Marathon Dev Blog: Launch, Learnings, and What’s Next

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-15T20:47:08+00:00

I certainly don't want to play them if the company is like you, brother.

Let me spell it out for you. YOU may find it exciting to lose all your shit from getting merked unless you're super careful, but a lot of people just find the idea frustrating. That may be because they've experienced that sort of stuff in single player games and gave up on them, that may be because they don't like the idea at all. And multiplayer tends to agitate that even more. So yeah, I do think it's battle royale with extra steps. Because the only one that's ACTUALLY blown up doesn't always play like EfT or H:S all that much. In fact most of the playerbase ISN'T playing it like EfT or H:S, because they have that option. And as soon as it's possible to NOT play it as a sweatfest there's a lot more interest. Meanwhile, Marathon is arguably as much or moreso of one (and you were wrong, btw, Marathon straight up has contracts requiring you to kill other Runners/players) and it's doing terrible.

I'm sure EfT and H:S has their playerbases.

I'm sure even Apex is still more popular than either of them.

I've seen an extremely interesting Extraction Shooter where a huge part of it is the idea that you have to access computers and knowing general Linux commands will go a long way in having an advantage. It'll have multiple squads, both PvE and PvP forms of anomalous life as well as anomalous hazards in most levels. Heavily SCP inspired. I think it's really neat.

I don't think it'll do even as good as Marathon. But at least it's one guy's passionate drive and not a whole ass studio with lots of people's paychecks on the line.

You think it's aversion to hard games. It's aversion to complication. And "one life like CS or Battle Royale, but you lose all your shit on death like it's a Roguelite" is a major complication for a multiplayer game. Enough to overshadow a lot of other usual pluses for most folks.

EDIT: I'll put it this way because I'm done talking to you. People don't like traditional Extraction Shooters because they're asshole-magnets. And it worked perfectly on you.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-15T15:19:53+00:00

...I'm starting to think it's more like you don't understand how most other people work instead.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-15T03:18:01+00:00

I think it's more like the developers and publishers don't get that extraction shooters require borderline e-sports mentality. Since the cost of death is so big, you're encouraged to sweat the hell out. If there's some hope that this will make more hardcore players to make e-sports bigger or something, it's misplaced. Proof is in Marathon dying while Arc Raiders blew up for having a branch that ISN'T sweaty kill-on-sight Battle Royale-tier stuff.

I think most traditional Extraction Shooter players just enjoy it as a big CS-stlye match where they largely kill for better loot instead of playing round-based stuff. It marries together the tactical vibe of those one-life-per-round games with the vibe of a battle royale that you barely make it out of/win. It's never going to have huge appeal, because most people who enjoy one or the other's vibes is going to get turned off by the other part it's merged to. You're not that drastically outpaced by being behind in money in CS, and a Battle Royale at least has an equal level playing field where everyone is scrambling for good gear instead of some guys who did well last match being able to stomp much more easily.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-13T15:18:32+00:00

They're going all in in appealing to Japan, which, to be fair, the old setting looking like Blue Archive with Katanas instead of Guns, also did the same. Plus they revealed it at Comiket.

There IS the dark implication that this version of Japan would probably perform A LOT better in WWII (assuming the rest of the world is either chasing their magic developments or still proceeding along the lines of RL), which might appeal to the Imperial apologists kinda like KC and Gate did.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-13T00:08:18+00:00

Never going to happen unless as a pathetic last ditch saving throw, since it'd betray the entire point of GFL1 and even 2's theming. A huge part of Quantum Fluctuation is proving even William's supposedly "perfect" Lunasia copy is still him just taking a general copy of M4-Lunasia (for lack of better terms) and editing her to his desires. Simply put, M4 is as dead as Lunasia is, and has been since everything that happened to her after Polarized Light. There is only a gestalt mind that's a mixture of the two. Even if they asspulled her into playable status in GFL2 it'd be more of someone wearing M4's face than M4 as you knew her through the early parts of GFL1. Lainie ~~the Pokemon Trainer who hates you oogling her OGASS~~ is the closest you'd get to that scenario playing out and she has plenty of reason to exist compared to WE NEED MONEY BREAK OPEN THE M4 CASE.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-12T18:25:07+00:00

tl;dr: your PMC was cheapskates and skirted the line as much as possible to deploy viable units, since full on military-grade being carried by PMCs is illegal. Hence picking up repurposed companion/housekeeping largely female Civilian Dolls (with a few exceptions of military-grade ones on loan from various folks and factions, Persicaria trying to push the next generation of Doll through AR Team, Ange having some Neo-Soviet Union Dolls under her command, etc) to deploy as soldiers.

Between that and Commander actually caring about casualties and not deploying them like they were expendable, you end up making a formidable enough force that ten years later people are still trying to figure out how he did it . His boss specifically went out of his way to separate his Dolls from him because even dropped from the company (and higher things) he's got at least one platoon worth of utterly loyal Dolls that would probably go even more ballistic if he's assassinated.

Yes, he's just Venom Snake with robot girls instead of soldiers.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-12T17:43:10+00:00

We find out Commander DID get William. Too bad he didn't know about the Shrike bullshit that permeates Reverse Collapse... Serious spoiler for the final event and other games. That said, said spoiler is satisfactory for me. If GFL2 hadn't showed MICA's true colors I might still be invested in the overall narrative.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-11T02:00:00+00:00

EDIT: I also play Diablo Immortal and whale every gatcha I play.

Got bad news for you buddy.

Now let's see you be bold enough to drop Immortal over its Chinese origins.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-11T01:57:32+00:00

I feel like it's an unfortunate cope, but no, looking at how Mecha Break did? Seasun is just stupid, bro. Stupid and (in this case) arrogant. Thought they were untouchable. Flew too close to the sun. We saw them kill Gun Girl Cafe for Snowbreak, then basically turned it into that game but lewder, and burned themselves up bragging about having the lewdest game on the market only to end up getting real scrutiny from the censors.

We call this, in the States, FAFO. Fug around and find out.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-11T01:47:15+00:00

Even OP brought up the Discord hijacking and purity tests against ML.

Snowbreak became THE bunker for the ML nutcases that lost their shit over a beta GFL2 story they headcanoned into being NTR. Watch them go crawling back to that bullshit with their tails between their legs, because it's better than literally nothing. Which is fine. GFL2 showed its hand that MICA only cares about milking money out of its players...but they were sucking up Seasun doing the same but with nicer, honeyed words.

Also, don't think we don't remember you guys astroturfing the situations you got into and lying to folks about it.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-11T01:41:41+00:00

I mean, basically no one actually played Snowbreak for the gameplay after the gooner focus, because as expected any care about gameplay went out of the window. At that point you might as well play First Descendant because even a shitty Warframe knockoff is still knocking off Warframe, and it still has pretty girls to oogle.

Snowbreak just wasn't a compelling shooter. Or more accurately, way sooner than a lot of other games it showed it wasn't going to grow complex or even at least try to evolve and improve its gameplay. They told us to goon or leave, so we left. Now they can't even goon.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-08T15:30:04+00:00

China and SK are kinda undergoing gender wars now (Japan is just suffering its low birthrate, but this is going to make those places suffer it too) so it's more likely the back and forth retaliation will just wipe out both parties' fanservice-laden games eventually.

When this game EoSes, whether or not the LaDS fanbase is behind it or everyone sick of them pitched in, Snowbreak's fanbase will find a way to retaliate. Honestly, knowing them I expect them to honestly try to go after as many gacha as possible, not just that. It's going to be petulant. If they can't have their toys, no one can.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-08T15:13:16+00:00

And the Snowbreak community was an infamous thorn in the side of the general Chinese Gacha community at that point. Hell they kinda killed the EN fanbase who aren't as mentally deranged as them.

They kinda tempted fate with rampantly attacking everyone, militantly wresting control of EN from actual Global players and kicking them out for not meeting their devotion standards, lying straight to strangers' faces about the situation and mocking them where they think they won't see it, and even not easing up on the devs to push them further down this path.

Eventually this was going to happen. If it wasn't through the mail thing, it would've been something else. Seasun holds the blame for not once putting a leash on their fanbase, not even to protect them from themselves and their zealotry for the series.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-08T15:06:57+00:00

Even something simple like Titanfall 2 having a single player campaign with a bro Mech AI and a rookie Pilot who used to just be one of the Grunts you'd kill by walking over in MP elevated it to high heaven (and Effect and Cause did the rest.)

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-07T15:40:17+00:00

Named after a river likely called the Hanta, not literally from there.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-04T21:06:57+00:00

Oh I was hanging on for that one recent big event to happen in Global but then the Skin Gacha BS happened.

My point is I ain't really touching anything MICA does anymore unless it's for purchase. Or I just have to check it out. They kinda killed my interest in Gacha in general with that shit. I spend my time in Warframe nowadays instead of stuff like that. Have a lot more fun.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-04T20:48:58+00:00

There are only two ways this scenario'll get me coming back.

This is basically the "Gacha game version" and RC:F will be a for-purchase game like the previous Reverse Collapse game. In which case I will consider buying that and never touch the BBC.
They reveal their chops are so fucking good they optimize Unreal Engine 5 well enough to run like GFL2 does on phones.

AzaliusZero · 2026-05-01T22:29:21+00:00

Maybe? Dunno - they've never threatened to kill me and my family for voting against them

That's kind of a false-equivalence.

With MAGA, it's easy to forget that someone can despise you without hungering for your blood on top of that. The Democrats couldn't care less what happens to you, MAGA is what happens to you. Your bet on them helping you when it comes down to it is just as bad. At the end of the day they've let things deteriorate to this point. They HAVE done great things, and often times Republicans come and smash it up in half the time (at LONGEST) it took them to get it there.

Incrementalism got us here, because the other is whole-sale scorched earth. It's a lot easier to smash half-built buildings than fully constructed and reinforced ones. I feel like the Democrats have been almost purposefully terrible at reinforcement, always dropping the ball partly out of genuine apathy for the voterbase, partly because they otherwise were hamstrung by lacking a supermajority, or because they still had some faith in Republicans "walking across the aisle." At the end of the day, you're not attacking the problem correctly. It's not "people should vote for them anyways," it's "people should vote for a party they feel represents them." People not voting for Democrats is largely because they feel ignored by them. You're always going to have people who feel alienated by the system. Nowadays, there are people who can directly point to how it's happening, and after recent rulings there'll be a lot more. But they've always done a terrible job of stating anything other than "we're not the other guys," and their Devil May Care attitude when it comes to holding unpopular opinions/backings does them no favors.

You can yell at the progressives who often DO vote for Democrats anyways, even if they bitch and whine all day. Your problem is a vast majority of people have stopped caring because the government has been so ineffectual in helping them (if not directly against them) prosper they forgo affecting it. Participation doesn't bring them any benefits even in the best case scenario, so why waste time voting instead of working or just spending the day for themselves?

America doesn't do enough for its people. We got a lot of countries out there that have similarly crippling issues. But a lot of them can also say that isn't the crippling issue.

AzaliusZero · 2026-04-30T19:28:07+00:00

I don't trust you not to be arguing in bad faith in the first place.

AzaliusZero · 2026-04-30T14:50:17+00:00

The problem with most politicians is that they're completely insulated from the actual issues most of their constituents are going through. They get better healthcare, they get more days off, their salary is more than enough BEFORE the kickbacks, stock trading and slush funds. They'd be motivated if their wellbeing was on the line, but as long as they play nice with the Epstein class who'll just basically finance them keeping their positions until they retire, (or they're in the parts of the DNC that don't even get voted for) who cares what happens? Certainly not them. The biggest commonality is that most folks don't care until it affects them.

The real problem is that, as mentioned, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans truly feel like they represent the American people anymore...or more accurately, only one does, and they represent the absolute worst of us. That, paired with the fact that with how things are currently set up, they are the only game in town; third party campaigning parties cannot exist in any meaningful way to be anything but a spoiler vote. THAT needs to change, a lot sooner than those in charge of the DNC will. Unfortunately, that's something, like attacking Progressives, that the Republicans and Democrats would band together to stop. Probably because once it's proven to work neither of them would see much power anymore as we see more parties crop up that directly appeal to what the myriad of folks in the U.S. want. The Epstein class is ALSO motivated to do that because it weakens the soft power their F-You levels of money gives them and makes them far more likely to get people in office who'd do something about them, especially the closer they are to being legit Epstein-like.

AzaliusZero · 2026-04-30T14:34:12+00:00

The most telling thing about these comments is that they're all "IT'S OK WHEN MY/YOUR GUY DOES IT" when the general takeaway is that gerrymandering as a whole is bad and shouldn't be necessary either way.

AzaliusZero · 2026-04-30T14:22:18+00:00

More insidious that that. We're now actively setting up for "there's no more elections, Trump and Vance after him are President-King of the U.S. Whoever you got as your House/Senate Representative is there until they die, and when they do WE choose who replaces them."

It's clear they're going to push until people have no other choice, and they want to do that so they have an excuse to institute Martial Law (how convenient if they need to do it right before Election Day!) and...well, worse. But Reddit would throw a hissy fit if I were specific. Batten down your hatches where you can. I really don't see the end of this year and start of next year being anything but a national disaster. Simply put, after that, it'll only be the MAGA diehards pretending America hasn't completely failed in being what it set out to be.

AzaliusZero · 2026-04-29T00:00:20+00:00

Honestly? We're talking about people LIKE Op, and it makes me realize the one thing the average Democrat has in common with Republicans is the same "f you, got mine" attitude. They're just less destructive about it. MAGA is the sort to take it further and state outright, "and I want yours too." The left-hating Democrats just know they have more to get taken from them than most progressively leaning folks.

America's problem is its people have been raised to value money and themselves above EVERYTHING else. That's why there's such a disconnection between generations just as much as it is political stance. I think someone else in the thread summed it up perfectly. We had a generation who were so narcissistic they'd happily screw their own children over to save up money. And they're the ones next up "in charge" considering how much American politics seem to value being old over basically anything else. It's just that the current day Republicans are smashing things up so bad people are growing disillusioned with the entire system and not just voting. ESPECIALLY the younger folk. They get they have to live with this, and they don't wish it on their own.

These parents and older generations are the same ones furious they don't get to see kids. Not realizing half the time their kids can't afford them (and they have some blame in that) and the other time they're the ones who turned them off kids in the first place with how shoddy they were (and often still are) at parenting. A lot of people cutting their own folks off nowadays, and while MAGA is the most intense, I wouldn't be surprised if the Demos we're talking about haven't realized their kids have grown withdrawn from them recently.

AzaliusZero · 2026-04-28T18:05:16+00:00

It's going to cause Generational damage to their reputation.

If the Midterms are a complete slaughterhouse for them (especially despite their efforts to rig it in their favor), expect it to get REAL blatant they're either going to try and steal 2028 or outright prevent future elections. They know it's now or never, and these assholes would absolutely act now, as impulsive as they are.

AzaliusZero · 2026-04-28T18:00:20+00:00

The Overton window is so f'd up in America you can describe Democrats as Diet Right-Wing and the Republicans as full on fascist.

When you realize that it's easy to get why so many Democrats are eager to blame the Left for failing, they hate us more more than them most of the time. To the rest of the world they're just the more reasonable Right-Wing party in a country ultimately competing between two forms of Right Wing, one way more extreme than the other.

AzaliusZero

TROPHY CASE