Marathon just extended its Closed Alpha for a couple more days, today making the AI more dangerous and unlocking a lot of upgrades for players so they can experience “late season” play. They are allegedly sending out more invites for what they say will be a “stress test,” but I’ll believe that when I see it.
There have been many positive and negative takeaways from the Closed Alpha of Marathon. The fact that it is a Closed Alpha means that many things can definitely be fixed by launch, whether that’s weapon/class balance or the visual polish it needs. But a recurring issue that keeps coming up among players does not seem like it’s something that will be addressed anywhere close to launch, and Bungie has said as much.
That’s the idea of playing Marathon solo, which often has the potential to be deeply un-fun for different reasons.
There is no dedicated solos mode in Marathon. If you want to play by yourself, you either matchmake with randoms or you load in by yourself to a 3s game, with no one filling your other slots. That’s it.
The problems are clear with either option. Sure, it’s certainly possible to have a good experience with randoms. I’ve had a few. But the nature of the game A) makes it way too risky and B) is formatted to work counter to this concept in the first place.
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This is not a battle royale or hero shooter where you partner with randoms and you win or lose, big deal. If your team fails to communicate or your partners simply throw a game, you will lose all your gear, as is the nature of the genre. It’s a lot of trust to place in teammates you have met roughly eight seconds ago. These games can be great! But they can also be disasters where it will feel like you lost everything due to no fault of your own.
Secondly, the way contracts work in Marathon actually encourages your team to work counter toward each other’s goals if you have to go to one POI and someone else has to go to another one across the map. Either someone doesn’t get their thing done, or you split up and inevitably lose. Nearly every contract I’ve done is like this to some degree, which is why I eventually just loaded in solo. Which leads me to…
Truly solo play is harrowing, which can be fun, but it gets old quickly. You scurry around the map avoiding both AI, who can burn all your resources and overwhelm you, or other 3s teams, who will almost certainly kill you unless they are outrageously awful. It can feel good to get a few cool things and get out without being seen, but after a half dozen games like that it loses its luster quickly.
It does not seem wise to me to design a game around the concept of playing with two actual friends on comms, and all the experiences outside of that being significantly lacking. Sure, playing with friends is always more fun in any game, but here, it feels mandatory in a way that is too demanding, as you’ll need to convince two friends to both buy it and be able to play at the drop of a hat, or risk a much worse experience. The average age of a gamer now is what, 35? We’ve got stuff to do, man. We need at least options for a game like this.
The problem is Bungie appears to be nowhere near addressing this in a meaningful way. Interviews repeatedly stress that the game has been designed with teams in mind and while they’re not saying they’ll never do solos, it doesn’t seem in the cards for anywhere close to launch. Rather, they talk about improving the solo experience for when say, the rest of your team is dead. Great.
Bungie says they would have to rebalance and redevelop all the spawns and gear and such on the maps, which were designed for 3s, and they said when they tested solos it was too much ghosting around with Void and barely any fighting. So when you don’t develop a game to accommodate solos in any sense, you get a situation like this. And that does not seem like it can be fundamentally changed.
Even if Bungie does add solos eventually (in a game not designed for it), this will come when, six months, a year after launch? That’s a big ask for players who have avoided the game thus far because it lacks that kind of play to return for a mode that should have been there at launch.
It’s weird. Bungie designed this game to be overly social with this massive advantage playing with friends, but also anti-social in the sense that they didn’t put in proximity chat. But for most players hopping in solo, I’m afraid that they may bounce off pretty quickly.
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