[quote]Where did bungie go wrong and what could they do to get players back into marathon?[/quote] Firstly I’m going to preface this with my own personal bias :- I despise Marathon and Bungie. Why, you ask? Well it ties into the first part of your question. IMHO Bungie went wrong in wasting the time, money and effort in making Marathon and the other 4/5 failed incubation projects, when they had a money printing machine in the Destiny franchise. Bungie could have reworked D2 with the next expansion to include dedicated servers, an updated engine and a banger of a DLC with all that time, money and effort. I know it’s petty, but Destiny has been abandoned for this turd of a game and it angers me about as much as any first world problem. Now the vitriol aside, everyone who has played Marathon seems to like it, yet the numbers keep decreasing? I think it’s because the game is far too niche and hardcore, which has the effect of pushing more casual players away. This has a knock on effect that the players that are left are a shrinking pool of increasingly skilled players. Making the game even more sweaty than it already is. This is going to cause burn out and people just taking off and leaving until the next seasonal reset. Other than other different PvP modes, a PVE campaign and the increasing casual-ization of the extraction shooter game itself, there is little they can do. Each of those ideas has problems attached to it, especially the last one, as it’ll piss off the current sweats that are still playing. The other ideas could end up splitting the already decreasing player base, causing the game to tank. I really think Bungie have backed themselves into a corner with Marathon. I think it was doomed from the outset, for a myriad of reasons. There are 2 that stand out though :- 1. Bungie’s reputation is in tatters due to the way they have treated Destiny 2 and its community. Nothing can spoil a product like bad word of mouth. 2. The game is too hardcore and niche. This has caused the initial player base to be small and then wither as people reach their skill level and don’t see the point in it anymore. Despite my disdain for Marathon and Bungie, and my comment earlier, I hope that Marathon continues as long as there are players to support it.

[quote]Where did bungie go wrong and what could they do to get players back into marathon?[/quote] I doesn’t seem so mysterious to me, it happened what everyone said most likely would. Bungie produced a very good game, the devs did an amazing job, but Bungie’s direction took a gamble and decided to enter a relatively niche market with on top of that a AAA hardcore game. And that’s what the numbers show. D1 and D2 vanilla had lukewarm reception BUT for different reasons. The core mechanics of looter shooter with Super and abilities has always remained. The sandbox was tweaked many times, abilities evolved but the core stayed the same. The challenge with Marathon is, the core experience is an hardcore extraction shooter, that’s what they wanted the game to be, and they succeeded. Now if that’s the reason why it’s not getting commercial success I don’t know how they get out of that one, without drastically changing the experience.

Marathon is a tainted game at this point. Ironically any big changes they could make to it are just essentially turning it into a shallower version of Destiny. Marathon is suffering from not only a lack of content but just a lack of everything. Cosmetics are unappealing and mostly just recolors which Destiny 2 already does via shaders and they work universally unlike Marathon's cosmetic system which is just an objective downgrade from Destiny. Gameplay is stale by the time you complete your first run as the enemy variety is basically non-existent meaning the PvP has to do all the heavy lifting. Guns feel nice as usual but if the only thing going for it is gunplay, the question becomes why not just play Destiny instead? There is also the other issues pertaining to design decisions that alienate casual or lower skill players and they drop like flies as can be seen on steam charts as the interest in the game wavers. tl;dr No matter what they do its not worth the investment because Arc Raiders already exists and any changes they can make to increase players is just turning down the PvP or making the game into Destiny 0.5.

The problem is BUNGIE released Marathon far too late in an oversaturated Competitive market full of competitive live service games, if this game came out 3-4 years ago in its current condition it would no doubt have been a hit but for the past couple years live service and competitive market playerbase been going down hill "Blame BR". I think this game's biggest mistake was not only making this an solely extraction shooter but a "hero base" Extraction shooter getting rid of not only the system that made Destiny great but also the store profitable. The game is not dead but it is dying way too fast especially after being released for a month BUNGIE is going to have to make some drastic changes even if it's against some player ideas of what it should be or want it to be if they want to turn this around because the game what it currently is now not working.

They mismanaged and overstretched their teams (the previous CEO admitted this). Marathon’s development had lots of problems causing them to make big changes, causing delays.  That first open test did a lot of damage. Made it real easy for people to hate on the game. ARC Raiders outplayed them. Even the people who are enjoying Marathon tend to agree it’s too niche (whereas ARC seems to be much more accessible). Prior to launch, I wondered if Marathon would do what D1 and D2 did - lukewarm Y1 followed by a more impressive Y2 “relaunch”. Maybe that can happen? Personally, I feel like the game needs to expand its scope - introduce PvP arena game modes. Make Marathon the PvP game and Destiny the PvE game (Crucible has had precious little for years, so why not). If Bungie/Sony is planning to end Destiny, it makes sense to also build PvE options into Marathon (which would require more interesting PvE enemies, IMO). No quick fixes that I can see.

They should keep extraction the core hardcore mode. Create other fun modes, 3v3v3 ctf respawn, 6v6 arena , mix it up. Keep the lose everything on death, but allow respawn modes. I think more people should experience this game