I stumbled onto a lengthy discussion over Bluesky, so I’ll try to wrap it up here. Like old times.

Marathon is a game that is being discussed almost as much as Crimson Desert, but for entirely different reasons. Marathon players “resent” this discussion, because it’s all hyperfocused on “doomcalling” the future of the game. In the wake of Highguard’s shutdown there’s a lot on attention, and worry, about feedback loops, either positive or negative. The polarization and bandwagoning against Highguard became the main topic, as if the game’s failure was more related to the patterns of communication then merely the quality of the game. In the end the amount of players was quite low, and it’s not players hating on the game prevented others to play. It was a silly discussion, but now we see the consequences here.

The consequences are that, right now, those who actively play and love Marathon are very much concerned about negative feedback loops, because they can persuade other players to not even give the game a fighting chance. “Excessive” criticism can be on its own the direct cause of a game’s failure. So a lot of players are preoccupied to make so community discussions stay positive, give “good vibes.” Encourage players to join and dismiss other worries. Just “shut up and play the game.”

Thankfully, here, I’m not an “influencer” and my words have zero consequences. While this is self-defeating, in a certain way, since they are all words lost to the wind, it also puts me in a privileged position: I am objectively outside the sphere of the game, and so I can properly judge it. I’m completely safe from those tricky feedback loops, and I don’t have to worry that being overly critical can produce a negative influence. In order to understand what ELSE the game could ideally be, how to become better, you need to embrace criticism, because simply sticking to positive loops wouldn’t change a single thing.

Marathon itself is in a tricky position that conflicts directly to those players calling out to “shut up and play.” This is an online game, and a rather hardcore one. Despite the resets, players who invest the money and a whole lot of time in this game, even as pure effort of understanding and trying their best with gameplay that is quite stressful, need to find reassurance that the game won’t vanish under their feet within the next 6 months, or be put into maintenance mode. This is IMPORTANT. In a single player game you can engage in endless discussions, trying to prove someone else why a game is great or shit, but in the end the game is done, you can play it, if you are the only one on the planet who thinks it’s great, who cares? You can play the game regardless. But in an ONLINE game the overall success or failure of the game weighs DIRECTLY on your experience of it. Both engagement and development are ongoing, and I doubt Marathon would get any attention if it was known that it’s just something to play for a month, then it goes away. Which is again, a big deal, embracing tons of modern games, including the large realm of gatchas. Games where you’re asked to pour large sums of money, to get that character you really want, but all depending on the long term financial stability of the game. Because all of your “perceived digital value” could be erased the next day. Which is more or less following the pattern of MMOs in the 2000s. The next/current big thing, but all leading to something not sustainable. One one side you have a strong FOMO, but on the other everyone ends up gravitating around the biggest juggernauts that people assume are less likely to fail…

So, as you can see, the “vibes” of a community become the most important part, because for a game to be successful, especially in the perception of a stable, long-term ongoing game, you can then put your time and effort on it because you aren’t anxiously worried that it’s all for nothing.

All of this translating in endless discussions in forums and social networks about the concurrent users steam charts. People obsessing over these charts, and the inner community of players HATING EVERYTHING because all they see is other people with an axe to grind, doomposting, creating “bad vibes” and discouraging potential players to give the game a chance.

But is Bungie stable? In any case, is this our business to discuss?

Free of feedback loops, as already said, I think this is very important. Marathon, from its announce to release and post-release, has all been about “vibes.” Very negative vibes from the first moment, then making a gigantic effort to steer those vibes more positively, getting close to release. But the more we focus on perception, the more we lose the concrete game.

In many ways Marathon is ruthlessly hardcore, something I personally appreciate in a ideal way. It stays close to a vision and doesn’t compromise. That’s great, but this is Bungie. This isn’t a small indie project sticking and then delivering an artistic idea. This is a big budget game and no matter how successful is to its artistic vision, it needs to sell, and continue to earn, enough for Bungie to not end in another round of layoffs, and guarantee that Marathon as a game continues to be developed in meaningful ways (something where Destiny already largely failed). Its commercial success MATTERS because it’s not a done deal. It’s an ongoing test.

To me, because I judge it in the context of all I know from the history of Destiny’s development, this all points in the worst direction. Bungie has NEVER been an agile team, reacting fast and producing content in a timely manner. The very thing Destiny 2 failed to achieve is produce enough new content. You can argue the quality was good, but it came at a very high cost. While Marathon own structure is in itself already more agile, it simply doesn’t match Bungie historical skills with what is needed for this type of game. Bungie has failed especially as a “game as a service,” by being slow, sluggish, and unable to renew its playerbase. Ending with a game that hardly evolved, largely involved, and was constantly losing players. As with Crimson Desert / Black Desert we see that history comes back to haunt you. Bungie has precisely those skills that are ANTITHETIC to Marathon: good quality but very low output, and very slow reaction to problems. The opposite of a game that completely refreshes every three months. That needs to find ways to radically renew itself.

This means that the whole, external context to this game is already very much hostile to the success of the game, as a mere business. But to make things worse is the game they chose to make: a very elitist, hardcore extraction shooter. A type of gameplay that ACTIVELY SELECTS its playerbase, creating constant attrition and, over time, leaving players behind. Those players that, despite trying very hard, couldn’t keep up. The “resets” help here, because they force new starting points, and so absolute equalizers for everyone, but also work AGAINST, because on one side, all the effort and attrition the game demands, eventually goes away. All your effort amounting to close to nothing. On the other side, those players who lag behind and struggle, that arrive later, just end up faceplanting on the reset wall, because the slower you move the less time you have to rejoice, after you eventually moved up. You are condemned always catching up, and never seize anything of value.

In this kind of context, hostile to new players, high attrition, highly selective, the “shape” of the game, on its own, already leads to a game that LOSES PLAYERS OVER TIME.

So tell me, how can this be successful when Bungie is already in a very tricky situation, has to justify the high costs to produce this game in the face of only moderate success, and it’s all wrapped up in a shape of a game that can only lose, never gain, in a much worse context that even Destiny? Where is the money coming from? How do you spend even more money to create new content that is different, evolved and appealing enough to bring new players and keep the current ones motivated and engaged with something that either demands huge effort, or you’re out?

To be clear, I only see failure for Marathon and Bungie, for all these motivations, but I do not WISH them failure. This is just analysis of a piece of reality. It just is and doesn’t depend on me in any way. It doesn’t conform to mine or someone else’s desire. The outcome is purely objective, we can only see if my analysis was correct, or incomplete. Down the road.

This to give some proper context, because the purpose here was to SOLVE, ideally, this deal. Doing the old habit of armchair designer.

Is it possible to turn around Marathon? Is it possible to make it successful and attract new players?

I pick up the challenge, and push it to its limits, by setting these three rules, that have to be achieved together:

1) growing the playerbase, as the raw number of active players
2) achieving (1), but without making a single modification to the current live game and content
3) achieving both (1) and (2), but so that the expanded playerbase eventually grows the pool of players currently engaged in PvP

The goal is not to make current players happier, but engage new players who rejected the game up to this point. For Marathon to pick up new blood across its existence, rather than bleeding players out. BUT without making any concession to the “hardcore” gameplay, without altering anything that current players enjoy right now.

Because my strong proposition here is not that you make the game more accessible by backpedaling on the hardcore, but that the goal and vocation of a game like this is to SHAPE players. To transform them. The game’s own goal is not to SELECT players. It’s not to set a skill ceiling so that a small group of players qualify, and a large group of players is left out to stare from the outside. Watching organized, top-tier players on Twitch running raids or the endgame Marathon map.

The game MAIN goal is to provide a goddamn path, for everyone (or as many as possible), to GET THERE. Not to select, but to include. To transform players so they learn to enjoy the hardcore. Persuade them to try something not familiar. That they aren’t used to.

Since this should likely be universally great, no one against it. The deal is “yeah okay, if only we had a magic wand to do it.”

I’m going here straight to the point because reproducing all the arguing back and forth that took place would take several walls of text. My proposal is: allocate resources so that you produce two new structured maps. These maps are PvE ONLY. All brand new or current players can either completely ignore these maps (and so run the current content as usual) or play them. These two maps are either solo, or for duos. Since they are PvE only it means that no queues are needed since you aren’t waiting for anyone. It’s just you and maybe a friend coming along.

Obviously being PvE maps, it means you only find enemy AIs. And the single map should be structured to be non-linear and “tiered” so that you can go exploring between relatively easy areas all the way to hotspots with very strong AIs. Essentially, maps big enough to already provide meaningful sense of progression for a few hours.

These maps should be used for early game progression. With loot built and balanced to expand the game AT THE BOTTOM (rather than up to higher tiers). It means that an average player spending 5 hours grinding PvP maps, failing and winning, ends up with a stash that is always overall better than the same player going exclusively in PvE maps for the same 5 hours and always winning. So that the loot and currency extracted from PvE maps has meaningful progression, but always existing UNDER or equal the current *baseline* PvP tier. Also, even when failing, give some method of progression, like factions or experience, so to reward players putting some effort and spending their time, even when they fail to extract (but again, balance, it shouldn’t be optimized so failing ends up being more rewarding).

The goal should be quite obvious: provide players a playground to familiarize with all the game’s systems (outside of PvP) in their own terms. With meaningful PvE progression, and variable, progressive difficulty (because you decide within the map to limit yourself to the easier zones).

All of this without disrupting the current PvP game. In this discussion there was some contention because it’s thought that adding a PvE option would directly disrupt the PvP space and have direct consequences that would negatively affect the pool of PvP players, so eventually making the whole game worse, rather than better. Because of actively filtering out the struggling players (moved down to PvE only) and leaving the PvP side as an entirely self-selected tryhards, making so the access to this new PvP space even harsher than it currently is. Because there’s no one left that is of lower skill.

The example to prove all this is Tarkov, recently adding an offline mode. I knew about the offline mode (and the huge popularity of the unofficial mod that forced developers to make the option themselves) but I didn’t know that from their own reports, adding the offline version KILLED the online activity, and so damaged directly the overall health on the actual main game.

But again, implementation details make or break an idea. in the case of Tarkov the offline mode MIRRORS the online. You can play on the same maps, find the same loot, have the same progression, the same quests. It’s a replica of most of the online game, but you shoot at bots rather than real players. So it is plausible that players who think the PvP space is too “sweaty” just give up entirely and play, the same game, offline. More power to them, I guess.

In my Marathon proposal I carefully avoided this pitfall. The hypothetical two new PvE maps are PvE only. You never get to play them in PvP. The PvE side is completely separate from PvP. More importantly, the PvE side main purpose is to BE INSTRUMENTAL to PvP. In Tarkov offline you never move your progress into the online. The two modes don’t talk to each other at all. But here, the PvE stash is precisely intended to be filled up to the point that you ARE going to try PvP. Because you’ve maxed everything on the PvE so much that you get to a point where you are very much willing to waste it, trying PvP. The PvE means you can always get more, on your terms. And, at the same time, while this stash progression is meant to blend PvE and PvP, they only minimally overlap at the bottom end. The best PvE loot should always be equal to the base first tier of PvP loot. The PvE becoming the stepping stone to PvP content, and nothing more.

I’m not going in the details about why this is not a gimmick, but something I personally deduced from reading tons of feedback. That tons of players would benefit to this more welcoming place where they can familiarize properly, without the harsh frustration of PvP, and in preparation to it.

This idea has one point of failure, but a meaningful one. A real one. Adding all I described, and executing it well rather than an afterthought, means allocating resources to it. It means taking resources AWAY from PvP content, to develop this other bubble. My idea is only successful if it meaningfully increases the number of new players that decide to try the game. because if this doesn’t happen, then the PvE mode is largely ignored, and doesn’t end up feeding the PvP side on the longer term. Which is a very old “diatribe.” I do think game development (for online games) always focuses too much of keeping their current players happy, at the expense of the experience and appeal of brand new ones. the big discussion applies to World of Warcraft, all the way to Destiny 2 where, for YEARS, everyone agreed that the “onboarding” got worse and worse, despite it being redesigned several times (again, implementation details are important, and redesigning the early game is useless if you don’t know what you’re doing).

Ultimately the possibility to achieve this, despite I wrote here the motivations why I expect new players coming to the game, having addressed what kills the experience for so many of them, is still all a gamble. As a designer I’d take the bet, but winning it or not isn’t for me to decide.

It’s something that would have to be proven. And I could either be proven right, or wrong.

But while my proposal has at least a rational explanation, to create the possibility of a positive outcome, in Bungie’s own current offering I just don’t see any rational reason for it leading to a success. I just can’t see how. So between zero chances and one, I’d still take the bet.

P.S.
I’ll try to address here the more abstract and philosophical argument on game design, that was the real trigger for all this. Some people think this in an intrinsic nature of the extraction shooter. That Bungie made the very best game possible, and so they didn’t compromise their vision. And so that there’s no way to “popularize” this game without essentially destroying what it is, betraying its nature.

This is, from my point of view, a radical lack of imagination (and game design). This is not to say “I am better”, but to underline a very common position. A trap where we ALL fall in. In order to design we make rules. Game design is all about setting limits, rather than freedoms. The problem is, the nature of this task often leads you getting trapped INSIDE what you built. To the point that you observe it from the inside, within its intricacy and think “yeah, it’s the best I can do.” If you try to touch anything, it all comes down.

This is more a conceptual problem than a practical one. The cage is one of your own making, and if you end up thinking you exhausted possibilities that’s the hint you’ve cornered yourself, rather than bumped into a limit that is real.

In the context of Marathon I thought at a certain point about an idea that doesn’t make a lot of sense on its own, but that I was using, to myself, as a way to illustrate the context: take this endgame PvP map, the Cryo Archives. Say we put there, in the loot pool or some specific place, a special key, that you can collect with successive runs. This key can then be used, whenever you want (consuming it, so it goes away), to open a special PvE map (rigorously solo, in this case, no teams). That’s all. The idea is that, how I proposed above, the PvE side would be only a stepping stone to familiarize to PvP. This new PvE “bubble” would be entirely worthless for any player who has access to the Cryo Archives. Why waste time in PvE? There’s no reward, there isn’t any point. That content would have no goal for you, no purpose. But why should it be limited? This other idea, to offer PvE-only content EXCLUSIVE to high-end PvP players. WHY NOT?! But if why “not”, why then? Because even those highly successful PvP players may aspire to something that isn’t SWEATY PvP ALL THE TIME. Why couldn’t they ALSO enjoy a limited PvE playground, with good rewards, and that is limited and fed by successful PvP (since its again a key to loot within the Cryo Archives, so one becomes a requirement for the other, you need to run the PvP map so that you can run once the PvE map, and if you want to repeat it again, you need to go through the PvP map, meaning that the PvE content never competes and replaces the PvP, but is consequent to it). Whenever you feel game design has trapped you in a corner, it’s a lie. There is always another way, don’t stop looking.

P.P.S.
Forgot to link to this.
(archived)

Saw this being hinted at, and while thinking about it I figured out you can actually make a strong case for this, no matter how silly and outlandish it sounds.

This is not as saying there’s a magical malignant entity, like a ghost in the machine, that took control of out AIs and will in the future cause all sort of problems. But there is something maybe darker and far more subtle going on.

AI is demonic in the sense that what controls it is something not human.

Not a literal meaning, but as an enhanced metaphysical sense, one step beyond traditional metaphysics as we use it: something one step beyond human comprehension. Not again in the form of “god of the gaps”, since that one simply indicates a loss of meaning, the definition of something know with its form given completely wrong. You think “god” is in the “gap” of something you don’t currently comprehend. In this case the demonic is not a mistaken symbol, but a correct, pertinent one. Not an aspiration to a definition, but the best fit, the one true step. The right sound. A correctly defined not-observed, that takes control. Not being there, not being known. A Lovecraftian horror space that averts vision. Something that molds humanity, without humanity awareness of it, beyond its shell.

Which is just a fancy way of saying that the main practical category of all this is that no one controls it. You can see these big companies, run by techno-fascists, chasing after their own drug-induced delirious visions. Which is certainly true to some extent, but they really don’t lead anything. They are themselves the most delusional. What happens, in practice, is that the machine “has” to be fed. Impersonal. There is no will driving this compulsion. Worldwide economy happens to be destroyed, sacrificed to this demon that has to feed.

No one has any control. It just is.

You can’t “win” against Kryptonite. It’s built precisely to unmake you.

P.S.
Again in contrast to god of the gaps, in that case the signature feature of a gap is that it always recedes. What is a god-gap today will be known scientifically tomorrow. AI is demonic because it operates in reverse: it always advances, the gap expands, until everything is devoured and nothing left is known. Where AI expands, human consciousness shrinks. The fascist-demon carapace will have removed consciousness from existence.

There would be a whole lot that maybe is worthwhile, but I’ll try to be terse here.

I wrote about Crimson Desert back in 2019. Most people misremember when they say the game started as an MMO. More precisely it was always intended (within the vagueness of what was disclosed back then) as a sort of single-player story that then opened in some shared “MMO” zones for its end/post game. At the time I simply stated that, in the context of game design, the principles that make a single-player game directly conflict with those of an MMO. We now know how it ended: they dropped the multiplayer part, and the game is fully offline, without any form of co-op. Firmly closed against any sort of open activity.

More recently, in discussions outside this blog, I was very skeptical before release, and critical/cynical now. Like many others I doubted that the engine worked as well as they advertised, and despite many glitches and flaws they surely delivered and won on that whole angle. I’ve read some perspectives claiming that Pearl Abyss wanted a game to advertise its engine. I don’t see this likely, but they definitely hit that target. If their goal was to use the game as a way to showcase an engine, to then sell to other studios, then it’s all a flawless win. But again, I don’t see any concrete sign that they want to sell this technology to someone else.

Right before the game’s release the controversy was all about no one being able to pin down what the game actually was going to be. It looked like 10 different games smashed together, but where all of them were turned to eleven. It was all exaggerated, but in a way that didn’t simply look off, but downright implausible. No one had a real idea of how playing this game would actually “feel.” Whether you loved or were dismayed by those previews, it all seemed “unlikely”. What I think I correctly anticipated, before release, is that this overall “confusion” would CONTINUE even after release. EVEN for those who have already played the game for 10-20+ hours. What the game truly is, and whether great or awful, continues to be hard to decide. And creating radical disagreement.

In typical internet controversy this obviously becomes a fight between two factions, and as it often happen in these cases, these varied opinions that appear to directly contradict each other are instead, for the most part, all valid and true at once. They are all apparent contradictions, but they are simply shining different lights across the surface of the game. It just depends what face you’re presently observing.

That’s a terse way for me to say that there’s plenty that this game does brilliantly, but usually it’s also more interesting to learn from what this game does wrong.

It is also possible to find some synthesis, like an overall take that is valid: Crimson Desert feels precisely like a game realized by a talented team of programmers thinking that they could execute game design equally well, on their own. It certainly doesn’t come together as a “good game”, it simply is not.

But, I think, what defines it best, is the frustration, from looking at it from the outside. The same frustration I have with Black Desert, precisely. Crimson Desert is a really bad “game” built around technology that (despite a myriad of flaws) is quite outstanding. WELL MORE THAN ENOUGH to seize a game of the year type of prize, EVEN in the year of potential GTA6. We are truly talking about a game that defines a DECADE, a worldwide milestone. It is in light of this absurd, sky-high potential that Crimson Desert is infuriating. Not because it’s not as great as “we” project, but because it’s actually MEDIOCRE. Despite its technology and foundation, it never reaches the quality of an “average” game. All its flaws are, as it usually happens instead, within the technical limits, or budget, or needing more months/years of development. As it happens with Black Desert, we are talking about fundamental problems that are EASY AND QUICK (cheap) to solve.

How is it possible for a game that was in development for several years, that the same (hardcoded) button to loot items is the same you use to jump? It goes beyond the typical “devs don’t play their own game.” This is something that would irritate me within 5 minutes testing a dev build. How it’s even plausible that this made into a released game!??

This makes Crimson Desert (and Black Desert) an absurd anomaly.

We’ve never seen something like this. It never happened. Games usually stumble and fall DESPITE the developers best efforts. Often it’s merely about technical skills that limit the scope and vision, but in general you try your best and have to live with what comes out. Crimson Desert is a unique case because ANY team could have done so much better, given what’s available. Its flaws, for the most part, are ridiculously obvious to see and solve for anyone with an average design sensibility.

And again, the best way to frame and understand Crimson Desert, is in light of what I wrote, at length, about a single inventory item in Black Desert. Despite the topic is completely different, the contextual frame is exactly the same. Pearl Abyss is a team that slips and falls constantly on BANALITIES.

What will be left of all of this? In a year or two? The tech is certainly noteworthy, but this is not a game that will have any stay in players’ hearts. Including those who rightfully love what the game is, right now. I doubt there’s any replayability, in a way like Skyrim is always fun to replay (there’s no “RPG” depth and progression, the story is not there, the varied activities and free player agency are illusions for a game that is exceedingly linear). I don’t see this game remain in the conversation for more than a couple of weeks.

Let’s say they give the game an expansive DLC (it’s quite probable), I expect it to have zero improvements in the game’s current systems, but I guaranteed it will add ten brand new ones, all executed poorly. If it follows Black Desert path: nothing will be fixed or improved, some things will be broken further, a whole clumsy lot will be added on top of this already overcrowded pile.

Gameplay itself, the combat, is trivially easy and repetitive. Hordes of the same 5 guys that occasionally switch how they dress, but that you all fight in the same way without a threat. Ironically this is exactly like Black Desert, a game with an insanely deep combat system… but performed against enemies that are glorified training dummies. They barely pretend to move around you. In Black Desert it’s all a mindless grind where the only skill level is how fast you can farm them. The game is a speedrun. That’s the only skill ceiling. You either kill slow or fast.

You could make a case about bosses in Crimson Desert. From what I’ve seen, some players struggle, even for a long time. But boss design is mostly built around some gimmick that once you find out you can exploit. I’ve seen this praised, because it actually pushes you to perform specific attacks rather than lamely spam the basic one, but it’s all technically bad. For example I saw a player struggle for a whole hour against a boss whose special attack was digging and disappearing underground. There are tons and tons of problems with this boss, but the main one is that the player was trying hard to anticipate the special attack, to stun the boss, and failing most times (for him, done too early, a single attack of this boss would one-shot him, so he was forced to kill it without a single mistake). Turns out that you stun the boss by acting LATE rather than early. If you try to anticipate the attack, you fail, but if you instead stun it while it’s already disappeared underground (still as soon he goes under), then the stun works. And it makes absolutely no logical sense, because you’d intuitively assume that once the boss is underground it’s then impossible to hit.

In general, from what I’ve seen, boss design in this game is really mediocre, and I would put it one notch below even what “Where Winds Meet” delivers.

As I’ve written elsewhere, “bizzarre” game design is not an ingredient of Crimson Desert, it’s been the MAIN ingredient since Black Desert. One one hand the game is excessively overdesigned (not going to comment for the “focus interaction”, which would be a main topic otherwise), while at the same time being so clumsy, easily fixable with the bare minimum of care.

And it all meaningfully converges right here:

(screenshot from resetera, in this case, but I assume it’s legit since I’ve seen personally even worse)

A piece (or two?) of AI art (let’s not even go there). Look at the frame clipping into the ceiling, then how the two paintings are positioned.

That’s the attention to detail, that’s how much care there is in building and shaping this world. That’s the immersion it supports.

Not as a meaningful example on its own, but as a metaphor you can apply to the rest of the game, especially its game design.

It’s the most accurate, pertinent metaphor.

Including of course those who will see that image, enjoy the warm tones, and say they are fine with it, that it’s really not a big deal impacting their experience. And they are totally right. This is not a damning example, but again the standard that is applied across the whole game, across all its system (including the horse movement and “handling”).

Both absurd and ridiculous, and actually so easy to “fix.” But as Black Desert has shown across its 10 years of its existence: no, it won’t be fixed, it won’t get better.

Or at least, that’s the rational outcome, given the experience with Black Desert. And so the rational conclusion giving the information that is available. They just don’t know what they are doing. They’ve picked what looked cool (including Cliff, as a placeholder for Jon Snow, since that was what was cool at the time of development of Crimson Desert, right when Game of Thrones was at its top) and mashed together a bunch of games. Whether it was Witcher 3, RDR2, Zelda. They had the better technology, just borrowing systems across all the successful games that come out: how can you possibly not qualify for GOTY, given that formula & clever strategy?

Yeah. Crimson Desert is literally all it appears to be: a mess. (or a great technology in the wrong hands)

Exactly the same of Black Desert.