Marathon is the upcoming extraction shooter from bungie currently in closed alpha. They've been fairly open with it cancelling the NDA's that would usually bind such an early look at something like this so there is a lot of chatter in the intermanets and the youtubs.
I've been wondering what the hell bungie were thinking for going down this route full loot PVP extraction shooters are a pretty niche genre something with a dedicated following but they lack the sort of universal appeal of other game types. The hurdle of losing all your gear and getting ganked by other players with more time to get the best gear and the youthful reflexs and or wallets to pay the p2w microtransactions to "git gud".
Still I've seen people say things like Deep Rock Galactic is an extraction shooter and I guess it is in a way but it blunts a lot of the more negative aspects of that genre by removing the PVP and not making you lose your gear on a death but it does show this game type can be innovated on to make something that someone other than hardcore pvp heads (and a whole bunch of cheat bot running fucks if tarkov is anything to go by) will play . So maybe Bungie can pull off some of the old school magic and make something that will bring the PvP full loot extraction shooter into the mainstream.
The opinions coming out of the closed alpha seem like that isn't the case.
It apparently has some of the good feeling shooting that Bungie have been known for but it has a lot of balance issues with the various abilities
It's still an alpha so maybe they tweak it before the september release but it's very group focused making solo or playing with randos likely to end in your death. This was always a problem with their other games Destiny 2 has a lot of content you can't really do without a dedicated 3 person fireteam and some even requires 6 people and those people need to be on voice and need to cooperate which as you know is a hard ask in this day an age. And Destiny 2 is free to play where as they want 40 dollars for Marathon. It also has some solo content which Marathon apparently won't there is no solo mode
It has a very large power imbalance for people who haven't got the good gear people with the basic kits have almost no chance of fighting someone with the more rare stuff they can't do enough damage on some of the basic guns even if they empty everything into a player it won't kill someone with the better shields.
So it feels like as soon as you have that bad run and you lose the good gear (assuming you even manage to get any in the first place) you're basically fucked against anyone who has better stuff and it doesn't sound like skill is enough to compensate.
The stuff I've seen suggests its too casual for the hardcore extraction shooter people and too hard for the casual player so it feels like it's just not going to appeal to anyone.
It apparently has some moderately interesting PvE elements on top of the PvP with bots that are tough to fight and various environmental challenges beyond just other players which is something a little new for the genre.
It's tough sell and of course since its an extraction shooter everyone gets their gear reset every season so you start from nothing but as soon as enough time passes and there are going to be gangs of 12 year olds who spend every waking moment playing so know all the spawn points and can just camp them and then blow you away in seconds with their vastly superior gear. So for the rest of the season you're at the bottom of the pile before it all starts again.
I was already very doubtful about this one and everything I hear makes me think this isn't for me indeed it isn't for most people. Myabe they will fix it before the planned release but I feel like most of these "bugs" are really "features" of the extraction shooter genre you need lots of players who die repeatedly to drive the economy of it.
Feels like they've just pissed away millions of dollars on a project that has niche appeal when they could have been working on Destiny 3 or at the very least not running Destiny 2 into the ground with the crippling bugs and lack of content.
Maybe it's time to accept that Bungie may well be finished. I'm sure they'll live on as an empty corpse puppeted by Sony used the way the old Atari brand was to sell t shirts and gear.
Comments
It's a revenue game. Single-player games don't really make much money these days (blame Fortnite).
If you look at the big earners ( https://gam3s.gg/news/top-20-pc-console-games-revenue/ ) in the "Shooter/Battle Royale" categories;
1) Fortnite - PvP only, Season passes
2) Call of Duty - PvP only (nearly), Season passes
3) Counter Strike 2 - PvP only
4) Valorant - PvP only, Season passes
5) Rainbow 6 - PvP only (nearly)
6) Marvel Rivals - PvP only
7) Overwatch - PvP only
I suspect Bungies analysts have lookedat the big earners, and can see that some (Rainbow 6 springs to mind) is a decade old, and maybe they can get a fanbase to move. Expect plenty of popular streamers to be paid to shift to playing Marathon as it approaches release.
You can see similar things in other big-earner genres. Inzoi is making moves on The Sims. Sports games naturally refresh yearly. Civ is under threat from any number of 4X games that have come out recently. Shifting incumbents in a genre can be expensive, but the potential payoff is huge.Bungie don't currently have anything in this cash-cow genre of games (Live Service), and that is probably more of an issue for their longevity.
Blame Fortnite.
Totally agree in blaming Fortnite.
I saw a quick stream of the Alpha and I was surprised that there wasn't any Bungie-ness on the game. Bungie have been very good at building around the FPS. The lobbies etc in Destiny 2 are cool and bring you into the game. I don't see any of that here - it appears all very menuy - although correct me if I have that wrong.
Also I can't see what's different here. What is it in loot-and-shoot that it does really better than other ones?
Sad for Bungie because in D2 they made a fun shooter, I fear that they've lost the plot with Marathon.
Sure and while I was never expecting a single player game out of them I was hoping for something solo or casual freindly something I can log in to and play without needing to force 3 friends to join to have any chance of playing well. I've tried that with destiny 2 with very limited success and that is f2p.
It's a revenue game
yeah and of course at one point Destiny 2 would gave been on that list (and it is but just something like 14th PC top revenue or 25th Xbox) and making bank as a live service multiplayer game (hell they've run bungie on its proceeds and while maintaining it and developing 6 other full games at the same time one of which was Marathon so they must have been pulling in a lot of cash from the in game cosmetics store) but years of neglect and poor decisions have basically shrunk that significantly with concurrent steam numbers in the 20k range.
I notice none of those titles on that list are Extraction shooters I know tarkov is the biggest there and I can't find good numbers for it but the questionable numbers seem to put it in the 100-200k range of players seems to be the 30d average most of the other games where I can get steam data are in the 10k to 20k range.
That's not bad numbers but it's not fortnight or pubg or apex legends numbers so not sure why they picked a more insular niche for their next big game of the pvp world. And it's worth noting that while those numbers on other extraction shooters probably make a lot of money a lot of the teams there are smaller and don't have the overhead bungie runs. they need money they need a lot of money and I'm not sure a half arsed extraction shooter is the play.
I was surprised that there wasn't any Bungie-ness
Yes it lacks a lot of the fun elements that make Destiny and others like it fun. There is no story currently it is something they will patch in at a later date but it sounds like things like cutscenes and animatics and long narative quest chains are not going to happen. They made a big thing about linking this to Marathon one of the earliest fps's and yet it feels like they are really doing nothing with it.
It has a set of fairly fixed runners and barely any of the options to build craft and adjust you characters abilities to tailor to certain types of play.
It has none of the pseudo openworld patrol spaces the social areas its all run through a website.
it has a somewhat distinctive artstyle but nothing super amazing.
What makes this more likely to take that chunk of the extraction shooter audience why play this and not Tarkov or Hunt the showdown or delta force or forever winter.
If the Question at the time they chose this path was "We need a new live service game to replace Destiny 2 which is aging the player retention had fallen off a cliff plus we fired all the QA people and the bugs are out of control. What genre should we invest 5 years and multiple millions of dollars into to get a good return on investment?"
I'm surprised they thought "Extraction Shooter!" was the answer maybe that was just the hot new thing at the time like how the same thing happened with MMO's and hero shooters back in the day.
Given that list you quote I can see doing a Hero shooter or a battle royale with cheese as you say Fortnite prints money and both of those genres have wide appeal to the general audience even if they don't take the number one slot there is still a lot of money in taking fortnites table scraps.
If they had chosen to do something radically different with the extraction shooter that would open it up to the more casual gamer to expand it's audience out of the relatively static pool the hardcore lose all your loot full pvp niche it seems to occupy maybe I could understand the thinking but this is a fairly bland version of something that already exists without much in the way of fancy new bells and whistles.
Bungie have made misstep after misstep of late and I suspect if Marathon comes out and does average numbers they'll likely just be folded into Sony they've already lost most of the people that made them what they were and of course sony have had so many massive flops of late they can't afford another unprofitable studio dragging them down.
This isn't a concord situation it will release some people will play it and probably it will have a small loyal following but I don't think it's likely to get onto that top 20 chart of games that you have linked (which looking at it was on some weird crypto scam game platform thing so perhaps not 100% accurate but good enough generalizations :D )
Bungie will become yet another failed studio that haunts the corridors of Sony