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[Men_in_Boxes]

First, I want to apologize to the mods at NeoGAF. We're probably reaching our limit on the number of Marathon threads. I'm being a bit annoying here because I think this is so vital in understanding how we interpret games.

There's been a lot of negativity surrounding the gameplay reveal of Marathon. I believe most of the criticism is meant in good faith and is actually fairly logical.

This Friends Per Second podcast (timestamped below) represents this best. Here's a 12 minute clip where 4 reasonably intelligent hosts, reluctantly bury Marathon. Not only do none of the hosts here "Get it", but they don't see how the market is going to get it either.




And here's the thing, their criticisms are all valid...but only in the context of the paper thin progression paradigm multiplayer has been stuck in forever.

The PvP was sparse, the loot was boring, the enemy AI was a chore, the shells were derivative.

But what they're missing, and what half the content creators on YouTube are missing, is that Dire Marsh was not Marathon.

Dire Marsh was the segment in Pokemon Red/Blue where you leave Pallet Town to level your starter Pokemon up. It was just walking in fields battling Sparrow for 8 hours. Leveling up your party makes no sense to anyone who doesn't understand RPGs. "You just fight the same low level monsters over and over again so you can get a few stat bonuses? How is that fun?!"

Marathon is not Apex Legends or Valorant or Halo Infinite. Marathon is Pokemon Blue, Skyrim and Final Fantasy.


The Marathon Framework:

Dire Marsh (Map 1): Easy, low level loot.

Generic Name (Map 2): Medium difficulty, medium loot rarity.

Generic Name (Map 3): Hard difficulty, rare loot.

Marathon Ship (Map 4): Get fu**ed difficulty.

Bungie wants us to level up our characters over the course of 20 - 50 hours to have a chance at Map 4. The "special" Marathon Ship map is the Elite 4 in Pokemon Red/Blue. It's Kafka in Final Fantasy.

They want you sitting down with your friends and saying "Alright, lets farm ammo on Dire Marsh tonight. Then maybe at the end we can head to Map 3 and look for some stealth implant upgrades. If we can hook Mike up with a few implants we should be ready to tackle the Marathon Ship on Friday. Everyone can still play on Friday right?"

Now there's going to be people who read this and go "Interesting theory...but I doubt it. Progression isn't that important. Marathon is still going to flop."

To those people I would ask "What are your 20 favorite games of all time and what are your 10 most anticipated titles?

Their list of 30 games would all have long form progression. That's how important this concept is. Additionally, this list of 10 most anticipated is certain to be dominated by big 30+ hour titles and not short 5 - 10 hour titles. Gamers don't value minimal progression. They want the epic.

Nobody wants Hellblade II. Everybody wants Cyberpunk 2077.

I'd also ask these people to look at the wildly successful Rust, DayZ, and ARK Survival Evolved...notice how lame the moment to moment combat looks in those titles (valid) and pontificate on why they're so popular. Might it have to do with social based, long form progression?

Bungie is building gasoline in a market dominated with kerosene. People will continue to say "PvP Live Service is a saturated market" but they don't realize that Marathon is something totally new. It just doesn't look like it through the old lense.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

All I know is that I just need to play it myself through an open beta or whatever and see what it's all about.

I'm still 50/50 on it. It could go either way, still too many vague shit about it.
Just let us try it and then make up our minds.

 

[Paasei]

Progression is fine if it's fun to do and worth it in the end. I didn't care for exctraction shooters in the past (Hunt showdown, The Division, Tarkov and so on). Why would I now?
All that progression only to - maybe - be unfortunate enough that someone comes up and fucks me over after I've already done all the work. Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.

It's a genre issue, not Bungie/Marathon for me.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Seriously, why the hell do you care so much about this?

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

We've moved on to oblivion now no one cares about Marathon

 

[Guerilla Munch]

I think the problem is moreso that it looks like an indie game with a shoestring art budget, and not the next major release from the studio that brought us Halo and Destiny.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Seriously, why the hell do you care so much about this?

To understand games is to understand humans.

I can't pull apart a TV and understand the mechanisms that lead to its function. My brain doesn't work that way.

I (believe) my aptitude (or proclivity) is to look at games and theorize why some of them work, and some don't.

This is me trying to disassemble the TV.

 

[Schmendrick]

I knew who had created the thread before I was even finished with reading the Topic title.

 

[Mortisfacio]

I think the problem is moreso that it looks like an indie game with a shoestring art budget, and not the next major release from the studio that brought us Halo and Destiny.

This and depending on the price. All I keep hearing and seeing is that people played this game in the hands-on, enjoyed parts of it like the classic Bungie feel to shooting, but they left wishing they were playing one of the other extraction shooters on the market instead. That correlates with my visual impression watching gameplay.

 

[mayham2199]

All I know is that I just need to play it myself through an open beta or whatever and see what it's all about.

I'm still 50/50 on it. It could go either way, still too many vague shit about it.
Just let us try it and then make up our minds.

This. The reveal wasn't good and didn't really push me one way or the other. Hearing details of the gameplay from some other people who previewed it did make it sound interesting. At the end of the day though I need to play it myself and see.

 

[mitch1971]

What they did with Destiny (It's many lackluster expansions; it's more and more relience on it's shop; deleting paid for expansions; piece mealing DLC's) is the reason I would not touch another Bungie product.

 

[Kilau]

To understand games is to understand humans.

I can't pull apart a TV and understand the mechanisms that lead to its function. My brain doesn't work that way.

I (believe) my aptitude (or proclivity) is to look at games and theorize why some of them work, and some don't.

This is me trying to disassemble the TV.

Be honest, are you Jaden Smith?

 

[InterMusketeer]

All I know is I'm never paying for PS+ so this game might as well not exist for me. And it's solely because it's not F2P.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Neogaf is acting too slow today to put all these GAAS threads on ignore.

 

[Kvally]

I'm being a bit annoying

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

This and depending on the price. All I keep hearing and seeing is that people played this game in the hands-on, enjoyed parts of it like the classic Bungie feel to shooting, but they left wishing they were playing one of the other extraction shooters on the market instead. That correlates with my visual impression watching gameplay.

If you have access to two RPGs, and one of them forced you to play its grinding section for 8 hours straight (Dire Marsh), why wouldn't you want to play the other one, which provides you the full game experience?

Hunt Showdown:

Marathon Dire Marsh Playtest:

Being handed a single puzzle piece is, by its very nature, a frustrating experience. "Why are you handing this to me? It doesn't have a hook. I'm afraid there's no picture here."

The missing context neutered the experience.

 

[small_law]

I'm willing to give it a shot. I think a lot of Destiny content creators are salty because all of them go into one of two buckets, PvE or PvP, and Marathon doesn't lend itself fully to either.

I know the Bungie of 10 years ago isn't the Bungie of today, but I have to believe there's more to this game than what we've seen in the alpha so far. I'd also like to believe they learned their lesson from Destiny's launch and first year. They're not going to get away with having only launch content for a year with nothing new after seasonal resets. They need to add maps, characters, and new loot as they go.

I will say Marathon looks like a game a developer would release while it's working on a much bigger project. The scope seems limited. Like this could be a mode in a much larger game a la the Division. Instead they're keeping it focused. It seems like they're going to put this out, do the occasional content add, but keep things mostly on autopilot.

 

[Bry0]

You just described gearing up for labs in tarkov.

 

[kiphalfton]

No, and mods please perma ban OP.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I will say Marathon looks like a game a developer would release while it's working on a much bigger project. The scope seems limited. Like this could be a mode in a much larger game a la the Division. Instead they're keeping it focused. It seems like they're going to put this out, do the occasional content add, but keep things mostly on autopilot.

I'll bet you you think this way because a large portion of Bungies work on Marathon was spent on its progression system, which is both meaty and difficult to illustrate to non players.

I had the same perspective as you at this time yesterday. "How can 300 developers work on this game for 5 years and all they have is 3 small maps and 6 characters?"

It didn't make sense.

But the magic trick is based around what the audience can't see, not what it can. The magician knows he must execute the non obvious. That's where the magicians time is spent crafting his new tricks.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Again, making the thread with minimal actual information.

Let the game release, play it, then explain to everyone why they are wrong.

Should I make a Starfield thread explaining everyone how its going to come together 3 yrs later and they are wrong?

 

[Guardian Monkey]

If the maps are really big and there few PvP encounters then this should be cool if it's about exploration. If it's a sweat fest then it's like all other PvP games in that genre.

 

[Zacfoldor]

I understand what you are saying, I just don't want to understand what you are saying.

Long form MMO style progression in these games can be tweaked to make them more interesting, yes. I voted plausible.

That said, the Playstation online community controls the zeitgeist and gaas ain't it right now. Even free this is gonna be a hard sell for even those with open minds and a flat out disinterest from the majority. Maybe it will find an audience on pc but they are a fickle bunch too.

I mean, I'm a huge Bungie fan, and I'd be hyped for something like Destiny 3 tbh, but these single mod fps games don't feel like full or real games to me. They just feel like a lazy game dev life hack to make a "game" without having to actually make a new game. Just feels like one of the many Tarkov trendchasers and most of them will fail. This one looks almost guaranteed to fail, but I guess I don't hate this game like I do many others(AC Shadows). I'll never play but won't actively hate.

 

[mayham2199]

I'll bet you you think this way because a large portion of Bungies work on Marathon was spent on its progression system, which is both meaty and difficult to illustrate to non players.

I had the same perspective as you at this time yesterday. "How can 300 developers work on this game for 5 years and all they have is 3 small maps and 6 characters?"

It didn't make sense.

But the magic trick is based around what the audience can't see, not what it can. The magician knows he must execute the non obvious. That's where the magicians time is spent crafting his new tricks.

The progression system will be one of the most important parts.

 

[bender]

I (believe) my aptitude (or proclivity) is to look at games and theorize why some of them work, and some don't.

 

[SJRB]

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Again, making the thread with minimal actual information.

Let the game release, play it, then explain to everyone why they are wrong.

I'm more interested in the hypothesis that will soon be tested than simply measuring the results once we have all the data. It appears you're interested as well because you clicked on a specific thread to a game that's 6 months out.

Should I make a Starfield thread explaining everyone how its going to come together 3 yrs later and they are wrong?

I love reading different perspectives on games. If you're interested in Starfield and feel compelled to write something similar, I encourage you to do it. I'd love reading that.

 

[Radical_3d]

Most of us played Destiny casually. We had that one friend that kept on the grinding farm "enjoying" what you've described. It's not that your thesis is invalid because Marathon is not going to have that kind of progression. Your thesis is invalid because most people aren't here for the grind. I get that you love it, but most people don't. So without a "story coop" mode most of us are out. And the story coop mode was already a downgrade from the story mode with fully fleshed events like Halo 3. Comparing good designed single player experiences to Hellblade II is dishonest af.

 

[diffusionx]

I think OP is reading something into this game he wants to see, as opposed to what we actually saw.

If a lot of people wanted this style of game, then Hunt Showdown and Escape from Tarkov would be much more popular than they are. Not to mention this is coming from a company that even fans of their game don't like anymore.

 

[Bungie]

If the maps are really big and there few PvP encounters then this should be cool if it's about exploration. If it's a sweat fest then it's like all other PvP games in that genre.

The streamer segment just made the game look like a sweat fest. Wish they gave us a more thorough breakdown instead of abunch of people screaming call outs. Explain the game in a way for everyone, they even struggled for a second to explain why extracting with loot is even important in this game.

 

[Madjaba]

Damn, some of you guys got a lot of free time huh ?

 

[_Ex_]

Marathon is Pokemon Blue, Skyrim and Final Fantasy.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

The streamer segment just made the game look like a sweat fest. Wish they gave us a more thorough breakdown instead of abunch of people screaming call outs. Explain the game in a way for everyone, they even struggled for a second to explain why extracting with loot is even important in this game.

Can't agree more.

The presentation was perplexing.

 

[Esppiral]

Anyone else's addblock not working properly?

 

[jumpship]

You're wasted here Men_in_Boxes should be using your talent to build a development team I'm first in line to play the debute game from M.I.B. Studios.

 

[realcool]

The Marathon Framework:

Dire Marsh (Map 1): Easy, low level loot.

Generic Name (Map 2): Medium difficulty, medium loot rarity.

Generic Name (Map 3): Hard difficulty, rare loot.

Marathon Ship (Map 4): Get fu**ed difficulty.

Bungie wants us to level up our characters over the course of 20 - 50 hours to have a chance at Map 4. The "special" Marathon Ship map is the Elite 4 in Pokemon Red/Blue. It's Kafka in Final Fantasy.

They want you sitting down with your friends and saying "Alright, lets farm ammo on Dire Marsh tonight. Then maybe at the end we can head to Map 3 and look for some stealth implant upgrades. If we can hook Mike up with a few implants we should be ready to tackle the Marathon Ship on Friday. Everyone can still play on Friday right?"

I don't know why they're arbitrarily prohibitive against solo players.

Bungie: Did you ever get 3rd-party'd, man?

Solo: Yeah.

Bungie: But did you ever get 3rd-party'd... on a team, man?!

Solo: ...

Bungie: It's awesome, man! It's the best way to get 3rd-party'd!

 

[AJUMP23]

I appreciate your passion Men_in_Boxes . The game looks terrible like it was designed by people that hate the golden ratio.

 

[PanzerCute]

The only thing I need to know about Marathon is that it's made by Bungie and they are the worst fucking company on earth in terms of business model.

Look at Destiny 2



That does not need any interpretation. F*ck them, I hope they fail hard.

 

[basement dweller]

This thread is a huge cope

 

[vaibhavpisal]

I'm more interested in the hypothesis that will soon be tested than simply measuring the results once we have all the data. It appears you're interested as well because you clicked on a specific thread to a game that's 6 months out.

I expected some credible sources outlining what they played.

But it seems like Bungie is in same mindset as Destiny 1 launch. Barebones launch with everything coming together a few years later.

It might not work out considering current temperament. Players are not that patient anymore, unless its a gamepass/ PS+ release.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I don't know why they're arbitrarily prohibitive against solo players.

I bet it's really hard to balance for both solo and team play.

Bungie believes in the power of social gaming (smart bet). I think most people would rather have a good experience with friends rather than a good experience by thenselves.

A game designed around solo play, with a tacked on 3 player queue is going to suffer as a social experience.

 

[BlackTron]

Perhaps without all those other flaws, they would not mind being in "dire marsh".

Kids played Pokemon despite that such an experience could stop them in their tracks in another RPG. Because it was a good game they wanted to play.

They may have preferred access to the whole map without having to bother with leveling, puzzling and random encounter maze dungeons. But wanted to anyway.

 

[mayham2199]

I expected some credible sources outlining what they played.

But it seems like Bungie is in same mindset as Destiny 1 launch. Barebones launch with everything coming together a few years later.

It might not work out considering current temperament. Players are not that patient anymore, unless its a gamepass/ PS+ release.

Hmm I thought Destin 1 launch was great and I got addicted as hell to that game. Destiny 2 though was bad and I bounced off it quick. When I came back though I was impressed how much things changed.

 

[Edmund]

You really have too much time on your hands to keep posting so much. Men_in_Boxes

 

[Bernardougf]

Stop and get help ... this is not healthy

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I expected some credible sources outlining what they played.

But it seems like Bungie is in same mindset as Destiny 1 launch. Barebones launch with everything coming together a few years later.

It might not work out considering current temperament. Players are not that patient anymore, unless its a gamepass/ PS+ release.

The rise in popularity of Rust, DayZ, Ark over the last two or three years suggests the opposite. People are willing to be patient for the right experience. The problem is that people collect information based on preferred narratives.

I'll bet Marathon is a moderate to large success at launch, with a healthy long term growth trajectory over its first few years.

They're going to learn and improve upon their 3 map farming system a ton. Season 6 should be considerably better.

 

[Punished Miku]

Brutal title change lol.

 

[Eesha]

you forgot "OP is retarded" like one of your old thread of yours.

*Edit*

Thread 'The Extraction Shooter genre is gamings new "Mario 64 moment", and I'm tired of pretending it's not.'

Nov 11, 2024

I've had violence done unto me. I've heard a number of twits attempt to tar Bungie and their supposed "trend chasing" with Marathon. The purpose of this thread is to sweep those cretins back under the rock they crawled from, and to encourage conversation from those with an open mind.

The Extraction Shooter is gamings new "Mario 64 moment". A hack media outlet use this term on an Astro Bot Rescue Mission back in 2018. That milk is now chunky and black.

An Extraction Shooter is s a PvP RPG. The premise of the genre is building your characters power over a length of time. You do this...

• Men_in_Boxes
• Replies: 196
• Forum: Gaming Discussion

• 
• 
• 

here the last poll, so i don't look extra meanie and rude.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Marathon was never one of THOSE IPs, and while I think the new iteration will definitely bring more attention to the IP I still don't think it'll be anywhere near THOSE big name IPs.

The criticism I've heard sounds completely valid and believable. People say the game is fun and they enjoyed their time with it, "But....", and everything that comes after "but" makes sense. I've seen people try to say that the people the feedback has come from are negative creators, baiting, etc. But, I can't help but disagree. There's a bit difference between the folks I've seen, and a standard click baiting content creator/streamer.

It just leaves me in a spot where I just need to check it out for myself to see how I feel about it. I get that Bungie is excited about Ranked and the 4th map, but until we see what's so exciting, everything about the gameplay looks and sounds pretty standard. Aside from the art style, universe, and aesthetic.

 

[bender]

We have a title edit. I repeat, we have a title edit.