Marathon starts Season 2 on the 2nd of June and while there are some promising updates on the horizon, it really just isn’t enough to move the needle.
On top of that, the Destiny 2 community and the larger gaming community have just been absolutely slapped in the face with news that Destiny 2 will be ending live service just a week after Marathon’s Season 2 launch. This has caused quite a stir across the gaming sphere and to be honest, I have heard and seen multiple players of Marathon who will be outright boycotting the game because of Sony and Bungie’s decision here.
It’s a shame because Marathon is actually a good game and I feel like the developers over there are getting the shit end of the stick as it were. The Season 2 trailer is legitimately cool and the updates do sound good. Joe Ziegler put up a blog post a while back talking about all the changes coming for Season 2 and they all sound good – and he really does get involved in comms with the players and it feels like he understands his game and its core audience.
I just don’t think any of that is enough unfortuantely.
What’s new in season 2?
Season 2 will bring a new zone, Dire Marsh (Night), a new runner, a bunch of quality of life stuff and a new progression system – just to name a few. Not only that but the game will also have a free to play week from 2nd of June until the 9th of June.
Experimental PVE modes and Duos Queue will also be part of Marathon Season 2 and at least one of my friends who was turned off by the extraction genre of the game has shown some interest when I told him there would be a PVE mode coming to the game.
That’s the thing.
It’s a Bungie game. Exception gunplay. Exceptional world building. Amazing graphics (this is different to art style btw). People wanted to like this game.
Unfortunately, I just don’t think it’ll be enough.
The only thing I can see moving the needle with Marathon is perhaps when the PVE mode comes out, they do another free to play week with some significant marketing to new players.
They do not have lapsed players to recall. They need to market to the wider gaming community and try and gain new players and this means learning from the mistakes made with Destiny when it comes to trying to get new players – they need solid onboarding and ways to play that doesn’t involve getting railroaded by a trio team of sweats right off the rip.
Until that happens I just can’t see the player count going anywhere above 30-40k on Steam and to be honest even that is a stretch.