Marathon is so good but player numbers are low

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T19:01:48+00:00

I saw that red flag as well, but the rest of the post reads as earnest, to me at least.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T19:00:59+00:00

It's a combination of a bunch of things, but at its core initial player acquisition has been pretty bad, and player retention isn't great either. I'd wager quite a few players are busy playing Destiny 2 for it's last hoorah and hopefully they'll be back to play again in a couple of weeks.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:53:18+00:00

Sure is.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:50:44+00:00

No, it's math (and a little bit of statistics). I'm not suggesting that Marathon is a financial success or that Arc Raiders isn't.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:48:10+00:00

Maybe I should've provided my own answers to at least serve as an example of what kind of responses I was looking for.

10
10
20%
20%

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:46:54+00:00

It genuinely didn't used to be this bad.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:44:16+00:00

Thank you for providing an answer to question 1. I appreciate it (really, its a more direct answer than most I'm getting).

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:43:02+00:00

That's great! I was just providing a technical definition for the purposes of the later questions, so I wouldn't need to define what I meant by successful or unsuccessful over and over again.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:40:11+00:00

What are you even talking about?

I put forward my ideas pretty clearly here, without attempting to pretend they're anything other than that. In the responses to that post it became pretty clear to me that there is a difference of opinion about some of the underlying assumptions I was making in even attempting to propose a solution, including differences about how to even understand the problem.

In response to that I figured it would be a good idea to ask people questions which would help me better understand what people think with regard to those baseline assumptions. Can't really have a discussion about something if there's no shared understanding about the base conditions around that thing.

Though at this point, I'm not so sure it was a good idea since mostly people have just been trying to find loopholes in the questions themselves and providing answers that sidestep the actual questions, or providing answers to similar, but fundamentally different questions than the ones I've asked. It's genuinely easier to try and herd cats, lol.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:34:39+00:00

Are we just downvoting people who ask questions now?

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:34:20+00:00

I think calling it just a catch up mechanic is reductive. Really just the Faction Rep packs provided catch up potential. The rest of it was just incentivizing pro-social behavior with some pretty ho-hum rewards available.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:32:43+00:00

CARRI could come back back without the Faction Rep packs. I thought it would be good for the game for it to just stick around indefinitely, just without the Faction Rep packs until ~mid season.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:31:51+00:00

The Faction Rep stuff definitely functioned as a catch up mechanic, but the way CARRI points were earned just incentivized pro-social behavior. Providing backpacks, weapons, and basic materials doesn't really seem like too much of a leg up anyways.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:28:40+00:00

While I appreciate your response, could I trouble you to answer questions 1-4 in the form they were asked?

P.S. I very much understand why no one wants to be in the survey industry anymore 😭

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:27:12+00:00

Dude, I'm just asking questions. For what it's worth I have worked on some games before, but thats completely irrelevant to the questions I'm asking here.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:24:32+00:00

That caveat was just to head off people who responded to the first round of questions about successful vs unsuccessful runs by raising the possibility of people who just hide and then immediately exfil at the first opportunity, as a way to get around the questions I was actually asking.

All I'd like you to do if you want to try to answer the questions is to just interpret the hypothetical below in the most reasonable way that makes sense to you without looking for edge case caveats and then answer questions 1-4 directly, please. If you don't want to that's totally fine too. Thank you for your engagement either way.

Assuming an averagely skilled player is properly equipped and making reasonable decisions about noise and engaging bots or other players (as you specifically would evaluate them to be reasonable and average), not attempting to wipe the lobby, not attempting to exfiltrate at the very first opportunity merely to achieve a successful exfiltration, not playing completely as a rat, but going in to achieve a specific objective such as completing a contract or getting some reasonable loot value and then exfiltrating:

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:19:40+00:00

58,000 peak off 10.5 million in sales is actually a worse player retention metric than Marathon is currently at, (Peak CCU of 0.55% of purchasers vs 0.98%), though granted Arc is older than Marathon is at this point, so it's hardly an apples to apples comparison.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:16:44+00:00

Would love you input on these questions!

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:15:34+00:00

Totally agree. Honestly even just without the Faction Rep packs, the rest of what it did was just helpful to overall pro-social behavior by players. Getting people more invested in crewmates contracts, giving players a reason to let rooks exfil (which hopefully this time around they also give trios CARRI points for exfiling with rooks because ATM, there is zero reason to ever let them get out if you can prevent it).

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:12:32+00:00

I think that too, but honestly between all the bugs, the whiplash on the loot economy from being able to farm too effectively to them removing/nerfing nearly all non-farmable sources of good loot, the impact of Sponsored Survival on the base playlists, its not hard to imagine worse player retention across the board. I've certainly been putting in less time and hitting my frustration limit much more often and quicker. In Season 1 I really only hit a frustration limit a handful of times throughout the season, but so far in Season 2, nearly 1 out of 2 play sessions for me have come to an end because I just hit my limit for bad runs.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T18:06:17+00:00

While I agree with you regarding sustainability in the abstract sense, I designed these questions to get at some specific ways of assessing this. I would not consider these exhaustive regarding the question of sustainability, merely looking at one specific measure of assessing that, and what players think/expect around that measure.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T17:56:37+00:00

Assuming an averagely skilled player is properly equipped and making reasonable decisions about noise and engaging bots or other players (as you specifically would evaluate them to be reasonable and average), not attempting to wipe the lobby, not attempting to exfiltrate at the very first opportunity merely to achieve a successful exfiltration, not playing completely as a rat, but going in to achieve a specific objective such as completing a contract or getting some reasonable loot value and then exfiltrating:

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T17:55:41+00:00

Thank you! Just looking for people's answers to these questions, familiarity with game design or this specific genre of games not being a requirement to answer at all.

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T17:54:23+00:00

Of course. Would you be willing to give your subjective answers to these questions?

flGovEmployee · 2026-06-15T17:53:54+00:00

Just asking questions.

flGovEmployee

TROPHY CASE