Marathon to me is a phenomenal game. I’ve put in hundreds of hours, me and my squad play multiple times a week together, and we're still having a lot of fun late in Season 2. However, there are a lot of problems with this game still and in this article I'm going to break down what I think are the three biggest issues that need to be fixed in Season 3 of Marathon.
Number One: Where's the loot?
I get it - you don't want to shower players in too much loot otherwise the overall game economy could become very unbalanced. That being said, I've never played an extraction shooter that gives you so little loot. Multiple times I have been the only to clear out two or more entire POIs, and I come out of those with maybe two to three pieces of blue loot.
Finding a blue weapon is extremely rare, and finding a purple weapon? Honestly I don't think that has happened for me at any point this season. Strong boxes, even when using the Thief’s The Finer Things ability to expose what box has a piece of purple loot will generally reward you with at best purple materials or a purple weapon attachment (woooooooo!).
Map events are very similar and killing a Warden or a Commander again reward you with very little purple gear. And even when you complete a difficult map event such as Upper Complex, the rewards still don’t feel great.
I shouldn't have to be forced to PvP and take other player’s gear to see purple or gold drops. I’ve personally never seen gold loot drop from the map itself. This isn't how you build a rewarding gameplay loop that brings back new players. If a new player gets to a POI, kills a few bots, and has the POI all to themselves, they should be coming out of there with at least a few pieces of loot that they're really excited about. They shouldn't come out of there with a giant pile of gray and green items with the one or two blue weapon attachments.
Searching the map and scrounging through every container should feel fun. It should feel exciting. It should feel rewarding. Right now I'd rather just run around the map and try to find other players to get their loot instead, and that is a major major problem.
Number Two: The Map Lockouts
I realize that the reason certain maps are available at certain times is to not spread the player base too thin across too many different queues. That doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating to sign into the game for your one play session a week with your squad, and to be blocked from doing some type of event that you're really enjoying. For me and my squad that's been Upper Complex. We love to attempt Upper Complex but many times we sign in and we have to wait an hour or more just to queue up for Night Marsh as a trio.
To me, this doesn't point to the actual queue lockouts being the problem. In fact, I actually think it points to the normal maps like Perimeter and Dire Marsh being way too boring and uneventful. And this goes back to the loot issue. Typically on a normal map run, looting POIs, killing wardens, killing commanders, and doing the events that are on those maps is not rewarding whatsoever. So my squad is always looking forward to Upper Complex or Cryo Archive as we feel those are at least challenging and give us soemthing to work towards (clearing UC, looting a Vault) that is more than just trying to find loot.
In Season 3 I know Bungie is making massive changes to Perimeter already, and I hope that includes adding something like an Upper Complex or adding more reasons to want to play that map. I think every map and every queue available at any given time needs to have some type of Pinnacle Event to drop players in.
UPDATE: Did Bungie read this post??? Because they just added a new event, Ordnance Heist, that gives Perimeter, Day/Night Marsh, and Outpost more incentive to play! There are still some issues here, so check out my full breakdown of the event.
If they don't want to do that because they're afraid of new players not being able to complete those Pinnacle Events, then the loot needs to simply be better and there needs to be more reason to want to play a basic map than there is right now.
Number Three: New Player Experience
I know this is another big focus of season 3 for Bungie, and I hope they get it right, because the more I play this game the more I realize if I had just hopped in and I had never been on Reddit or I had never watched a YouTube… I would have absolutely no idea what was going on or what I was supposed to be doing.
It took my squad and I watching multiple YouTube videos just to understand how we can beat Upper Complex and honestly? Would a new player even know that Upper Complex is a thing? For that matter, would a new player even know what Vault Breaker is? That there's a PVE mode that they can play? Is any of this actually explained to a new player?
So in season 3 when they release their cool Marquee Feature that is supposed to bring in new players, they also have to make sure that those new players are able to figure out what that new feature is, and are also able to see what is available on each map, what they can and can't do on each map, and what they should be working towards.
And again… give us more loot! Give a new player a shiny purple gun when he successfully loots an entire Point of Interest during a random Perimeter run! Hook people and give them a reason to keep playing and to keep going.
A recent Reddit post actually stated that only around 50% of players on console have gotten the achievement for extracting seven times or more! that just sums up how poor the new player retainment is and I think that is solely down to overall confusion of the game and what you're supposed to be doing early on combined with terrible loot and constant PvP (since experienced players know the best loot comes from PvP).
By fixing these three issues I think Bungie puts marathon in a much better place to retain and draw in new players. But even for me it's becoming a slog to sign on, to feel so unrewarded for putting in time and having successful runs, and until I want to sign on for more than just running a few Upper Complex runs, or a few zero to hero runs with the boys, Bungie has work to do. I hope they do it.
I’ll see y’all on Tau Ceti!