u/SirBenny

I played Marathon for nearly 150 hours in season 1, and it was a great ride. I loved getting into the lore, completing priority contracts, empowering my rook, gradually getting deeper into Cryo, filling out the skill trees, etc.

I've dipped into ~15 games this year, and I think Marathon is still top 2 or 3 for me. Totally worth the money, helped me discover a new genre.

And...I think I'm done?

I had my fun and I don't feel the same motivation to build my vault back up or re-do the priority contracts. I've explored the existing maps to the point that I no longer feel the same satisfaction from growing navigational mastery.

It's possible this is just a personal taste / player archetype thing. I do this with a good chunk of games each year, even if they are technically "live service."

But I also wonder if it's something specific to extraction shooters...or Marathon specifically?

The "extraction shooter argument" is basically that this same thing happened to me with Arc Raiders over the holidays, and judging by the player numbers, I'm far from the only one. Maybe this genre is just set up to attract people for a month or two, but then fail to keep them from there?

Or maybe it's specifically a Marathon thing? The small number of maps and "defeat compiler" challenge feeling a little like beating the final boss in a single-player game? (I never did in Marathon, but I could see this applying to some people.)

I know for a million business reasons, Sony/Bungie need this thing to keep chugging along. But just as an experience, it feels less live service-y and more "really cool, one-off experience." Which might partly explain my paradoxical feelings of still thinking so much of the game is amazing (i.e. art, world, lore, gunplay, loop), but also being fully satisfied and happy moving on to other things.

Despite being someone who doesn't usually play either shooters or PvP, I kept coming back to Marathon for 150+ hours, and I couldn't put my finger on why. Vault Breakers helped clarify that.

My problem with Vault Breakers, which admittedly isn't a super original take, is that it feels pretty bland without the tension that the "constant threat of PvP" brings. It's still a fun diversion in terms of trying to beat the clock and manage resources, but it's not nearly as absorbing as the primary game loop.

And speaking of that tension, it also made me realize I don't usually feel tension so much in trios either. I've had plenty of fun with trios: meeting cool people on Discord, coaxing my friends to play during the free weekends...but the fact that we're playing Marathon as opposed to Apex or Destiny or Fortnite or Overwatch or whatever feels almost incidental. I enjoyed the trios hours for the social aspect, and for the team fight execution, but not really for Marathon, specifically.

Regardless of how long I stick with the game (or how long it lasts), I'll remember Marathon most for the tense, surviving-despite-the-odds moments. Things like:

• Taking down a kitted purple kit chad as a free kit
• Somehow 1v3ing that squad as a rook that one time
• Holding my breath and hiding to avoid PvP and complete the most absurd Sekiguchi contracts solo
• Needing to survive as a duo with no heals after our 3rd teammate DC'd (which brought back the tension I enjoy that's usually absent from trios)

All of this has made me wonder if I'd actually be a good candidate for Tarkov, which sounds like it is built around the ideas of solo-first and tension-first. My biggest hangup has been the art style...I am potentially an odd combo in that I love tension but tend to be put off by the hyper-realistic, military sim style. Regardless, it feels clarifying to know that the core of the Marathon appeal (to me) is the survival horror piece.

I have about 350 hours in each game. I played 4 characters in POE 1, then another 4 in POE 2 once it released. I finally went back to POE 1 in the new league to see how things felt after all my POE 2 time.

I'm 4 hours into my POE 1 campaign and I'm still in Act 2. Which is to say, roughly on par with POE 2, which only has 4 acts and a few interludes. I would describe my play style as "methodical by default, but willing to cut corners when I know my next objective." POE 2 tends to reward this mindset. You want to do *most* things, but you can occasionally rush through a map where the side content isn't all that important.

By contrast, POE 1 seems to require a bunch of hyper-specific, "skip this but NOT that" pathing. Do that quest for the skill point, but skip that one because you don't need the skill it rewards, etc." For me specifically, this basically means I'm picking between "generally doing everything" and "alt-tabbing to wikis constantly to double check I'm pursuing the worthwhile quest." Neither one is all that fast in the aggregate. And this is for a game I've played for three hundred and fifty hours AKA more than 90% of any games I've ever played.

I get that POE 1 grants mobility skills very quickly, something that POE 2 doesn't really offer. Still, I find myself leap slamming, shield charging, and frost blinking toward dead ends and underwhelming rewards.

If the conventional wisdom was "POE 1 is a *bit* shorter" or "POE 1 gets shorter if you play the game for literally thousands of hours," I would understand. But the narrative seems to be closer to 'POE 1 campaign is *way* shorter for most players," and so far, I'm not seeing it. What am I missing?

I'm impressed by how much IOI nailed the Hitman-to-Bond transition here. They've maintained the immersive feel, the improvisational vibes, the "yeah I'm hot shit" sequences. But also, they've deftly shifted the humor to be more British, more dry...and the performances to be right on the level of a major 007 film.

If I were the game's director, I'd have similarly signed off on the "one part Hitman, one part Uncharted" alchemy. Sure, this comparison is a little overdone, but honestly it's spot on. It's that feeling of the spectacle and experience being more important than the raw gameplay execution or sophistication of the environmental puzzles. That's how you make a game feel like Bond, and how you give the story such tight, satisfying pacing.

Personally, however, I can't stand it. 😅

With the sandbox levels, I don't feel clever for posting up 10 feet away from two NPCs explaining exactly how to advance an opportunity. I understand there are 4+ ways to advance past each beat of the level, but even on replay, each one has a familiar, paint-by-numbers, can't-screw-it-up set of basic tasks. Overhear plan, use watch or obviously placed distraction or bluff, proceed.

The Q lab feels tedious. I loved my first visit, where Bond's "what's this thing do?" antics perfectly captured the 007 flavor. But now, I find all the gadgets feel very samey, and I don't look forward to some slightly different way to distract/disable the next guard NPC.

The fighting felt satisfyingly punchy the first 3 times. But now it seems pretty one-note? Counter and grab, move along. I still get a little thrill from the "Situation contained" pacing, and agree thematically it's the right direction relative to Hitman's methodical body-hiding. But the combat just isn't that fun (for me). I see clips of people praising how dynamic it all feels, but from where I sit, the AI still feels like bowling pins lining up to get knocked over.

I find myself feeling similarly to how I felt with each Uncharted game (the 1st and 4th of which I played all the way through). The spectacle and vibes were off the charts. But the moment-to-moment gameplay just didn't work for me. I'm actually a little jealous of players who can just "enjoy the ride" with these games.

Credit where it's due: the training montage segment was legitimately cool, and something I think other games should emulate.

I know I'm posting this on the main sub for the game, where probably 90% of you loved it. That's great. I just needed somewhere to try to articulate why the game's not clicking for me, and maybe see if a few others feel similarly.

I recently bought my first headhunter and my build is mostly going great. I'm almost level 95, and I typically run fully juiced 15s. https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/24ffa

The build started as my own thing, but I've migrated about 90% of the way to Ky's Cold Caster Chronomancer (roughly Endgame Step 3): https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/builds/cold-caster-chronomancer-ky?ws-ngf5-f7d82102-7e77-4a44-ad24-33b67e8ae7bf=activeVariantId%2Cb37b7dcd-b2eb-49e9-9b28-13d4841a93f7

I'm sitting on about 100D and trying to decide on my next big purchase. A few options:

• Get an Absent Amulet to get Cast on Elemental Ailment for free, which would then free up my helmet slot to get something better (like more increased rarity, which I'm pretty low on right now). I'd naturally want to keep at least +2 levels to spells on it.
• Upgrade to a 1,000+ runic ward chest armour, but that still gets me good spirit and life. This is tempting because I am still dying like 1 in 15 maps.
• Upgrade my staff.
• Don't upgrade for now. Invest in good tablets and refining my farm strategy until I'm richer.

My problem is that, per PoB, I need to spend basically my entire budget to get a meaningful uptick on any of these 3. Sure, I can find 10-20D upgrades for a few extra percentage points of defense or damage. But a meaningful jump is 100D minimum, and often a lot more.

I realize I might just be hitting this reality for this point in endgame. But curious if there are some obvious lower-cost improvements to go for first. Or alternatively, an expensive (100D+) but absolutely completely worth it next big buy.

I’m glad Bungie is experimenting with PvP-lite and an upcoming PvE mode. Maybe it will help. But more and more, I’m convinced the biggest unlock will be solo mode investments.

Yes, Marathon was built from the ground up for squad play. And as someone who splits their time roughly 50/50 in squad vs solo play, squads are for sure a more fun experience overall. Cryo and complex raids, team fights, shell abilities…it’s all tailored toward a team experience.

But the reality is…most gamers play games solo. Even online ones. The stats vary a bit by study, but back-of-the-envelope, between 2-3x as many people opt for a solo or async multiplayer experience over a team one. And that gap becomes even greater once you get past age 25 and beyond the typical college or recent grad phase.

Lots of Bungie fans are well beyond this age. The old Halo junkies. The lapsed Destiny players who last logged in back in 2016. Parents with 1 hour to play each night, and exactly one remaining gaming friend where schedules align literally one time per month.

Discords like Dads of Marathon help, but it’s a niche use case in that grand scheme of “potential player base.” Rook runs are a great option, but they were clearly designed around the core trio gameplay loop. A side mode for restocking before the next team raid.

I think there’s an untapped, “likes tough rogue-lites or maybe solo battle royales” player archetype that would actually like Marathon if it had more solo hooks. The vibe right now is very much “Bungie’s take on Apex Legends,” up to and including the “team by default” setup.

Obviously, a full-fledged Marathon solo campaign would help, but that’s super expensive to make. To start, I’d love to see a “Solos Roadmap” in the next Bungie blogpost, with hints at dedicated mode(s) (ie Cryo, but for solos?) and further solo tuning, progression hooks, etc.

Marathon has found its “small but mighty” trio players. It feels like there’s a solo crowd they could win if they actively leaned into that archetype.

Up until now, my general principle has been, "it's time to increase Gnosis when I can reliably full-clear all available maps."

I'm level 35 now, and I've met this threshold pretty consistently for both Island of the Damned and Scarlet Coast. Clear all enemy packs, do a vault, do a boss, etc...I'll still drop a run occasionally when I'm careless, but it's mostly not that big of a problem.

Then there's Velmorne. I have independently defeated all 3 minibosses, but never in 1 run. My usual experience is clearing 3-4 packs, realizing I'm too low on resources, and then bailing for a portal. I also find the in-map events to be much harder here. A cursed chess on the previous 2 maps is often a pushover. In Velmorne, it often significantly drains my resources, if not outright kills me.

I'd like to step up to Gnosis 3 to get access to new research, a new map, and add content to my 2 reliable maps. But the Velmorne experience makes me think I need to grind and practice for awhile first.

Ultimately, I'm just curious about the best way to think about this. I could see the answer being, "Velmorne can be tricky, don't overthink it, if you want to go to Gnosis 3, you do you!"

OR it could be, "Yeaaaaaah...you really should feel more comfortable on Velmorne. Have some patience, level up a bit, you'll know when you're ready."

Curious what the vets would advise. Thanks!

I've been working through the expansion pretty slowly. Finished the campaign a couple nights ago. Roughly 5 hours later, I realize my entire loop is basically now just, "Run War Plans," with the occasional horadric cube or blacksmith stop here and there. Maybe a stray tree of whispers drop pick up every once in awhile.

Is this what most of you are doing too? I can't tell if I'm overlooking something obvious.

If so, I'm not sure how I feel. It's way more streamlined, which is nice. But it also feels like the open world is sort of superfluous now? I'm not really exploring. I'm just teleporting to specific spots.

I suppose I could also take a break from War Plans to run sidequests for awhile. Would you recommend that? Trying to get a sense of how people tend to structure their endgame loop now.

One popular Marathon criticism is that it's just too niche. Many players have concluded that, despite the gunfeel or design or lore, it's just "not for them" because they'd rather not play a hyper-sweaty, PvPmaxxed extraction shooter.

And to be clear, it's super fine for a game to just be "not for you!" People are allowed to have preferences and to pass on whatever they want. My concern, however, is that Marathon is getting labeled as one thing, but in fact has a feel, style, and gameplay loop much closer to something else.

If you were to browse my Steam library and look for PvP games, there's a pretty consistent story: I often play for 10-20 hours, then dip. It's mostly...just not for me. It happened with CoD, with Valorant, with Apex. I don't get enough of a thrill out of the same PvP arena fights over and over (I also kind of suck, in the spirit of full transparency).

But with Marathon, I have 130 hours. And my path to that 130 was eerily similar in pace and gradually growing enjoyment to, say, my first time playing Dark Souls or Hollow Knight. Initial skepticism. Early frustration. Dozens of punishing deaths. But little by little, things would click, I'd go deeper, and eventually, I'd realize it was one of my favorite games ever.

I wrote this point already in a broader thread a month ago, but I think the single-biggest question for whether someone will like Marathon is:

- NOT do you like extraction shooters

- NOT do you like sweaty PvP

- BUT INSTEAD do you like the learning process of dying many times in a row on the way to overcoming something that seemed impossible, like a Dark Souls boss?

Gradually acquiring map knowledge, balancing your kit for the contract or team at hand, understanding when to engage vs. disengage, customizing your looting plan, intentionally playing for stealth over conflict...these are all super satisfying things to learn that have nothing to do with "did I click on the other guy's head faster and more times than they did?"

I have a feeling that 80% of players would still answer the "dying many times" above question with a "no." But I think 98% of players would say they don't want "hyper-sweaty PvP extraction." That 18% gap, in my opinion, is one big area where Marathon could do a lot better if somehow it were able to shift perspectives on which sort of player would actually enjoy the game.

(Writing a slightly more general version of a post I first shared to the UX writing sub, where it didn't get too much traction.)

As a lone content designer supporting a dozen+ UX designers, some AI tools have made my job easier — or at least more scalable. I can train AI skills on style guides, "vibe design" to better get early ideas across, and fix live copy with Claude Code.

But the "last mile" of the process mostly just feels worse. Prompting AI to change copy in a design or prototype works, but the feedback loop is very slow, and you lose the immediate and tactile process of directly editing content strings and seeing how the copy feels.

Sometimes I also want to try out a slightly different font weight or component...the sort of thing that is trivial in Figma, but that feels clunky in an AI prompting tool like Magic Patterns.

So far, the most common solution I've seen is, "Just export from that AI tool into Figma for the final polish phase," and that does work fairly well. But I'm not sure how long that will last.

Curious to get a sense of how you tend to handle the fit and finish piece of the design process after starting with AI.

In the first Death Stranding, my favorite parts were when the game left me in a pretty open-ended area and basically said, “go nuts: make your own plans and optimize, prioritize what you want to do to hit [general goal].”

In DS2, I just hit chapter 6 and it feels like it’s been pretty aggressively nudging me to mainline the story since hour #1.

Admittedly, I’ve been able to do a few one-off side quests along the way. But they have felt like explicitly, “okay here is this one side thing you can do for 10 minutes but then back to the core path please.”

Ultimately, I want to get to the point where I am weighing how to execute 3 or 4 deliveries in one go and considering several different delivery paths in terms of efficiency or resource gathering. Does this start to happen at some point?

Also, I realize maybe this is a me problem, and you can start doing this earlier than I thought, and maybe I’m listening too often to the game telling me to advance the story? Curious to get a better sense on this, thanks!

My design team is increasingly using AI prompting tools to generate designs, with Magic Patterns being the most popular.

I don't mind this for earlier stages in the design process. I can often fork PD designs and try out my own explorations. For higher-level UX thinking like info hierarchy, this works roughly as well as traditional Figma design iteration.

But it's the "final 10%" where I'm running into headaches. Previously, I could edit text layers directly in Figma. This was great for rapidly trying out different strings, immediately getting a feel for length, flow, vibe, tone, and iterating in real time to get the language just right.

Now, I find myself typing into a prompt box off to the side, instructing the AI software on what to update, waiting 2 minutes, then seeing the generated version and immediately realizing it feels or reads or looks wrong once the prototype actually updates.

There are some workarounds, like exporting to a Figma and editing there, but the export is usually at least a little wonky, and then getting the revised copy back into the AI prototype creates a headache on their side. The AI tooling itself has some so-so built-in text editing, but it's pretty limited relative to Figma: I can't update the text layers directly, and I can't try out slightly bigger changes like changing font weights or swapping out an informational guidance card for an error message without doing another 2-minute, wait-and-see prompt.

Admittedly, this is more about a bunch of papercuts than a truly debilitating problem, but I'm curious what other content designers are doing at the polish stage in an era of AI-first design.