Archived article: https://archive.md/HONwC
They’ll release one more update (my guess is whatever release-ready content they’ve already got), then the servers will shut down next Thursday.
“We don’t need player counts to be super huge in order to be successful” is starting to ring hollow.
Marathon is probably life or death for Bungie. Sony can’t exactly afford to put out a mid game after spending so much on the studio… and “mid” is exactly what Marathon felt like. Just like so many copycats during the battle royale boom.
I don’t think it will fail (or if it does, not as hard as Highguard), but unless it manages to stand out from the Tarkov/Arc Raiders/Hunt: Showdown oligopoly, it won’t bring in the numbers to please Sony.
To be honest at this point toppling Embark Studios is pretty tough in my book. The games they make have the same feeling of passion that Bungie used to have. Great gun play, fantastic audio design and interesting ideas. I really hope for the best for Marathon, if for no other reason than competition drives creativity, but Bungie has had the soul sucked out of them unfortunately.
Marathon seems pretty good imo, it’s problem is it’s trying to be a more hardcore extraction shooter than the ones that already exist which is gonna make it too niche to sustain a large US-based studio like Bungie.
Idk I played the play test and it was easily one of the better extraction shooters. Bungie has gun play locked in. But they shot themselves in the foot with BattlEye linux support and my new linux build is literally being put together this week. So regardless, I won’t be buying it when it launches cause it wont run on linux.
post build specs please
Case: O11 Compact Board: MSI 870e Edge TI Wifi
CPU: Ryzen 9 9950 x3D
GPU: XFX RX 9070 xt
PSU: Lian Li EG1000G
Cooler: Lian Li Hydroshift 2 LCD
It took me over a year to get it all together and all of the expensive components were gifts
What’s your RAM situation looking like?
32 gbs. Caught at the first sign of upturn on the RAM crisis.
Edit: 32 DDR5
Mid is exactly how I have seen Marathon described by the server slam feedback. People vasalating between whether or not they like it immediately after starting to play it is not a great look.
I heard the most recent playtest brought some hype back. Did you play it?
People who enjoy hardcore pvp and extraction shooters are hyped… but the important question is whether or not those people represent a large enough niche to sustain a game with such a massive budget.
I’m guessing no, but who knows.
Not a lot, just enough to get the feel of the game, but also to realize that I’m not the target audience. In some ways, it’s similar to Counter-Strike 1.6 or Team Fortress 2 back in high school: if I have a group of friends and an hour of free time, then sure, I might hop on. But I won’t be investing the time and long-term effort that an extraction shooter expects of me.
The moment to moment experience is good. Bungie haven’t forgotten how to create a tight FPS experience. But the game needs both longevity and a healthy playerbase, that’s what concerns me. Fans of hardcore extraction shooters already have Tarkov and Hunt, and casual players already have Arc Raiders. It takes something exceptional to move players out of their “home” game.