You said Cody, but here's way too much text. (Gaming)

by Vortech , A Fourth Wheel, Saturday, February 28, 2026, 10:13 (2 hours, 56 minutes ago) @ Kermit

I'm not really sure? I've played for quite a while and almost all of it has been learnign what the game is. It's my first extraction shooter, but also there's just a lot to learn.

Executive summary of what I know so far: Guns feel really good. The visuals and dark scifi is really up my alley personally. Playing as a crew of two is a big mistake. Everything else would be a long ramble.

SO, here's a long ramble:

Its hard to get the character from Thursday night day one of a network stress test release as all of that is bound to influence the population that shows up, but so far it is absolutely not going to be the Kumbaya fest of arc raiders. Simply not having aggression-based matchmaking will cause that. But also Marathon broke the prox chat in the test yesterday so that also made things only ever go in one direction.

Last night things felt…steadier. Hard to know if I changed, the game changed, or the players changed. I had more fun with it.

The learning curve is steep. Items do look too similar, but I think the UI is fine once you build muscle memory of what the buttons do. Reminds me of Apex in that way. The ttk feels similar too, actually.
Most of the learning I have had to do is about what the factions represent and what they will sell or barter (one group more about healing and armor, another for weapon mods, one for explosive, etc.) that’s where the long-term power enhancement comes from. All gear is just held temporarily as it floats by in the river of time.

Late Thursday night I switched to solo queue and had a MUCH easier time of things. I basically had the rook experience without being a rook. Using a low level kit to get some kills lost to the limit and exfil out. but I’m not sure if that was down to people going to sleep.

The other thing experience has given me is more awareness of world events. How to trigger them, where they happen, and the kind of gear that results.

I’m many hours in, level 14, (also played some in a pre-beta test) and I still feel like I’m only just starting to understand how the game works. Combined with the real detriment of using crew filling with match made people, and (rumors?) of no skill/experiance matchmaking algorithms I have to wonder if enough people- or what kind of people - will stick it out through the tough beginning to get to the good parts. And there are a lot of signs that it has a lot of good parts.

Last night I played with a friend who was literally just starting, and I was basically telling him things about the game the entire time. I guess that's a better experience than how I learned it all? Faster, and less confusing certainly. Playing with a crew of two is still the hardest way to play, but it was not the meat grinder Cody and I had Thursday.

The other issue is if people at large even really want an extraction shooter. Arc raiders got a bit of popularity from trying to be more accessible and so they chased that so hard it’s not really giving people the extraction shooter experience. The earlier ones never really took off. You “win” about as much as in Apex/fortnite, but it feels more frustrating to lose when it actually hurts you by losing your stuff. Bungie has already said people are doing contracts and leaving faster than expected, which is making the more risk tolerant and the pvp focused people feel like the runs are empty.

I still have seen zero people choose non-aggression, let alone cooperation.

OTOH, it is compelling to actually care if you win and I came out of both days with unique stories of what happened because of things not being essentially the same every run.

And it does feel like maybe the best gunfeel and most team/class based shooter Bungie has ever done which is saying a lot.

The visual style and sci-fi dystopia writing is right up my alley, but is another thing making me wonder how many people even want this.

Anyway, I put my pre-order in.