few more months, but its weird that they gone back to this limited test after the latest one, which was much bigger
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Arsic said:
North America is loud and critical. Likely scared of leaks and bashing. Flaws being the only focus.

The more intelligent thing would be is mass flood now, get all the hate out there and what's wrong, then just update it and delay if needed. Get it right. Don't hide.
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Luipadre said:
Thats what they did in october. It was a pretty large test. Thats why i was surprised when i saw this limited one
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Normally in each playtests and focus testing sessions companies test and analyze different things. Some of them require a larger volume of people, in other ones with a way smaller one is more than enough.

In general for them is more important to have testers that are very representative of the type of player who could be interested in games like the one tested, and that are good at identifying the issues and express them properly (this is for a part of the data, because the majority of the data is collected automatically via internal game metrics).

Regaring to limit it these betas to North America, shooters are a genre way more popular in NA than in the other regions of the world.

I assume at some point they'll do at least one public worldwide one to both analyze ping/input lag for when playing with people from very distant locations, and to perform server stress tests. But well, if the specific game code they use for that is essentially the same from Destiny 2 they may skip that test.

Luipadre said:
Anyone got the invite for the next test starting on friday? I probably wont get it since its NA only, but im curious about the improvements they made since october
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I'm from EU, but still I always applied and never got a code for any of them
 
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Luipadre said:
Its weird because the last test was worldwide and much bigger than this. This is NA only and only a few hours open per day. What are they testing? Why its so limited now? Game wont come out for a few more months, but its weird that they gone back to this limited test after the latest one, which was much bigger
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They are testing character customisation and want feedback on it believe.

Didn't get in either, shame as i wouldn't mind having another bash see if my opinion has changed since Arc dropped.
 
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Arsic said:
I … got… in!?

Fuck me this weekend is going to be so hype!!!!
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Luipadre said:
First time?
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First time.

I was a big believer of this then they shit the bed with how they launched testing, played arc raiders, and the hype died off because embark just crushed it.

Now I'm warming back up to it because arc was so fun until I ran out of shit to do.
 
MrAlwaysRight said:
I just searched to see if i got accepted, and i did, but for the test in October and i missed it
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Damn I just checked my email and saw the same thing.

Edit: Try to login. I did the login and it says I got accepted... Not sure if it will work but we will see. I redeemed the code and it worked but just not sure I'll be able to login tomorrow.
 
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