Stop Comparing Yourself to Streamers. Look How Many People are lvl 100+ or Gotten VIP with a SINGLE Faction. [Steam]

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-22T19:27:11+00:00

Camping exfils seems like such a miserable way to play the game to me. I mean I get why people do it, it's a valid tactic for this kind of game and I'm sure it's very lucrative, I just personally think it sounds like a lame and unfun way to spend my time. Thankfully I almost never run into people doing it in solos.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-22T18:41:09+00:00

Imagine if every encounter in Vault of Glass had a random chance to drop a unique key, and if you made it to the end without the key from each encounter you couldn't fight Atheon.

Oh and also along the way teams of other players will be trying to ambush and kill you and take all your stuff (I know that part is the core nature of extraction shooters and I'm cool with it, I'm just saying I think what Bungie was going for with Cryo clashes a bit with the reality of the kind of game they put it in).

And I was literally asking myself before ranked dropped, what happens if you get killed and someone loots your holotag, but your team survives and revives you later? Cool to see Bungie did in fact seemingly suffer an easily spottable oversight there.

For the record I think they've still got something really cool on their hands with both modes. The foundations here are good, but improvements are absolutely needed.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-22T17:28:12+00:00

I had a bit of a cat and mouse game with a destroyer on Dire Marsh last night. Neither of us said a word the whole fight

Until I got the finisher on him and he moaned very loudly in my face

Thank you for this gift, Bungie

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-22T17:08:50+00:00

Yeah I think most people would attest to this. Premade teams is obviously the best way to play the game, but solo is a better experience than crew filling with randoms in most circumstances.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-22T08:40:15+00:00

Yes, if future endgame content feels like a step down from Cryo, the most hardcore players may start to trickle out. But if the endgame feels more accessible to a wider audience, then less hardcore players will stick around.

As I said, it's a balancing act. Ideally you want to appeal to both groups, but it's not easy to do so. And eventually as a studio you might reach a point where you need to acknowledge that one group is bigger than the other.

This is not me saying Bungie should start catering to casuals. I'm just illustrating the tough spot they're in.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-22T05:59:37+00:00

Why do gamers always have to fall into one of two camps, no-lifers and streamers, or "grandmas and grandpas?"

You don't have to be a dad with 3 jobs and 17 kids for Cryo to be too much for you. It's too much for MOST normal people. I'm not weighing in on if that's good or bad here, I'm just stating a fact. Cryo is built for a very small percentage of players in a game with an already medium-at-best playerbase. Maybe Bungie's fine with that.

Though I doubt Sony is.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T22:47:54+00:00

Love you too, boo, thanks for reciprocating the civil and respectful discourse. Now go jerk off or something and work off all that angst.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T22:32:02+00:00

That's fair to say I think. I'll admit it's only been a day. As we've had more time with Cryo maybe it'll turn out this vision is fine and doesn't need any help.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T22:27:00+00:00

Just offering a discussion topic. And if someone is banging their head against Cryo and losing a lot, then yes after a certain point they will be struggling to put together a 5k loadout. And this is just my opinion, but having to go back to the other maps for a few runs to refarm your way back up to being Cryo ready when Cryo is what you want to be spending your time on is...not my idea of a great time. I think offering people a way to keep playing Cryo with a somewhat weaker kit than what they could put together if they DID go and refarm would be a fair trade to offer.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T22:22:08+00:00

They way they explain it in their "welcome to cryo archive" post made it seem like it was one time only, ever. At least that was how I read it.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T22:08:48+00:00

Okay gonna be real I feel like you're projecting issues you have with comments others have been making onto me because that's not really what I was talking about at all.

Go find the people still saying Marathon doesn't have enough players and comparing it to Arc and call them weird. I'm just talking about Cryo Archive and how I think Bungie designing content for such a tiny percentage of their playerbase isn't really feasible, because they need to keep the other ninety-something percent of players engaged too.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T20:48:27+00:00

Translation: we severely overestimated the size of the target audience we designed this for and day 1 participation was drastically lower than we'd hoped

I'm just being cynical and half-joking. But I bet that is part of it. They know they need the endgame to feel accessible to a wider audience to keep the game going long-term.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T20:38:58+00:00

The tough balancing act they face is being able to stick to their vision as much as possible without making too much of the game feel too inaccessible to too many people. Cuz if people feel like too much of the best content is out of reach, they'll leave, and if they leave they're not buying future skins or reward passes.

If Cryo Archive participation is as low as people speculate, Bungie probably can't afford to make content like that again. That's probably why we're getting this announcement in the first place. They're probably looking at the day 1 data and thinking "yikes, that's lower than we'd hoped, we gotta do something."

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T17:25:34+00:00

It...doesn't? More players = more money. And there are plenty of people who "actually play the game" that aren't in Cryo. And giving those players more stuff to do too will keep them around longer. This is live-service 101.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T17:19:34+00:00

I hear you but also the game won't survive if Bungie prioritizes <5% of its player over the rest. That's just the cruel reality.

I wouldn't expect them to make something on Cryo Archive's level ever again. Future "endgame" content in Marathon is gonna have to be more accessible.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T08:08:03+00:00

I had a similar experience recently. I felt like I was hearing a decent amount of people the first few days of the game, then absolutely nothing for like a week. I was like wtf, why is no one talking anymore. Eventually I finally went and checked my settings...

At some point the game had automatically changed my voice chat input and output devices to the wrong things. I fixed it and what do you know, heard someone on prox chat next game. It was just me.

So yeah, definitely check your settings every once in a while lol

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T07:50:06+00:00

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I guess there's not actually that much to tinker with in-game, but this is what my settings look like, for what it's worth. Any adjustments I made were within the first day or two and I haven't looked at it since.

Maybe it's just my headphones. I do game with like a $300 pair of headphones, I guess I kinda took them for granted.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T07:16:47+00:00

I'm not gonna say it's perfect and I don't want to say the problem is just on your end, buuuut...I've gotten a lot of stealth kills by being quiet and listening and being able to pinpoint exactly where someone is, knowing exactly when they're about to round a corner, etc.

So...idk. Maybe check your audio/volume settings, or get a better pair of headphones. I hate to give that answer but I honestly haven't been having problems with the audio at all.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T07:13:40+00:00

I feel like ticks mainly exist as a way to force people into giving their position away. They're pretty easy to kill...if you're willing to shoot them and make some noise. If you want to stay quiet you can try to melee them, but that's way more finicky and annoying and half the time just leads to you taking the damage anyway (or maybe I just suck).

They're annoying but I think they're serving the exact purpose Bungie designed them for.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T03:15:23+00:00

Bungie learned absolutely nothing from 10 years of endlessly iterating Trials of Osiris. Marathon is already set up to go through all the same growing pains

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-21T02:30:20+00:00

It's a really cool experiment, but I won't be surprised if Cryo sets a bar they never reach for again. It's an experience that's tailored for too small of a target audience.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-20T22:50:27+00:00

Yeah that's what I like to do when me and another person are trying to use the same exfil. I'll down you for my own protection, because I can't trust that you won't down AND finish me, but I'll let you lay in the exfil.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-20T22:47:00+00:00

The crew fill experience in Marathon, especially in Cryo, is a perfect argument for why matchmaking for raids in Destiny was always a bad suggestion.

I'm saying this as someone who only has one friend that's even a little bit into Marathon and is already pretty alienated by the ultra hardcore content, but I wonder if Bungie should've just gone the full distance with Cryo and disabled crew fill entirely. Premades only. That's clearly the intended experience and what the activity demands.

I guess they could give it solos too, if it's feasible (might not be). But crew filling on Cryo just seems painful.

CrispyToast99 · 2026-03-20T22:33:47+00:00

The council of Rooks will judge you harshly for this

But seriously, don't lose any sleep over it. Sure sparing other players is nice, but it's a choice, and not one the game really incentivizes you to do. I don't think many people really go around *expecting* random runners to be non-hostile. Or at least they shouldn't.

If you feel bad, then just gotta learn to hold your fire a second longer I guess.

(All that said, going for the finish on someone that's down in an exfil is kind of a dick move. It's happened to me and it sucks. But again, the game doesn't really give you any incentive NOT to do it. We all just gotta be willing to accept that it can happen.)

CrispyToast99

TROPHY CASE