https://preview.redd.it/8lr7lo046shh1.png?width=1106&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e9148d9e9264a0c90ffb189c0e352e63bece763

Hey guys, my friend, Stan Marastan, that I do runs on Tau Ceti with (on the right) has sent me a picture of him and his wife during a casual phone call (on the picture he's taking a nap while we're waiting for the game to find us a lobby).

But I can't make out what they're saying. Can anyone here read lips? I think he's saying, 'Nobody understands weapon feel like Bungie. The way the trajectory vectors interact with the movement physics is unmatched. It feels so impactful.', and his wife replies something about 'Chad's weapon registering hits at unexpected angles'. Is she a hater?

Please share your observations.

As you may remember, due to some snide insinuations about brigading (that never happened, but Reddit chose to take at face value anyway), we're not allowed to name the other subs or personalities, even if it's relevant. So I apologize for being forced to make this text more obfuscated than it should be.

Here's what happened:

1. The MaraStasi Gestaspo lead by a cough-cough certain cured meat, aka Kim Jung Bac, aka the Good Faith Preserver, took over ONE of the 'good faith' subs dedicated to Marathon. Let's just say it's not as big as this sub, but close.
2. They claimed the kinda 'had to', because it was moderated poorly. Wink-wink, nod-nod.
3. The people's reaction have been... mixed at best. Which proves their infamy in the online community in general
4. As you might have expected, they are already cleaning the house and cracking down on dissent. New model, original parts.

My take? Bungie doing damage control the same dysfunctional way they do anything else in their work.

As a bonus, here's a picture of me getting my second Purple Heart:

https://preview.redd.it/dc0jmkemwohh1.png?width=1074&format=png&auto=webp&s=1a67ec5115a118a1db485d23acc5053679d23e09

Recognize the condescending tone? Wish the homeboy would take a break himself, and use it to find a personality that didn't revolve around doing internet janitorial work.

I am writing this from a hospital bed while my wife and her boyfriend, Hector, are outside sharing a celebratory vape because they think they finally got the house to themselves (ha, they don't know it's my mom's).

So, anyway – yesterday morning, blood started jetting out of my nose like bad ideas out of Ziegler's backlog. My ears popped so hard I thought Hector was setting off fireworks in the garage again. My vision went blurry, my lungs collapsed, and I was dizzy as hell. Hector reluctantly drove me to the ER in his lifted truck because I was 'killing the vibe'.

The doctor rushes in, looks at my charts, sticks a light in my eyes, and gasps.

Doctor: "Holy mother of God. Son, were you recently diving in the Mariana Trench? Are you a deep-sea submariner who survived a catastrophic hull breach at 10,000 feet?"

Stan Marastan(Me): "Bro, what? No. I haven't left my gaming chair in three years. I haven't touched the shower, let alone seen the ocean for another 10 years."

Doctor: "This is bizarre. The symptoms are textbook: severe, acute barotrauma brought on by an un-decelerated, vertical drop into an absolute vacuum. Nurse, check his phone."

The nurse grabs my phone, unlocks it, and gasps.

Doctor: "Just as I feared. An active tab for the Marathon Steam Charts. The terminal velocity of this player-count descent has completely obliterated the surrounding barometric pressure. The graph dropped so deep, so fast, it literally sucked the blood right out of your sinuses."

He wrote me a prescription for 100% pure copium and told me if I ever check the charts again, my skull will implode. Learn from my mistakes, guys. Let your wife's boyfriends look at the charts for you. It’s a medical hazard.

PS Just wanna give a shoutout to Dr. Johnny Jirkoff who treated me. He was kind enough to examine my wife as well to rule out the possibility of this condition being a genetic one (my wife is my cousin). Here's his photo, so if you ever see this man – know you and your wife are in good hands. This is the face of a doctor who has always got your wife's back.

https://preview.redd.it/dyp862rjehhh1.png?width=628&format=png&auto=webp&s=d896790befb35368124c32eaa493ede59626a508

Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing about the hospital – walking back from her appointment there, my wife tripped on wet floor and fell on her tailbone real hard. Now she walks funny, and sits on ice packs. She will probably need another appointment, but Dr. Johnny has graciously agreed to become our live-in doctor until my wife recovers! Anyway, if you see this doctor – know that you and your wife are in good hands.

If you think you are hardcore, you aren't. My wife’s boyfriend, Master Sergeant of Sergeantly Sergeantship Hector Ballstothewallsky, was the peak human specimen. Fifteen years in LAPD SWAT. Flawless record. He could breach a door using nothing but raw testosterone. Both in and out of the context of my wife.

Today, Hector got fired.

The LAPD announced they are now hiring exclusively from the pool of Marathon players who can successfully clear the Vault Breaker without crying. Hector didn't make the cut. He is currently in the living room weeping into a soy protein shake because he couldn't survive the unscaled PvE mob density as a solo player.

It gets worse. My own SEAL Team SIX unit is panicking. Our Commander just told us that if we can't speedrun the Vault Breaker in solo mode before lights out, the Pentagon is replacing us with 40-year-old British dads who have 800 hours under their beer guts in Marathon. Modern warfare doesn't need drone strikes. It needs peak human conditioning to clutch that "W".

I've tried talking to the brass about this. "Admiral, sir, those damn civvy contractors at Bungie dropped the ball and didn't scale a PvE raid meant for 3 operators to the solo experience! AGAIN!" I said.

The Admiral slowly looked up, bit the end off his cigar, spit it directly at my boots, and completely lost his mind. He got so close to my face I could smell my wife's ass on his breath, and yelled:

"Listen up, you un-moisturized, diaper-wearing sack of liquefied garbage! The absolute lightweights over in the Air Force are crying into their soy lattes, complaining about 'party size scaling in Marathon.' They're all on the internet saying, 'Waaaah, Bungie didn't scale the difficulty for solos! It's mathematically impossible to output enough DPS! My numbers don't add up, sarge!

Let me tell you something about math, Petty Officer VanCuck: MATH IS A SKILL ISSUE. If you cannot personally break the laws of physics, bend arithmetic over your knee, and violently traumatize the space-time continuum to defeat a trio-level dungeon by your lonesome, you are simply not hardcore enough to be a part of the US Navy, the back-to-back world war champs! If you need a duo, or a trio, or a whole star-studded committee of emotional-support operators just to complete basic PvE content, you shouldn't be holding a weapon system. You shouldn't even be playing an FPS! You drop your gear, pack your little bags, and go play Minecraft on peaceful mode with the rest of the toddlers! Now get out of my sight before I use your skull as a geometry textbook!"

So guys, I know there are a lot of vets from the Battle of Verdansk here, and active Delta Force and SAS operators from a different sub. Is this really just a skill issue? I thought Marathon was just a game I could launch after work to relax and unwind, and not feel like I'm deploying in Fallujah every time I start a run.

Any tips?

I know the sub is older and also for the original trilogy, but no doubt there are people here who have played the latest game and have stopped. I'm wondering why? What is your reason?

Please no ranting about what the game needs to sUrViVe, just honest reasons from people that played and bow don't.

Edit: Thanks for the engagement guys! I really tried to respond to as many people as I could. It's good to see what the community actually thinks and what are some of the actual reasons behind people not playing. Of course this is a small sample size, but it's good to gather data like this.

I really like the game, and for me the biggest reason I'm not playing it more is the lack of time, and lack of friends to play with. I'd love for duos to be available in all maps always and I'd like to see more story and world changes that reflect our journey through it. I don't mind the sweats that much, but to keep me playing I really need some stakes and a narrative purpose. The gameplay is amazing to me and that's right now, apart from the incredible visual design, the main thing keeping me coming back.

I hope the devs see this discussion and see what could be improved for the future of the game.

I wish Bungie the best and I wish Marathon prosperity and lots of players. It's sad to see a great game struggle with its potential.

Edit 2: I'm just gonna post some common reasons I saw in the comments.

• got bored (not much to do, contracts are stale in s2, few maps)
• no PvE (low stress, contract completion, easy low gear farm)
• competitive PvP shooters not their thing
• no new story content (what's going on?, no stakes, no narrative meaning, what's Durandal doing?)
• gameplay is great but not enough to keep me
• sweaty players are a big problem (chads vs. casuals [regular people with jobs and families], feels punishing if you don't play regularly and a lot, tough to succeed with randoms)
• no duos (duos should be available on all maps at all times)
• scheduled content not working for everyone (tough to fit into timeslots when people also have real lives)
• MORE STORY

Listen up, you Destiny tourists and Marathonhate brigaders. My wife's boyfriend and I were just laughing while looking at your zero-IQ takes on Ziegler's tweet. You think Joe Ziegler "left" Bungie? You think he "stepped down" because of the player count? *SNORTS IN JAPANESE*

Think about it. As Game Director, he was shackled by things like showering to get to the office, not being able to hit his Skittles-flavored vape hard in the boardroom, and listening to customer feedback. He was trapped inside a cage Sony built around him!

Well, he wasn't fired! He was PROMOTED TO CUSTOMER! By transitioning to a full-time unemployed player, Joe has finally achieved the ultimate extraction. He is now at the highest tier of the Marathon ecosystem – the Blast Haver.

And you guys are crying about Julia Nardin taking over? "Ooooh, they were partial to the launch failure!" "Ooooh, the game has been bleeding players for half a year!" 😭🍼

Ummm, hello? It’s called a slow burn narrative. Marathon losing its playerbase isn't a failrure, it's environmental storytelling. Everything you see in Marathon – from the shitty UI to the callous layoffs – simulates the harsh, uncaring reality of a dying corporate dystopia.

Del Chafe III (which, as I have just Googled, is a real name, and not an item on an STI panel) and Julia Nardin have been heavily involved in leadership since day one, which means the vision remains uncompromised. We don't need "external perspectives" or "fixes." We need to trust the process and...

LET BUNGIE COOK!

Joe is out there right now, playing autofill lobbies on Dire Marsh and being called bad words by random teammates, having the time of his life, laughing at all of you. Get ready for Season 3, haters. The Marathon sweep is coming, and Joe will be right there with us in the trenches – using his severance to purchase the sexy robot sesbian lex skins for $20!

I'm from Finland and I fluently speak Russian (studied it 8 years ago) and the amount of Russians I run into is hilarious. It's always funny to pretend I don't understand them and then suddenly start communicating with them, then we all have a laugh (99% of them were pro Ukraine and nice fellas). I guess Marathon is somewhat popular there?

(If anyone is curious how they play, all of them have very specific and expensive routers and VPN. I too, was curious how they're playing, especially on PS5 since Russia is heavily sanctioned).

>!...in Battlefield 6. It's 50% off now, so if you were on the fence – it's finally decent again, and you don't have to wait on your wife's boyfriend and pilates instructor to play it. It takes a lot of space, unfortunately, so I had to delete Marathon :(!<

Real talk.

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  |  ______________________________________________________  |
  | |                                                      | |
  | |   [ BUNGIE HQ - INTERNAL SECURITY // EXFIL TERMINATED ]| |
  | |                                                      | |
  | |               \   /                                  | |
  | |                \ /                                   | |
  | |             --- X ---  <-- SONY ACQUISITION          | |
  | |                / \         CLEANUP PROTOCOL          | |
  | |               /   \                                  | |
  | |                                                      | |
  | |         _--""""--_                                   | |
  | |        /          \                                  | |
  | |       |  (o)  (o)  |    <- "But I just made          | |
  | |       |    __      |        Valorant again..."       | |
  | |        \  \__/    /                                  | |
  | |         `--------'                                   | |
  | |           /    \                                     | |
  | |          /|    |\      ____                          | |
  | |         / |____| \    [____] <- Cardboard Box of     | |
  | |        /  |    |  \             Desk Belongings      | |
  | |                                                      | |
  | |   "Joe, we've reviewed the 2026 player numbers.      | |
  | |    The Recon ass pricing is good, but the board       | |
  | |    says you've run out of clones to deploy."         | |
  | |                                                      | |
  | |   [ DEBUFF STATUS: NO SEVERANCE EXTRACT ]            | |
  | |______________________________________________________| |
  |__________________________________________________________|
         |                                           |
         |         [ PRESS F TO PACK DESK ]          |
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