140K+ Players Slam Marathon Servers in Pre-Launch Test, and That's Just on PC

I’ve heard a lot of mention of how slow it is… which I assume is in relation to it being less action-centric but more tactical than say Destiny or… and I’m only mentioning this as I’ve heard so many people state it in comparison - Apex Legends (yes I know they’re totally different games but people are using it as a comparison for some reason). Hopefully it finds its audience, in much the same way as Hunt: Showdown and Escape from Tarkov has.

Played for two hours last night and had a blast, the UI is chaotic but you kinda get used to it. Also thought the bots hit hard or is it just me 😅.

I am a big fan. Just played as rook (survived, solo play).

Played a couple hours with my kids last night and we had an awesome time!

I played through the tutorial and 2 matches, while I actually like the unique artstyle and Bungie’s signature gunplay I found the gameplay loop a bit too slow and it quickly got boring since the very first match, plus the interface seems unnecessarily convoluted.

I think it had the potential to have a very interesting campaign for single-player content but they decided against it.

As a console player, I’m not a fan of having to move a mouse pointer to select things In the games menu.

Very nice , impressive!
Can't wait to see the retention numbers!

I'd say thoroughly whelmed is how I feel about Marathon. After spending a few hours yesterday in both solo and squad with friends, there's something lacking about this that I can't quite put my finger on. Even the friends I was playing with seemed pretty indifferent to it, and they're way more into PvP shooters than I am.

It's clearly not for the Destiny crowd.

I played it and found it boring, slow and frustrating. Even the soundtrack is monotone and sleep inducing.

Also the menu UI is godawful. They clearly haven't learned from Destiny's mistakes in that regard.

Saying that, a lot of my negative feelings are subjective and genre based, I think the extraction shooter crowd will be satisfied.

I still think this game will live in the shadow of Arc Raiders, which feels like a more complete product.

@BusyOlf yeah games do that annoy me. Cyberpunk was a poor culprit also. Surely it can’t take much for them to “optimise” the menu controls for console?

I played this for around an hour last night and I enjoyed it but not sure if it's enough for me to buy. I then tried to load into a new run after the tutorial and it kept crashing (PS5). I'll try again tonight.

Played an hour or two last night and then turned it off. Thought it was pretty mid to be honest. Nothing was outright terrible but neither was anything very good.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays in a years time should it survive.

My first impression several months ago was that this game looks exceedingly generic, and having played it, that is still my impression.
I'll give it a few months tops.

I don't play extraction shooters, so that can be a big part of it. But are they normally so boring? Dropped into a map with the most boring objectives a boring open-world game could muster, pick up lots of random s*** like it's goddamn Fallout, shoot a few bots with gunplay that could come out of literally any modern shooter, and randomly get ambushed like you're on Fortnite — except the density of other players is so nebulous, you never know how on edge you should be.

I'm going to try it again with a friend this weekend, if I have the time. But I was bored out of my mind for the 2 matches I played. Literally nothing even happened in the first match. It took 10 minutes of nothing in the second match for me to to randomly get killed from behind. And I didn't even care about losing stuff, because the game does such a terrible job with presentation that I never understood what the hell anything was for or why I should want to collect stuff in the first place.

I've had about 5 games so far. I'm not sure I'd pay £35 for it. But I am having decent fun. The UI definitely needs work.

@LifeGirl Tried it yesterday and that's pretty spot on. Game looks great and play very well (like Destiny) but otherwise very generic.

Remains to be seen if players are willing to walk away from other similar games (Arc Raiders, Hunt etc) and pay $40 for it.

@somnambulance As soon as the tutorial started, all I could think of is how much cooler this would be as a linear, single-player experience.

I would still be very interested if they put that together.

Yhhh I don't see this game surviving for that $40 price tag. Too slow and uneventful atm, like someone else mentioned the mouse cursor thing on console is aggravating to say the least.
The numbers look good on paper except for the fact that it's sandwiched inbetween highguard and arc so it's meaningless.
The Finals isn't an extraction shooter but it feels like a much better version of what they were trying to do here, flashy and visually striking game with some nice sfx and high octane combat.

@RoomWithaMoose had the exact same thought, I'm normally willing to give a new mp game a chance especially because this one looks visually striking but damn if this didn't feel like a missed opportunity as soon as I got out of the tutorial.

it’s trash, so damn boring. everything about it is just bland and the ui sucks

The menus and UI in general aren't good at all, but the gameplay is fun. After playing a little last night, I'm honestly not sold on it, but will play more this weekend. I've been very excited for a new Bungie shooter and my experience so far has dampened that excitement a little, but I don't want to jump to conclusions yet. Much remains to be seen!

@somnambulance
Your experience sounds exactly like mine pretty much. It looks really cool although the menus are a bit of a mess to sort through. Atmosphere is really great.

And yeah, just kind of get a contract, go loot/scan/whatever holding square does at a point, and leave to do it over again...or die trying to leave.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just stuck in my old ways but I think extraction shooters just aren't for me neither. Just can't find the fun in it.

The general gaming consensus seems to have switched back to "meh". I was trying to catch a couple streams but not many big streamers were playing it and if they aren't showing off your game that's kinda a death sentence in the modern gaming landscape. Even saw some people start with Marathon but by the end of the stream they were playing something else entirely.

It's really not a good look, a game lives or dies by what the general audience thinks about it and no amount of media propaganda will be able to save it.

I tried it, and it wasn't my cup of tea, but I hope others enjoyed it.

@UltimateOtaku91 yeah ai is strong with this one

@somnambulance I think there's so much potential for a really dark and disturbing sci-fi body horror single-player FPS with Marathon, but the tone in the cutscenes and the actual game feels like a mismatch. I'm just not sure what Bungie was going for here.

It’s kinda dull from a viewers perspective. I said on a different thread that watched 4 hours of gameplay last night and seen about three pvp situations (all ended within seconds)

I agree that the menus and UI need some work but it's right up my street and I'm still buying it. It's a steep learning curve. Seeing as I was finding it hard to sleep last night even though I was dead tired I was playing it around 4:00am and managed to work out what was what and where the extraction points were.

Huge drop off today thus far. Less than half yesterday's peak playing now.

I'm guessing requiem has some thing to do with that though.

Relay all powers to schilling, commencing in three, two, one...

I'll try it tonight or tomorrow. I love the Bungie gameplay but the aesthetics put me off.

Had a quick session during lunch, had no idea what the hell was going on at all, sheesh... sorry whoever matched with me, lol. I read about going solo with Rook which I'll try later but it was locked when I tried to choose it? How does that work?

started it again (like all previous betas) and uninstalled after 5 minutes again and went back to arc raiders
there's just nothing worse than 1st person shooters, literally

I've played Hunt Showdown got the platinum I used to play solo Vs trio's. Once you get used to these types of game's it's not hard to wipe out trio's or duo's as a solo. Obviously I play Arc Raiders I was playing solo but since they've added solo Vs trio's I've played a lot of that too. While I do like Marathon it was never designed for solo's it's only there to say you can play solo's PR marketing. I've played mainly as Rook. Rook is for solo's ONLY meaning you cannot pick Rook if you are in trios or you cannot pick any other runner if you want to play solo there is only Rook. When playing as Rook you essentially get a free load out you can NEVER customise your load out, meaning the trios have an advantage from the get go. They can take in better gun's more ammo, more shields and health etc and can do quests with Rook you cannot do quests solo. Don't get me wrong I've had quite a few excellent games with Rook taking out a lot of loot & getting quite a lot of kills. I can see Rook being unpopular with solo players from Arc Raiders for example as you are essentially being handicapped for playing solo and can only ever play as Rook when playing solo. If you have friends to play with and you like these types of games you might like Marathon. But from a solo player point of view like I said Marathon never was designed with solo players in mind.

@somnambulance
I get that. That's kind of the reason I moved over to playing fighting games more for my multiplayer fix this gen. I have some friends that play Battlefield but while it's fine it's not really my favorite style of shooter. I'm also a huge Halo fan.

Halo Infinite was almost there. It had almost everything it needed to bring Halo back in a big way. It just didn't have the support it needed tragically. Hopefully whatever the next multiplayer Halo offering is can learn from that especially now that its multiplatform.

Im not a fan and vastly prefer Arc Raiders to it.

In general, Arc Raiders systems are better.

For a looter extraction shooter, there are many locations in marathon that are barren.

Arc Raiders has a separate system for XP for when you kill enemies or search things that contribute to the distribution of skill points. Their other system is the looting side of it, which goes toward crafting or collecting full pieces of loot, whether it’s weapons or armor.

Marathon has all the systems into just collecting items or collecting items for money. Arc Raiders systems help to make even the lesser systems feel somewhat enjoyable.

I could play a marathon if my friends really wanted me to buy it but on my own, I can’t see myself picking it up.

I’ve had a good time thus far. Shooting feels good, combat is spicy, particularly against other teams. Any decent looter/shooter does that well. Would really like to see the time it takes to open a chest or dead drop to a liiiittle quicker. I know they want it to be a little more time consuming. But still. The classes are interesting but still a bit imbalanced, but they’re working on it. The feel of the world is cool though. It’s gaudy and I dig it.

The only real complaint I have is the community. Last night, the PS rating was around 4 and a half. I think even at 4.6ish. Today, it’s 3.19. Ain’t no ***** way that the people review bombing it actually truly played it from when I went to bed last night at 1 AM East Coast US time and when I had a chance to hop on and play it briefly today at 2:00 EST in order to drop it that much. It’s shambolic and one of the grossest things about being a video gamer.

@OmegaStriver good points. I don’t think Marathon is bad, but it’s not as good as Arc Raiders. Hope they still find a following, for Bungie’s sake haha

@Frmknst you are just full of contradictions aren’t ya?

@GalacticBreakdown
Decided to check out the stream in question. I went into the comments and a vast majority of them were noting that the game is boring but peanut is a good entertainer so they stuck around. It's once again not a good look for Marathon.

Not a fan of the UI. So much text to read, especially when looting. Have no idea what the majority of the stuff is. Needs a deeper tutorial on launch I think.

@GalacticBreakdown
Kinda true but I doubt they did for Arc Raiders. That's just how it goes, every game has 1 chance to either wow everyone or they'll never give it a chance again. It might still be too early to say but I don't think Marathon wowed the people it needed to wow.