The Marathon Server Slam is off to a fast begin, with spectacular participant numbers on Steam.
As a part of the Server Slam occasion, Bungie’s extraction shooter was made out there to obtain without spending a dime throughout PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Sequence X and S yesterday, February 26, permitting gamers to offer it a shot over the weekend.
Marathon hit a peak of 143,621 concurrent gamers on Steam, though the true determine throughout all platforms might be greater (neither Microsoft nor Sony make participant numbers public). And whereas the Server Slam is free and Marathon will value $39.99 when it launches correct subsequent week, the numbers do recommend vital curiosity.
Maybe a helpful comparability is to rival extraction shooter Arc Raiders, which went on to get pleasure from monumental success and enormous gross sales after an analogous server slam occasion forward of launch and the identical value level. Arc Raiders’ stress check hit a peak of 189,668 concurrent gamers on Valve’s platform. Marathon is behind that for now, however its peak quantity will certainly develop as we head into the weekend and extra persons are out there to play.
Already, Bungie has signalled it’s gathering suggestions from gamers, and stated it’ll make updates through the Slam itself and “tie up any free ends” forward of launch on March 5. In a post on social media, Bungie outlined a variety of bugs it’s working to repair, however maybe of most curiosity is an acknowledgement of suggestions on Marathon’s consumer interface.
If there’s one side of Marathon that has been roundly criticized, it’s the UI. Some gamers are saying they’re discovering the icons of things unintuitive, and there’s an excessive amount of visible litter, which makes navigating the menus trickier than it must be.
“We have heard your ideas and need to hear extra!” Bungie stated on the UI suggestions, earlier than pointing gamers to its Discord. It appears unlikely the developer will be capable to make any significant change right here earlier than launch, however hopefully tweaks might be made sooner moderately than later.
In the meantime, Bungie stated it had obtained reviews that PvP isn’t frequent sufficient total. It provided some ideas for gamers hoping to have interaction in PvP extra typically.
“Perimeter (Newbie) deliberately infils fewer Runners,” Bungie stated. “Head to Perimeter and then Dire Marsh for a higher problem. Moreover, the UESC are deadlier than you may suppose and will wipe you off the map (thus limiting the foyer’s PvP alternatives) if you happen to allow them to swarm.”
The Marathon Server Slam ends at 10am PT on March 2, with rewards out there for testing the servers.
Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.