Additional Thoughts (Gaming)

by kidtsunami , Atlanta, GA, Tuesday, April 29, 2025, 09:01 (5 hours, 48 minutes ago) @ Cody Miller

Marathon is okay. It's competently made, and I honestly think some people are going to dig it. I've never played an extraction shooter, and I can kind of see the appeal. However at least for me, those moments that exemplify that are few and far between. I don't feel any magic about the game. It's not like the Destiny Alpha where I was excited and eager to see where things would go. I've been having an okay time, but not enough of one to buy the game.

This is a Bungie game that will never be on my shelf.

At least for me, the loop itself is not really that engaging. The reveal didn't explain it too well, but here's what you do: Factions give you contracts, so you go down to a level, and do some destiny patrol equivalent activity. Completing them gives you rewards and faction rep. The contracts are just not super interesting on their own. It's literally on the level of a Destiny patrol. Go to a spot on the map, go to the indicator, hit square. Or kill x number of UESC. Or collect item and extract with it. The imagination on display for these is seriously underwhelming. I don't for a second believe that any of these will have 'raid like' mechanics. Imagine if each time you wiped the first time you did Vault of Glass, you lost all your gear. It's just not happening.

I think what appeals to beginner players will differ greatly from sweaty players. If there's a loop of preparing for a difficult run involving more involved mechanics (beyond hey find this number somewhere in this building...) I think hardcore folks are going to be ALL over it.

The factions can give you permanent upgrades, and the materials you need are scavenged and extracted from the levels. They appear to be high cost, little reward, with the possible exception of vault space increase. I don't know how it will be in the final, but for the effort you take to gather the materials and credits required for upgrades, you get so little benefit.

So the loop is to farm materials, and do patrol missions essentially. The absolute best parts of Destiny :-/

I see the loop as scavenge, do patrol (possibly raid mechanics), risk a trials level engagement, GTFO.

Which is SUPER intriguing to me. And certainly more engaging than a regular PvP match (BR or arena) or a random seasonal event in Destiny. It's a strange balance and it's possible they'll strike it right or they'll fail to find the right note.

Of course, there is the PvP element. This is where I start to understand some of the appeal; it's pretty thrilling to narrowly escape, or come out on top in a fight with another team and steal their stuff. But it also sucks ass to get ambushed and die and lose everything. It's highs and lows, but you can go entire matches without seeing anyone. The bots are extremely aggressive and will shoot you from pretty far away, hunt you down, and charge at you.

There are elements to figure out, such as drop shipments, locked doors, and high value targets. Which I guess is okay.

The shield upgrades tip the balance so far though. Someone with a full shield upgrade has nearly twice as much health as you if you have the base value. It's definitely the most important upgrade. A full shield is so strong that a full clip can't kill someone even if you hit everything. It's also unclear if shield and health function differently? Do energy weapons do more damage to shields? I don't know. Both recharge, but it is very very slow. We are talking MINUTES to recharge. You can use consumables to instantly replenish both, but let's say that another player kills you, and loots your body. They'll probably take those consumables, and if you are resurrected afterward, you are left with no shields, and 1/4 health and no way to recharge them. People who say being downed isn't punishing enough have obviously never had all their consumables stolen and be totally vulnerable the rest of the run.

Which brings me to the combat. It was somewhat interesting to learn how to think and play the game. It's not like Destiny or Halo where you can mow everything down. Strafe speed is super slow. Like SUPER slow. You're essentially locked into moving straight or back toward your enemy, and if you want to go sideways you have to put your gun down, turn your view, and start running. Because your health and shield don't recharge on timeframes of a firefight, they can really really take their toll.

Love the speed, feels very deliberate. It makes for engagements where I feel like I understand what went wrong rather than suddenly "oh we dead".

I personally think the gunplay lacks oomph. Or kinetics. It just feels… floaty? Off? I can't explain. It's not quite on the level of destiny.

I do like how the maps have tons of different paths, tunnels, sight lines, and options for you.

Yeah the complexity and constraints of the environment (like Hauler being a choke point) are really cool.

Sound is super important. You can hear enemies walking around. You can hear gunfire. Birds that are scared by people passing them. Supply drops and dropship landings. All of which are mixed positionally. Play this with surround sound or headphones. Sound cues can let you know where other players may be. Which is good because often you just don't want to fight people. However, other players don't seem to make noise while moving which is a huge issue. Someone else running around should make a loud sound. Walking a smaller sound, and crouch walking silent.

Yeah the sound design and everything is top tier and a key part of the mood / gameplay.

Basically, choosing NOT to engage is an option you'll probably take far more often than you're used to if you are familiar with Destiny and Halo. You also probably don't always want to load in with your best stuff.

100% I played with a friend last night and they engaged a lot more than i normally would with randoms and I blew through my vault in a few hours. An hour this morning playing by myself with randoms, I've got a healthy selection of things again.

Weather is essentially just rain, and it makes it harder to see. I'd love to have seen more options such as fog, and day and night. Heading into the sun as it sets could flare everything and make it harder to see. Or cast long shadows on enemies. Night could be, well… night.

Voice chat is a huge problem. First, there is no cross platform voice chat. You have to use something like discord. To me, this is pretty ridiculous given that Marathon has dedicated servers. The servers should route VoIP to your teammates. I would load into a game with randoms, have someone say hi, and I could hear them but they could not hear me. Sometimes it would work just fine. But more often than not it didn't. It's kind of a mess.

Yeah it's gotten a lot better once I figured out how to unmute myself. I'd say more often than not I'm matching with 1 mic 1 not.

Proximity chat is likewise something I would have liked to see. I've heard so many stories about other extraction shooters where players could talk their way out of engagements with enemy squads. Agree to go their separate ways, or to temporarily team up. It would be great to tell another team that you have no good gear, and are just trying to do a contract. Or to ask if they would help take down that UESC commander and split the loot. Right now other players are purely there to fight, or to flee from. No other option. It just seems so boring given the possibilities.

This could be handled through emotes or a ping system. Avoid the trolling but allow the communication in a somewhat limited fashion.

Playing with matchmade people is tough. They won't have your contract, and because voice chat often doesn't work you can't coordinate with them to go to the area you need. You'e better off going with your friends, and picking contracts that are in the same or similar locations. You can only have one, which is a bummer. I get that they probably don't want to let you do a bazillion in one run, but why not? It's also a bit weird that for many contracts exfiltration is not a requirement. You can do a thing and it counts even if your team wipes.

I think it's a recipe for disaster if you're going in with randoms and think you're going to do your contract. If it happens, it happens. I just support them whatever they're doing and try to exfil with as many mats as possible. More often than not they'll ask me about my contract and then will try to help me. But no harm if not.

The graphics are fine I guess. It's 60fps which is nice and welcome, but in engine and in motion they lack the pop and vibrance of not just the trailers, but even of something like Mirror's Edge with a similar style. This is going to be preference, but I was not really impressed.

There's something up with the lighting. I feel like outdoors is where the "muted" is but when we're in the interior like the bright red tunnels it looks exactly like the trailer.

The interface is not good. It's not consistent, and the text is so small. It's not because I'm old or my TV is tiny. Holding down and cycling through which consumable you want active does not feel good or intuitive. You should be able to assign left and right d-pad to items. Although, left currently changes fire modes on certain weapons, which was never explained anywhere. So I guess that leaves right (up is ping). It is cumbersome and confusing knowing where an item will end up after you hit X. Swapping weapons around is not intuitive. You'll find yourself using L2 to pick and move weapons like a mouse.

I play on a 32" monitor with glasses so I don't have an issue with any of the text. But I realize I'm in a unique situation.

I'm currently trying to teach a 4yr old and a 6yr old how to play video games and wow I just didn't realize how much knowledge I had built up over time for unintuitive systems.

At the beginning of the alpha I certainly was confused and they definitely need more tutorials guides whatever (oh my god if games released a manual for their games I'd pay so much for a hardcover of it). But at this point I've got a pretty solid understanding of it and am no longer popping off errant shots when I'm trying to heal.

There's a lot of untold helpful stuff. For example theirs a little icon for mods that are compatible with your equipped guns. It made scanning a backpack for something that works on my AR a lot faster/easier. BUT it's 1 icon for the 2 guns you have. So if you're trying to find mods for your shotgun but you're also holding a pistol, you see all the mods for both tagged... confusing.

The story is going to be bullshit. You do a contract, then a non animated picture of a non human face reads text off to you. That's your story. It's kind of weird they would even go this far because the story is SO not going to be why people are going to play this game.

This morning I had some really unique dialog at the beginning of my run. I don't think the static AI faction agents are going to be the full extent of it. Granted I do appreciate that it's not super intrusive.

It's just not my jam. There's no sense of awe to it. And I imagine it getting far worse when you have to pay for it. But it's not the next Concord. The discourse around this game is super insane. Don't listen to it.

This is VERY much my jam. I play trials, I like PvE, I love Sci-Fi AI driven dystopias. It's right up my alley. And yeah the discourse is going to be insane.