Marathon hit Season 2, and it's gonna be free to play until June 9th (it's also on sale until June 16th for $27.99 USD, a more than fair price, imo). This season will include a PvP-lite mode and later a PvE-only mode as experimental queues. Please try the game if you think you might like it!
Given Destiny 2 is entering maintenance mode, it's possible that the PvE modes being successful could cause Marathon to shift towards being more PvE friendly, but that won't happen if players interested in PvE aren't showing up. While I am personally just fine with PvPvE modes, if you're hoping for a post-Destiny 2 PvE game, Bungie needs a successful Marathon for that to ever be a possibility. Because, let's be real here, it's not looking great for Bungie's long-term lifespan at the moment.
I like Marathon a lot, but I have no confidence it can be the kind of monolithic presences that Halo and Destiny were. Marathon doesn't have the significant singleplayer / PvE content that is needed to attract and maintain that kind of playerbase.
If I were Sony and I wanted to recapture the Destiny audience, I'd put every Destiny 2 dev that is slated to be laid off to work on PvE or campaign content for Marathon. Obviously, that's not going to happen, and I'm not sure that Sony even wants that.
Marathon is what made me start caring about Bungie again, but it sucks having to face the possibilty of losing them like this - due to an incredible game that appeals to a niche, hardcore audience being slated with the weight of an entire company. I'm glad Warframe appears to be doing well, but I understood that Destiny 2 was doing well a year ago.
Warframe is a game where forward progress becomes very unintuitive after a certain point. (Thanks to The Teacher modding tutorial quest added in 2025, that point is no longer "fifteen minutes in"). This is Warframe's greatest weakness, but also the unavoidable cost of it's greatest strength. I guarantee that nearly every time a Warframe player asks themselves "how do I improve my XYZ?" or "how do I get XYZ?" the inevitable result will be a multi-stage rabbit hole that takes them through multiple gameplay systems.
For instance, I wanted to get a copy of Thermite Rounds. This led to wanting to build a Wukong to cheese the high-level Spy missions it drops from. I had to go to the Void to pick up some Argon Crystals (I think these were for Wukong, but I've needed a lot of Argon Crystals recently, so maybe not). Once I had those, I realized I was short one Nitain Extract. Easiest way to get those is from Nightwave... but I had just spent all my Nightwave currency on Kuva (and Nitain Extract for a different Warframe). What Nightwave objectives can I do? Well, there's the Railjack missions, but I don't have a Railjack. I did Rising Tide to build my own Railjack (I was grandfather'd past where it normally happens in progression). Now I'm learning how to do Railjack missions (big fan, by the way). I play mostly solo (so I can pause), which meant grinding Intrinsics for my Railjack so I can get up to Command 5 for three AI crew members. Unbeknowst to me at the time, by hiring a pilot and a gunner, I've unlocked a stupid fast Credits farm. After my Eighth Railjack mission, I've earned a hefty chunk of Nightwave progress. But I have a locked Nightwave objective, too. I need to finish The Deadlock Protocol, so I make that quest my next active one and the cycle continues.
The thing that makes this work is the fact that I'm being pulled through so many varied gameplay systems that are all fun and feel fully fleshed-out. This is the ideal version of the thing you get from a live service game.
So it sounds like Season 2 of Marathon is going to feature experimental PvE / PvP-lite queues. Also Duos queue is coming back, and they've mentioned content in the works for Season 5. So long as Sony doesn't pull the plug prematurely, Marathon has plenty of run way.
I like the PvP aspects of Marathon, definitely, it's the most fun I've had with PvP in, well, ever. But Marathon doesn't have much in the way of lower-intensity content. You either need to lock-in 100% or not play, and I imagine that's where a lot of player retention issues are coming from. Here's hoping lower-intensity content helps the player base expand and stabilize.
I've been revisiting the arcade FPS Space-Hulk-with-the-numbers-filed-off, Space Beast Terror Fright. It's got me thinking about how similar it is to the trend of multiplayer comedy horror games (i.e. Lethal Company) without actually appealing to the same audience at all. It is difficult to be a comedy when the primary mechanics are standing next to computers and maintaining a cohesive line of fire, often at the same time.
I mostly play Marathon in solo queue. I am not what I would call good at first person shooters, and especially not competitive first person shooters. I had to learn the fundamentals of positioning while playing this game. Here are some tips I wish I knew early on in Season 1:
Honorable Mention Tip: I already knew this one, but it's the most important tip for any extraction shooter: You will lose everything again, and again, and again. It cannot be avoided. You will gain back what you lose again, and again, and again. Use your best gear. Gear collecting dust in your vault is meaningless. If you're willing to use your best gear, you win every fight against an equally skilled player who is scared of losing their gear. Gear fear gets you killed and leaves you without any experience leveraging your good gear when it comes time to use it.
1. Priority Contracts should be treated as your goals, not as tutorials. Standard contracts are dramatically easier and allow for much faster faction progress. Standard contracts never have "in a single run" requirements. You can often make meaningful progress even on runs you did not survive. I have literally died and been rewarded with a purple shield because I completed a contract and ranked up. You can also spend a small amount of credits to reroll standard contracts you don't want to do.
2. As you rank up in factions, you will sometimes receive salvage that can be used on upgrades for that faction. It is much easier to get purple salvage by ranking up with a relevant faction than it is finding it in the field. Additionally, the salvage and gear you get for ranking up improves in average quality the higher rank you reach.
3. Always have a smoke grenade and an offensive grenade if possible. Throwing a smoke grenade at the exfil point will make your life much easier. Offensive grenades allow you to deal damage without exposing yourself to counterattack, which can easily be the deciding factor in a fight.
4. Map knowledge is critical. Use solo queue and Rooks to explore. If you're at a POI you haven't been to very often, throwing a run away on checking every corner can pay off long-term.
5. Solo queue is hard mode. Like really hard mode. Even if you're uncomfortable playing with random people, it's almost certainly worth it to try crew fill at least sometimes. A single mistake can kill you in solo queue, trios give you far more leeway for minor mistakes.
6. On flat terrain, the more directions and longer distances you can see, the less safe you are. The inverse is also true. The best position is somewhere you have multiple directions you can go without leaving cover while your target cannot get into cover at all. Height is good for both your cover and your ability to see players coming, but be aware that it can also leave you exposed from multiple angles.
7. TTK is low. If your enemy has to guess where you will attack from next, that alone can buy you all the time you need to win. Never pop out of cover in the same place twice in a row.
8. In solo queue or as Rook, it's important to crouch and make less noise when you know other players are near. But don't let caution become cowardice. Playing fast and dying fast is better than playing slow solo and losing everything 15 minutes in without attacking even a single UESC bot. The long-term experience is more valuable than not dying.
9. In Solo queue, hearing is critical, especially in solo queue. You will almost always hear other players before you see them. Use a headset if you can.
10. In crew queue, communication is critical. A team that can communicate effectively will almost always beat a team that can't. Use a headset and mic if you can.
11. Learn to reset fights. If you took any damage and you don't know where your enemy is or you're not sure you can win another exchange of damage, take cover somewhere else and heal before you try to engage again. Do not return using your escape route. Force your enemy to guess where you will be coming from next. You can practice doing this against UESC bots.
12. When you die, ask yourself what you could have done differently, and be as honest as you can. There is always something you could have done better. If there was nothing you could do in that fight, consider how you could have avoided getting into that fight where you were located in the first place. Even in Perimeter, there are many open spaces where your only defense is hoping no one sees you, and that is a very bad defense.
13. Make sure you are using as much of your Shell's advantages as possible. If you're only using your Shell for one ability or trait, it may not be the right Shell for you. I spent a long time as Triage for his med bots and Thief for her visor. But I use every tool Destroyer has, and that's why it's my main.
Got a lot of stuff I wanna work on right now. Got several engine heart campaign starts I want to put out for anybody to grab if they fancy.
Got a gilarpgs Slayer Duet on standby with my beloved.
There's a map generated already to give farirpgs Stoneburner a try.
But oddly enough the most put together solo game I have going on is Facility by Galen Pejeau. One I haven't really talked about yet inspired by the likes of Portal.
Stoneburner and Facility both use the breathless system designed for tense scavenging survival gameplay...and trust I have been thinking about translating something like marathon to tabletop. Fooling around with a locked tomb meets dune meets marathon sci fi necromancy situation. Calling it Death Race in my head for now.
But how to get all that organized and pretty? Time and effort.
When I first saw the implications that Runner psyches degrade across repeated terminations, I immediately thought that someone should do something like that for a TTRPG.
Also, when your characters can just get better after death, that also opens up options for extremely high-risk / high-reward options. Like, you could give characters an option to voluntarily die to force a success / improved outcome / etc. Runners are characters that can treat their bodies like a car they stole.
I returned to Marathon for a few runs yesterday, and I did much better than I usually do. Part of it was almost certainly just luck. But also the regular, non-priority contracts appear to be really effective at making progress. I feel like I should have focused more on these early on.
Cursed knowledge: Destiny is Warhammer 40k if there were good guys. The Cabal are Space Marines, The Hive are Tyranids, The Vex are Necrons, and the Fallen are Elites (from Halo). They're guest stars. The Guardians are, of course, Jedi. They're overall a net positive for the world, with some blindspots, but they are capable of learning to be better.
genuinely feels like an enormous fumble that PSO2 did the whole open world NGS thing in preparation for their official english release only for all of the biggest multiplayer games that released this decade to be run-based games structured around party play
it's such a nightmare to tell people "oh yeah I'd recommend PSO2 if you want more games like that. oh no. not the current one. the one they stopped working on to make the current version, which I think you would hate because it feels like a dead game"
Please stop trigger tagging with #epilepsy tw/cw/warning/etc.
I need every single person to understand how horrible tumblr’s tagging system is
I go into the tag for epilepsy and its all flashing lights. We can’t use our own tag because people without epilepsy fill it up with improper warnings.
Use ‘flashing’ in place of ‘epilepsy’ in your tags. You aren’t warning people of epileptics, you’re warning us of flashing lights. Please please tag properly. Epileptics say this endlessly and constantly and it’s ignored. You are risking lives by doing this.
Here’s proof of what I mean:
THIS POST IS 100% OKAY TO REBLOG, I ENCOURAGE PEOPLE WITHOUT EPILEPSY TO ESPECIALLY DO SO!
Yeah it's definitely been fruitful going back over the screencaps and unlocking those codex entries for the Hauler. Made a surprising connection from the codex entry from the bonsai tree of all things. From the shots we have of beneath the hauler I noticed that even though everything under there should be blocked off from sunlight there are still a lot of plants growing.
The bonsai tree codex town hall meeting about humanity's ecological impact had a colonist concerned about terrestrial flora growing around the Hauler but the botanist answering questions made a point about how much the ecology mattered and how we were doing everything we could to prevent harm.
I was looking at the quality of the artificial lighting under there...it's targeted spectrum grow lighting.
Little detail like that really drives home how seriously humans are taking the biosphere on this new planet considering what happened to Earth and Mars in our history.
We're not even going to kill something under a piece of equipment. There are *flowers* under there.
You have, what sound like blue collar workers, *expressing real concerns* about delicate ecosystems.
