Marathon season 2 is upon us. Bungie is attempting to draw players into the game not just with new content, but an extended free week where anyone can try out the game in full to see if they want to shell out $40 to keep going afterward

We’ll talk about how many people have actually done that later on, but for now, I figured I’d go through what’s working and what isn’t.

Marathon Season 2: The Good

Night Marsh – It’s very cool. Perhaps it’s my brand new OLED screen talking, but this place is dark dark, and creates the spookiest atmosphere we’ve seen in the game so far. Moving through the grass in pitch black darkness, roaming through desolate corridors with only a flashlight, the atmosphere is top-notch. The new tower/event additions are good as well, with Upper Complex being a sort of extremely rewarding mini raid (though more on that later). If Bungie wasn’t going to do a new map, this was a good idea.

The Cradle – I really love this system. It’s a way to upgrade base stats without needing to go deep into the vendor system to get needed improvements. Starting from zero, I have been able to almost max heat capacity/reduction in that row in just a few hours just from dismantling loot and doing easy contracts. I’d consider this a very good boon for newer players who can get around some of the game’s more oppressive systems much earlier.

Cosmetics – Yes, I will throw a microtransaction or two in here. Bungie is finally making truly unique skins that are attractive enough to actually buy (at least for me, I bought the Oni Thief instantly). If this game is going to have any amount of sustainability, it needs good things to sell. These things are better.

The UI – There have been a lot of changes to the UI to make it more intuitive and, more importantly, faster to navigate, which was a pain point at launch. Some great improvements here.

Marathon Season 2: The Bad

“PvP-Lite” – Granted, this is just an experimental mode, but the Sponsored Dire Marsh playlist is not really set up that well, and as such, is pretty dull. The idea, in theory, is one team facing off against UESC enemies and loads of invading Rooks. Instead, there are barely any Rooks at all, who lack motivation to go into a mode that is the riskiest in the game for them, and the rounds are mostly just very slow PvE marches, especially since you have to play for 20 minutes at minimum. If you don’t do Upper Complex, which is very difficult for random teams, it’s a lot more dead time than usual. It also shows that basic, pure PvE, ie. simply removing other teams, is not really the way forward here. Though a more in-depth PvE mode is coming.

Sponsored Kit Skipping – Easily the most common complaint about season 2 is what Bungie has done with free kits, namely letting players skip the early grind with advantages over non-kitted players instantly. The idea of “everyone’s on the same page again" is erased within a day, and we’re almost back to feeling like the second half of season 1 already. Faster progression in some ways can be good, but this is too far.

PvE farming – Outside of the experimental mode, Bungie is encouraging players to do Night Marsh and Upper Complex/Observation Lens by positively dumping high-quality loot in there. Now, good players are farming that rapidly and gearing up in purple and golds that drop from what is a much easier mode than Outpost or Cryo. Again, this loads up these groups with purples and golds instantly, skipping the normal progression path of an extraction shooter.

The problem is that between both this farming path and the sponsored kit issue, the cat is out of the bag, and this season just has to deal with the imbalance. It’s not as if it’s going to do a second wipe or anything. Upper Complex might be nerfed, but if you don’t farm it now before that happens, you’re at a disadvantage. I do think the bad probably outweighs the good, given that the above problems that probably cannot be solved until season 3 now, and I think it will sap the interest of both new players getting stomped and veteran players getting bored. We’ll see how the season progresses.

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