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

PoE2 director said in an interview that when you do live service you shouldn't be looking at diminishing player counts during a season, but you only look at how many players come back at the start of a new one.

Basically don't be afraid to lose players after a couple of weeks, but only become scared when season starts get less and less players.

I think that is what Sony is also betting on.

Just don't tell this to my friends at the CCU thread…
you are welcome rent a car GIF by Sixt
 
What changes do you expect in S2 that will undo the grind or frustrations to the point that the game will be redeemed?
I don't think your question is proper. S2 doesn't need to "undo" anything. It needs to improve in a few key areas.

You can take the world's best chocolate chip cookie recipe, mess with each ingredient amount by 10 - 20%, and you'll have something that tastes awful. Marathon just needs to improve the recipe. It doesn't need to become a different game.

My hopes as far as improvements on S2 grind and frustrations...

- Tighter SBMM
- The new Runner Sentinel could reduce wet fart engagments with "alarm abilities".
- New loot that will reduce wet fart engagments.
- Weapons and shields could have trade offs. IE Weight could slow players down, increase noise to reduce skill gap.
- Rook could be reworked into being fun to play.
- A proper solo and / or duo mode would go a long way to reducing frustration.
- Shields & heals could take 100 - 200% longer to work in order to punish aggressive players.
- Night Dire Marsh could feel substantially different than the current maps and provide a mini aspirational experience to improve the sense of grind.
- They could force players to choose limited upgrades to help players feel they're building something unique.

There's a million ways to improve the game. That's what makes this genre so special. You can't substantially improve Street Fighter VI or Overwatch like you can Marathon.
 


Well the unibrow bomber strikes again. Overall he's right but he lost me at the end he went into how he doesn't wish anyone to fail over wokeness or anything, etc... And I wish I could talk to him and say dude you can't have band trends take off, sure if someone asked me do I want people fired no... I want games to be good, but here's what I want more is devs to make GOOD DECISIONS. If a company can't make good decisions anymore theyre a waste.

If every game was a kumbaya moment then every bad decision, every bad choice, every bad habit etc.. Will go unscathed. You gotta break some eggs to make an omelet. Bungie is not even remotely the same bungie anymore so there's no more love there, it's a bunch of weirdos that somehow always land in these positions that push slop out and that is why we hope for failure so that other companies see we don't want any of this anymore. If bungie can get their act together sure make a good game I'd play it but I think they are in trouble, big trouble here
 
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Nooooo, stay in your corner! 😂
Season 3 Nbc GIF by The Office



Well the unibrow bomber strikes again. Overall he's right but he lost me at the end he went into how he doesn't wish anyone to fail over wokeness or anything, etc... And I wish I could talk to him and say dude you can't have band trends take off, sure if someone asked me do I want people fired no... I want games to be good, but here's what I want more is devs to make GOOD DECISIONS. If a company can't make good decisions anymore theyre a waste.

If every game was a kumbaya moment then every bad decision, every bad choice, every bad habit etc.. Will go unscathed. You gotta break some eggs to make an omelet. Bungie is not even remotely the same bungie anymore so there's no more love there, it's a bunch of weirdos that somehow always land in these positions that push slop out and that is why we hope for failure so that other companies see we don't want any of this anymore.

Ricky Gervais Lol GIF

I bet the twitter mob already handed out the pitchforks.
 
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I bet the twitter mob already handed out the pitchforks.
And the Bungie sponsored tiki torches.
PoE2 director said in an interview that when you do live service you shouldn't be looking at diminishing player counts during a season, but you only look at how many players come back at the start of a new one.

Basically don't be afraid to lose players after a couple of weeks, but only become scared when season starts get less and less players.

I think that is what Sony is also betting on.
This game launched like a men_in_boxes Wet Fart™, and has been dropping players at a consistent 15-20% WoW. That logic only applies when you start off well and drop players later in the season.

Marathon,
NVt4FF7.gif
 
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Look it's simple, nobody wants shit out of the toilet, just put it in a trash bag or directly in the bowl, it's a simple thing really , in a way Marathon players like to play with their 💩
 
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Look it's simple, nobody wants shit out of the toilet, just put it in a trash bag or directly in the bowl, it's a simple thing really , in a way Marathon players like to play with their 💩
My GOD he's solved it.

Make Marathon an alternate Gambit mode in Destiny 2.

2 birds, meet one stone.
 
Incredible, a whopping 19 hours under 10K CCU today (04:05UTC to 00:05UTC), smashes the previous record of 17. 80% of the day is now spent under 10K CCU.

On a brighter note for Marathon, it actually breached 10K today and based on past trends looks like it might beat Sunday's CCU. Maybe the Mothers Day cope was right after all, yesterday was significantly below previous projections.
 
Marathon won the peak but lost the war today (UTC based capture).

Code:
| Game      | Date UTC       | Coverage h | Avg CCU | Peak CCU | Player-hours | DAU range      | DAU midpoint |
| Destiny 2 | Mon 2026-05-11 | 24.0       |  8,005  | 10,590   | 192,118      | 64,039-153,694 | 96,059       |
| Marathon  | Mon 2026-05-11 | 24.0       |  7,281  | 11,215   | 174,754      | 58,251-139,803 | 87,377       |
 
61jRVzJpi7L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

I'll have to admit, its embarrassing admitting why I hate Marathon. Nobody even asked. This may be insightful to Men_in_Boxes Men_in_Boxes Don't judge me, lol:

1. It is a mean game
2. It is not made for me
3. It is designed to reduce their work
4. It is made at the expense of a PvE game I love
5. Nothing is replacing the PvE game, it will cease to be made
6. No extra things to do besides the anxiety
7. A mode game that repeats over and over with no goal, loot doesn't really matter, skill is randomized
8. A lack of friends and social skills, so no access to end game or compiler for me ever
9. A dislike of the Bungie business model
10. The community happily kicking me out and having fun without me
 
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The closer you are to perfection, the less room there is to improve.

Do you understand?
True, perfection of a simple tool like a hammer or straw is difficult after a certain point. Those have largely held the same design for the last 100 years.

Extraction is a drone. It's so much bigger and more complex than Street Fighter VI or Overwatch. It's why everyone will have their eyes on S2.
 
True, perfection of a simple tool like a hammer or straw is difficult after a certain point. Those have largely held the same design for the last 100 years.

Extraction is a drone. It's so much bigger and more complex than Street Fighter VI or Overwatch. It's why everyone will have their eyes on S2.
Everyone has their eyes on S2 for the CCU meltdowns, not for the game.
 
61jRVzJpi7L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

I'll have to admit, its embarrassing admitting why I hate Marathon. Nobody even asked. This may be insightful to Men_in_Boxes Men_in_Boxes Don't judge me, lol:

1. It is a mean game
2. It is not made for me
3. It is designed to reduce their work
4. It is made at the expense of a PvE game I love
5. Nothing is replacing the PvE game, it will cease to be made
6. No extra things to do besides the anxiety
7. A mode game that repeats over and over with no goal, loot doesn't really matter, skill is randomized
8. A lack of friends and social skills, so no access to end game or compiler for me ever
9. A dislike of the Bungie business model
10. The community happily kicking me out and having fun without me
11. It's shit from a butt 💩
 
I didn't see a StreetsOfBeige update from last night. I think last Monday was 13.2K peak vs this Monday 11.8K peak, so -11% WoW. Should still see sub-10K peak later this month.
 
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61jRVzJpi7L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

I'll have to admit, its embarrassing admitting why I hate Marathon. Nobody even asked. This may be insightful to Men_in_Boxes Men_in_Boxes Don't judge me, lol:

1. It is a mean game
2. It is not made for me
3. It is designed to reduce their work
4. It is made at the expense of a PvE game I love
5. Nothing is replacing the PvE game, it will cease to be made
6. No extra things to do besides the anxiety
7. A mode game that repeats over and over with no goal, loot doesn't really matter, skill is randomized
8. A lack of friends and social skills, so no access to end game or compiler for me ever
9. A dislike of the Bungie business model
10. The community happily kicking me out and having fun without me
I do not judge you, friend. Other than points #3,#7, and #10 everything makes a degree of sense. I don't believe Marathon is for everybody, nor do I believe it represents the pinnacle of the genre. You are still welcome to trash it whenever your heart inspires you.
 
I don't think your question is proper. S2 doesn't need to "undo" anything. It needs to improve in a few key areas.

You can take the world's best chocolate chip cookie recipe, mess with each ingredient amount by 10 - 20%, and you'll have something that tastes awful. Marathon just needs to improve the recipe. It doesn't need to become a different game.

My hopes as far as improvements on S2 grind and frustrations...

- Tighter SBMM
- The new Runner Sentinel could reduce wet fart engagments with "alarm abilities".
- New loot that will reduce wet fart engagments.
- Weapons and shields could have trade offs. IE Weight could slow players down, increase noise to reduce skill gap.
- Rook could be reworked into being fun to play.
- A proper solo and / or duo mode would go a long way to reducing frustration.
- Shields & heals could take 100 - 200% longer to work in order to punish aggressive players.
- Night Dire Marsh could feel substantially different than the current maps and provide a mini aspirational experience to improve the sense of grind.
- They could force players to choose limited upgrades to help players feel they're building something unique.

There's a million ways to improve the game. That's what makes this genre so special. You can't substantially improve Street Fighter VI or Overwatch like you can Marathon.

I agree a lot of these could help with shorter term frustration and player bleed, maybe bring a few people who quit back on board. I'm doubtful that any of these are going to massively revitalize the game or bring in new players though. If someone had never played Marathon are any of the changes above going to matter to them or sell them the game? Maybe Night Dire Marsh could be unique enough that it gets some new player interest from a trailer, but the length of time shields take to apply? What rook feels like to play? No one who hasn't already experienced Marathon is going to have any strong feelings about these or even be looking at the patch notes. They should of course improve the game to stop the bleed but exclusively trying to recover existing players is likely a losing strategy because they're only going to get a fraction of them back and it didn't do tremendously well to begin with.

Marathon's greatest strength and chance at a comeback at this point is actually how few people played / bought it. That might seem counter intuitive but it means a lot of the opinion around Marathon isn't solidified in terrible first hand experiences, but instead people just looking at word of mouth or media around Marathon. Bungie has an opportunity to change the story around the game but they have to be first and foremost focused on the people who didn't buy in to begin with and offering those people a reason to jump in. Marathon can't sit back and make micro tweaks to guns or shields and hope to hit the metrics they need. They need something that is going to break through public sentiment and make gamers see Marathon differently. I just don't see how Bungie accomplishes that without a radical pivot or massive content drop that they don't seem capable of delivering atm. They're bleeding out badly enough that I don't think they have the time to do any kind of slow change. EU is now peaking at less than 10k and the game is bottoming out at less than 3.5k at night.
 
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9 pm completed hour CCU. Peaked reached at 11.5k around 10:30 pm, a new low by 100 CCU (done on Sunday)
All time peak was launch day 88.3k. Today's peak at 11.5k is -76.8k or -87%

Today vs yesterday: 11.5k vs 11.8k (-0.3k or -2.5%)

Yesterday's low 3.5k. If the rate holds, low tonight will be 3.4k

Tue vs Tue: 11.5k vs 13.4k (-1.9k or -14%). Much better than 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: 149
Global Top Sellers: 197
Weekly Top Sellers: Unknown. Not on top 100
Top Rated Games: 6,130 (83.74%)
 
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9 pm completed hour CCU. Peaked reached at 11.5k around 10:30 pm, a new low by 100 CCU (done on Sunday)
All time peak was launch day 88.3k. Today's peak at 11.5k is -76.8k or -87%

Today vs yesterday: 11.5k vs 11.8k (-0.3k or -2.5%)

Yesterday's low 3.5k. If the rate holds, low tonight will be 3.4k

Tue vs Tue: 11.5k vs 13.4k (-1.9k or -14%). Much better than 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: 149
Global Top Sellers: 197
Weekly Top Sellers: Unknown. Not on top 100
Top Rated Games: 6,130 (83.74%)
Ignore this it updated🤪

So we could see sub-10K next week with a 13-14% drop WoW. To me that's always been a hard line for a Hail Mary and then followed by an Old Yeller if it doesn't work. They don't have time to remake the game with PvE modes. S2 is do or die.
 
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Another oof today. Well under 100k DAU now. What was Sony talking about strong retention?

Code:
| Game      | Date UTC       | Coverage h | Avg CCU | Peak CCU | Player-hours | DAU range      | DAU midpoint |
| Destiny 2 | Tue 2026-05-12 | 24.0       |  8,275  | 11,661   | 198,608      | 66,203-158,886 | 99,304       |
| Marathon  | Tue 2026-05-12 | 24.0       |  7,159  | 11,798   | 171,815      | 57,272-137,452 | 85,908       |
 
Ya. I missed doing it. Took a nap after dinner and woke up super late so didn't bother. Lol
We can't be having that bud. There are people that sit and wait for your updates. Think about these people and the fate of their F5 keys next time you decide a nap is more important than this CCU thread. We will let it slide this time...
 
Imagine doubling down on this fucking game.

Season 2 Lol GIF by Insecure on HBO
Modern Sony software division doesn't have a fuckin clue. They did this like 8 times. It's common to hear that they just fucked up less than Microsoft, but I don't even think it's that. They are literally running off fumes from the victory they had with the PS4 during the foundational years of people establishing their digital libraries.

Can't wait for Hungry Gatherers and Fairgain$. This shit is epic beyond belief.
 
Modern Sony software division doesn't have a fuckin clue. They did this like 8 times. It's common to hear that they just fucked up less than Microsoft, but I don't even think it's that. They are literally running off fumes from the victory they had with the PS4 during the foundational years of people establishing their digital libraries.

Can't wait for Hungry Gatherers and Fairgain$. This shit is epic beyond belief.
Sony is only killing it because Xbox committed suicide. The PS5's victory is really just a participation trophy.
 
9 pm completed hour CCU. Peaked reached at 11.5k around 10:30 pm, a new low by 100 CCU (done on Sunday)
All time peak was launch day 88.3k. Today's peak at 11.5k is -76.8k or -87%

Today vs yesterday: 11.5k vs 11.8k (-0.3k or -2.5%)

Yesterday's low 3.5k. If the rate holds, low tonight will be 3.4k

Tue vs Tue: 11.5k vs 13.4k (-1.9k or -14%). Much better than 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: 149
Global Top Sellers: 197
Weekly Top Sellers: Unknown. Not on top 100
Top Rated Games: 6,130 (83.74%)

200.gif
 
Should've had them make a new AAAA Halo with a different name. Minimum 10M sold.
Yep. Sony has never really had that MONSTER FPS multiplayer game that was exclusive for them. Killzone was dubbed the "Halo Killer" and it was anything but.

They should have just made a new Sci Fi game with a good campaign and multiplayer in the same style as a Halo game. Would have been HUGE.
 
Yep. Sony has never really had that MONSTER FPS multiplayer game that was exclusive for them. Killzone was dubbed the "Halo Killer" and it was anything but.

They should have just made a new Sci Fi game with a good campaign and multiplayer in the same style as a Halo game. Would have been HUGE.
I mean just using Destiny would've worked fine. Destiny Saga or whatever. There is already a ton of lore to build a solid campaign on.
 
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Yep. Sony has never really had that MONSTER FPS multiplayer game that was exclusive for them. Killzone was dubbed the "Halo Killer" and it was anything but.

They should have just made a new Sci Fi game with a good campaign and multiplayer in the same style as a Halo game. Would have been HUGE.
That's a really good comparison actually. I played (and liked) killzone's multiplayer but there was definitely a similar sentiment that people who didn't like it just didn't appreciate the brilliance of the game itself. In fact a closer parallel would be MAG on PS3
 
Sony is only killing it because Xbox committed suicide. The PS5's victory is really just a participation trophy.
Everyone ran to buy ps5's counting on their games after good ps3/ps4 gens, there's their success right there.. top that with Xbox committing seppuku and this gen was a walk in the park...until now, high prices and low/bad first party output is making sales drop from a cliff.

But sony is so fcking lucky that GTA6 is basically a pseudo exclusive game and will make the ps5 sell again at least for a time.

Hope they get their shit together for next gen.
 
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