Today Marathon announced a new event Ordnance Heist, which at first glance seems to be an awesome unexpected edition to the game introducing its first ever Power Weapon, but after digging a little deeper the event shows some of Marathon’s glaring issues once again.
What is Ordnance Heist?
Ordnance Heist is a new event arriving to Marathon on August 18th and running till September 1st. It is a multi-step event with the end goal of looting the Firestorm, Marathon's first ever Power Weapon. You'll have to start in Perimeter, hunting down UESC enemies to loot key templates and USEC Manifests.
From there you'll need to complete the objectives of your key template on Dire Marsh to convert it into a Firestorm Locker Key.
You'll need three Firestorm locker keys before you can bring them into Perimeter, Dire Marsh or Outpost to unlock a Firestorm Locker. Unlocking the Locker will grant you he Firestorm itself, as well as what Marathon says is a “haul of valuable loot”. We'll see what they mean by valuable loot once we open a Locker but I'm not getting my hopes up too high on that.
The Firestorm
The Firestorm is Marathon’s take on power weapons from Halo. Think of it like the Rocket Launcher - a temporary, super powerful weapon that will give you a massive advantage over your enemies, but once you expend all the ammo, it’s fine to be dropped.
Specifically, the Firestorm is an enhanced Hardline HPR with a sniper scope and incendiary explosive rounds that detonate on impact to deal massive damage and generate heat vs enemy Runners. It gives you 6 shots, and once they’re used, you don’t get any more.
The other thing about the Firestorm? It can’t be extracted and used in a successive Run. If you choose to extract it, it will be converted to credits. This makes its use case very straightforward - go through all the steps to get the keys, bring in the keys into a high-stakes run where you want to clear an event or simply clear the other Runners in the lobby, loot it from the Locker and let it rip! No stress about losing it, it’s all about using it!
The Good
Ordnance Heist solves a few issues with Marathon that I called out in my last article.
- It gives us a reason to want to run Perimeter, Day Marsh, and Outpost. As mentioned in my last post, these maps felt extremely unrewarding loot-wise, and without something like Upper Complex, me and my squad didn’t feel much motive to play the other maps. This event solves that, there is now more reason to go into each map!
- Improved loot. Yes, we’re getting a Firestorm locker full of loot that is more than just the Firestorm itself, but we are also getting a new currency from Perimeter - UESC Manifests - that can then be spent in the Firestorm armory for pretty solid loot. This is great, as it makes Perimeter runs more rewarding, but… couldn’t they just buff the loot on all maps?
The Bad
Complicated
Similar to other end-game events in Marathon, like looting a Cryo Archive vault or even completing Upper Complex, Ordnance Heist has a lot of steps to complete before reaching that final reward. You have to get the key template out of your first run. You have to complete the template objective without dying on your second run. You then have to get to the Locker with all your keys without dying, and if you do all of this successfully you get the Firestorm…. For 6 shots.
On top of that, we’re adding yet another new Currency in UESC Manifests on top of Vault Data from Vault Breaker, and C.A.R.R.I. All of this going to be hard for a new player to understand. That confusion combined with the fact that you’re most likely going to die while holding a key template or key, restarting your progress, is going to be very frustrating and will once again be something that turns away players. That brings us to…
No Loss Prevention
We need a safe pocket, or a way to “save” progress between runs. It needs to be more than just being able to buy another key template from the armory. This needs to be done for more than just Ordnance Heist as well. After grinding your ass off to get a Cryo Vault key, you shouldn’t instantly lose it if you get downed while trying to actually get to the Vault.
Events like this should be attainable for everyone. They should be things that frequently spice up a normal run. As it stands, that’s just not the truth. Three key templates, three successful template objectives, and then you might have a chance to loot the Firestorm? The amount of players that actually get to ever use the gun will be extremely small, because the steps to getting it are too difficult (and too rage inducing) to do.
Solo Friendly? Ya, right.
Oh, one other thing, from the sounds of it this isn’t solo-friendly whatsoever, as looting the Firestorm causes a UESC response, so add it the list of things that Marathon requires you to have a squad for. Apart from overly complex and difficult events and poor loot across maps, the fact that Marathon just isn’t enjoyable as a solo player still stands as the main reason this game’s player count is what it is, and Ordnance Heist doesn’t change that.
Enough with the dooming though, I’m personally excited to hop on with the boys and try our hand at getting the Firestorm! I’ll see y’all on Tau Ceti!