Marathon isn't taking Arc Raider's approach to aggression-based matchmaking, as being unaware of another player's intentions is what Bungie's extraction shooter is all about

Marathon seemingly won't follow Arc Raiders' lead in separating aggressive players from those who prefer a more peaceful run through matchmaking.

Marathon game director Joe Ziegler says as much in an interview with Ali213, translated via machine learning, explaining that the extraction shooter won't have special matchmaking rules to loosely organize violent and non-violent players into separate matches. Mind you, that doesn't mean Marathon isn't trying to accommodate friendlier players since proximity chat and other social tools are still apparently here, too.

For a bit of background, breakout extraction shooter Arc Raiders has recently been using a system called aggression-based matchmaking, putting players who prefer to grief, rob, betray, or generally shoot any living being together in the same hellish games. Meanwhile, those who engage in the PvE side of the PvPvE spectrum more often get matched into peaceful-ish games. That's after filtering players by skill and game type (solos, duos, trios), of course.

It seems Marathon is forgoing such a feature, and it's intentional, too. Ziegler explains that the tension of not knowing whether another player has good intentions and the uncertainty of whether they might stab you in the back at any given moment, is a driving force in Marathon's dangerous runs.

Developer Bungie announced last night that a Marathon server slam will come later this month to let everyone stress-test the game ahead of its full launch on March 5 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. For more, here's everything revealed at the PS5 State of Play yesterday, including a remake of the original God of War trilogy.

Sony is "very confident" in Marathon after playtests revealed "good points," as well as "not good points" that have since been changed for Bungie's Arc Raiders challenger