Marathon‘s early game can be very stop-start. Though it only takes a few strikes of the spacebar to get straight into the next raid, the transition from match to match, for me at least, is often hampered by a flurry of inventory management and vault emptying. I have more unclaimed faction rewards than I can count, and it’s getting a bit silly at this point. Fortunately, Bungie’s heard the feedback loud and clear, and among other much-needed tweaks, this week’s update will finally bring an elegant solution that should help declutter our storage.
As revealed in the Marathon Week 2 patch notes, Bungie’s substantially upping the size of vault stacks for consumables, ammo, salvage, and grenades. Doing a quick comparison between the image shared by the studio, and the live version of the FPS game, it looks like we’re in for a whopping ten-times increase, which will certainly help cut down on the rows of Volt Batteries I’ve somehow accumulated.
In isolation, this is already a fantastic change. Less chaff means more time before we have to Marie Kondo our vaults back into a serviceable state. Beyond that, it places less impetus on farming Unstable Diodes in Perimeter and Outpost, which is itself a pretty miserable loop. The North and South Relays are already hotspots on the beginner map, so hopefully it’ll help smooth out the action across some of the other POIs. It could also help newer players get out of Perimeter, and into Dire Marsh a little sooner.
There are late-game benefits, too. Seeing as vault expansion upgrades only get more expensive, and reward progressively fewer rows of space, it’s difficult to hoard all those gold weapons you’re desperately trying to cling onto. Marathon’s benevolence in dishing out freebies makes it one of the best extraction shooters I’ve played when it comes to removing ‘gear fear.’ You shouldn’t be afraid of losing your loot, because it feels like there’s always a trove of it ready to be redeemed to replace it. It remains a big mental block for many, myself included, though, so I’m elated to see those extra vault squares being freed up.
Elsewhere in the Marathon 1.0.5 update notes, Bungie acknowledges that the audio distance change was an “overcorrection.” The original tweak increased the range at which you could hear players in combat, leading to a marked increase in third-partying (that’s been the case in my games, anyway). While some players welcome to the challenge like gladiators in the colosseum, this needs to be better balanced against those who like to squirrel about collecting loot, have a fiery exchange or two with another squad, and get out. Bungie says: “we’re still aligning on how to ensure the best player experience and will deploy changes in an upcoming update,” so keep an ear out for that.
The final issues highlighted in the update pertain to high-end PC performance, which Bungie is looking to improve, as well as a weird credit farming method. For some reason, Rooks were able to stock up on bonus credits by loading into raids and immediately exiting them. Now, you’ll have to do things the ol’ fashioned way. Though Bungie hasn’t put a date on when the update will go live, judging by last week’s patch, I’m expecting it to deploy this Wednesday, March 18.
