The Cord: Let Them Eat Burger

Good morning, it is Monday.

For the first time, an installment of The Cord will be a complete editorial, with no news reporting to speak of. So let’s get this out of the way early: I imagine this one will be divisive.

Over the last few days, discussions within the community have devolved following Game Director Del Chafe III’s preview of several changes the team is actively exploring to address some of Marathon’s most persistent pain points. Three of the four proposed changes have dominated the conversation: altering Cryo Archive’s security door access levels to mitigate spawn rushing, significantly reducing the “dinner bells” triggered by key rooms, and introducing a 4x2 safe pocket for the Rook frame that would prevent players from losing the items stored inside upon death.

Whether these changes are categorically good remains to be seen, though that hasn’t stopped some players from celebrating prematurely while others dramatically mourn the loss of their hardcore extraction experience. At the risk of sounding indecisive, I’m sympathetic to both sides. On the one hand, Marathon can be too difficult, too punishing, and ultimately too alienating to survive as a live service. On the other hand, it was and still is refreshing to see a truly hardcore experience in the AAA space that isn’t a Soulslike, but a competitive FPS.

This installment is less concerned with the implications of each individual change and more with the broader conditions that necessitated their exploration in the first place. Marathon is, inarguably, too fucking difficult for its own good. But I don't think the answer is to blame the players who want to preserve that difficulty. Marathon's most dedicated players have every reason to want its hardcore identity protected. The problem is that the systems underpinning that identity may ultimately work against the game's long-term survivability. The growing disconnect between the best players and everyone else has exposed what may be an inherent flaw in any PvP game built around an economy: one player's continued success will come at the expense of another's ability to enjoy the game at all.

In a game where loot, equipment, and progression are all on the line, better players will naturally accumulate more wealth. Those with greater skill, more time to play, or both will continue to build their advantage, while those who can't keep up are left in the dust, increasingly desperate for some form of mitigation. This isn't necessarily the result of anyone doing anything wrong. It's simply what happens when a game rewards players for accumulating resources and then asks them to put those resources on the line against one another.

We've already seen how this plays out with the Drewsky-coined term “giga-stacking.” Since Season 1, I've personally heard top-end players explain that they have to run stacked teams and fully kitted loadouts precisely because everyone else is doing the same. They're constantly running into sweat, so they have to sweat themselves (much of this appears to stem from the level-based, extraction-percentage-based, or otherwise convoluted matchmaking algorithm that is clearly in the game, even if its exact mechanics remain a mystery). Honestly, you can’t really blame them. If you're repeatedly running into coordinated teams with expensive loadouts, bringing your own super-squad and your best equipment is a perfectly rational response. Nobody wants to handicap themselves when the cost of losing can be so significant.

The problem is that when everyone makes that same rational decision, the collective outcome becomes increasingly punishing. Nobody feels comfortable letting their guard down because doing so means handing an advantage to someone who won't hesitate to exploit it.

Sweats fight sweats, and beget more sweat. The whole thing is cyclically cannibalistic.

The obvious solution, at least on paper, is to remove level/gear/otherwise targeted matchmaking. Without it, higher-end players might encounter a wider variety of opponents, giving them more opportunities to experiment with weaker kits, play alongside less experienced teammates, and generally stop treating every infil like a tournament final. In theory, this would ease the pressure to constantly bring the best possible equipment and the most coordinated team. Players might finally feel comfortable taking risks without treating every deployment as a test of their entire inventory's worth.

But good players are still good players. They don't suddenly become less capable because targeted matchmaking has been removed, and the absence of skill-based matchmaking could very well exacerbate the problem it's supposed to solve. Better players would have more opportunities to curb-stomp less skilled opponents, widening the very gap that has made the experience so punishing in the first place. The same change that might give experienced players more breathing room could make the game even more hostile to those still learning it. It’s not quite analogous to something like Call of Duty, where losing a gunfight largely means nothing; in an extraction shooter losing a gunfight could mean losing hours of progression that comes easier to some players than others.

This is the bind Marathon finds itself in. Keep matchmaking, and you risk concentrating the most competitive players into lobbies where everyone feels compelled to bring their best equipment and play their hardest. Remove it, and you risk exposing less experienced players to opponents they have little chance of beating. Neither outcome necessarily requires anyone to be acting in bad faith. They're competing consequences of trying to balance a game where players have vastly different levels of skill, different amounts of time to play, and different expectations of what makes an enjoyable experience.

And when less skilled players are repeatedly outmatched, out-looted, and out-earned, eventually they're going to look for ways to regain some control over that experience. They'll band together, form alliances in real time, and start exploring ways to level the playing field, whether that means teaming up or engaging in other forms of less-than-honorable play. When the rules of the game consistently reward the same echelon of people at everyone else's expense, don't be surprised when those at the bottom start organizing to secure their own enjoyment.

They'll camp exfils, team up, exclusively run the Assassin shell to smoke out POIs, or resort to any number of guerrilla tactics. And that's assuming they don't drop the game entirely.

Naturally, the better players will then argue that the game is being leveraged against them. They shouldn't be punished for being good, they'll insist that teaming, camping or other tactics should be penalized as they undermine the competitive integrity of the experience. And to be fair, they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. Players shouldn't have to sacrifice the competitive experience they enjoy because others have decided to circumvent the rules. But what happens when the measures introduced to protect competitive integrity end up making the experience even more excruciating for everyone else?

Eventually, the pressure to mitigate these problems could lead to calls for less PvP, or at least more ways to avoid encounters that are all but guaranteed to be stacked against a player. More opportunities to play stealthily, more tactical options, and additional systems that give players greater control over when and how they engage one another. More ways to protect their investment and more ways to disengage when a fight isn't worth taking.

And none of those requests would necessarily be unreasonable in isolation. A player who wants hardcore PvP can still reasonably want fewer third parties, more control over engagements, or a way to escape a fight that isn't worth the risk. The problem is what happens when enough of those individual requests collectively change the nature of the game. The very systems introduced to protect players and preserve their investment could gradually undermine the hardcore experience they were intended to sustain.

And just like that, we're right back where we started.

“The game needs less PvP.”

Of course, this is always going to be a problem when a PvP game has an economy. Players who invest more time securing resources are going to want that investment protected, while players with less time or less skill are going to want ways to level the playing field so they can actually enjoy their $40 investment. We know this dynamic exists because, without getting too dramatic, it's largely how economies work in the real world. Those with less are eventually going to grow tired of feeding into a system that exploits their participation without offering them much in return.

The difference here, however, is that players have a choice. They will stop playing eventually. Nobody likes to lose in perpetuity, and “get good” is not a counterargument. All it does is further alienate players who, again, are perfectly capable of playing something else. It's much easier to switch games than it is to improve at one where you can burn through 15 different runs without having enough time to learn anything before each one gets cut short.

Another valid complaint I've heard from top-end players is that they're constantly running into the same rotation of enemies, run after run. We have extensive evidence of this, and it's among the most damning indications that matchmaking is doing exactly what its critics say it is. That's not to say all top-end players want to preserve the game's hardcore nature at the expense of its survivability, or that every complaint they have stems from a desire to maintain their advantage. But the underlying problem remains: Marathon has to become more approachable if it's going to sustain a healthy player base. If it doesn't, there really might end up being only four squads left playing the game.

This will become excruciatingly obvious next month, when more casual players are pulled away from Refresh to play the Ocarina of Time remake, GTA VI, or both. And when that happens, the only people left playing Marathon will be, and I say this endearingly, the “sickos.”

And I don't mean that as an insult. Those are the players who will keep showing up, who love the game enough to tolerate its roughest edges even as they stare down the biggest release of the generation, and who want to preserve the experience that drew them to it in the first place. But even they can't sustain a live service on their own forever.

Marathon shouldn't have to choose between respecting its most dedicated players and remaining accessible to everyone else. But if the game's economy continually incentivizes players to maximize their advantage at the expense of everyone around them, those goals will eventually come into conflict. And no amount of arguing over individual balance changes will resolve that underlying tension. While these changes may seem to betray the games’ hardcore identity, they arguably might be necessary for the game to persist at all.

The question isn't whether Marathon should be hardcore. It's whether Bungie can preserve that identity without allowing the economic incentives of its PvP systems to make the experience unsustainable for everyone except the most dedicated players.

Because if the only way to preserve Marathon's hardcore identity is to keep making the game less appealing to everyone else, eventually there won't be enough people left to preserve it for.