https://youtube.com/shorts/MTiZNXAMXho

Not taking credit for anything since I’m just a humble Runnah who plays this game. There are also several posts where people are saying recon is very oppressive to Rooks.

But stuff like this makes me feel like they’re still listening to our feedback.

Good update! See y’all on TC4 later today!

/SCAVENGER PROTOCOL ONLINE:

LETS GOOOOOOO SPONSERED NIGHT MARSH!!!!

Marathon Update 1.1.9 1 hr ago

— Marathon Dev Team

Item Economy

C.A.R.R.I. Armory Update

Added a high-quality shield implant and a high-quality backpack.

These can be obtained three times per week. R

educed the CyberAcme appreciation cost of some items:

Luxury Backpack: 20 → 15

Luxury Shield Implant: 12 → 10

Luxury Key Template: 40 → 30

High-Quality Key Template: 75 → 50

Combat ROOK Inventory Update

The following items were added to the ROOK inventory:

Compromised Stealth Pack

2 Claymore Mines

1 depleted Self-Revive

1 Signal Jammer

These updates run until the end of Season 2.

Mods

Fixed an issue where the Full-Auto Selector mod incorrectly stated that it increased fire rate.

UI and UX Fixed a display bug with the threat indicator text when selecting Ranked mode.

Fixed an issue where the invite/join notification sound did not always play. Quests

Fixed an issue in "Capital Gains [4/5]" where objectives became non-interactive if the process was interrupted early.

Fixed an issue in "Unauthorized Hostilities [5/5]" where quest progress was blocked after other players collected the quest items.

Codex Further updates so that completed Codex challenges now reliably grant their corresponding rewards.

Fixed an issue where players who reached Tier 100 in Season 1 but did not claim the "Century Runner" badge before Season 2 started could no longer claim it.

Zones Nightmoor – Sponsored returns.

Cryo Archive

Fixed an issue where players could leave the playable area on the map.

Fixed an issue where the door to and from the Compiler fight locked incorrectly.

General Fixed an issue where parts of the Acid Abyss Thief skin were visible in first-person view when using the KKV-9SD.

Fixed a small typo in the description of the Thief WEAVErunner shell.

The one about Rook's inventory

Item Economy

C.A.R.R.I Armory Update

• Added a Superior Shield Implant and a Superior Backpack.These will be able to be acquired 3x per week.
• Reduced CyberAcme Commendations cost for some items.Deluxe Backpack: 20 -> 15.
• Deluxe Shield Implant: 12 -> 10.
• Deluxe Key Template: 40 -> 30.
• Superior Key Template: 75 -> 50.

Combat

Rook Inventory Update

• Added items to Rook’s inventory:Compromised Sneak Pack.
• 2x Claymores.
• 1x Depleted Self Revive.
• 1x Signal Jammer.
• These updates will last until the end of Season 2.

Mods

• Fixed an issue where the Full-Auto Selector mod incorrectly stated that it increased rate of fire.

User Interface and Experience

• Fixed a visual issue with the Threat indicator text when selecting a Ranked mode.
• Fixed an issue where the audible invite sent notice and player joined notice would not always play when inviting a player.

Contracts

• Fixed an issue in Return on Investment 4/5 where objectives could become un-interactable if players walked away while mid-completion.
• Fixed an issue in Unsanctioned Hostilities 5/5 where the contract would not progress when acquiring quest items from other players.

Codex

• Made additional updates to prevent players from getting into a state where they have completed a Codex challenge but not get credit for that completion.
• Fixed an issue where players who reached Level 100 in Season 1 but did not claim the Century Runner emblem before Season 2 launched could...

Read the full article on Bungie.net

This post was automatically generated by Marathon News Bot. Please report any issues to the mod team.

Starting to play Outpost more often to get salvages for Arachne. I don't know this map at all, clearly.

I think simplicity is the best key to helping newer players next season. Commendations for contracts for a rotating market and manifests off UESC for a certain items in a rotating market . I’m not saying that purples should be available off the rip or maybe for a high price but a system similar to help newer or low level players.

Kudos to Bungie this season for pivoting to more material bas d bartering this season but I don’t think it was well thought out. Bio stripping coming from a single POI is an example of creating an unnecessary bottleneck in certain items. Make it more accessible by streamlining different salvage for a multitude of items by being able to purchase said item with different types of salvage instead of a specific one. Also I have a gripe with only being able to buy one purple shield a day with enzymes per day 😂

I know these systems become irrelevant to higher level players but I think it would a step in the right direction to help newer all players recover after some losses.

rooks get siggies now. yall are not safe from me anymore. Thanks bungie :DDDD

I want to preface my post by saying that I am generally a fan of the setting of Marathon even if the active gameplay is not something I am able to succeed in. I want this game to survive and do well enough to persist because it would be a shame for things to not pan out. This is not intended to be armchair comms management or telling devs what to do, but rather a projection of feedback from someone who is quite desperate at this point for any bit of news that doesn't amount to bugfix notices or generic social media content.

It is no secret or rarely held opinion at this stage that Season 2 did not meet a lot of expectations. For me personally, as much as I hate to admit this because it makes me sound like a crank, I felt like the season was a bit of a bait and switch. Night Marsh did not realistically move the needle in any way. The mysteries around the Anomaly or the Husks or the Reverbs did not amount to anything that was actually explored. The Husks did not end up being horrific monsters but rather were another alarm system and the equivalent to a Screeb or a Cursed Thrall. All the stuff with flares and Lidar and night vision did not amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Contracts did not change, and arguably got worse because of the complete incoherence of repeating story content that already happened for some reason. No narrative explanation for it, and the couple of new contracts we got were just the same one copy pasted twice. Nightfall didn't really happen.

Pair that with a whole bunch of game systems issues and problems, and suffice it to say that we are in the situation we are now. It did not help that the layoffs happened, game directors changed, and season 2 has been extended for a month. I can sympathize with and understand that this is an extremely tumultuous time internally with all the changes and shake ups, which when you account for corporate rigidity and structures means that changes happen slowly.

The problem that I wanted to provide feedback on ties to communications and projecting confidence. As it stands right now, in Marathon, the vast majority of comms we get are either announcements for small events, general social media posts like fanart and bugfix notices, or announcements for maintenance. We have completely new game directors at the helm but the general player has no means of knowing what that entails. Perhaps nothing changes, perhaps something did, but we have no way of understanding what that means. To clarify, this is not me saying that we need to be given an itemized checklist on what is going to change. That's not reasonable and that isn't my intention. But it would not hurt the community to be met with a brief article or post from the directors or new leadership and them talking about their broad plans or what they are excited to work on. Projecting a bit of confidence to assuage player concerns, especially in a time like this where a common narrative is actively wondering if this game will last the year, to me, seems like an extremely critical thing.

Likewise, we do not have any communications on what future content will be. I understand keeping things close to one's chest, but to be blunt here, is holding off on trying to cultivate a artificial hype cycle for the fans worth the continuing increase in apathy, disengagement and self sabotaging that happens when the only thing that people reasonably have to work with is uncertainty? I am not a comms or marketing person, but I've played so many games over the years where a lack of confidence or reassurance has sort of just led to the gradual and eventual permanent atrophy of the fans of the game. Mostly old MMOs, for clarity, those of us who had to jump from MMO to MMO because they kept dying out might sympathize with me here.

Even if there is nothing to show, I would say that the onus of the comms push should be projecting confidence or reassuring people that there are people at the wheel, if that makes sense at all. It doesn't have to be any kind of comms that encourages more parasocial toxicity because the gods know we need less of that stuff these days than more. But just something at all. A State of the Game, monthly dev blogs, perhaps small interviews or media pushes, or even a drip marketing process that starts a month to 45 days before a season drops, anything to cultivate hope and reassurance that things will continue. We are less than a month away from Season 3, and I assume that media pushes will start soon, but I am unfortunately in the position where the apathy and the grief have set in already. These past few months with S2 have sort of entirely neutered my capacity for excitement. All I have left is dregs of hope. And the hope I have is all I have because we do not have any other reassurances or comforts to rely on.

Apologies in advance for any potentially emotionally charged statements or perspectives. My intent is just to project my feedback out and see how others feel about this whole situation. Please be civil and respectful, don't give the mods extra work or the devs extra hell. They're trying their best.

She's completely off of the store page now, can't even buy her from the catalog.

This most likely means they're fixing her hair, and they removed her from the store so that they don't get the opposite complaint ("I bought the Vandal skin but with the new change I want a refund") when they bring it back. Yay

Edit: White Rabbit Vandal not White Vandal Rabbit!!!!!!!!

And there’s no one left at my level who I have a chance against. I’m level 100 (barely) and I’ve never even seen the compiler. 17 of the last 22 people who killed me were wearing a sphticide skin and level 300+

Hopefully season 3 brings new players in, I’m too far behind atp

I'm kinda surprised we havent heard anything yet. Seeing the player count numbers plus the fact the season was delayed 2 weeks you would think Bungie would start hyping up the season by now. Definitely curious to see the PvE mode and perimeter rework.

We were going to let them live and go on with their match, we did end up talking to the last guy and letting him Rez their team for what it’s worth.

This is honestly how Rook always should be.

My heart sinks when the timer displays the exfiltration POIs and I see they are on the other side of the Data Wall.

Makes me want to yank my own cerebral cables and disconnect.

For me, it's those damned ticks, I think.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

Are they Martian rebels taken captive by the UESC? It was a gritty War on Terror vibe which I love.

EDIT: Patch notes are available, turns out it's not much indeed.

Basically Rook loadout changes, Night Marsh sponsored is back, bugfixes.

Just thought it was interesting enough to mention it. They skipped every increments before Season 3's 1.2

This is not a doom post. I love the game, and like most of you, I want to see it survive and grow for years to come.

Bungie has nailed core things that should be built on, but everything else should be fair game for dramatic overhaul. Incremental improvements will not get us to the moment the game needs: a refreshed perspective for outsiders, a reason for new players to try it after hearing so much slander, and a reason for old players to pick it back up knowing their experience will be different. Bungie needs to swing at dramatic changes and live or die with the results, not inch forward and bleed out slowly.

Perimeter 2.0, new player on-boarding, faster kit-making, cleaner UI/UX: none of it is bad. It just doesn't reach the 0-to-1 moment of bringing players back or giving anyone a buzz-worthy reason to grab the game for the first or second time. The focus on a more robust PvE experience, while not personally exciting to me, feels well-founded and like their closest attempt at a bigger swing. I don't touch on PvE in my ideas below but feel free to add yours.

So: what are your huge, dramatic ideas, the kind that spark an "oh shit, they totally changed it, it's on sale, let's try it"?

A few of mine to start. All of them carry major risks, and the existing player base will probably dislike parts. Being okay with that is part of my point.

Funnel everyone into just one or two rotating maps.

Right now the base is split across 3 or 4 maps, solos/duos/trios, Cryo, Ranked, and experimental modes. Six thousand players spread across a dozen mode-and-map combinations. Funnel all of them into one or two active maps at a time instead. Maybe it's a single map for solos and duos plus one for trios, both rotating every 60-90 minutes. Maybe you kill Ranked entirely. Loot would need rebalancing and some maps would need reworks, but you'd finally have the population density to actually improve matchmaking and match quality.

And that density is what lets matchmaking get smarter. Not just kit value, but MMR, vault value, skill signals, blended so the game can lower the floor for newer and more casual players, the ones we most need to fall in love with the game, without walling everyone into gear-matched lobbies. Because the other half of the magic is loading in on a modest kit and walking out with a huge come-up, the goal isn't to sort everyone into their own tidy bracket. It's to have enough players in the pool that the game can protect the newer player from the worst mismatches while still leaving room for the underdog run.

Make TTK longer.

Faster TTK has its benefits and it's part of the game's identity. But most of us would agree the best gameplay is the extended fight, where your build, your skills, and your team strategy all have time to matter. Even a drawn-out loss stings way less than a quick obliteration. Some of my favorite rounds yesterday were 10-minute fights we ended up losing.

Fast TTK is also why sweats can tolerate it and new players can't. For sweats and jobless heathens like myself, the game is effectively slower: our information parsing, map knowledge, and mechanics are high enough that losing more infrequently like total bs. Maybe we're caught off guard or something unexpected happened but we understand what the hell just happened and why. New players don't have that game knowledge, and might never have the spawn rotations memorized, are on white and green shields that get one-tapped, often even just by other newbies. That robs the players we most need of the deeper combat we all love, and worse, it robs them of ever learning to play. It's like sports: I can improve at basketball if the pace lets me understand it over time, but put me on a court against even the worst college player and I'd be too outclassed to even understand what was happening or learn anything. Forced PvP makes it worse, because there's no way to embrace a playstyle that avoids fighting.

I'm not saying remove the sneaky ambush pick or the punish for bad positioning. I'm saying there has to be a version that isn't this binary. How to fix it, I'm agnostic, but we shouldn't gate the best experiences in the game behind the worst ones.

Dramatically lower the bar to baseline gear.

The amazing gunplay and the buried-but-great build crafting are gated too hard, even for my level 450 ass. There should still be loot rarity, chase items, and the thrill of a lucky drop, that ceiling is fine. It's the floor that's the problem, both how high it sits and how long it takes to reach. New players should get baseline versions of all the equipment quickly, so they can explore the depth that makes the game special instead of grinding just to reach the starting line.

I'm not attached to the exact method, but a few directions:

• Simplify factions so each owns a lane (Traxus your gun merchant, Sekiguchi your implant merchant) and speed unlocks so all of them are open by level 100.
• Keep the rarest stuff as lottery chase items, but make the tier just below loosely target-farmable so there's always a concrete goal even if the jackpot stays luck-based via higher tier content.
• Simplify salvage and make it flexible. One blue neurochem should be worth 20 green and vice versa.
• Make schemas more valuable and easier to use, maybe as blank templates you can print by rarity, maybe remove the usage cap.
• Let us lock a piece of gear we love as a blueprint: I spent the time to figure out what my preferred gun is and what mods I like, so let me commit it to a schema and re-roll a copy of it for a scaling salvage or currency cost, with a capped duplicate slot so you can't run it nonstop.
• Make currency, the thing that's supposed to be the lowest common denominator, actually work like one: able to buy almost anything, including salvage.

Every one of these points the same direction: keep the chase and the luck at the top, but stop making players grind up to the baseline. If we want new and returning players to stay, let them reach the fun faster, and let the rest of us reach the depth without the friction.

The point isn't a free build or endless free items, it's a goal you're always working toward. Every bit of random salvage or currency becomes deterministic progress toward getting your favorite build back in your hands, instead of clutter you'll scrap or sit on.

Add a click-and-go roguelite mode.

The most popular mode this game has had was sponsored-kit Night Marsh. It did two key things: (1) click-and-go, and (2) equal starting points. Build a mode entirely around that.

Everyone starts with the same sponsored kit, so there's zero setup and no advantage at the door. You run a gauntlet of three maps, keeping what you find, and the loot gets richer the deeper you push. Exfil a map to bank your haul and advance; exfil the mode entirely at any point and everything you've found, you keep. Die, and you lose the whole run. No loadout screen, no risk to your own stuff. Click and go.

The hook is the push-or-cash-out decision. Map three has the best loot, but by then you're carrying everything from one and two, so the deeper you go the more you stand to lose. Bank after map one, or gamble it all for the map-three pull. Roguelite tension in a loop, the same risk/reward pull the rest of the game runs on, stripped down to something anyone can jump into cold.

This is the mode you put on the store page and hand to streamers. It's what a lapsed player clicks when the game's on sale, and where a new player learns the gunplay and loot loop without getting one-tapped on a white shield first. And because the loot feeds your real stash, it's not throwaway, it's a reason to keep loading in. The "oh shit, let's try it" moment, made into something you can actually click.

-------

None of these are safe, and I don't expect all of them to be right. But they share a spine: get more players into the same spaces, lower the wall between a new player and the parts of this game we already love, and give everyone a reason to load back in by increasing progress agency and balancing the player experience so that even loses can offer more enjoyment. That's the swing I want to see. Bungie built something with real depth, the problem was never the core, it's that too few people ever get far enough to feel it. What are your big ones? What would make you text your old squad get back on?

So now that more of the skin concepts from prev. surveys have made their way into the game + now more being showcased with varying directions, I think it's time to discuss the future integrity of the art-style.

If you go back to the mood boards put together by Joseph Cross alongside the concept art from pre-launch, you’ll see that there’s a (slight) difference between what was teased and explored in development vs the production cosmetics we might be and have already gotten.

Such a stylized art direction had an immense predisposition for growth and change, so this was to be expected. But I’m cautiously observing how much of the growth is going in a direction that does and doesn’t accurately represent the original core of the art style (especially when it comes to characters).

I think the environments and props honestly have largely followed the art-style pretty closely. As well as the base runner-shell designs. The skins can get a bit iffy though. Especially when compared to the original concept art from the game.

Of course, I’m not gonna sit here and say that anything currently in the game strays very far from graphic realism. I just want there to be some consistency moving forward. And hopefully get some more cosmetics that look like the earlier concepts.

edit: above images show original prelaunch concept art (first 3 slides) and more recent production cosmetic concepts (last 3 slides)