Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter

[Disc]

Part of what makes ES exciting is killing someone and then getting to loot them. It’s the video game equivalent to a piñata stuffed with candy, it’s really fun. Then there is the ‘come up’ and ‘zero to hero’ aspect where if you get lucky or just completely outperform the competition you start snowballing in success. Marathon has the best snowball type game play, no other game I’ve played has that sort of feeling of maximum victory and winning harder. Once you’re on a roll it’s a rush and it turns into a race against the clock. At the best of times the game starts feeling like one of those 90s game shows like Super Market sweep where you have 60 seconds to fill a shopping cart with as much shit as you can all free of charge. You are sprinting across the map to open rooms, kill high value targets, and stuffing your bags with purple and gold loot with just seconds left.

Pinatas don't tend to be made of real people.

Let's be real here, extraction shooters are more like driving into the ghetto to jump some ghetto gang members for a jordans jamboree. You can say it's a fun game loop, but that doesn’t change that it is the pinnacle of antisocial and unconstructive behaviour with regards to making a thriving community.

The problem is, ghetto gangs are stuck in the ghetto. For as long as there is a ghetto, there will be ghetto gangs. In video game simulations, people can just back out and stop playing, realising that fighting over loot that can be easily lost when you aren’t good enough to defend it is pointless. Every extraction shooter lives in fear of their player base looking in the mirror and uttering a single, dreadful phrase:

But even aside from that, I think the biggest thing that's doomed this game, and a lot of examples of the genre, is that it has the very unfortunate distinction of being a knuckleball strategy getting a fastball treatment. It is hard to pull off, but pulling it off can be worth it IF there aren’t a lot of people trying to do the same thing. The more people trying to do the weird gimmick strat, the less effective that strategy becomes because everyone else gets far more exposed to it than before.

Even if Marathon was like the second or third best extraction shooter ever, two thirds of the player base who would have checked it out were playing another extraction shooter that came out like a week or two before or a week or two after, or had played a few lame ones and given up on the genre, or were comfy enough playing Arc Raiders or Tarkov and weren’t going to switch.

 

[creaturestorm]

Pinatas don't tend to be made of real people.

That's the secret sauce of it.

Otherwise they are just boring target dummies, this sounds like the complaints of a PvE player just off the rip.

.You can say it's a fun game loop, but that doesn’t change that it is the pinnacle of antisocial and unconstructive behaviour with regards to making a thriving community.

With out referencing a PvE shooter, can you provide an example as well as an explanation of a pvp focused shooter that is super social and lends to constructive behavior with regards to making a thriving community?

fighting over loot that can be easily lost when you aren’t good enough to defend it is pointless.

I think this argument applies to all games.

Lets assume you can never ever win a game of chess, what's the point in sitting down to play knowing youre fucked?

Every extraction shooter lives in fear of their player base looking in the mirror and uttering a single, dreadful phrase:

No, every shitter fears having to look in the mirror and admitting that they are dog shit and they need to git gud.

This is a very hard pill to swallow for most people, especially if they have an ego.

Casual games will always be more popular for this reason and retards will always, always, always try to make casual games competitive. Seen it a million times. People want to feel good about themselves and they need some way to measure success. If they cant do that they pretend that every thing else is the problem, they are just that desperate for success.

 

[Zenos Yae Viator]

Pinatas don't tend to be made of real people.

Let's be real here, extraction shooters are more like driving into the ghetto to jump some ghetto gang members for a jordans jamboree. You can say it's a fun game loop, but that doesn’t change that it is the pinnacle of antisocial and unconstructive behaviour with regards to making a thriving community.

this sounds like loser bitch fucking cope, its a PVP game, Marathon is flawed as fuck and will die, but the "point" is PVP with PVE backdrop.

Arc is the same way, and there's tons of people like you screaming in rage that there should ONLY be PVE and everyone should work together and never ever kill each other because then there would be a loser! and that makes them sad!

Which is good, fuck you, I want you to be sad, I'm taking your shit, your the Irish waiting for the Vikings to come steal all your shit because you can't do it yourself.

 

[Civillian 18]

With out referencing a PvE shooter, can you provide an example as well as an explanation of a pvp focused shooter that is super social and lends to constructive behavior with regards to making a thriving community?

Planetside (2) man I miss that game.

Lets assume you can never ever win a game of chess, what's the point in sitting down to play knowing youre fucked?

They do not take my rooks away when I lose a game of chess though. And my opponent does not have 4 queens and a Glock pointed at my dick under the table.

 

[StacticShock]

Team Fortress 2 managed to solve this by optimizing for the experience of the individual player rather than the team. Incidentally it became the most renowned "hero shooter" ever made and is still talked about for its design genius to this day. Every other PvP game with "hero shooter" elements has failed to learn these lessons and has become miserable to play as a result. Probably on purpose because then the matchmaking algorithm that every fucking game uses now can beat you down until your win/loss ratio is a perfect 50/50, which they can then brag about in a weekly blogpost where they say the game is perfectly balanced.

all of these words to just say TF2 focuses on being fun instead of competitive...

 

[Snekposter]

all of these words to just say TF2 focuses on being fun instead of competitive...

You're not wrong. I also don't know of any other shooter game like that that goes out of its way to remind you that you're playing a fucked-up psychopath who loves what they do for a living and wouldn't ever choose to do anything else.
"I'm not a crazed gunman, dad; I'm an assassin. Well the difference bein' one's a job and the other's mental sickness."

 

[creaturestorm]

Planetside (2) man I miss that game.

That's a good example and also kind of highlights the strengths of a pvp mmo where Numbers = Win.

They do not take my rooks away when I lose a game of chess though. And my opponent does not have 4 queens and a Glock pointed at my dick under the table.

You lose elo instead and are branded as a shitter, your opponent is Magnus Carlson.

all of these words to just say TF2 focuses on being fun instead of competitive...

TF2 went to shit post engineer up date, but i digress see below:

Casual games will always be more popular for this reason and retards will always, always, always try to make casual games competitive

 

[Civillian 18]

You lose elo instead and are branded as a shitter, your opponent is Magnus Carlson.

ELO is intangible and only serves to make my next match 'better' or at least more fair. If I as a shitter am plopped down against a grandmaster that is a failing of the organizer not me. Do they hand out the vibrating buttplugs/cheating devices or is that DLC?

 

[creaturestorm]

ELO is intangible and only serves to make my next match 'better' or at least more fair.

Yes and no, Elo has some serious problems. Problems similar to what's going on in Marathon.

If you only ever lost games you'd eventually hit 0 elo and your chances of matching with some one as equally retarded/possibly blind or otherwise crippled would be next to nothing.

The pool of players would need to be so fucking massive that there would be an actual bell curve of people for you to match into.

You are only ever going to match into opponents who are better than you and are favored to win. Some opponents might have the exact same Elo as you, but are in reality 2k and 3k rated players. They are smurfing and are here to fuck you.

Realistically you would eventually win some games, but you would eventually hit a wall. The only way through that wall is through nutting up and to improve, but know this... now and forever, once you hit that wall every rung on the ladder there after is a brand new wall demanding the exact same from you. This is when people typically quit.

But still, in my hypothetical, why would you bother to play a game if you are just hopelessly fucked? There are real answers to that which vary from person to person.

Do they hand out the vibrating buttplugs/cheating devices or is that DLC?

Cheaters are already faggots anyways, they may as well fully commit.

 

[Civillian 18]

Yes and no, Elo has some serious problems. Problems similar to what's going on in Marathon.

If you only ever lost games you'd eventually hit 0 elo and your chances of matching with some one as equally retarded/possibly blind or otherwise crippled would be next to nothing.

You are only ever going to match into opponents who are better than you and are favored to win. Some opponents might have the exact same Elo as you, but are in reality 2k and 3k rated players. They are smurfing and are here to fuck you.

Realistically you would eventually win some games, but you would eventually hit a wall. The only way through that wall is through nutting up and to improve, but know this... now and forever, once you hit that wall every rung on the ladder there after is a brand new wall demanding the exact same from you. This is when people typically quit.

Cheaters are already faggots anyways, they may as well fully commit.

ELO has issues for sure, especially I feel in use outside 1v1 settings. But no one (who is not deliberately sandbagging) is going to lose every game, you will hit your 50/50 equilibrium and then have 'fair' games.

The pool of players would need to be so fucking massive that there would be an actual bell curve of people for you to match into.

But still, in my hypothetical, why would you bother to play a game if you are just hopelessly fucked? There are real answers to that which vary from person to person.

If the game is fun, I will play it until the wheels fall off. I sucked balls at CS 1.4 as a squeaker but I clocked a lifetime in that franchise. Private servers make a world of difference though honestly, speaks to the power of community on that style of game.

 

[creaturestorm]

But no one (who is not deliberately sandbagging) is going to lose every game, you will hit your 50/50 equilibrium and then have 'fair' games.

Same case for Marathon and all games, but previously some one was pretending noobs can’t possibly succeed there and that’s why it’s bad. As if every game needs to absolutely hand hold you as much as possible. As if every raid noobs are just going to get the shit bullied out of them. That we can not have games with clear winners and losers. this is the argument being made by the individual.

Even games we rarely win or that are incredibly difficult, people have their reasons for playing them and finding enjoyment in them.

Marathon is bad right now not because it’s an extraction shooter and it’s difficult, but because it’s a fucking mess.

 

[p1138]

ELO has issues for sure, especially I feel in use outside 1v1 settings. But no one (who is not deliberately sandbagging) is going to lose every game, you will hit your 50/50 equilibrium and then have 'fair' games.

Sure but the problem is that if you do get a good run in an evening for whatever reason, 5 games in a row all wins because the stars aligned in your favor or whatever the case may be. Then a modern videogame will then decide that the next evening you play that it's time to fuck you in the ass to put you back in your place at your 50/50 win ratio where you belong throwing opponents so far ahead of you in your direction that the losses end up completely lopsided and your opponents end up with an easy victory they get nothing out of either.

TF2 went to shit post engineer up date, but i digress see below:

I'd say it's a bit more specific than that, really when it went f2p(2011) because then any retard could create a new steam account, cheat till they got banned, and just continually do it. Before it went f2p that shit was rare since the retards didn't necessarily want to gamble the $25 or whatever it was standalone outside of the orange box.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Anyone still working at Bungie either knows they'll never get hired anywhere else and are enjoying the paychecks while they last or-

Actually that's the only reason I can think of to still be there.

In the modern gaming landscape? The only important factor in getting hired is how much woke shit you crammed into existing IPs, rather than making profitable games. It's inverse meritocracy.

 

[Civillian 18]

, 5 games in a row all wins because the stars aligned in your favor or whatever the case may be

I get this, it is a concern that all matchmaking needs to deal with though. Things like accelerating through or even 'leapfrogging' ranked brackets during placement or as anti smurfing techniques.
The problem is that matchmaking in games is (and I think we are all in agreement here honestly) striving for 50/50 forever fuck you which is a 'big picture' Good Thing™ but it relies on your game being fucking fun. If your game is good, people will remember matches not scoreboards, even if it sounds super gay.

 

[p1138]

I get this, it is a concern that all matchmaking needs to deal with though. Things like accelerating through or even 'leapfrogging' ranked brackets during placement or as anti smurfing techniques.
The problem is that matchmaking in games is (and I think we are all in agreement here honestly) striving for 50/50 forever fuck you which is a 'big picture' Good Thing™ but it relies on your game being fucking fun. If your game is good, people will remember matches not scoreboards, even if it sounds super gay.

Sure, but there's a difference though even with an ELO system in say... chess vs a videogame. In chess, you can just go play chess without having to give a shit about matchmaking unless you're at a tournament or some special event where it makes sense. In a lot of videogames? You don't get a choice in the matter, or even if the game has a "casual" mode then you're just stuck with shit players. It's not like these games just do random matchmaking, count your ELO or whatever system they're using in the background, and then only apply it during tournament week as the last week of the month or something.

 

[Civillian 18]

Sure, but there's a difference though even with an ELO system in say... chess vs a videogame. In chess, you can just go play chess without having to give a shit about matchmaking unless you're at a tournament or some special event where it makes sense. In a lot of videogames? You don't get a choice in the matter, or even if the game has a "casual" mode then you're just stuck with shit players. It's not like these games just do random matchmaking, count your ELO or whatever system they're using in the background, and then only apply it during tournament week as the last week of the month or something.

Yeah, and with games matchmaking for 'engagement hours' for shareholders/drive microtransaction purchases (I think this is the one), gone are the days of private servers, or even just a 'casual' playlist which just did distance/ping based matchmaking to find quick pick up games and scramble the teams between matches. Oh and also having a fucking fun game.

 

[creaturestorm]

I'd say it's a bit more specific than that, really when it went f2p(2011) because then any retard could create a new steam account, cheat till they got banned, and just continually do it. Before it went f2p that shit was rare since the retards didn't necessarily want to gamble the $25 or whatever it was standalone outside of the orange box.

Also half the classic maps just flat out stopped working because of how much the game had changed by then. New maps came, but i mourn the simpler times.

I think maybe the game was at its best with the pyro update.