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The Marathon mid-season update rolling out today feels like a major step in the seemingly unavoidable process of Bungie making the game more approachable and rewarding as its player count continues to fall despite excellent gameplay and aesthetics. Bungie made Marathon kind of miserable on purpose, but it turns out that still makes it feel miserable to many players, so this update targets several pain points and at least tries to make the experience more welcoming.
Solo players will enjoy a few big changes from the patch notes. Whether you're actually playing alone or you join a matchmade crew, a new CyberAcme initiative will give you additional rewards for completing contract objectives, further incentivizing coordinated play.
Runner level and faction reputation gains have also been increased for solo players, and all standard faction contracts will grant additional reputation for all players. These changes will hopefully fill the gaps in the progression curve that inevitably emerge when you're playing solo, with core contracts regularly running dry and leading to more aimless sessions.
If you do want to find like-minded players, the new "Stay Together" feature should help. This "experimental" option lets you form a crew with fellow runners after a successful exfil. "Who said you can't make friends on Tau Ceti?" Bungie asks. The answer, of course, is Bungie, which all but told players to make a necklace of runner ears in nearly every single piece of marketing released for Marathon, and indeed in every message and contract from the Arachne faction.
Bungie now seems to be leaning a bit more into the friendly play style that's come to define much of Arc Raiders, a far more forgiving, palatable, and, consequently, more popular extraction shooter. Case in point: Mercy Kits have been added as a way to revive downed enemy runners, with all Rooks spawning with one in their inventory.
"We wanted the new Mercy Kit to provide ways for players to bring back enemy players without spending a self-revive," Bungie says. Previously, you could drop a self-revive for a downed player to pick up and use. "Sometimes the de-escalation happens after the fight is over, we get it. Now you can make up for that quick trigger finger."
The social sandbox baked into extraction shooters is often what draws people to the genre, and with the release of Mercy Kits, it feels like Bungie is trying to stoke stories of player interaction that are longer and more interesting than, "I saw a player, so I shot them."
Self-revives have been changed as well. They're now purple, Superior-rarity items, for one, making them rarer out in the wild. "Depleted" self-revives will now appear exclusively in solo lobbies, giving players more, albeit impermanent, ways to pick themselves up after being downed. This will make solo play less punishing in theory, but making self-revives harder to come by could exacerbate the difference between new players and well-geared veterans in endgame maps and modes.
To improve Marathon's onboarding experience – something the newly announced free-kit-only Dire Marsh playlist may help with, just as a neutral learning ground – Bungie's updated the beginner version of Perimeter to be solos-only and remain available until players reach season level 12. New contracts for this beginner map have also been added as a way to introduce Marathon's progression system.
A raft of more granular balance changes fill out the mid-season update, with huge buffs for the runner shell Recon, further nerfs to thermal scopes (now Superior-rarity with shorter range), and nerfs to the notorious Bully SMG. Bungie says footstep audio should be slightly clearer, you'll take less fall damage while downed, and the final exfil timer will no longer overwrite any other active exfils. Multiple weapons, especially railguns, received changes of their own; check out the full patch notes for all the nerdy gunsmithing.
Additionally, Bungie wants to "increase the value of the Rewards Pass," which has been called lackluster by many players, both free and paid, so more cosmetics have been added in. With Marathon steadily declining in Steam player counts and in console playtime analyst rankings week over week, alongside an uptick in community posts and videos from players growing tired of The Lose Everything Machine, this can't avoid coming across as a way for Bungie to better monetize and accessorize. Finally, more skins can be earned via the Arachne faction codex, assuming you've been making that necklace of ears.
