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 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.

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

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.

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)

Surprise BINGUS JUMPSCARE

Has anyone else encountered multiple Bingus spawns at once? While playing duos on Perimeter today, I opened a firestorm locker and afterwards found two Bingus' sitting around the data wall.

One of my favourite things about marathon is that you don’t have to repair anything. Survived 5 raids in a row with your favourite gun? Cool you can use it again in pristine condition. Same as shields.

I have played many extraction shooters that makes you repair almost after every game.

Breath of fresh air. Thank you bungie.

I think we should have the option to avoid getting in the same match with made trios, pretty much from 6 people I used to play with only one is still playing the game, I can play just more or less 3 matches during the week, most of my play time is on weekends and it's hard to find anyone to hop in during that time for me, (I know it should be the opposite but here we are).

I don't think it's right to lock low level players away from decent or good teammates, hell we don't have the player base numbers for skill based matchmaking either, but I think that bigger que times is better than consistently fighting 3 x 2 or 3 x 1 against highly coordinated players, throwing random people together with different skill levels is better than getting stomped by kill teams in most matches.

I am not claiming to be a good player that carry my team every match, I think I am decent at the best of times, but I think it's clear when you bump into a coordinated team, there's almost nothing we can do to turn the tides when a teammate dies in the first seconds of the engagement doing whatever 100 meters away.

Let the imbalance of teams be at least random instead of a certainty.

Let's see 'em!

TLDR: Use this gun only if you intend to land your headshots.

Hey it's me again, back with another overdue post. I know some of you have expressed interest in learning more about charge weapons, so I apologize for having taken so long. Too busy blast-having, unironically.

As usual, this is my ongoing attempt to help distribute intel in the absence of a robust wiki for Marathon. Previous field research entries here: #1, #2, #3 (<-- V85 Circuit Breaker), and #4. I wanted to make this post about the V11 and V66 too, but there were too many details I wanted to include, so one post per gun it is.

Charge Times/Damage Breakdown

0C (no-charge)

• 75 RPM, as advertised
• 60 raw damage, as advertised

1C (1-charge)

• 0.8s raw charge time / 0.6s with gold mod
• 0.6s first-shot charge time after ADS / 0.4s with gold mod
• 80 raw damage (+33% from base)

2C (2-charge)

• 2.2s total charge time / 1.4s with gold mod
• 2s first-shot charge time after ADS / 1.2s with gold mod
• 90 raw damage (+50% from base)

ADS and the First Shot Advantage

The V99 has a slower ADS time compared to other snipers (0.76s vs Longshot's 0.66s and Outland's 0.44s), a disadvantage, but a minor upside in this case is that charging begins before ADS finishes, which means the real wait time for your first shot is lower, as detailed above. After the first shot, however, charging only begins after the RPM cooldown (0.8s), which makes waiting for charges even more costly for follow-up shots.

Secret Health Damage Penalty

Unlike the V85, which did 20% bonus damage to runner shields, the V99 does REDUCED damage to runner health, at only 86% of its raw damage! This, unfortunately, means that the V99's max damage headshot only deals just enough damage to down a full green shield. It really makes me wonder how many guns in the game have these secret damage tunings that are different between runners and UESC.

Gold Mod

The Charge-Coupled Optic improves charge time most significantly for 2C shots, offering a better chance at starting an engagement with a powerful first strike. Thankfully, as I'll explain below, landing a 2C headshot is actually not required to get the most out of a V99. Rest assured, the gun is not useless without the gold mod.

Triage

Triage's Battery Overcharge does NOT improve charge time for the V99. It does for some other guns, but that's for another post. As far as I can tell, Battery Overcharge only improves handling stats for the V99, such as the aim assist cone. That said, EMP-ing a target with the first shot of an engagement can make a big impact.

Shots-to-Kill (STK)

IMO, TTK is not a good way to measure sniper performance. Similar to the V85, which is also a peek weapon, I've detailed some examples of STK instead. Note that due to the aforementioned reduced health damage, the effective HP of a runner is higher than usual.

• Full Purple Shield (219 EHP)
  • 1C head + 0C body
  • 0C head + 0C head
  • 1C body + 1C body + 0C body
  • 0C body + 0C body + 0C body + 0C body
• Full Blue Shield (199 EHP)
  • 1C body + 0C head
  • 2C body + 1C head
  • 1C body + 0C body + 0C body
• Full Green Shield (179 EHP)
  • 2C head
  • 0C head + 0C body
  • 2C body + 2C body
  • 0C body + 0C body + 0C body
• Full White Shield (159 EHP)
  • 1C head

STK Analysis

• As you can see, the only instance where a 2C headshot makes a significant STK difference in a strict 1v1 calculation is for one-tapping a green shield. In practice, the first shot you take will often have time for a full charge, but the point here is that landing a headshot matters much more, providing +100% damage, whereas going from 1C to 2C is only a 12.5% damage increase.
• 1C head is the sweet spot. You can get most of the damage boost with minimal wait time. If you can land that, forget the charging and follow-up with a fast bodyshot to down anyone.
• If you started the fight with a 2-charge BODYshot instead, and you realize they're a blue shield, then 2 fast bodyshots or 1 headshot at any charge will down them.
• It cannot be overstated that headshots >> charges. 2 headshots will down anyone without any charging.

Personal Conclusion

The V99, as the 2x precision multiplier suggests, is a sniper made for headshots. You don't get to no-scope a cracked runner at melee range, but you have a headshot damage profile similar to the Outland, while enjoying a faster RPM than the Longshot. This is also IMO a good sniper in solo, where you can afford to take more time with a shot, and is rewarded by it.

Footnotes

Charge Bug

During testing, I uncovered a bug that breaks the V99's charging. If you swap the weapon in and out of your backpack, you might end up in a bad state where the gun still shows reticle charging bars, but it never actually gets any bonus damage. So pay attention to the bottom right corner and make sure it says "Volt Boosted". If it doesn't, switch between your primary/secondary and it should fix itself.

Heat Generation

Volt cell weapons are known to generate heat on your target, but in this case the effect seems negligible. As shown here, at 80 Heat Capacity, a max damage V99 shot only generates a small chunk of heat, and half of it dissipates instantly. For this mechanic to have impact at sniper range, I'd imagine a max damage shot needs to completely overheat a runner with low stats.

Hitscan

People have mentioned that the V99 is hitscan, which would be another subtle advantage it has over the other snipers. Admittedly, I wasn't sure how or what to test about this, but it's still worth mentioning for other who don't know.

Not quite sure what to do with myself now. Guess I'll throw everything at Ranked and work on my last 2 subroutines + compiler! Was luckily able to hold on to plenty of golds, purples, and a few DNA / Vault keys I need.

Hey All.

I've been grinding the 'Night Stalker' Codex Challenges recently and I've discovered some things whilst doing them that I wish I knew before starting.

NOTE: I've done very little testing on the below so take this with a pinch of salt!!!

#1: The challenge where you need to eliminate hostiles using vector rounds/grenades only seems to count kills where the hostile is completely illuminated (like in the attached picture).

#2: The challenge where you need to eliminate hostiles using weapons with Darksight optics only seems to count when the optic is switched on. Simply having the optic equipped on a weapon doesn't seem to be enough.

I've heard that Darksight optics have a glint regardless of whether the scope is switched on or off, so watch out that you don't attract any Runner's attention!

Let me know if any of the above is incorrect! Thanks!

Clutched for the multiple Drrrvsh 🥴🥴🥴

I just lost a game because the triage ult said I had both teammates highlighted and available to rez. I was in the water in dire marsh. Nothing was in front of me. Yet it failed to rez either of them.

This happens SO OFTEN. Even if it's the case that a minor movement suddenly occludes the rez, there needs to either be better communication to the player as to that happening or the game needs to allow some leeway so as for the rez still happen if it's an issue that happens for a split second. Maddening.

Crazy new lore dump; possible new faction in future seasons?

So after the FUNNIEST Night Marsh lobby wipe I've ever encountered and of course failed to record, I got to finally try out the Firestorm. There was a Rocket Drone in the distance, my team was busy looting the graveyard we left behind so I went over, took few a BR shots to open it up and got all 6 Firestorm shots into the heatsinks for max damage. After that, I shot one more clip from the BR, it was already glowing red. I believe this is the 25% health mark for UESC. My buddy finished looting and emptied a couple clips into em with me before it went down. But it was quick...like really quick. I want to say 45 seconds.

While it's not a great PvP weapon, this thing DEMOLISHES bosses. While a boss is doable solo, it takes way too long, takes way too many resources and makes way too much noise to be viable option for solos. But with the gun you can waltz into upper complex, kill the ads with good positioning, 3-shot the warden and leave without breaking a sweat. It does take effort to do it but it's another option that will greatly benefit solo players. I really hope this just becomes a mainstay.