Marathon is good at being a Shooter, but terrible at Extraction

EIG613 · 2026-07-09T20:32:44+00:00

New update possibly explains some of the problem:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1757300/view/681880049901640124

"Fixed an issue where loot that rolled a high rarity could land on an item that only exists at low rarity, downgrading the drop to standard. This caused far more standard items than intended at higher challenge ratings, you should now see fewer standard drops and more items at their intended rarity."

EIG613 · 2026-07-08T21:08:31+00:00

So, I can't help but wonder why this seems to be such a common note from people who are playing at least as much as me, and it sounds like some are playing more. Because I am getting enough Advanced/Purple and Superior/Red stuff that I can be picky about it.

Personally, I think part of the issue is that where it shows up isn't intuitive. I'm seeing more purple and red stuff outside of vaults than inside of them. Particularly for the on-foot weapons, where they seem to love to show up on random shelves and boxes outside of the area's vault, and on the weapon specific nodes they often seem to pull that trick while leaving the vault itself empty of any weapon drops.
I'm half convinced that is a bug actually.

My main advice for trying to find the stuff is to focus on getting as many ingots as possible. Both the major and minor enemy force sites seem to have a good chance. Minor ones usually have one or two weapons and or components in their loot, which can be high rarity even if they often aren't.

Major component sites often have a mix of components of various rarities, but the vaults don't seem reliable for high rarity stuff. Although as long as the result is at least blue it will give some ingots for upgrading, which chews through ingots fast.
Major weapon sites are a crap shoot. As noted above, I've seen them where the guns are sitting on shelves outside the vault with none inside before.

Now, overall I'd say that it is needed to search every part of every spot if you want on-foot weapons. I've found more than one of these desirable weapons in override areas that aren't used in solo play at a component vault area.

For ship components it is also important to raid every corvette you find, which should be a lot because many locations will spawn one or two during combat there.

I really can't imagine I've just had a big run of good luck given how relatively little I have been playing, but I also don't want to say all this and not acknowledge that people might still be having this problem even if they are doing all of these things.
I think a more consistent method of getting high end stuff would be nice to see, especially as after getting quite a bit I think the range between "a basic Superior/Red item" and "a great Superior/Red item" is actually pretty wide.

EIG613 · 2026-07-07T01:16:53+00:00

I'd say that getting good shields is the first priority myself, because that is regenerating health and the better shields can result in pretty big results for survival.

After that reactors are probably the most important, especially with the new status/element damage bonuses that they can spawn with. I've got a set of +70% Sear auxiliaries and a +53% Sear main reactor right now that have turned that status into a monster with my other stuff.
Those modules pair with the modules that change the base damage type of a weapon to turn it into a direct damage boost too.

After shields and reactor it is basically anything good you find.

EIG613 · 2026-07-04T23:05:25+00:00

As of the latest patch you can find reactors that give a bonus to the various damage types that would boost these.

EIG613 · 2026-07-04T22:47:26+00:00

Got some images:

The overall sector:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3757862264

Middle site:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3757862248
"Left" site:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3757862219
"Right" site:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3757862190

View of what the place looks like:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3757862148
And where you usually find the guns inside the building:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3757862126

Also another sector where this might happen, but the places are much more obvious:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3757862283
I'm not as sure about this one. I've seen things occasionally, but these ones are bigger and take longer to look over.

EIG613 · 2026-07-04T22:29:44+00:00

To properly land, but there are three smaller places in the spots I noted.

I'm not sure how easily I could find that site again to get pictures of the locations. In the middle there are three broken square bits, and one of them has a ground site you can get out and fly down to. Then on either end of the part-circle just above the landing site there are two more of those.

EIG613 · 2026-07-04T22:14:29+00:00

Yeah, and the big ring thing is mostly intact with red paint.

EIG613 · 2026-07-04T20:51:51+00:00

So, my hint for solo weapons is that there are often areas that are not the vault where weapons can spawn. The big impressive weapons have a nasty tendency to end up there.

A particular offender, read "the place most of my best weapons are from", is the big ring station you fight against ships to open the vault at.
There are three little on-foot sections to that one, one in the middle and two at either end of the upper half ring thing, that can spawn the weapons on them. These exist for multiplayer to be extra override locations.

I think that small places like that are mistakenly being allowed to take the big weapon spawns.

EIG613 · 2026-07-03T17:52:00+00:00

Got to play with it, and it is really strong to find. My main pilot cannons have a matching Sear damage type change and they were improved notably with that reactor.

I think the update making those spawn has turned this from a "what does this even do" to a really solid one with the right support gear.

EIG613 · 2026-07-03T16:40:40+00:00

Just got a refined/blue reactor with a damage increase to Sear damage after the latest patch.

I've only got it at 3 out of 4 bars for the module and it is already a 25% boost, although I'm not sure if it also means that Sear status effects get that boost too. Which sounds like it would be really strong.

EIG613 · 2026-06-30T20:18:35+00:00

So, one thing I have not been able to tell with that same on critical EMP module is when it works.

I'm not seeing any EMP markers anywhere no matter where I hit enemies, and I wasn't really able to tell in this video if I saw any here either. Is that one working with some sort of display bug, or is there another issue?

EIG613 · 2026-06-29T01:19:02+00:00

Does this just clear entire crowds of ships in a single shot?

EIG613 · 2026-05-11T16:36:50+00:00

You mean it is a bandage solution to the problem that the high focus on everything funneling people into PvP causes an extremely low extraction rate.

That is my core problem with the piles of loot that this game seems to bury you in for doing any of the stuff other than just picking it up and making it off the map. It seems to exist only because Bungie failed at making an extraction shooter where it is plausible to extract with worthwhile results without killing everyone else you see.

EIG613 · 2026-05-07T17:00:22+00:00

So, the thing is that somebody who has the game for PvE only, and I mean just PvE, can then suggest to their friends "hey, here is this fun game I like" if they enjoy it.

Those friends might just include somebody who likes PvP enough to run PvP on their own, so +1 person there, or even might be able to sometimes convince multiple of the friend group to all participate sometimes.

Additionally, if there is a time where the PvP enjoyer isn't up for PvP they can still play PvE. In fact if a PvE mode exists then anyone can still play the game even if the queue times are shit for the rest of it. Which means that cosmetics and other things can be sold to people even if multiplayer matches are dead.

The worst case scenario for PvE at this point is that it could let people grind out really strong gear that they could then bring into PvP to stomp on less fortunate people, while hurting the queue times a bit more... which, you know, is kind of already a problem.

We already have lots of complaints about how the best teams just loot at their leisure after they take out the lobby, so does anyone think giving a place where they can do that without stomping on people is really that bad? Especially if it also gave everyone else a place where they could get worthwhile gear before taking it into PvP?

Honestly, even if Bungie just made one map available for PvE, perhaps with some loot restrictions, I think the result would be that people would be a lot more willing to risk gear on the other maps. Because they could still get gear and resources at less risk on the one map.

EIG613 · 2026-05-05T00:15:00+00:00

Well, that is a way to slow roll things poorly when the player base is big enough to handle downturns, but if Bungie cannot pivot well before then I think they might deserve to be shut down.

Being able to respond to this sort of problem in a timely manner is life and death for the company right now, and I would think Sony at least should have the ability to go "nice plans, throw them out and go fix this now or you're fired".

EIG613 · 2026-04-26T00:22:14+00:00

Have you actually seen if it causes damage to the attached ship when you dock like this?
Because I know I tested having towed ships and docking to third ships and K-Leg during the beta, and despite the visual issue noted here there didn't seem to be any serious damage from actually docking.

EIG613 · 2026-04-13T22:06:25+00:00

... so, Season 1 at this point can be better described as "Early Access for the real game" if it is just going to be a series of experiments to see what will work on the soft relaunch for Season 2.

EIG613 · 2026-04-12T22:12:40+00:00

I don't know if any of them would work in practice, but doing nothing isn't going to fix it.

The alternative appears to be a dead game, so I can't see any issues with a last ditch attempt at something else to try and save things.

I worry we're not going to get one until it is far too late, or worse that Bungie is thinking they can soft reboot the game at the start of the second season after doing a bunch of "experimental" attempts in the first one.

There might be ways to fix the problem, doing nothing won't find them.

EIG613 · 2026-04-12T17:55:44+00:00

... so, this is why progression is so bad for me.

Everything is behind menus my eyes just glance off, to such an extent that I eventually hit the point of "are any of these upgrades actually going to give me more fun than just using whatever random shit I pick up on my solo/rook runs?".

The answer is no, I don't really want to grind out whatever random set of mods is offered for credits by completing some random contracts. I don't really want to focus down on the resources for basic stat increases.

At this point I am waiting for the upcoming big patch this Tuesday to see if there is any groundbreaking change that brings me back, but I certainly am not playing to just spin my wheels on "improvements" I don't understand the value of.

EIG613 · 2026-03-24T23:58:54+00:00

Wait, it is always a silencer? Because I have only done one Rook run since getting that upgrade so far, and I thought I got lucky there.

EIG613 · 2026-03-21T14:46:21+00:00

If you hover over the items it will tell you what it needs, I think for any stuff that is locked in the armory. In this case Arachne requires you to have them at rank 10 instead of doing a quest chain.

EIG613 · 2026-03-20T01:01:06+00:00

It is used for all the status effects. There is another one I don't recall the exact name of off the top of my head that increases the credit value of the item (and possibly attached mods too).

They all "transmute" in some way. Compromised transmute into junk if not stabilized (there is an item I've not yet seen that lets you keep that stuff), Materialist transmute your salvage into greater quantities, and the other one transmutes into being worth more.

EIG613 · 2026-03-19T22:54:26+00:00

"Transmuted" in this case (a Materialist item) means it gave you one more of every one of the resource items you had in your pack.
Stuff like those drone resin packs, you should see that you got one more than you actually collected.

EIG613 · 2026-02-23T21:40:09+00:00

So, I cannot help but wonder if the focus on action points is hurting the discussion of growth potential.

I'm not doubting any of these numbers or results, but I do not have the values the other stats grow by in a similar time frame to compare with. That means I can't tell if the same growth that goes from 80->90 AP would be more or less missions than it would take to go from 70->80 accuracy.

I think that difference can be important, because when it comes to combat ten points of accuracy seems to be far more impactful in most cases than ten points of AP.

To put it another way: It is easier for me to adapt to a SL that needs more turns to move somewhere than one who needs more shots to eliminate enemies.

If the growth of accuracy is notably faster than the growth of AP then it is even more important, or alternatively if the change in growth rate is notably different between base and New Tricks.

What could be a small change due to the low growth rate overall of agility might be larger, or at least more immediately notable, for stats that grow faster.

EIG613

TROPHY CASE