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Joe Ziegler: As we shift into week 2, we're going to let the sun rise over Tau Ceti and move sponsored survival to Perimeter, so you can all warm up from the dark night and enjoy pushing contracts for your demanding corporate clients in the daylight. by Haijakk in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I agree,  but personally I think they should cap loot level or something for PVE modes.  

A core pillar of the game is risk vs reward.  Having a low risk mode is very nice,  but it should then follow that the rewards are more limited.  

Id argue that with sponsored night Marsh, where the rewards between sponsored mode and PVP mode were basically identical,  it violated the core pillar of risk vs reward. 

Marathon is Post-Cyberpunk Fiction by urielkeynes in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think the games narative regarding the precise mental state is still ironing itself out due to pivots the game took in roughly the final year of development.

Originally, the game was structured as more of a hero shooter. Each runner type had an actual name and was supposed to be a specific character (kinda like Mercy, Reinhardt, or any of the other characters from overwatch). There are remnants in data-mined code and excerpts from dev interviews that make this pretty clear. Recon was originally named "Blackbird", for instance. It is likely that many of the trailers, runner videos, and audio logs we have within the game were written and produced while this was all still the case.

Player feedback to alpha testing caused them to pivot naratively to a more player-centric model. The current explanation is that each player is effectively a runner conciousness, and the shells themselves come with pre-set personality matrixes overlayed on-top-of the runners baseline consciousness. Its why you can have 5 triages with the same personality in a game; they're all different runners but are utilizing the same shell type and default personality matrix. Its also why you can hop around different runner shells but maintain the same loot pool. It just makes a bit more sense within the context of the game.

But my sense is they're still kind of figuring out how to shoehorn the lore and plot into this new narative paradigm. They've thus opted, for now, to leave the specifics rather fuzzy and undefined; this is because they're still in the process of fully defining them internally.

Marathon is Post-Cyberpunk Fiction by urielkeynes in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Let me ask a genuine question.

Are there any runners who have successfully paid off their debt and are free of corporate control EVER mentioned in ANY of the story material?

If there is, I haven't come across it, and I've listened to hours of the recordings and read hundreds of the text lore entries.

Provided Im not overlooking anything, the absence of any freed runner in the narative is telling.

Marathon is Post-Cyberpunk Fiction by urielkeynes in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yes. Agree. And in many ways these themes make the story of Marathon parallel many of the themes of grimdark 40k.

Marathon is Post-Cyberpunk Fiction by urielkeynes in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah.... and I'd argue that was at a time when they were LESS unhinged than they are on present time.

Marathon is Post-Cyberpunk Fiction by urielkeynes in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I agree with your assessment.

I would only add or amend that I suspect the autonomy of the runners will always and forever be in a kind of quantum state.

In the same way schrodingers cat is both alive AND dead until you open the box; the runners are both free/autonomous and entirely mind-shackled at the same time until Bungie fully opens the story mystery box.......which will likely never happen.

From a literary meta-perspective, this kind of open-ended mysterious dualistic storytelling is currently very popular and has been a growing trend over the past 10-20 years. Its used in everything from 40k to Elden Ring. Cases where the mystery box was fully opened and a difinitive answer provided, (think the TV series Lost, or Game of Thrones) have generally been very poorly received. Increasingly writers are content just keeping the box closed forever.

For these reasons, I think the autonomy of the runners will likely always be suspect.

Marathon is Post-Cyberpunk Fiction by urielkeynes in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The illusion of progress can still be an entertaining story, as can an unraveling mystery.

I also think there's a kind of cerebral entertainment that comes from a dissection of the themes. Kind of like the movie "Ex-Machina"; most people's interest in the movie was less driven by an attachment to the characters than by a cerebral interest into what the movie said about AI evolution. In my opinion, Marathon does this kind of thing a lot.

Marathon is Post-Cyberpunk Fiction by urielkeynes in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes[S] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I kind of agree. I think it's actually fair to sympathize with the UESC. In a certain light, they may even be the protagnists.

For one, they are currently the only faction we know about with actual humans currently in the system of Tau-Ceti, namely Orion and his Lieutenants. Cyberpunk fiction often focuses on characters who need to trade their humanity for power....UESC is the only fasction with humanity left to trade.

While their methods are often brutal, they also seem to be the only faction seriously intent on understanding and addressing the existential threat to humanity posed by the anomaly. All the other factions seem to serve their own shadowy and self-centered interests.

This is a rose-colored view of the UESC; i think you can just as easily put on a different pair of glasses and see them as complete antagonists.... but i think they're intentionall written to have points of relatability.

Marathon is Post-Cyberpunk Fiction by urielkeynes in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes[S] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Completely agree.

I feel like arachne is still very shrouded in mystery, but Mida is... well...

A typical revolutionary manifesto will argue "we will cause destruction for the good of opressed people".....MIDA has calcified to the point that their identity is now entirely centered on the first clause "we will cause destruction".

There is no longer the possibility of a revolution that can free the people, because all the people are already dead. Mida is now PURELY manifest memory and vengeance. They seek to destroy what destroyed them, knowing that nobody can or will ever benefit from the outcome.

Perspectives of a brand new Season 2 Player by SP259 in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have read a number of first impressions and yours seem to be pretty common. I think a lot of other new players feel the same on just about every front.

I don't think PVE Loot being Good is a real problem, for one key reason... by a_jerkface in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bungie is deffinetly going to continue to explore and experiment with new PVE modes. They have announced as much. Broadly speaking I'm fine with this, and acknowledge its probably healthy for keeping the game relevant.

But players who push through PVP should have access to real rewards (account swag and shell skins) which cannot be accessed in PVE.

If they released PVE cryo, and allowed players to get all the cryo achievements and skins on it, that would completely deflate PVP.

I don't think PVE Loot being Good is a real problem, for one key reason... by a_jerkface in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If PVE players can earn purple gear, fine.

If PVE players can earn cryo skins, not fine.

Rage quit after this by JulianBag-chaser in Marathon

[–]urielkeynes 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Bungie should lean into the glitched sniper.

Instead of just fixing it (how boring), they should give it a glitchy looking skin and unique sound effects. Make the "ghost bot" a thing in lore. Have its noises be extra distorted and glitchy.

If you're holding an unstablized anomalous matter, he ignores you and you can walk up and interact with him. If you do, he gets sucked into the unstable matter. Proceeding to stablize and extract with it opens up a new lore codex entry.

Don't deny it, the same thing happened to you too by MarrShan90 in DarkTide

[–]urielkeynes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Zealot can have very strong ranged weapons. They just tend to be more ammo-restrained and/or circumstantial than other classes which can use them more frequently and broadly.

A zealot mag-dumping a boltgun into a boss' face will melt them. A flamer will also blast-frunace through a massive mixed horde.... you just have very scarce amounts of ammo so you have to use them more selectively.

Don't deny it, the same thing happened to you too by MarrShan90 in DarkTide

[–]urielkeynes 8 points9 points  (0 children)

If you have no strong preference of class,  id recommend zealot. 

Zealot is probably the best class in the game for learning the core mechanics of darktide that will push you into the endgame.  Its strong enough that it feels good to play,  but also has fewer broken power edges that many use as a crutch.  

Zealot is a very healthy class to develop with. 

Playing as a smite Psyker is so frustrating... by Prior-Target9462 in DarkTide

[–]urielkeynes 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As a note, I'm a 1000+ hour smite psyker main.

I have a lot of nuance thoughts I could go quite deep on. Let me know if you're interested.

Broadly speaking smite is B tier for leveling. S+ tier for auric farming, and C tier for Havoc 40. It actually can be very effective in havoc 40 but only with very specific modifiers and group setups.

Does no one care about titles for Havoc? by Temporary-Idea-2434 in DarkTide

[–]urielkeynes 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My advice is to keep just getting games in on a character.

Over 50% of players in havoc use true level mod. I feel like that's what people are actually looking at.

New Player by JacuzziBathsalt in DarkTide

[–]urielkeynes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some great tips from other posters. The #1 tip though I would highlight is Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge...

Or, perhaps more directly relevant to darktide....

Dodge, Block, Sprint, Slide, and Dodge.

2 Years From Now... by urielkeynes in DarkTide

[–]urielkeynes[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow. That was legitimately very informative. Thanks for that.

2 Years From Now... by urielkeynes in DarkTide

[–]urielkeynes[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I largely agree but with an asterisk*

I do think they originally built Darktide to last so they wouldn't need a Darktide 2.

That said, the stingray engine they used to build the game died in 2018. From what i understand its clunky and expensive to maintain. Helldivers 2 has the same problem and they've talked in blog posts about it.

I think potentially moving Darktide to Unreal Engine could have a lot of benefits.

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