Marathon

In a very long, very welcome, very transparent blog post from Marathon director Joe Ziegler yesterday, he laid out what’s working and not in the game, but most importantly, its future plans.

Easily the biggest reveal was the fact that in season 2, which launches in two weeks, there will be a pair of experimental playlists, at least one adding something that some fans have been talking about since day one:

“In Season 2, we will be experimenting with two modes, one at the beginning of the season and one towards the middle/latter half of the season. The experimental mode at the beginning of the season will focus more on PVE, but with a light touch of PVP. The second experimental mode will be a PVE-only mode that’s focused on crews being tasked with completing objectives together and making some progress across matches.”

I’m not sure if “PvP lite” is just a normal map with fewer teams in it, but the obvious standout reveal here is the trial of a purely PvE mode, something that many said Marathon absolutely needed to draw in more players, and others said would run entirely counter to the purpose of the game. Well, it’s happening, and it appears to be more substantive than just eliminating rival teams from the map.