This has always been the case. Putting aside poor upper management, Destiny was a 10 year long experiment that showed us how it is nigh impossible to please both.

Even when both groups were relatively happy with the current state of the game, it was too expensive. Marathon is already a $150m+ loss so we can't expect a huge influx of dev talent and labor to expand one part of the game without the detriment of the other.

Destiny stopped new content because no matter how healthy or successful the game was, it's still one game/income source and can't be worked on as if it's more than that, which pvp and pve both require.

Overwatch fell for the same trap and it almost killed the game too. Tens of millions and years of dev time wasted on a (admittedly much worse than bungie) PvE mode that brought about a content drought. Had marvel rivals been on the scene earlier, it could have killed the game then and there. Another inverse example is apex which outright removed their more pvp heavy arena mode.

Tldr; the suggestions I'm seeing for marathon as a hub for all sorts of game modes, from extraction to pve to pvp arena and so on will not work because it's too labor intensive to upkeep everything at the same time

Make sure to look him up and appreciate his work I watch his art and animations over and over it's really cool

Played Vault Breaker a bit from yesterday and honestly been liking it a lot. I like how agressive the PvE enemies are, the increase in enemy density is good. The push for doing 2 to 3 Vaults back to back is really fun and I bet will get easier as I get more T2 upgrades for the Free Kit (I am yet to do the compiler). I am gonna play more to get that Cryo 6 key for normal Cryo.

The bones for a great mode are here but it is not really that deep which is understandable as this is an experimental mode that Bungie likely developed last minute. For me the most intersting part of the mode is tbe upgradable Free kit, it is a really cool idea that could be built upon for upgrading parts of the kit with your items.

I think this mode can be expanded to other maps such as Night Marash and Outpost. Maybe moving from key room to key room with some added mechanics. I do hope Bungie sticks with this mode to expand and improve it as it has a really soild foundation for a good Roguelite mode.

Maybe the next step is to remove all enemies from the game and transform it into a sandbox

ouuuuuuughhhh.... so full....

I know it's the norm nowadays but seeing this and the class action waiver at the end of the agreement, I can't shake the feeling they're covering their back in case the game is unexpectedly shutdown. I hope this just basic legal stuff as I'm no expert and hope the game gets to have a long life and the love it deserves

Edit : thanks for the reassuring replies about it being normal for all the games as I suspected, was just a bit surprised by a new agreement today, I can peacefully get back to vault breaker

I’ve been working on this creation for a while now, and I’m excited to finally show it off!

To celebrate the launch of a new way to play Cryo, I’d like to give away a CYRO themed bag charm to a lucky commenter! To enter, just leave a comment.

I’ll randomly select a winner three days after this post goes live and reply directly to the winning comment from this account only: u/rameneater_haun.
I will never ask for payment of any kind. Shipping details will be arranged privately through DMs after the winner is chosen!

I make Cryo and faction-themed bag charms in small batches and wanted to share them with the community. Thanks for checking them out! If you're interested in them, you can also check out my Etsy shop "R3DGameEssentials" - I'm running a little summer sale over there!

A huge thanks for r/marathon's mod team for allowing me to run alittle giveaway and a massive shoutout to all the inspirational artists and team over at bungie for creating such a fantastic world.

Thanks so much for checking out my creation, and try not to lose everything at the lose-everything factory, runners.

I will cry if this actually gets removed in 2 weeks lol, this is literally the first time I have had ANY fun in Cryo. And it's not because I don't like PvP.

I love, and am decently good at, PvP in this game. I am not advocating that the game should be all PvE all the time. But Cryo has been very very difficult to learn the mechanics and layout of, when you have to worry about getting rushed in your spawns for "not being fast enough" AKA not magically knowing the map like the back of your hand yet. Or, yknow, if you don't get rushed, ending up in Recon v Recon standoffs for 15 minutes in Control so there's no time left to try to learn the vault system.

I love the ability to explore one of the coolest maps in the game and love being able to turn off PvP brain for a bit while still enjoying the world.

Devs please, consider just leaving the mode up through the season.

Hi everyone, sorry for the inconvenience. I'm here to offer my services as an artist. I'm a big fan of Marathon and wanted to share my projects.

Went really well actually but this moment was hilarious

I love PvE shooters and I’m a fan of Destiny. I’m not terribly excited about pvp, however, which is why I haven’t grabbed Marathon. This new PvE mode looks really great and I’m thinking about buying this game mostly for this mode.

I've never been much for PvP - I'm okay at it, but far from what I'd call proficient or anything. I'm able to just about get by in most PvP games. But as Marathon's gone on, and the game's skill ceiling got higher, I found myself more and more out-competed as players of equal or worse PvP skill than I am began dropping out. This, naturally, led to me starting to feel discouraged. It's been talked about to the point of exhaustion here and it's not really the point of this post anyway.

I don't know yet whether I just needed a break from the normal game modes or what, but Vault Breakers as of right now feels more fun than anything I've done in this game so far. The roguelike feel of it, the puzzles, the opportunity to play in and explore a map that I was always getting rolled in before, it's all perfect. The difficulty of the bots feels just right, challenging without being insurmountable. My team and I haven't yet managed to make it to the Compiler but we're all very excited and motivated to get there, more so than we have been for anything in this game in a while. We were a little bummed that we can neither take gear in nor bring anything out, but it makes total sense as to why and it doesn't feel too oppressive, so we can't really bring ourselves to gripe over that too much.

So I guess this is all to say, thanks Bungie for making it and doing a great job with it, and if I can add my voice to those who have been asking for it to be extended or made permanent, then count me in. I'll certainly be playing it for the entire two weeks it's planned to be here, at the very least.

While I may not be the biggest fan of the mode, it's undeniable that it fills a void the game was lacking: being a cryo archive tutorial.

Cryo is undoubtedly the best map in the game, but a lot of people don't play it because they find it overwhelming. People who don't play cryo lock themselves out of one of the best parts of the game, and eventually quit.

Vault Breakers fixes this by guiding you through the steps of opening a vault. It helps you learn the map, the routes, where to find clearance hacks and such. Sure, it won't fully prepare you for a regular cryo match (since you don't have to stress about leaving spawn asap to avoid getting rushed) but it will teach you most of the basics of the map.

I also love how you're guided through the process of opening a vault. As much fun as they are, I don't think it's good design to make people watch a YouTube guide on what to do with your key before opening the vault, at least nowadays considering most people know what to do. I think those step by step guides should probably be implemented into regular cryo.

Overall, I find it to be a pretty solid game mode. I hope that Bungie doesn't fully get rid of it, because if once it goes away we go back to people having to play cryo "blind" we will go back to how things used to be. If the mode were to become a permanent addition I think it'd be a nice compromise if it was only available when regular cryo archive is closed. A gameplay loop or playing vault breakers through the week to get keys and then take them into regular cryo during the weekend sounds promising.

I think I’m going to put this accomplishment on my resume as a time management course. My god was it hard.

Also no, I don’t think I’ll be able to repeat it.

Loaded into outpost with a free kit, got matched some 300+ level people with Vidmaster or Gilded titles and whatnot, no mics. First game of the evening that went well for, we killed a team, did convoy, opened pinwheel, red key room - where I got a Flight Control encrypted key for the first time ever. I ping the room excited, but moments later I got unfortunately got clumsily downed by a claymore.

My wonderful teammates decided to not rez me, pick the key off of my body, left me dead and went to open the room themselves because "that's what I get for greeding the pinnacle room". (?) Am I supposed to wait like an idiot until everything is looted because I'm on a free kit? That key was literally the only thing I picked up from there and I'm sure there was plenty of goop for everyone in key room.

What a miserable experience. You guys fucking suck.

I love PVP. I love the risk/reward. But damn does vault breaker smack.

I just teamed up with a squad and did 2 vaults and then 3 the next match. All night just running random fills with the people very willing to teach and lead the way. This is what I love about this game. The constant need that adapt. The thrill of PVP. The methodical ways to evade or face PVE. Barely escaping a boss fight. Sometimes risking it all and loosing it. That's what this game is about. I love it. No other game hits like it.

That's what makes Marathon. More PVE won't diminish the PVP. It will feed into it. I believe they coexist and content for both is healthy and can grow the player base. Or I'll just play till the last match loads up.

Bungie don't give up when the fight is tough. Fight because it is tough. I have no qualms about buying this game on both PC and Xbox. It's the most fun I've had in a long time and reminded me why I love gaming. I see y'all out there one way or another.

Before the skills issues thing. Let me get this out of the way:

I have done compiler kills on every character. I have all titles in the game apart from the new one (7 resets will take a while) and I was Pinnacle 1 on season 1 and will likely be Pinnacle 1 this season again. I am not the best player of the game by any extent of the imagination but I think I am among the people in this game who would not be called a beginner or even an intermediate level player. Also, I have already done everything there is to do in the new mode yesterday, including killing the compiler.

Now on to the PVE mode:

The game is great but...

We need more people playing the game.

Barrier to enter is too high.

We need to expand the appeal of the game so people can play on a ladder to get to the hardest ways of playing the game, feel more comfortable, and also so they can enjoy the game a bit without constantly losing.

There are likely thousands of ideas that could be implemented to achieve those goals. Bungie chose one.

Enter Vault Breaker.

I love the idea. Honestly. It won't be a silver bullet, but it is a step in the right direction. However, that stuff needs tuning.

My main takeaway is that it is way too hard and in a boring way. You will likely not be able to kill the compiler unless you split throughout the map and find batteries alone and do some of the vaults in duos or solo. My team is fairly ok at the game and if we were struggling to do it, i bet there will be a lot of others (the people this thing should be actually aimed at, findin the content way way too hard).

What I would suggest:

• Bring back the armor lockers. Having not a single armor locker on Cryo and starting with only the Magnum and the Volt AR is just a pretty boring experience. It would be nice to have the chance to get better weapons throughout the map. And the main challenge with the compiler is actually having decent weapons to do damage during the damage phase.

• Add the yellow weapons to the vaults they belong to, like in normal cryo. This is a chance for people to have fun with weapons they might have a hard time getting in PvP mode. Remember, the game is about having fun; let's help people have fun. It is not a hard concept to grasp. Plus, you won't keep the guns when you leave anyway. No one is harmed by this.

• Either make it so it is 2 vaults and then compiler rather than 3 vaults and then compiler, or make it truly random. Doing all those vaults over and over for little reward is not very fun; give people a chance to get a lucky run. The compiler gives people nothing other than the same stuff you get on the other vaults; why gate it so hard?

• Allow people to further better their initial kit all the way up to a gold kit. I play with full golden kits most of the time when playing pvp and that is so fun, let people have that fun, ungate that fun from the at least on PVE, give them a path to that fun. This will also give the mode more longevity and something to grind for, upgrading your gear all the way up to gold.

• Add a better version of the vault tokens that you can only get from the compiler and that you need for the highest tier of upgrades. Make doing the compiler more than once worth it. Otherwise, you do it once for the codex, then grind tokens for rewards at the shop and never try the compiler again. Use those tokens to gate better rewards at the armory as well. So there is a clear progression ladder.

• Add more cosmetic rewards. (This could come later, but there needs to be more to grind towards)

• This is a HUGE one. Make the keys not templates. It is an absurd idea that the golden key is a cryo template and you get this in a mode where people are supposed to go to get respite from the carnage of PvP cryo. A huge part of the current templates are all going to end up in the hands of good PvP players who will kill other people trying to do their template "quests".

These are just some top-of-the-head thoughts. I would really want to see the game succeed. I love the game. And the PVE is a great idea. However, it needs real tuning. As it is , for veteran players it is a 3-day activity that will quickly lose its appeal, and for the casual or beginner player it is a hard experience that will be fun at first and will end up in frustration and feel ultimately unrewarding.

Love you, bungie. Keep on believing.

Even though the rush of completing a vault while facing real player threats isn't there, it's surprisingly well replaced by the pressure of trying to complete all three vaults in a single run.

To me, this mode feels like proof of concept that a true PvE extraction mode could work—one where you bring in gear you've earned and have a real chance of losing it. I want the kind of difficulty that forces me to actually play well, or risk losing my entire loadout. I want to be able to risk my gold-tier gear against challenging AI, but only if the bots are difficult enough that extraction never feels guaranteed.

The key is that there should be no free kits in this mode. Every loadout should come from your traditional Marathon runs, giving every deployment meaningful risk and reward.

I think a mode like this would appeal to both a broader audience that enjoys PvE experiences and the core extraction shooter community that wants high-stakes gameplay.

Tl;dr: Marathon has the opportunity to be the next best Rogue-like, and the first FPS of the genre made with significant scale. It’s a perfect pair to an extraction shooter due to their perhaps less than obvious similarities.

Background and context: I’ve played quite a lot of Destiny, Marathon, and relevant to this post, rogue-likes, which are my favorite genre.

As I’ve been playing vault breaker and comparing it to some of my favorite rogue-likes of recent memory, a thought occurred to me: Extraction shooters and rogue-likes are 2 sides of the same coin. I think they offer essentially the same incentives, long term gameplay loops, and emotional impact on the gamer.

They both are games that can be extremely punishing. They both focus on knowledge, experience, and fast dopamine hits as reward centers. They both offer broadly some meta progression that makes the next run just a little bit easier. Maybe my affinity with rogue-likes and their “ok just one more run” identity is what has drawn me to marathon so deeply.

This is where vault breaker comes in. Is it a good roguelike? Not really, but that’s only because it’s completely barebones as an experience. The potential is huge, both from a gameplay perspective AND a commercial perspective. I’m not sure what the PvE plans are for season 3, but a more fleshed out roguelike experience could be the key to significant commercial success where the only issue I foresee is how to share loot/progression between the 2 modes.

Some of the most popular and acclaimed games of this decade are rogue-likes: Returnal/Saros, Slay the Spire 1/2, Balatro, Risk of Rain 2, and that’s just those released since 2020. Hell, a rogue-like won GOTY and its sequel is even better (Hades 1/2). These games have sold millions of copies despite having barebones stories (if any), barebones budgets, and only procedurally generated level design. We’ve also seen FPS rogue-likes find mild success in Deadzone Rogue. (Super fun for 10-15 hours if you’re looking for something quick btw)

So what’s my overall point? That a Rogue-like experience is the PERFECT pairing to an extraction shooter for those looking for a PvE experience while maintaining what I believe is the studios wider vision for the game and its niche. It strikes a very hot iron, feels similar in its reward centers, and has the potential to be more robust and interesting than all of the wildly successful rogue-like endeavors this decade. I hope Bungie leans into this and differentiates Marathon from destiny in tone and gameplay experience, because as we all agree, the potential is unbelievable.

I keep seeing post about how vault breaker is to difficult and its impossible to kill the boss.

The mode has only been out for a day and your trying to rush the boss. We have 2 weeks of this.

You start with just a gray shields and no backpack. You need to build your kit with store upgrades to make the fights easier. The amount of enemies are the same as standard cryo, it just that you don't have your most meta gear.

I know most of equipment drops and spawns have been reduced but you can still find good loot boxs in the same places every time.

You have 35 minutes to do at least one vault you don't need to rush around the map. There are no other players to rush you, slow down plan your route bots don't regularly spawn in hallways.

This doesn't match the UI design at all, and it bothers me an unreasonable amount. Is it a bug? Is it intentional? Who knows, who cares, but please round those corners a bit before I impale myself on them.