Marathon's future includes duo queues, more PvE modes and better onboarding

Bungie Since the release of Marathon on March 5, a lot has been written and said about Bungie's latest shooter. Much of the discourse has been negative, predicting the imminent death of the game due to declining player counts. During that time, Bungie has said precious little about its plans for Marathon, other than to reiterate its commitment to the game for the long haul. That changed this week when the studio published a lengthy blog from Game Director Joe Ziegler. The post details Bungie's overarching strategy for Marathon, starting with an acknowledgement of the areas where the game falls short.

"Marathon is overwhelming to learn," Ziegler begins. "After a short tutorial, you're often thrown into the fire to learn a lot of concepts, navigate a lot of screens, filter through a ton of loot, and build muscle memory with a lot of mechanics fairly quickly in a hostile environment where other players can bring you down and take your stuff."

As someone who now has close to 50 hours in Marathon, I can attest that the first five to 10 were bewildering and not much fun. But as Ziegler notes, there are other problems, including matchmaking, the end-game combat sandbox, and the fact that Marathon doesn't really accommodate players who just want to play a chill match or two. To address those shortcomings and more, Ziegler says Bungie will pursue a twofold strategy.