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Marathon 2025 - Bungie's new AAAA Extraction shooter
Part of what makes ES exciting is killing someone and then getting to loot them. It’s the video game equivalent to a piñata stuffed with candy, it’s really fun. Then there is the ‘come up’ and ‘zero to hero’ aspect where if you get lucky or just completely outperform the competition you start snowballing in success. Marathon has the best snowball type game play, no other game I’ve played has that sort of feeling of maximum victory and winning harder. Once you’re on a roll it’s a rush and it turns into a race against the clock. At the best of times the game starts feeling like one of those 90s game shows like Super Market sweep where you have 60 seconds to fill a shopping cart with as much shit as you can all free of charge. You are sprinting across the map to open rooms, kill high value targets, and stuffing your bags with purple and gold loot with just seconds left.
Let's be real here, extraction shooters are more like driving into the ghetto to jump some ghetto gang members for a jordans jamboree. You can say it's a fun game loop, but that doesn’t change that it is the pinnacle of antisocial and unconstructive behaviour with regards to making a thriving community.
The problem is, ghetto gangs are stuck in the ghetto. For as long as there is a ghetto, there will be ghetto gangs. In video game simulations, people can just back out and stop playing, realising that fighting over loot that can be easily lost when you aren’t good enough to defend it is pointless. Every extraction shooter lives in fear of their player base looking in the mirror and uttering a single, dreadful phrase:
But even aside from that, I think the biggest thing that's doomed this game, and a lot of examples of the genre, is that it has the very unfortunate distinction of being a knuckleball strategy getting a fastball treatment. It is hard to pull off, but pulling it off can be worth it IF there aren’t a lot of people trying to do the same thing. The more people trying to do the weird gimmick strat, the less effective that strategy becomes because everyone else gets far more exposed to it than before.
Even if Marathon was like the second or third best extraction shooter ever, two thirds of the player base who would have checked it out were playing another extraction shooter that came out like a week or two before or a week or two after, or had played a few lame ones and given up on the genre, or were comfy enough playing Arc Raiders or Tarkov and weren’t going to switch.
.You can say it's a fun game loop, but that doesn’t change that it is the pinnacle of antisocial and unconstructive behaviour with regards to making a thriving community.
With out referencing a PvE shooter, can you provide an example as well as an explanation of a pvp focused shooter that is super social and lends to constructive behavior with regards to making a thriving community?
No, every shitter fears having to look in the mirror and admitting that they are dog shit and they need to git gud.
This is a very hard pill to swallow for most people, especially if they have an ego.
Casual games will always be more popular for this reason and retards will always, always, always try to make casual games competitive. Seen it a million times. People want to feel good about themselves and they need some way to measure success. If they cant do that they pretend that every thing else is the problem, they are just that desperate for success.
Let's be real here, extraction shooters are more like driving into the ghetto to jump some ghetto gang members for a jordans jamboree. You can say it's a fun game loop, but that doesn’t change that it is the pinnacle of antisocial and unconstructive behaviour with regards to making a thriving community.
this sounds like loser bitch fucking cope, its a PVP game, Marathon is flawed as fuck and will die, but the "point" is PVP with PVE backdrop.
Arc is the same way, and there's tons of people like you screaming in rage that there should ONLY be PVE and everyone should work together and never ever kill each other because then there would be a loser! and that makes them sad!
Which is good, fuck you, I want you to be sad, I'm taking your shit, your the Irish waiting for the Vikings to come steal all your shit because you can't do it yourself.
With out referencing a PvE shooter, can you provide an example as well as an explanation of a pvp focused shooter that is super social and lends to constructive behavior with regards to making a thriving community?
They do not take my rooks away when I lose a game of chess though. And my opponent does not have 4 queens and a Glock pointed at my dick under the table.
Team Fortress 2 managed to solve this by optimizing for the experience of the individual player rather than the team. Incidentally it became the most renowned "hero shooter" ever made and is still talked about for its design genius to this day. Every other PvP game with "hero shooter" elements has failed to learn these lessons and has become miserable to play as a result. Probably on purpose because then the matchmaking algorithm that every fucking game uses now can beat you down until your win/loss ratio is a perfect 50/50, which they can then brag about in a weekly blogpost where they say the game is perfectly balanced.
You're not wrong. I also don't know of any other shooter game like that that goes out of its way to remind you that you're playing a fucked-up psychopath who loves what they do for a living and wouldn't ever choose to do anything else.
"I'm not a crazed gunman, dad; I'm an assassin. Well the difference bein' one's a job and the other's mental sickness."
They do not take my rooks away when I lose a game of chess though. And my opponent does not have 4 queens and a Glock pointed at my dick under the table.
ELO is intangible and only serves to make my next match 'better' or at least more fair. If I as a shitter am plopped down against a grandmaster that is a failing of the organizer not me. Do they hand out the vibrating buttplugs/cheating devices or is that DLC?
Yes and no, Elo has some serious problems. Problems similar to what's going on in Marathon.
If you only ever lost games you'd eventually hit 0 elo and your chances of matching with some one as equally retarded/possibly blind or otherwise crippled would be next to nothing.
The pool of players would need to be so fucking massive that there would be an actual bell curve of people for you to match into.
You are only ever going to match into opponents who are better than you and are favored to win. Some opponents might have the exact same Elo as you, but are in reality 2k and 3k rated players. They are smurfing and are here to fuck you.
Realistically you would eventually win some games, but you would eventually hit a wall. The only way through that wall is through nutting up and to improve, but know this... now and forever, once you hit that wall every rung on the ladder there after is a brand new wall demanding the exact same from you. This is when people typically quit.
But still, in my hypothetical, why would you bother to play a game if you are just hopelessly fucked? There are real answers to that which vary from person to person.
Yes and no, Elo has some serious problems. Problems similar to what's going on in Marathon.
If you only ever lost games you'd eventually hit 0 elo and your chances of matching with some one as equally retarded/possibly blind or otherwise crippled would be next to nothing.
You are only ever going to match into opponents who are better than you and are favored to win. Some opponents might have the exact same Elo as you, but are in reality 2k and 3k rated players. They are smurfing and are here to fuck you.
Realistically you would eventually win some games, but you would eventually hit a wall. The only way through that wall is through nutting up and to improve, but know this... now and forever, once you hit that wall every rung on the ladder there after is a brand new wall demanding the exact same from you. This is when people typically quit.
Cheaters are already faggots anyways, they may as well fully commit.
ELO has issues for sure, especially I feel in use outside 1v1 settings. But no one (who is not deliberately sandbagging) is going to lose every game, you will hit your 50/50 equilibrium and then have 'fair' games.
The pool of players would need to be so fucking massive that there would be an actual bell curve of people for you to match into.
But still, in my hypothetical, why would you bother to play a game if you are just hopelessly fucked? There are real answers to that which vary from person to person.
If the game is fun, I will play it until the wheels fall off. I sucked balls at CS 1.4 as a squeaker but I clocked a lifetime in that franchise. Private servers make a world of difference though honestly, speaks to the power of community on that style of game.
Same case for Marathon and all games, but previously some one was pretending noobs can’t possibly succeed there and that’s why it’s bad. As if every game needs to absolutely hand hold you as much as possible. As if every raid noobs are just going to get the shit bullied out of them. That we can not have games with clear winners and losers. this is the argument being made by the individual.
Even games we rarely win or that are incredibly difficult, people have their reasons for playing them and finding enjoyment in them.
Marathon is bad right now not because it’s an extraction shooter and it’s difficult, but because it’s a fucking mess.
ELO has issues for sure, especially I feel in use outside 1v1 settings. But no one (who is not deliberately sandbagging) is going to lose every game, you will hit your 50/50 equilibrium and then have 'fair' games.
Sure but the problem is that if you do get a good run in an evening for whatever reason, 5 games in a row all wins because the stars aligned in your favor or whatever the case may be. Then a modern videogame will then decide that the next evening you play that it's time to fuck you in the ass to put you back in your place at your 50/50 win ratio where you belong throwing opponents so far ahead of you in your direction that the losses end up completely lopsided and your opponents end up with an easy victory they get nothing out of either.
I'd say it's a bit more specific than that, really when it went f2p(2011) because then any retard could create a new steam account, cheat till they got banned, and just continually do it. Before it went f2p that shit was rare since the retards didn't necessarily want to gamble the $25 or whatever it was standalone outside of the orange box.
In the modern gaming landscape? The only important factor in getting hired is how much woke shit you crammed into existing IPs, rather than making profitable games. It's inverse meritocracy.
I get this, it is a concern that all matchmaking needs to deal with though. Things like accelerating through or even 'leapfrogging' ranked brackets during placement or as anti smurfing techniques.
The problem is that matchmaking in games is (and I think we are all in agreement here honestly) striving for 50/50 forever fuck you which is a 'big picture' Good Thing™ but it relies on your game being fucking fun. If your game is good, people will remember matches not scoreboards, even if it sounds super gay.
I get this, it is a concern that all matchmaking needs to deal with though. Things like accelerating through or even 'leapfrogging' ranked brackets during placement or as anti smurfing techniques.
The problem is that matchmaking in games is (and I think we are all in agreement here honestly) striving for 50/50 forever fuck you which is a 'big picture' Good Thing™ but it relies on your game being fucking fun. If your game is good, people will remember matches not scoreboards, even if it sounds super gay.
Sure, but there's a difference though even with an ELO system in say... chess vs a videogame. In chess, you can just go play chess without having to give a shit about matchmaking unless you're at a tournament or some special event where it makes sense. In a lot of videogames? You don't get a choice in the matter, or even if the game has a "casual" mode then you're just stuck with shit players. It's not like these games just do random matchmaking, count your ELO or whatever system they're using in the background, and then only apply it during tournament week as the last week of the month or something.
Sure, but there's a difference though even with an ELO system in say... chess vs a videogame. In chess, you can just go play chess without having to give a shit about matchmaking unless you're at a tournament or some special event where it makes sense. In a lot of videogames? You don't get a choice in the matter, or even if the game has a "casual" mode then you're just stuck with shit players. It's not like these games just do random matchmaking, count your ELO or whatever system they're using in the background, and then only apply it during tournament week as the last week of the month or something.
Yeah, and with games matchmaking for 'engagement hours' for shareholders/drive microtransaction purchases (I think this is the one), gone are the days of private servers, or even just a 'casual' playlist which just did distance/ping based matchmaking to find quick pick up games and scramble the teams between matches. Oh and also having a fucking fun game.
I'd say it's a bit more specific than that, really when it went f2p(2011) because then any retard could create a new steam account, cheat till they got banned, and just continually do it. Before it went f2p that shit was rare since the retards didn't necessarily want to gamble the $25 or whatever it was standalone outside of the orange box.
Also half the classic maps just flat out stopped working because of how much the game had changed by then. New maps came, but i mourn the simpler times.
I think maybe the game was at its best with the pyro update.
Unless it's just to hang out with a relative or something? None, really. Even if you take it to the more fair "you will lose notably more often than you win", it can be hard justifying playing for a long stretch.
Of course, the first difference is that chess is a 1v1 game where there is almost certainly someone you can face on roughly even grounds. There is someone you can face where it's a tossup, even if they're an absolute shitter by the standards of the broader game, and entire systems exist to make sure that you can fight a roughly fair game. Nobody is chained up in Garry Kasparov's basement as his Check Mate, we can play how we want.
Heck, just recently I had a game where it was me and another player (both semi-competent casuals) against a serious player, with him having a 1min timer while we had ten times as much. We got checkmated, and we still had fun. I then played the other semi-competent player a few times, and he managed to beat me pretty thoroughly despite his mental exhaustion even as the serious player audibly cringed with every piece we blundered. Still fun.
That's all entirely tangential to the core point, which is that losing is an active setback in an extraction shooter. Even if we'd won the serious player can go to his next game and have a great time regardless.
The only pvp game I'm currently playing in any way resembling 'seriously' is Mahjong Soul. I'm not an especially great player, though I'd say I can count myself as good; I've just managed to get into the gold lobby, and I'm slowly creeping up the ladder. It's a four player game, where the 1st gets a big rankings buff, the second a small one, the third a small penalty, and the last a big penalty. The worst that can realistically happen to me is that I get knocked down into the previous lobby, which just means I'll get a string of probably easier games as I get right back to grinding out my rank. The fundamental difference is that in an extraction shooter, the penalty goes deeper. It can become noticably more difficult for someone to regain lost ranks if they also lost something important to their strategy, That is, at the absolute root of it, the only difference between extraction shooters and other games; I will never long-term fall significantly lower than my true skill level, because whatever I need to play at my best is there for every game regardless. In extraction shooters, that can be held up by the fact that I need to grind out some more loot so I can catch up again; getting stuck in lobbies below my true skill level just to get an equipment buffer in case I get jumped as soon as I'm back. Perhaps that new step can happen at the same time as general rank-grinding, perhaps it can't. Either way, all I have to do is decide I don't want to do that new step to decide that extraction shooters are not for me on principle.
this sounds like loser bitch fucking cope, its a PVP game, Marathon is flawed as fuck and will die, but the "point" is PVP with PVE backdrop.
Arc is the same way, and there's tons of people like you screaming in rage that there should ONLY be PVE and everyone should work together and never ever kill each other because then there would be a loser! and that makes them sad!
No, every shitter fears having to look in the mirror and admitting that they are dog shit and they need to git gud.
This is a very hard pill to swallow for most people, especially if they have an ego.
Casual games will always be more popular for this reason and retards will always, always, always try to make casual games competitive. Seen it a million times. People want to feel good about themselves and they need some way to measure success. If they cant do that they pretend that every thing else is the problem, they are just that desperate for success.
Damn, one unflattering metaphor about extraction shooter players and we got you cussing like you just learned the words. Now, you could have just accepted the jordans jamboree metaphor and called it a guilty pleasure - after all, plenty of games are far more explicitly about simulating some asshole facet of humanity - but it seems I’ve struck a nerve here.
Clearly, the only choice I have... is to quadruple down on the metaphor and turn it into a full-on roast of the genre and the larpin’ lunchtime rowdies that call it their home.
Which is good, fuck you, I want you to be sad, I'm taking your shit, your the Irish waiting for the Vikings to come steal all your shit because you can't do it yourself.
But you see, that’s just it. You can’t take my shit, because I can just play a game where pvp doesn’t mean losing my shit and still have a good time. You can come in to my mahjong game, feed the other players, do anything and everything you want to try and piss me off and assert your dominance, and I can just finish the round, go to a new game and you cease to exist in my life in any meaningful sense. You cannot do the lasting damage you want to me.
You can claim that it’s some kind of unparalleled experience that you just don’t get in any other genre, that the deep thrilling experience of punching that man in the back of the head and taking his Jordans is the ultimate expression of a living, breathing game world, the ultimate assertion of manliness and tactical depth and whatever else, and I can just nod and go “yeah, ooga booga bix nood to you too, bro” and move on. Maybe toss you the good ol’ blue eye stare as I do, because I’m either playing games that’ll stick around regardless of what you do or I’m not so invested in them that I’ll be torn up if they fail.
You demeaning the genres I like means nothing to me, because they’ll succeed or fail regardless of what the ‘Urban Market’ of gaming thinks. Me rejecting the genre you like seems to mean far more to you, perhaps because extraction shooters are eeeeever so slowly going the way of every “pvp with lasting consequences” game: dead in an alley after a deadly overdose of their own farts, not even worth a news article.
The people in the hood with the fundamental, innate hood mindset are the only ones who actally experience hood culture and have even a chance of thinking it's cool afterwards. Oh, some other people outside might occasionally be suckered in by the media glamour, but as soon as they get there they realise it's nothing but a rat race, and the scales fall from their eyes. But unlike the real hood, this one is opt-in, so inevitably the disillusioned people will decide to just leave and the streets run dry. Those actual hood people, well, they'll talk on and on about how big and tough they are and how everyone who left just can't handle being a real hood gangster, but even the slightest cursory glance reveals that they're at BEST a slightly-above-average fish in a slightly-below-average pond. All these people live in small environments occupied only by people like them and the casual players they use to feed their egos, but god forbid you start implementing changes to keep those casuals around, especially by making the crime statistics have to deal with the fallout of their anti-social behaviour in any way beyond the rush of the moment. These people, after all, live in an eternal present; the idea that being aggressive and confrontational should result in some consequences they have to deal with later is some black magic bulllll-shiet that they can't truly understand the workings of but hate and fear regardless.
And of course, all their bluster about being big and tough go out the window the moment there's even a slight numbers disadvantage for them. No, when the guys they swore they could run rings around in a fight collectively decide they're sick of their shit and provide them with the challenge they ask for, they go running for the hills as quickly as their fast-twitch muscle fibers can take them. They will of course complain about this endlessly, suddenly not liking the idea of organic and emergent gameplay when it means they're getting buck broken - despite the fact that even that much produces a significantly more functional environment.
And let's be clear here, the ability to recognise Marathon as a doomed game does not indicate a greater self awareness about the flaws, or someone who can truly fix the same. Marathon is still a ghetto, it's just a haitian ghetto that's so bad even some of the regular ghetto-goers will go 'nah dis shit fucked up mane'. That acknowledgement does not make any of the individuals a member of the Dominican Republic; it implies no greater awareness of why the game collapsed aside from the ones that differ from their home base hood. you can point out how some of it's flaws and the reason for it's slow decline are baked into the genre, and all they can give is a stare with less higher thought than Harambe's - even after the zookeepers ventilated him.
This sort of dysfunctional hoodrat results in one insurmountable problem: they cannot maintain their communities without proactive and persistent external support. You can dig them a well and give them all the instructions they need to maintain it; it's time as a functioning piece of their society will last as long as you ensure they maintain it, as long as it can last without maintenance, and not a second more. Practically, this means that the only way to have a persistent community is to either have so many that it can outlast attrition for a few years, or fundamentally change the hood to appeal to a higher tax bracket (they'd call it gentrification if they could spell it.) Sooner or later, any smaller experimental ghetto’s gonna run empty - because let's face it, we all know that the biggest difference between an extraction shooter and a real ghetto is that you poor lads are even worse at reproducing than regular gamers. You can't even reproduce like the liliths of the world by finding some young, vulnerable kids and love-bombing them, because that would require a level of empathy and theory of mind for other players I am yet to be convinced that these people possess. A new player isn't a potential friend to be taught the fun of the game, they're just a slightly less practiced target to jump in the jungle.
So inevitably, the extraction shooter ghetto will fall apart, and they'll come crawling back to one of the big two. Unfortunately, for the ghetto trash, they're stuck with two species they are fundamentally incapable of dealing with: redneck trailer trash and aimbot rooftop koreans. In Arc, they find themselves heading to a somewhat more functional town that is still obviously a hollowed-out shell of what it formerly was. And sure, it may seem sleepy, but soon you'll find out the friendly townsfolk with the funny drawl will don their grandpa’s pointy white hood and lynch your ass as soon as you try any of your ghetto shit. Tarkov is the ghetto where all these creatures first came from, and not only is it an especially big shithole, it's the largest and oldest district where their behaviour is still treated as normal. Unfortunately, when they come back they find out the hard way that the half the hood have evolved into even scummier people using outright cheating tactics, who realised that playing fair when something they care about is on the line is for chumps - so now the Jordans route is a one-way street they're at the bad end of, and the only option they have is to bend over and take it just like their massa said they would. Either way, even the big boys already only a shadow of their former selves, and it won’t be long until you’re left fighting over the barest morsels that aren’t even Jordans anymore; just a few scraps of old leather that might have once been a pair of Pumas.
Of course, I might be wrong. Perhaps there’s a game for Misanthropic Melanin Men tucked away in the back of a small town, being worked on by a dedicated team, and it’ll fix all the issues that plague these games (even the issues the 'real ones' say are core to the genre) and make it a thriving one that lasts aeons. Maybe it’ll come with 10 modes tuned to perfection for every kind of player, perfectly resolve the obvious and seemingly insurmountable player retention issues, single-handedly revive the genre while giving everyone the clues they need to do the same. And maybe it’ll even come out before people write the genre off completely and leave it for dead in the wake of the Next Big Thing, you never know, it could happen.
You can hold out hope for it if you want, but personally I don’t truly care either way if extraction shooters as a genre live or die. At the end of the day, your entire genre’s existence is just a spectator sport I’m watching for the bloopers. Either they’ll flop and I’ll get a laugh from the cope, or they’ll fly well enough to be boring and I’ll find something else to do. Who cares if you call me names while I watch? Your demonstrated tastes are a dying genre, copium and your own butthole; obsessing about the opinion of people like that is clearly not worth my time.
So I have no need to assert superiority by your rules. I don’t even need to ever play an extraction shooter even once. I can just let you think whatever you want about me and go do my own thing.
