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Marathon approaching 15k CCU low (sponsored by coachmcguirk91 - still having a blast)

All Bungie needs to do it is to make a solo, PvE mode and I'm in. Not everyone wants a sweaty high octane PvP mode and because player base is dwindling PvP will not be possible soon. I like the gunplay, I like the world, I like the level design but I don't want to play multiplayer.
 
All Bungie needs to do it is to make a solo, PvE mode and I'm in. Not everyone wants a sweaty high octane PvP mode and because player base is dwindling PvP will not be possible soon. I like the gunplay, I like the world, I like the level design but I don't want to play multiplayer.

I'd be in for that too if it was a decent solo PvE mode.

Or they could just do what Arc Raiders did, add aggression based match making (or at least add a ABMM mode), so the PvE people could play the game co-op rather than PvP.

They need to do something different than the sweaty PvP they currently have, because it isn't appealing to a broad audience.
 
Marathon recieved higher user reviews, higher critic reviews, and had better player retention than all 4 of those games.


Marathon is crazy hardcore. It's not casual at all. It needs SBMM.
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The game is almost out of the top 200 games.

I just got to ask.

How is Bungie paying its army of employees?

Forget about making its initial dev cost. The ship has long sailed.

Where is the money coming from for current payroll and overhead?

There is literal 20 person dev teams making absolute bank on Steam relative to their budget size in comparison to Bungie's big release.
 
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All Bungie needs to do it is to make a solo, PvE mode and I'm in. Not everyone wants a sweaty high octane PvP mode and because player base is dwindling PvP will not be possible soon. I like the gunplay, I like the world, I like the level design but I don't want to play multiplayer.
Is that all? Create an entirely new game out of thin air? That was the original plan and they couldn't pull it off, they sure as hell aren't going to piecemeal a PvE game together now. The game is what it is, they may try new PvP modes but PvE content takes years and years of effort so best case you get it in whatever their next game is, if there is a next game.
 
Bottomed out at 3.9k Weds are usually bad days. Historically tracks at -3 to 8%.

Yesterday's peak was 13.4k. So today should be 12.3 - 13k. So let's say in the middle around 12.6k.
 
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Marathon is crazy hardcore. It's not casual at all. It needs SBMM.

Its not hardcore at all. It revolves around inbalance and elevates those who ride the crest of the wave disproportionately. It feels 'hardcore' to those who MM because their experience is different. That's why people are dropping off exponentially.

Running round teamed, or in a premade 3, with factions progressed, bubbles, shotguns, autoaim and revives is not a 'hardcore' game. There will be talented players sure, but that doesn't mean the game is hardcore. I'd argue high level Halo is more hardcore tbh.

The game is just disliked because its an absolute mishmash of competing mechanics and decisions that ultimately benefit the niche of niche. Its no surprise the 'level playing field' queue got the most action.

You're talking to actual arena players, de_aztec AWP'ers etc. who know what it is to die and be in spectate for the next round. This is just another community created reason to hardwave away the fact it's a poor game with good production values. You need to get the meta, you need to play 25 hours, you need to level your factions, you need to be on a mic, you need to be a hardcore player etc.

You like a poor, unpopular game that is slightly better than some recent horrific bombs. Its no more scientific than that. And that's fine. There are shit games I like but you don't need to be a cheerleader for this shite or pretend its some amazing new shooter that this audience has never seen. This 'audience' being predominantly 30-40yr old men who have lived most of their lives with gaming as a massive part of it.
 
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11 pm completed hour CCU. Squeaked out a small gain at 13.4k. Not unusual for maintenance day
All time peak was launch day 88.3k. Today's peak at 13.4k is -74.9k or -85%

Today vs yesterday: 13.4k vs 13.2k (+0.2k or +1.5%)

Yesterday's low 3.7k. If the rate holds, low tonight will be 3.8k

Tue vs Tue: 13.4k vs 15.7k (-2.3k or -15%). A bit better than the historic changes of -20%

Ratio method to estimate peaks and valleys
Mon-Thur 3.3:1. For example, a peak of 15k will have a low of 4.5k. For Fri/Sat, gamers stay up playing so the ratio is 2.5:1

Steam Rankings
Daily Active Users: 134
Global Top Sellers: 159
Weekly Top Sellers: Unknown. Not on top 100
Top Rated Games: 6,077 (83.82%)
Is this the first time it dropped out of the weekly top sellers?
 
Its not hardcore at all. It revolves around imbalance and elevates those who ride the crest of the wave disproportionately. It feels 'hardcore' to those who MM because there experience is different. That's why people are dropping off exponentially.

Running round teamed, or in a premade 3, with factions progressed, bubbles, shotguns, autoaim and revives is not a 'hardcore' game. There will be talented players sure, but that doesn't mean the game is hardcore. I'd argue high level Halo is more hardcore tbh.

The game is just disliked because its an absolute mishmash of competing mechanics and decisions that ultimately benefit the niche of niche. Its no surprise the 'level playing field' queue got the most action.

You're talking to actual arena players, de_aztec AWP'ers etc. who know what it is to die and be in spectate for the next round. This is just another community created reason to hardwave away the fact it's a poor game with good production values. You need to get the meta, you need to play 25 hours, you need to level your factions, you need to be on a mic, you need to be a hardcore player etc.

You like a poor, unpopular game that is slightly better than some recent horrific bombs. Its no more scientific than that. And that's fine. There are shit games I like but you don't need to be a cheerleader for this shite or pretend its some amazing new shooter that this audience has never seen. This 'audience' being predominantly 30-40yr old men who have lived most of their lives with gaming as a massive part of it.
I think Men in Boxes is smarter than that and is just trolling being contrarian guy to what GAF thinks. He just wants some attention and discussion.

He might like some games that are laughed at. Similar to what you said or any of us, we all like our bad games or ones people laugh at too who wouldnt play it. I said on this board before there's some obscure board and card games I like on Steam with literally like 5 CCU. I bought and enjoyed Roll Player. It's literally got 2 CCU now, which is no different than when I played it years ago. So I would be a handful of people in the world playing it after dinner. Pending where the other people are in the world, I might be the only guy in the western hemisphere playing it. Who cares.

But he goes overdrive on purpose so he's got some banter going on which he likes to play off.
 
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All Bungie needs to do it is to make a solo, PvE mode and I'm in. Not everyone wants a sweaty high octane PvP mode and because player base is dwindling PvP will not be possible soon. I like the gunplay, I like the world, I like the level design but I don't want to play multiplayer.
Maybe if it had bot runners and separate progression like tarkov pve and let you play co-op. Yeah I'd play that more. I love the vibe of the game too, but I just can't commit to pvp like other players, it's exhausting and I feel stonewalled.

If it was just me vs uesc that'd be too boring though. They can't half-ass a pve mode if they do one. It needs to be the full experience.
 
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All Bungie needs to do it is to make a solo, PvE mode and I'm in. Not everyone wants a sweaty high octane PvP mode and because player base is dwindling PvP will not be possible soon. I like the gunplay, I like the world, I like the level design but I don't want to play multiplayer.
I think what would boost this game is just have some normal MP modes. Add in some kind of TDM with no loot lost. Gamers can have fun like a normal MP game and use their best loadouts without fear of losing them. Separate out or exclude any leveling/XP if needed to prevent farming XP. A separate mode with no lost loot also kind of acts like a real gameplay firing range where gamers can test their loot.
 
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I think what would boost this game is just have some normal MP modes. Add in some kind of TDM with no loot lost. Gamers can have fun like a normal MP game and use their best loadouts without fear of losing them. Separate out or exclude any leveling/XP if needed to prevent farming XP. A separate mode with no lost loot also kind of acts like a real gameplay firing range where gamers can test their loot.

Yeah, that sounds like it could work well to attract lots of new players. Heck I'd consider buying it if they did that!
 
The game is almost out of the top 200 games.

I just got to ask.

How is Bungie paying its army of employees?

Forget about making its initial dev cost. The ship has long sailed.

Where is the money coming from for current payroll and overhead?

There is literal 20 person dev teams making absolute bank on Steam relative to their budget size in comparison to Bungie's big release.
Sony pay for everything i guess, they are a sony studio afterall.
 
With D2 the peaks seem to be in EU and with Marathon it's in US. The difference is somewhat subtle but seeing them side by side it looks like D2 is somewhat equally popular worldwide but Marathon is more popular in the US.

Why is Marathon US centric? Have we talked about that? D2 seems to appeal to EU but Marathon less so.

Perhaps it is the nature of the game itself or perhaps it is a backlash against an American made Sony game.

It's just odd. There is some reason for this that would be interesting to know but I don't think we have a way to know.

I read somewhere where the dirty secret of GAAS is that most users are acquired thru marketing spend and the game itself mostly is tasked with just making the players stay. With the bleed being apparent early on perhaps that is why Sony decided to stifle the marketing spend until Bungie could address the bleed issue.
 
With D2 the peaks seem to be in EU and with Marathon it's in US. The difference is somewhat subtle but seeing them side by side it looks like D2 is somewhat equally popular worldwide but Marathon is more popular in the US.

Why is Marathon US centric? Have we talked about that? D2 seems to appeal to EU but Marathon less so.

Perhaps it is the nature of the game itself or perhaps it is a backlash against an American made Sony game.

It's just odd. There is some reason for this that would be interesting to know but I don't think we have a way to know.

I read somewhere where the dirty secret of GAAS is that most users are acquired thru marketing spend and the game itself mostly is tasked with just making the players stay. With the bleed being apparent early on perhaps that is why Sony decided to stifle the marketing spend until Bungie could address the bleed issue.
ARC has a big Euro hour peak too. While Hunt and Tarkov have peaks at 10 am est.

Marathon is the only extraction shooter with US evening hours being the peak around 10 pm est which is a combo of eastern US gamers still playing before bed, while west coast gamers are jumping on after dinner at 7pm pst.

I'll take a guess that the art style is a big turn off for most regions of the world except the US where you'll get a set of people who like really weird looking shooter games. Who knows.
 
IMG-2680.jpg


How is this a turn off? This is worth at least 18.99
its so deliberately ugly that it almost seems like a dispassioned artist's visual rebellion against the constraints of modern game dev. the crushing reality of the way they see the world...
when's the last time these people caught crayfish with their hands or just looked at flowing water or leaves falling in the wind...
these people hate what they're doing
there is hatred in this art
 
Its not hardcore at all. It revolves around inbalance and elevates those who ride the crest of the wave disproportionately. It feels 'hardcore' to those who MM because their experience is different. That's why people are dropping off exponentially.

Running round teamed, or in a premade 3, with factions progressed, bubbles, shotguns, autoaim and revives is not a 'hardcore' game. There will be talented players sure, but that doesn't mean the game is hardcore. I'd argue high level Halo is more hardcore tbh.

The game is just disliked because its an absolute mishmash of competing mechanics and decisions that ultimately benefit the niche of niche. Its no surprise the 'level playing field' queue got the most action.

You're talking to actual arena players, de_aztec AWP'ers etc. who know what it is to die and be in spectate for the next round. This is just another community created reason to hardwave away the fact it's a poor game with good production values. You need to get the meta, you need to play 25 hours, you need to level your factions, you need to be on a mic, you need to be a hardcore player etc.

You like a poor, unpopular game that is slightly better than some recent horrific bombs. Its no more scientific than that. And that's fine. There are shit games I like but you don't need to be a cheerleader for this shite or pretend its some amazing new shooter that this audience has never seen. This 'audience' being predominantly 30-40yr old men who have lived most of their lives with gaming as a massive part of it.

This is pretty much where I'm at looking at this thing. It has perma death / gear loss, a hardcore raid / PvP weekly event, but at the same time is full of weird casual shit like hero abilities on cooldown, self-revives, "video game" style shotguns, etc. Mr Boxes has spoken about tactics but then I'm watching gameplay clips of guys with wall hack level thermal optical snipers 1-2 shotting guys across a foggy map who couldn't have done anything reasonable to avoid it, and the justification I get is "Well snipers are just popular on that map". Yeah no shit when they're that broken on a foggy map with little cover. Now SBMM is on the table and it's just going to artificially sort everyone into tiers to make the experience even less dynamic, which again maybe good to protect casuals or boost player numbers, but it certainly isn't in line with anything hardcore or what extraction shooters are about. I'm convinced a successful Marathon basically looks like what Halo 2-3 were.
 
It's very early, but 11 am completed hour tracking vs Monday (yesterday was maintenance day).

Monday 11 am 7.3k
Today 11 am 6.3k

Already off on a bad foot down -13%. It wont be this bad by end of day(?), but Weds are always down historically. Will probably end the day down about 5-6%. It should definitely hit the 12s. Monday peak was 13.2k.
 
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It's really not though, and I love the game.
There's something called Oppositional Defiance Dissorder and I might be bumping into that. The mountains of "It's too hardcore to be successful" accusations by basically everyone has now been followed up by "It's not hardcore at all".

I love arguing on NeoGAF but some things are too retarded to jump into.
 
Destiny 2's lows are around 5k CCU
Marathons are now firmly dipping below that. Also Marathon's peak CCU has become a short lived spike when it hits the sweet spot during NA play time. The single raw CCU peak number is not telling the full story of how much the game is languishing now and seems to be getting worse by the day.

Destiny 2 is Bungie's most popular title now by player count, hours played, global reach. It's also the worst that Destiny 2 has ever been.

Let that sink in.

#Omega
 
its so deliberately ugly that it almost seems like a dispassioned artist's visual rebellion against the constraints of modern game dev. the crushing reality of the way they see the world...
when's the last time these people caught crayfish with their hands or just looked at flowing water or leaves falling in the wind...
these people hate what they're doing
there is hatred in this art

I've said this before in this thread or another. Ugliness taken to the extreme becomes hatred and everything in between ( in every scope). They/them are aware of this. They do it deliberately.
 
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