{"id":797170,"date":"2026-05-15T02:31:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T02:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/797170\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T02:31:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T02:31:14","slug":"marathon-lays-out-an-ambitious-blueprint-to-save-its-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/797170\/","title":{"rendered":"Marathon Lays Out An Ambitious Blueprint To Save Its Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marathon is about to wrap up its first season. It\u2019s a brilliant game with a dwindling player base. But Bungie has some ambitious ideas for turning that around. Game director Joe Ziegler outlined what the team has learned from the past two months and how that is informing where Marathon is headed in the future. The plan includes experiments with PVE-only modes as well as more casual PVP-lite experiences. But these are just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the first season of Marathon we\u2019ve created a strong core community,\u201d Ziegler wrote in a new blog post on May 14<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re embarking on a multi-season journey built around growing from the seed of this strong community.\u201d He said the team is looking to solve various pain points like making the extraction shooter more rewarding and less grindy, improving new player onboarding, and deepening the endgame meta.<\/p>\n

Bungie admitted that Marathon can be \u201coverwhelming to learn\u201d and that its too easy for people who play alone or aren\u2019t super skilled to hit a wall early on in their progression. The late season endgame has also been pretty stale, grenades and snipers being used to spawn rush and lobby clear in a way that saps encounters of tactical or strategic complexity. Mostly, Bungie seems to think Marathon just needs more chill.<\/p>\n

But the development team is also planning entirely new experiences for Marathon. Ziegler hinted at \u201cfun and mind-bending content\u201d that includes updated maps, new runner classes, and different gear, but also \u201cmore survival experiences for different moods. This means \u201cexploring more pure PVP, PVE, and PVP-lite experiences.\u201d This is the first time Bungie has come out and said that Marathon might eventually expand beyond its excellent but very punishing high-stakes PVP core with more casual modes that non-PVP players can still enjoy.<\/p>\n

PVE-only action is coming to Tau Ceti IV <\/p>\n

Ziegler went into more detail later in the post:<\/p>\n

\n

In\u00a0Season\u00a02,\u00a0we will be experimenting with two modes, one at the beginning of the season and one towards the middle\/latter half of the season.\u00a0The\u00a0experimental\u00a0mode\u00a0at the\u00a0beginning\u00a0of the season\u00a0will\u00a0focus more on\u00a0PVE, but with a light touch of\u00a0PVP.\u00a0The second\u00a0experimental\u00a0mode\u00a0will\u00a0be a\u00a0PVE-only\u00a0mode\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0focused on crews being tasked with completing\u00a0objectives\u00a0together\u00a0and making\u00a0some\u00a0progress\u00a0across\u00a0matches.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In terms of what else is guaranteed for Marathon season 2, which goes live on June 2, Ziegler confirmed that a rotating Duos queue is returning, along with \u201ctesting some experiments\u201d PVE and PVP-Lite modes. Players\u2019 max vault size will also be expanding, which is music to my ears as someone constantly playing inventory Tetris in between matches. There\u2019s also the previously revealed Night Marsh map, Cradle progression system, and new Sentinel character, all of which players will get more details on closer to the season 2 start date.<\/p>\n

But Ziegler also gave a peak at what\u2019s coming beyond season 2. While Bungie will be testing some of these new modes beginning in June, season 3 will bring a much deeper overhaul to the onboarding experience on Perimeter, alongside additional content. \u201cSeason 4 we\u2019re focusing on building more depth into the existing extraction loop,\u201d he wrote. \u201cSeason 5 we\u2019re looking at bringing the whole ecosystem of (PV(P)VE) play together and evolving our weird sci-fi world in new ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Bungie can continue delivering rapid mid-season improvements that respond to player feedback on a weekly basis, that first year roadmap is looking pretty robust. Despite grim Steam charts and the constant specter of cuts following the game\u2019s initial performance<\/a>, Ziegler reiterated that the team is focused on shaping Marathon \u201cbeyond 2026 and into 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n

Update 5\/14\/26, 4:44 p.m. ET: Added more information and context from Bungie\u2019s blog post.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marathon is about to wrap up its first season. It\u2019s a brilliant game with a dwindling player base.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":797171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[77630,27816,325150,158,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-797170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-bungie","tag-marathon","tag-roadmap","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116576248426846287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}