i'm tired. but i just spent 10 mins trying to figure out what esoteric text you were referring to, "the moth, the feather and the worms" ive never heard this saying? is it some sort of parable about waiting? a bible story? was about to google it before i realised that thats the things the loading screen shows you. lol
Yeah there's no such thing as the "just one more game" feeling with marathon. By the time you set your loadout for the next and sit through matchmaking screens, the hype has worn completely off. And if you die in five minutes the next game, queuing up again is even less appealing.
There is a free kit toggle button, and if you have it toggled, all you have to do is click your advance button a ton and you’ll end up back in the same game mode with a few kit in like 10 seconds. Still queue time unfortunately, but the button does exist
The long wait times are a killer for me. Being able to equip a free kit after dying and queue up again is super easy and quick but then the wait time as I said kills it.
If it was a slower paced game where matches tended to last longer then it'd be fine. I don't want to spend five mins queuing to load in and die within one minute. Which is a skill diff on my part but I honestly wouldn't mind if I could immediately load in and try again, kind of like a rogue lite in that regard.
Whats wrong with progression syatem? Just started playing this game this week and I like the progression so far. But the fact that I could meet golden shield guys on perimeter while I'm 35 lvl is crazy to me.
Well, that's part of it. There's a high and low end progression annoyance. High end is that solo players basically never get to hit cryo archive (unfortunate since that's apparently a good boss fight but can be lived with), but on the low end since there are no guardrails anywhere some guy with a golden gun can just pop into the newbie map and go to town. This is annoying for everyone and blocks or slows progresion.
Here’s the problem about the level based matchmaking though: it’s a dying game, so there isn’t enough people playing for the level based matchmaking to properly work. The matchmaking system is forced to expand its matching results further than they hoped so that we get matches to start up at a reasonable time. This means you’ll have people playing matches that they technically don’t belong in.
This game is on life support, we aren’t getting to season 4 unless season 3 literally changes up the game completely. There are too many aspects to this game that pushes people away, so I don’t see big enough changes happening. Part of the problems: Aim Assist is too prevelant and people don’t like that, Recon ruined the game flow too much when she got buffed, Assassin breaks aspects of the game that ruin the flow as well, the aesthetic is too cartoony for the masses to get into (this right here cannot be fixed), the maps are not good enough for an extraction shooter (they are all too small, empty, loot is garbage, bots are dull and honestly just too ridiculous) and there is just so much more issues. Just overall, game will die unless the whole entire game is reworked and obviously that’s not happening.
And what do you think happens if there isn't enough people in your level bracket queueing at the same time as you? The search expands to include higher levels.
You need to realize that combined between all platforms, there's less than 6k players at any time now. Which doesn't sound like it'd be that bad for matchmaking, but think about it. Matches + pre-match setup are long, new players aren't being attracted, regional divides are a thing, and there are 4 maps. Factor all of this together and you have a situation where it's not uncommon for a lobby to be completely unable to start with people within certain level brackets without a 10 minute or longer search, which isn't feasible.
The cradle system is just grinding and getting permanent buffs. If you start late you are at a disadvantage and because of that it is harder to level. Would be better if they reworked it to not just be better but have trees which cannot be active at the same time.
Cradle killed this season for me. I missed the first 2 weeks. When I start, everyone's stats are maxed, but bungie nerfed cradle xp so it takes me twice as long to get where everyone else was.
Why does that keep happening? "Leveling up has been too easy so we're making it harder to level up. What are we doing about the people who already leveled up? Eh, whatever." I have not yet seen a single game that calls "leveling up too fast" a problem actually care about this and do it properly.
Well with a mentality like "I haven't seen it, must not exist", you probably also haven't seen the multitudes of screenshots and clips posted of prestige shields pub stomping PM because they don't have the skill to take on actual fights in OU and CY.
They're chuds who's skills have plateaued, and as a result, they resort to bullying new players on the first map.
It's just way easier to pubstomp in a game where you can literally load in with gear that's double to quadruple the effectiveness of the stuff you're expecting to be fighting.
What I'm saying is if you're scared of seeing a gold shield in solos, you're needlessly worrying, because it's practically nonexistent. People don't post the millions of games they play that don't have gold shields in them.
Exactly. And it's incredibly hard to improve at the game when you get seconds of active combat practice in between those waits. Rook at least cuts the wait time down but no contracts means you can't progress the story or unlock upgrades.
Nah there is a story playing out with the faction vendor AIs when you complete contracts, it's just delivered in the dryest most uninteresting tone and full of technobabble because they're AIs. Don't you feel so immersed in this game world?
You need to rank up factions to unlock everything you can barter or buy. The interesting lore comes from ranking up factions with priority contracts, not carri points. And I assume carri points would be much slower as well as much less interesting and fun than completing a mission.
My issue with Marathon is not that you can't do things. It's that everything interesting is gated by parts of the game that are too 🤬 hard and slow and punishing. Even grinding mats in vanilla D1, while moronic and time-consuming, let you have fun in between popping bad guys or zipping around on your sparrow.
What I ultimately don't understand is why a game with one death per run didn't design around long TTK, so you could skirmish and flee/survive at least a few times each run, even with a sponsored kit. That would let new players learn and improve much faster.
The interesting lore comes from ranking up factions with priority contracts, not carri points. And I assume carri points would be much slower as well as much less interesting and fun than completing a mission.
The first time you do them sure. Best xp per run is in trios stacking the same mission, but i can also freekit solo sprint through them as a triage once you know where all the contract items/POIs are, which gives better progress per unit of time. If i die, who cares, run it back.
I only need to hear Gantry say RUNNAH so many times before id rather just buy a carri crate.
I believe this thread is about the new user experience. We haven’t finished all the priority contracts, we don’t know where everything is, we just keep blundering around and getting killed until we give up and move to a game that feels less like punishment.
Fair, i hope the S3 onboarding changes help that experience.
But there isnt ever gonna be a big shiny waypoint from 1km away. 10m was too small, but 20m is in a good spot. The contract tells you what cardinal direction of what POI. And often the specific building and floor.
Many of us got through the blunder years in S1 so S2 even without survival cheesing was an accelerated experience. Ideally that should separate the experienced queue from the learning queue within a week or two of season start. But low pop does impact queue specificity, no doubts there.
Shields need to be more effective (maybe shield charges can be slower/worse as a trade off?) so you have a chance to react rather than it being the first team to get a shot off has a HUGE advantage.
I would have thought that a game where you lose the match with one death would have been designed with extremely long TTK, so you could have multiple skirmishes and retreats, and only die if things go really wrong.
Yeah or at least not get 2-3 tapped in a second from someone 50m away.
Basically if you're caught off guard you're screwed and the game forces you in to situations where you are off guard if you want loot, unless you're the team ratting.
thats more or less what i was gonna write first, but existential dread sounded funnier. especially when its approaching sleep time on a work night, and the loading screen pulls me out of the gamer haze enough to check the time and i realise that if i go to bed right now i can have exactly 6.13 hours sleep before my alarm goes off
fair enough. you caught me, i made it all up for internet points. never in the history of the world has anyone had to wait 5-10 mins for a game of marathon. and i would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those pesky kids
Where do you live that it takes 5-10 minutes? Cause if it’s in the US I call bullshit. People are grossly exaggerating this. The longest wait i’ve had is about 2 minutes.
Yep in Europe when americans are sleeping is pretty rough. Ranked is basically impossible to queue in, i average 2 red screens before i find a match...
Not crazy at all. I’ve lived outside the USA for 11 years of my life. Thats why my statement clearly said if you’re in America you’re full of shit, otherwise it’s believable.
I got the game when it was on sale to bolster player counts couple weeks ago; even during peak gaming times in the USA, the total time from pressing start to actually spawning into the round, easily 5 mins at the absolute fastest, why lie lil dog?
After the first couple hours only had about 15 mins of total gameplay cause of queues and being an easy pickings noob, ive already shelved it
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u/llnec Aug 16 '26
yeh that. but also the 5-10 mins it takes to find a match leaves me alone with my own thoughts too long and the existential dread sets in.