- Marathon Game director Joe Ziegler has shared new plans for Marathon as the game’s Steam player count declines.
- Bungie plans to reintroduce duos in Season 2 and new PvE and PvP-lite experiences
- The developer also wants to improve the process of onboarding new players.
Bungie has revealed new content plans for Marathon Season 2 and beyond as the game’s Steam player count continues to decline.
As the first season of the first-person shooter (FPS) comes to a close, game director Joe Ziegler shared what the team learned after two months of release in a new blog post and outlined what he intends to change in the future, including the introduction of new PvE experiences.
“With the first season of Marathon We have created a strong core community,” Ziegler said. “We are embarking on a multi-season journey built around growing from the seed of this strong community. “We are looking to solve some weak points of the players.”
Those weaknesses include making the game “less complicated, more rewarding,” improving UI/UX, matchmaking, solo and duo play, the endgame meta, and “softening onboarding.”
Bungie also wants to introduce new “fun and awesome content,” such as updated zones, racer shells, fighters, loot, and building systems that make progress more interesting.
The director confirmed that the team is also exploring more “pure PVP, PVE and PVP-lite experiences starting in Season 2 with two modes, one at the beginning and one towards the middle or second half of the season.
“The experimental mode at the beginning of the season will focus more on PvE, but with a slight touch of PvP,” Ziegler said. “The second experimental mode will be an exclusive PVE mode that will focus on teams being tasked with completing objectives together and progressing through matches.
“We will continue to run experimental queues beyond these two offerings for Season 2 and beyond, testing the waters around other mechanics (like perhaps a more purely PvP-focused mode) with the potential for them to become part of the main game loop or permanent new ways to play.”
Beyond Season 2, which launches June 2, Bungie will improve the onboarding process for new players, and beyond Season 3, it will change the contract system to improve how players interact with Priority and other contracts.
Bungie’s new plan arrives as MarathonThe number of Steam players continues to decline. At launch, the game had an all-time peak of 88,337 players and now represents less than 15% of that number, according to SteamDB. As of this writing, there are just over 6,000 players in the game.
From the lengthy blog post, it’s clear that Bungie is looking to attract new players and even admits that the game is “overwhelming to learn.” It also aims to improve the experiences of the few dedicated players who remain, such as bringing back Duos for Season 2 with a rotating Duos queue and new PvE and PvP-lite modes.
The studio even acknowledges the game’s inconsistency, understanding that new players may “hit a wall” and admitting that it is still “figuring out endgame balance.”
With the detailed roadmap officially presented, let’s hope Bungie can turn things around.
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