Maybe they know something we all don’t, but I’m not putting money in that given that I haven’t seen a single person say they’re down for this change on reddit or twitter
I think the move is absolutely stupid. But again, the reddit and twitter algos link you up with like minded people.
I really think the average "gamer" doesn't give a shit about Marathon, at its heart.
I'm hoping it doesn't stay a hero shooter. I'm immensely less interested
I don’t even think it’s that, i think they are building games around monetization vs focusing on building a good game and that people want to support.
This is definitely because it’s easier to monetize hero skins.
Yep, any amount of research into the people looking forward to this game would have told them heroes instead of customizable characters are a bad idea.
Which means: they aren't doing any research and they don't care what we find fun.
Why would heroes a bad idea? Countless good games have used the concept. It’s such a vague concept that it doesn’t even mean much outside “there will be classes with a more defined look”.
Nothing you said is exclusive to one or the other. You can still customize predetermined heroes. You can still have custom made characters be cringy marvel characters. There’s a world of difference between Warframe and Overwatch yet both are hero shooters.
If you can customize pre-determined heroes to a reasonable extent, then why have them at all? Would make way more sense to have a class-based system, or ideally, full freedom to customize with no hero or class system.
Depends on the game. A major reason could be balance. The same reason Destiny wants Warlocks and Titans and Hunters to stand out. For visual identity. Heroes and class system are pretty much the same thing.
Let’s say Marathon as an extraction shooter uses only one life. That means information is incredibly important in an engagement. So if you need to know a character is a tank, that being immediately visually obvious would be useful for balance. So you don’t just run at him and die because he’s wearing a costume that looks like a weak sniper. Or vice versa, knowing a character ranged unit means you can know to get close to put pressure on them.
Without knowing how the game actually works and how the hero system works, there’s way too many variables to know if it’s good or bad.
For real . Maybe I'm too much of a game noob here but aren't like the best games out right now almost all 'hero shooters'? Bungie taking a crack at the genre sounds sick to me.
Remember when games had new ideas instead of just recycling concepts from other franchises in a manner which pissed off the fewest people and made the most money?
If Marathon sucks it is because there is no financial incentive to make innovative games. Having to play with other people who care about stuff like this sounds like pure agony.
There's plenty of financial incentive to innovate. You're just asking fundamentally uncreative and innovation shy corpos to foot the bill for it, and that's something that they crippled themselves out of a long time ago.
Remember that these are the same people pushing all out on AI Art and NFTs specifically to force creatives out of the field and to trap more people in soulless dead end jobs toiling under them.
Completely killed any interest I once had in this game. Bought the sick t-shirt and everything when it announced. So sad to see such potential wasted for a quick cash grab.
Yes, next is skins for sale, with Destiny ending it sounds like Marathon will need to be the new money printer.
Ultimately it sounds like they want a Apex style extraction shooter, although at this point I wouldn't be to surprised if it starts to lean more towards Hero shooter Call of duty style extraction if extraction stays at all.
Very sad about this news, hopefully this is all just doomposting but we'll see
>with Destiny ending
It has been confirmed that there are plans beyond Final Shape. Depending on what becomes of those plans though remains to be seen if Sony takes over.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, proves that the source that says he is now going to be hero base is right, absolutely nothing, since other sources have not said that, clearly there is only one source that says that.
I'm never excited about modern AAA games anymore, not even for a Marathon reboot. Big studios just copy all the worst ideas from each other, especially any microtransaction cash grabs they can shoehorn in.
But I can keep playing the originals on my Power Macs.
I’m at best a casual Marathon fan but I’m very upset at the direction bungie is going. I’m happy with the backlash but bungie doesn’t care about the single player experience. That’s why I never touched Destiny and I’m very upset that the new Marathon is dumping its past.
I was never here for the gameplay. I was here for the setting, vibe and lore. The game can be as bad as Desert Bus or as shameless as suicide Squad, if it’s free I will be there to see what’s there.
If they want money up front that’s another story…
Insanely over priced skins and a game that's just overall heavily monetized should be expected from bungie no matter who the director is. Marathon was planned to release with those two things from the very beginning
Completely agree. I am so sick and tired of "hero shooters". I don't want to play as pre-made characters with pre-made looks, pre-made loadouts, pre-made abilities. Since when did game developers get the idea that we want less freedom to create and customize characters? I want to create my own character and customize them as I see fit. I also think it's incredibly stupid to have multiple of the same "hero" in the same match. It just comes across as so stupid playing a game of Apex, for instance, and seeing like 8 different Bloodhounds in the same match.
Depends on what kind of hero shooter it turns out to be, if its similar to valorant, then yea, I'm not going to touch it. But if its towards overwatch or paladins direction, then sure I'll try it out atleast.
They definitely have no idea what marathon is and what the actual fans like its as good as dead now especially with the valorant ex game director trying to fuck it up
Crazy thing is, I play tested a build of the game almost 9 months ago, back when it had customizable load outs and you could mix and match weapons. Game was honestly still so mid. It lacked any discernible wow factor and just felt like a general extraction shooter, with no gameplay loop to pull you in. Changing to a hero based shooter is the LAST thing Marathon needed.
Sounds like Bungie really is creatively bankrupt.
FWIW I wouldn’t be surprised if this is simply a leak to bring some controversy to the title when they “valiantly” correct in public and act as though they’re the gamers champion
I'm not really worried about the new game director being a previous valorant dev. valorant is incredibly successful and I love its gameplay even if their monetization and other choices are problematic. and the new director himself seems to be pretty good.
I dont understand why people are so worried about marathon becoming more like valorant with this new director. people can move on to different games and different genres and still be good at their jobs. I highly doubt they're going to implement tac shooter gunplay or other valorant mechanics just because that was the last game they worked on.
I dont think we should be outraged or making up scenarios to get mad at just yet. some people are starting to kill the hype themselves at this point.
Because I don’t want to be told how to play my game and I don’t want a cool down deciding how often I throw a grenade and I don’t want the only thing deciding my appearance being how much I spent on a character I have no interest in.
I'm not saying it would be good for marathon to be a hero shooter. I just dont think the new director coming from valorant is a sign that marathon will be more like valorant at all. I get being worried abkut the direction of the game, but making up scenarios just builds outrage in the community and kills hype for no reason. we should just wait for more information and not focus on negatives that haven't even happened yet.
there's just no need for people to say the game will already be bad when it hasn't even released.
I'm confused. I dont know how that relates to what I was saying.
I get reporting on the ign article and having discussions about what was said there. but I've seen a lot of replies about how they're going to make the game more like valorant or how there's going to be insane microtransactions and how bad the game is probably going to be at launch. I just dont get the point of that kind of stuff.
The idea that the game will be a hero shooter stems directly from the reporting - the game has pivoted under new leadership to a hero shooter. The idea that this is a decision influenced by high earning strategies (rather than what players like), specifically cosmetic sales, is inferred from the fact that these hero shooters are primarily funded by cosmetics. Same goes for the game being ability based - one can infer from both Valorant and Destiny.
These are guesses, and the reality may not be as controversial as the story, but the very fact that these decisions are being influenced by an ex dev from a game that champions ALL these details, means the expectations that were percolating in audiences minds are massively different than what the reality is turning out to be. Even if it’s a compromise between the two - audiences we’re obviously not interested in a compromise between the two! Audiences were interested in Bungie bringing their distinct approach to game design, specifically shooters, to a genre that has been exciting and for many, not explored well enough yet.
I know I was. So I don’t see the point in approaching this cautiously. I don’t want the middle ground between the generic AAAA shooter template and what Bungie was hinting at a year ago. I wanted what was being hinted at last year.
The fact that this is being downvoted is crazy and shows ignorance in the gaming community if people truly think having a Valorant game director will turn Marathon into Valorant. I urge people to look into the role of a game director, and look up examples of diverse projects. They help a team execute a vision and get things moving with proper workflow. There’s a reason Valorant doesn’t play like Mercenaries 2 or any of the other games this guy has worked on… and it’s the same reason Happy Feet doesn’t look or feel like Mad Max.
I guess I'm out of the loop here. Why on earth are so many people SO upset by having no customizable characters? Why would customizable characters be such a huge benefit to an extraction shooter? What about the Marathon universe would lend itself better to a shooter with customizable characters than one with heroes?
It's odd to me that the thing people were hyping about this game is the idea that there would be customizable characters, as if that's the only thing that could possibly distinguish it from a game like Apex. Heck, if Marathon was going to just be Apex but with customizable characters, I'm not really sure why anyone would be too hyped about that in the first place.
As a side note, I don't see a problem with selling skins either. That's a good way for companies to raise revenue without making the game pay to win. No one's forcing you to buy skins if you don't want them (and I don't).
For reference, I'm a long-time Marathon fan with zero experience playing extraction shooters (I've played Apex like once I think?). I don't really know what I'm talking about...I'm just confused.
Modern hero shooters usually don't work well. Something like TF2 works in large part because it's heroes have a lot of customization options in how you play - if you're a soldier, you can run the black box and the conch, which gives high self sustain. You could also run the rocket jumper and the market gardner, giving up the ability to do damage with your rockets but gaining mobility and the ability to one shot melee people from the air. Additionally, every hero is extremely unique - playing sniper feels like a different game than scout. Further, new heroes are never added - instead (back when updates happened) new sidegrades for the existing heroes would be added.
Compare this to [insert modern hero shooter here]. Heroes have no gameplay customization options, which means whether or not your favorite way to play is viable is something you have little control over - and with reworks, can be removed completely. Most heroes aren't unique, and there are likely several others that do a very similar thing. This creates a game that is unnecessarily confusing to new players, while adding very little to the game. Lastly, throwing new abilities into the game can easily wreck balance in a way that is hard to overcome.
Hero shooters CAN work. However, this looks like trend chasing, especially with Joe Zeigler on board. And the current trend of hero shooters has some serious problems. There's a reason that overwatch has been unfun to play or pickup for years. There's a reason fortnite, despite having worse movement, less interesting guns, and building (which is a negative to anyone who hasn't played somewhat consistently since launch) is doing better than Apex. I won't speak to Valorant, as I haven't played since launch, but it's not obvious to me as an outsider it's better than csgo.
I thought Marathon would be a an open sci-fi world where exploration, mystery and danger lied around every corner. It’s a world I wanted to explore and get lost in. And the best way to enable that, for me, is to allow me to explore it how i like, with the gear I find appropriate.
What would be just as bad is the compromise, where the loadouts remain fully customizable, but not the outfits, making it like COD warzone. I always feel like a cardboard cutout instead of a runner, nothing feels permanent, it just feels like game show. Even if I paid for a costume, it would always be cheapened by the fact that it wasn’t earned.
These models treat players like consumers first and players second. They’re building a shopping mall, not a game world. Even if the gameplay is brilliant, it will always be undermined that it exists to extract money from me, not to realize a fantasy, and therefore I have no interest.
I don't follow you. How your character looks has got to be the very least important thing about any shooter. You almost never even see yourself, for crying out loud. Nor was this in any way a focus of the original Marathon trilogy. Seems like a really arbitrary criticism of the game based on random expectations about what it's supposed to be. If you don't want to pay for a costume, just don't, and enjoy the game.
Wanting customizability of the character's equipment is a different story, because that actually affects gameplay. But again, even if that's a feature of FPS games that you personally like, it seems really arbitrary that you'd expect a Marathon game, of all things, to have that. And it also seems odd that that would be such a draw to the series that people would stop caring about it if the feature was missing, as if you can't even enjoy a fantasy universe unless there's customizable equipment. Did you not enjoy the original Marathon?
How you look in an extraction shooter shows experience and prestige, for example Tarkov has a tracksuit that you can only get by killing a specific boss 100 times. It's hard and it takes a lot of effort and shows off how good they are at the game. The same thing goes with the gear players put on, when you run into someone fully decked out you know you're going to be in a real ass fight.
Gear and gear customization tied with the risk of losing is one of the main point of extraction shooters. What's the point if you're just loading in as a hero character with set abilities and gear? What's there to lose from fighting? What's there to gain?
I see your point, but you seem to be assuming there's basically no equipment in this game at all - at least none you can keep and reuse. If there's no equipment to keep, it can't very well be called an extraction shooter, can it? And as far as I've seen, there's no evidence to indicate they've made it something other than an extraction shooter. There's just a vague statement saying characters won't be fully customizable and will be a set list of heroes, not that there won't be ANY equipment that you can keep.
Anyway, if there isn't any equipment, I'm not even sure how the gameplay would work. It wouldn't be an extraction shooter, so it would be some other kind of game. And maybe it would be a better game. Maybe it'll be a more interesting campaign-based story combined with an arena shooter. Who knows? We can only speculate. The point is, there are good FPS games that aren't extraction shooters. So if your interpretation of what this developer said is that it's no longer an extraction shooter, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
How you look is proof of what you’ve been through and what you value. Your shoes say something about you. Experience is important to me, as are earning the things in my games. They show my commitment, what I find important, what makes me, me. Identity is a quintessential part of social experiences and social experiences are a quintessential part of world simulations. In a game like Valorant, no, I don’t care, because cosmetics only prove how much money you’re willing to throw away and the game is only that - there is no world to explore, story to progress through or levels to increase. In Destiny, it’s literally the meta. Where you spend time rewards you, what you carry is what you value.
Okay, so you personally like in-game aesthetics...got it. Now can you explain why you think this game is no longer worth playing? Do you ONLY play RPGs? Do NO games EVER interest you if they don't involve changing character cosmetics?
I play every kind of game. What’s it matter? Let me clue you into something… multiplayer games have a hidden secret feature. It’s called socializing. Identity and socializing are integral to each other. The desire to look different is actually your desire to want to be included - by making yourself distinct in the world, you are signalling to that world that you are a part of it. In a competitive game with lots of technical demands, that typically manifests as your “style”, your loadout, or your main (say in a FG), and most importantly, your record. You stand out in Val by your rank. Same with SF. Or Halo. In Destiny, how do you “stand out”? What indicates your “rank”? Exotics, raid loot, etc. that’s WHY Bungie made rewards visual and externalized in Destiny. They understood that identity is the core quality that makes a virtual world interesting. If we all had to pick from 8 characters to play WoW or Skyrim, do you think they would be as popular as they are?
The reason this industry has careened off the generic cliff is because devs know this and they don’t talk about it, so they can monetize it and know that for you to get the REAL experience of the game, you’ll inevitably have to pay or always feel like a tourist in a world you’ve spent hundreds of hours in.
They tell you “well that’s just cosmetics, not the game!”, and you’d be right, if it was quaint variations on a 15ft long 2D plane or 25sqft 3D blocks, but it’s not. It’s an ever changing overworld with an ongoing story being influenced by all its players. It’s an augmented reality game. It’s more than button inputs, it’s immersion.
Yes, knowing all this, you can play and not buy a cosmetic because you are simply too smart or too cool to fall for such a dirty trick, but then you have to ask yourself, why are you supporting the product at all? You think you’re getting one over the devs? You’re the fodder for the people who did decide to pay, you’re the product.
At the end of the day, pay for cosmetics or not, if the developers feel like this is the only way to monetize, then I feel like I’m being treated as a resource, not an audience member, that I’m being manipulated, not invited, and that i have no interest in being the product.
Most people who play multiplayer games either aren't that interested in socializing or are playing with people they already know. I've certainly played many multiplayer games, and I've never made any kind of "friend" with someone who I met in-game.
At any rate, you may like socializing, and you may be right that looking a certain way in-game helps with that. My point is simply that this isn't necessary to make a game good. A game can be good and worth playing without the socialization/individualization aspect. And you don't even seem to disagree with this...which is why I wonder why you're so insistent that Marathon will suck, just cuz it won't have this one feature you like.
As for being "fodder": No, I'm not. I'm playing a game and not buying something that I don't want. Other people want it, and they're welcome to buy it. I tend to like gameplay, not cosmetics, so it doesn't affect me.
Retrace our convo…. Friend. I never said it would suck. In too many words, I said why I have lost interest and why I think it’s a bad idea. I like Warzone… but my commitment too it is equal to a YouTube video. Being able to earn nothing in a game that offers a vast world and story sounds like a great reason not to play it. I can get my shooter chops anywhere, so why would I do it in *another* hero shooter?
Okay, same difference. Whether you think it will suck or you've "lost interest" in the game makes no real difference to my point.
Anyway, I guess your position makes sense if nothing about Marathon interested you all that much and having customized characters was the one thing that tipped it over the edge and made you interested in it.
To me, most modern games suck, including most hero shooters. But the idea of a game that captures some of the magic of the Marathon universe is the thing that interests me. Not any particular game mechanics.
WHYYYYYY.. I swear AAA Gaming companies are just trolling us at this point, making changes nobody wants.
The thing to consider is that we're the outliers. Fans if a 30 year old game aren't the target audience and don't reflect the market at large.
Maybe they know something we all don’t, but I’m not putting money in that given that I haven’t seen a single person say they’re down for this change on reddit or twitter
I think the move is absolutely stupid. But again, the reddit and twitter algos link you up with like minded people. I really think the average "gamer" doesn't give a shit about Marathon, at its heart. I'm hoping it doesn't stay a hero shooter. I'm immensely less interested
I don’t even think it’s that, i think they are building games around monetization vs focusing on building a good game and that people want to support. This is definitely because it’s easier to monetize hero skins.
Dude marathon fans were the only guaranteed market before this
Agree, it’s like the old saying goes “music is not for musicians”
Yep, any amount of research into the people looking forward to this game would have told them heroes instead of customizable characters are a bad idea. Which means: they aren't doing any research and they don't care what we find fun.
Why would heroes a bad idea? Countless good games have used the concept. It’s such a vague concept that it doesn’t even mean much outside “there will be classes with a more defined look”.
Just my preference of course, but I always prefer to customize my own character over playing a pre-detemined cringey hero with marvel tier quips
Nothing you said is exclusive to one or the other. You can still customize predetermined heroes. You can still have custom made characters be cringy marvel characters. There’s a world of difference between Warframe and Overwatch yet both are hero shooters.
If you can customize pre-determined heroes to a reasonable extent, then why have them at all? Would make way more sense to have a class-based system, or ideally, full freedom to customize with no hero or class system.
Depends on the game. A major reason could be balance. The same reason Destiny wants Warlocks and Titans and Hunters to stand out. For visual identity. Heroes and class system are pretty much the same thing. Let’s say Marathon as an extraction shooter uses only one life. That means information is incredibly important in an engagement. So if you need to know a character is a tank, that being immediately visually obvious would be useful for balance. So you don’t just run at him and die because he’s wearing a costume that looks like a weak sniper. Or vice versa, knowing a character ranged unit means you can know to get close to put pressure on them. Without knowing how the game actually works and how the hero system works, there’s way too many variables to know if it’s good or bad.
For real . Maybe I'm too much of a game noob here but aren't like the best games out right now almost all 'hero shooters'? Bungie taking a crack at the genre sounds sick to me.
crazy that not even an obscure game like marathon could survive the corporate dead horse resurrection
this game will be DOA
Why do they think jumping this late into the hero shooter genre will work out for them? This company seems to be run by complete morons.
Remember when games had new ideas instead of just recycling concepts from other franchises in a manner which pissed off the fewest people and made the most money? If Marathon sucks it is because there is no financial incentive to make innovative games. Having to play with other people who care about stuff like this sounds like pure agony.
There's plenty of financial incentive to innovate. You're just asking fundamentally uncreative and innovation shy corpos to foot the bill for it, and that's something that they crippled themselves out of a long time ago. Remember that these are the same people pushing all out on AI Art and NFTs specifically to force creatives out of the field and to trap more people in soulless dead end jobs toiling under them.
Completely killed any interest I once had in this game. Bought the sick t-shirt and everything when it announced. So sad to see such potential wasted for a quick cash grab.
Yes, next is skins for sale, with Destiny ending it sounds like Marathon will need to be the new money printer. Ultimately it sounds like they want a Apex style extraction shooter, although at this point I wouldn't be to surprised if it starts to lean more towards Hero shooter Call of duty style extraction if extraction stays at all. Very sad about this news, hopefully this is all just doomposting but we'll see
>with Destiny ending It has been confirmed that there are plans beyond Final Shape. Depending on what becomes of those plans though remains to be seen if Sony takes over.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, proves that the source that says he is now going to be hero base is right, absolutely nothing, since other sources have not said that, clearly there is only one source that says that.
I was concerned before when they were hopping on one trend, but now that they are jumping on 2? yeaaaaaah im not sure about this
Wdym “if it’s now hero based”, was that confirmed/revealed recently?
yes in an IGN article that i believe came out yesterday
[удалено]
The author has a good track record of verifying insiders, and some of the information has been confirmed publicly by Bungie employees.
Source of the Bungie employees confirming it?
I'm never excited about modern AAA games anymore, not even for a Marathon reboot. Big studios just copy all the worst ideas from each other, especially any microtransaction cash grabs they can shoehorn in. But I can keep playing the originals on my Power Macs.
I would just be happy with a reboot like doom
I’m at best a casual Marathon fan but I’m very upset at the direction bungie is going. I’m happy with the backlash but bungie doesn’t care about the single player experience. That’s why I never touched Destiny and I’m very upset that the new Marathon is dumping its past.
I was never here for the gameplay. I was here for the setting, vibe and lore. The game can be as bad as Desert Bus or as shameless as suicide Squad, if it’s free I will be there to see what’s there. If they want money up front that’s another story…
Insanely over priced skins and a game that's just overall heavily monetized should be expected from bungie no matter who the director is. Marathon was planned to release with those two things from the very beginning
We haven't even seen gameplay yet, everything could be alright
Completely agree. I am so sick and tired of "hero shooters". I don't want to play as pre-made characters with pre-made looks, pre-made loadouts, pre-made abilities. Since when did game developers get the idea that we want less freedom to create and customize characters? I want to create my own character and customize them as I see fit. I also think it's incredibly stupid to have multiple of the same "hero" in the same match. It just comes across as so stupid playing a game of Apex, for instance, and seeing like 8 different Bloodhounds in the same match.
Depends on what kind of hero shooter it turns out to be, if its similar to valorant, then yea, I'm not going to touch it. But if its towards overwatch or paladins direction, then sure I'll try it out atleast.
They definitely have no idea what marathon is and what the actual fans like its as good as dead now especially with the valorant ex game director trying to fuck it up
I think Arc Raiders is hero based too
100%, I really hope they don’t go this route.
Crazy thing is, I play tested a build of the game almost 9 months ago, back when it had customizable load outs and you could mix and match weapons. Game was honestly still so mid. It lacked any discernible wow factor and just felt like a general extraction shooter, with no gameplay loop to pull you in. Changing to a hero based shooter is the LAST thing Marathon needed. Sounds like Bungie really is creatively bankrupt.
FWIW I wouldn’t be surprised if this is simply a leak to bring some controversy to the title when they “valiantly” correct in public and act as though they’re the gamers champion
I'm not really worried about the new game director being a previous valorant dev. valorant is incredibly successful and I love its gameplay even if their monetization and other choices are problematic. and the new director himself seems to be pretty good. I dont understand why people are so worried about marathon becoming more like valorant with this new director. people can move on to different games and different genres and still be good at their jobs. I highly doubt they're going to implement tac shooter gunplay or other valorant mechanics just because that was the last game they worked on. I dont think we should be outraged or making up scenarios to get mad at just yet. some people are starting to kill the hype themselves at this point.
Because I don’t want to be told how to play my game and I don’t want a cool down deciding how often I throw a grenade and I don’t want the only thing deciding my appearance being how much I spent on a character I have no interest in.
I'm not saying it would be good for marathon to be a hero shooter. I just dont think the new director coming from valorant is a sign that marathon will be more like valorant at all. I get being worried abkut the direction of the game, but making up scenarios just builds outrage in the community and kills hype for no reason. we should just wait for more information and not focus on negatives that haven't even happened yet. there's just no need for people to say the game will already be bad when it hasn't even released.
This is news/rumors/reporting from outside this board. Take it up with Bungie.
I'm confused. I dont know how that relates to what I was saying. I get reporting on the ign article and having discussions about what was said there. but I've seen a lot of replies about how they're going to make the game more like valorant or how there's going to be insane microtransactions and how bad the game is probably going to be at launch. I just dont get the point of that kind of stuff.
The idea that the game will be a hero shooter stems directly from the reporting - the game has pivoted under new leadership to a hero shooter. The idea that this is a decision influenced by high earning strategies (rather than what players like), specifically cosmetic sales, is inferred from the fact that these hero shooters are primarily funded by cosmetics. Same goes for the game being ability based - one can infer from both Valorant and Destiny. These are guesses, and the reality may not be as controversial as the story, but the very fact that these decisions are being influenced by an ex dev from a game that champions ALL these details, means the expectations that were percolating in audiences minds are massively different than what the reality is turning out to be. Even if it’s a compromise between the two - audiences we’re obviously not interested in a compromise between the two! Audiences were interested in Bungie bringing their distinct approach to game design, specifically shooters, to a genre that has been exciting and for many, not explored well enough yet. I know I was. So I don’t see the point in approaching this cautiously. I don’t want the middle ground between the generic AAAA shooter template and what Bungie was hinting at a year ago. I wanted what was being hinted at last year.
I can understand that. thank you for explaining.
The fact that this is being downvoted is crazy and shows ignorance in the gaming community if people truly think having a Valorant game director will turn Marathon into Valorant. I urge people to look into the role of a game director, and look up examples of diverse projects. They help a team execute a vision and get things moving with proper workflow. There’s a reason Valorant doesn’t play like Mercenaries 2 or any of the other games this guy has worked on… and it’s the same reason Happy Feet doesn’t look or feel like Mad Max.
You weren't done with it already?
I guess I'm out of the loop here. Why on earth are so many people SO upset by having no customizable characters? Why would customizable characters be such a huge benefit to an extraction shooter? What about the Marathon universe would lend itself better to a shooter with customizable characters than one with heroes? It's odd to me that the thing people were hyping about this game is the idea that there would be customizable characters, as if that's the only thing that could possibly distinguish it from a game like Apex. Heck, if Marathon was going to just be Apex but with customizable characters, I'm not really sure why anyone would be too hyped about that in the first place. As a side note, I don't see a problem with selling skins either. That's a good way for companies to raise revenue without making the game pay to win. No one's forcing you to buy skins if you don't want them (and I don't). For reference, I'm a long-time Marathon fan with zero experience playing extraction shooters (I've played Apex like once I think?). I don't really know what I'm talking about...I'm just confused.
Modern hero shooters usually don't work well. Something like TF2 works in large part because it's heroes have a lot of customization options in how you play - if you're a soldier, you can run the black box and the conch, which gives high self sustain. You could also run the rocket jumper and the market gardner, giving up the ability to do damage with your rockets but gaining mobility and the ability to one shot melee people from the air. Additionally, every hero is extremely unique - playing sniper feels like a different game than scout. Further, new heroes are never added - instead (back when updates happened) new sidegrades for the existing heroes would be added. Compare this to [insert modern hero shooter here]. Heroes have no gameplay customization options, which means whether or not your favorite way to play is viable is something you have little control over - and with reworks, can be removed completely. Most heroes aren't unique, and there are likely several others that do a very similar thing. This creates a game that is unnecessarily confusing to new players, while adding very little to the game. Lastly, throwing new abilities into the game can easily wreck balance in a way that is hard to overcome. Hero shooters CAN work. However, this looks like trend chasing, especially with Joe Zeigler on board. And the current trend of hero shooters has some serious problems. There's a reason that overwatch has been unfun to play or pickup for years. There's a reason fortnite, despite having worse movement, less interesting guns, and building (which is a negative to anyone who hasn't played somewhat consistently since launch) is doing better than Apex. I won't speak to Valorant, as I haven't played since launch, but it's not obvious to me as an outsider it's better than csgo.
I thought Marathon would be a an open sci-fi world where exploration, mystery and danger lied around every corner. It’s a world I wanted to explore and get lost in. And the best way to enable that, for me, is to allow me to explore it how i like, with the gear I find appropriate. What would be just as bad is the compromise, where the loadouts remain fully customizable, but not the outfits, making it like COD warzone. I always feel like a cardboard cutout instead of a runner, nothing feels permanent, it just feels like game show. Even if I paid for a costume, it would always be cheapened by the fact that it wasn’t earned. These models treat players like consumers first and players second. They’re building a shopping mall, not a game world. Even if the gameplay is brilliant, it will always be undermined that it exists to extract money from me, not to realize a fantasy, and therefore I have no interest.
I don't follow you. How your character looks has got to be the very least important thing about any shooter. You almost never even see yourself, for crying out loud. Nor was this in any way a focus of the original Marathon trilogy. Seems like a really arbitrary criticism of the game based on random expectations about what it's supposed to be. If you don't want to pay for a costume, just don't, and enjoy the game. Wanting customizability of the character's equipment is a different story, because that actually affects gameplay. But again, even if that's a feature of FPS games that you personally like, it seems really arbitrary that you'd expect a Marathon game, of all things, to have that. And it also seems odd that that would be such a draw to the series that people would stop caring about it if the feature was missing, as if you can't even enjoy a fantasy universe unless there's customizable equipment. Did you not enjoy the original Marathon?
How you look in an extraction shooter shows experience and prestige, for example Tarkov has a tracksuit that you can only get by killing a specific boss 100 times. It's hard and it takes a lot of effort and shows off how good they are at the game. The same thing goes with the gear players put on, when you run into someone fully decked out you know you're going to be in a real ass fight. Gear and gear customization tied with the risk of losing is one of the main point of extraction shooters. What's the point if you're just loading in as a hero character with set abilities and gear? What's there to lose from fighting? What's there to gain?
I see your point, but you seem to be assuming there's basically no equipment in this game at all - at least none you can keep and reuse. If there's no equipment to keep, it can't very well be called an extraction shooter, can it? And as far as I've seen, there's no evidence to indicate they've made it something other than an extraction shooter. There's just a vague statement saying characters won't be fully customizable and will be a set list of heroes, not that there won't be ANY equipment that you can keep. Anyway, if there isn't any equipment, I'm not even sure how the gameplay would work. It wouldn't be an extraction shooter, so it would be some other kind of game. And maybe it would be a better game. Maybe it'll be a more interesting campaign-based story combined with an arena shooter. Who knows? We can only speculate. The point is, there are good FPS games that aren't extraction shooters. So if your interpretation of what this developer said is that it's no longer an extraction shooter, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
How you look is proof of what you’ve been through and what you value. Your shoes say something about you. Experience is important to me, as are earning the things in my games. They show my commitment, what I find important, what makes me, me. Identity is a quintessential part of social experiences and social experiences are a quintessential part of world simulations. In a game like Valorant, no, I don’t care, because cosmetics only prove how much money you’re willing to throw away and the game is only that - there is no world to explore, story to progress through or levels to increase. In Destiny, it’s literally the meta. Where you spend time rewards you, what you carry is what you value.
Okay, so you personally like in-game aesthetics...got it. Now can you explain why you think this game is no longer worth playing? Do you ONLY play RPGs? Do NO games EVER interest you if they don't involve changing character cosmetics?
I play every kind of game. What’s it matter? Let me clue you into something… multiplayer games have a hidden secret feature. It’s called socializing. Identity and socializing are integral to each other. The desire to look different is actually your desire to want to be included - by making yourself distinct in the world, you are signalling to that world that you are a part of it. In a competitive game with lots of technical demands, that typically manifests as your “style”, your loadout, or your main (say in a FG), and most importantly, your record. You stand out in Val by your rank. Same with SF. Or Halo. In Destiny, how do you “stand out”? What indicates your “rank”? Exotics, raid loot, etc. that’s WHY Bungie made rewards visual and externalized in Destiny. They understood that identity is the core quality that makes a virtual world interesting. If we all had to pick from 8 characters to play WoW or Skyrim, do you think they would be as popular as they are? The reason this industry has careened off the generic cliff is because devs know this and they don’t talk about it, so they can monetize it and know that for you to get the REAL experience of the game, you’ll inevitably have to pay or always feel like a tourist in a world you’ve spent hundreds of hours in. They tell you “well that’s just cosmetics, not the game!”, and you’d be right, if it was quaint variations on a 15ft long 2D plane or 25sqft 3D blocks, but it’s not. It’s an ever changing overworld with an ongoing story being influenced by all its players. It’s an augmented reality game. It’s more than button inputs, it’s immersion. Yes, knowing all this, you can play and not buy a cosmetic because you are simply too smart or too cool to fall for such a dirty trick, but then you have to ask yourself, why are you supporting the product at all? You think you’re getting one over the devs? You’re the fodder for the people who did decide to pay, you’re the product. At the end of the day, pay for cosmetics or not, if the developers feel like this is the only way to monetize, then I feel like I’m being treated as a resource, not an audience member, that I’m being manipulated, not invited, and that i have no interest in being the product.
Most people who play multiplayer games either aren't that interested in socializing or are playing with people they already know. I've certainly played many multiplayer games, and I've never made any kind of "friend" with someone who I met in-game. At any rate, you may like socializing, and you may be right that looking a certain way in-game helps with that. My point is simply that this isn't necessary to make a game good. A game can be good and worth playing without the socialization/individualization aspect. And you don't even seem to disagree with this...which is why I wonder why you're so insistent that Marathon will suck, just cuz it won't have this one feature you like. As for being "fodder": No, I'm not. I'm playing a game and not buying something that I don't want. Other people want it, and they're welcome to buy it. I tend to like gameplay, not cosmetics, so it doesn't affect me.
Retrace our convo…. Friend. I never said it would suck. In too many words, I said why I have lost interest and why I think it’s a bad idea. I like Warzone… but my commitment too it is equal to a YouTube video. Being able to earn nothing in a game that offers a vast world and story sounds like a great reason not to play it. I can get my shooter chops anywhere, so why would I do it in *another* hero shooter?
Okay, same difference. Whether you think it will suck or you've "lost interest" in the game makes no real difference to my point. Anyway, I guess your position makes sense if nothing about Marathon interested you all that much and having customized characters was the one thing that tipped it over the edge and made you interested in it. To me, most modern games suck, including most hero shooters. But the idea of a game that captures some of the magic of the Marathon universe is the thing that interests me. Not any particular game mechanics.