Ziegler

Game Director - MARATHON , Former Game Director - VALORANT. My statements and views are my own and do not reflect those of any current or past employer.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

Every crew is different, what will your story be?

[Marathon @MarathonTheGame]

In death we’ve just begun. Watch the Marathon Launch Cinematic featuring Poppy and Son Lux.

Marathon releases March 5.

https://t.co/gWe2HQBgjJ

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

UPDATE: DAWN RISES ON SPONSORED SURVIVAL

It's been a wild week as we've been kicking off our first post launch season with season 2! First of all want to thank everyone who has come out at night to traverse the haunting landscape of Night Marsh both in our core extraction experience and in our first PVP-Lite Mode Sponsored Survival. The anomalous entities are happy for your continued visits, as it gets lonely out there when there's no runners to spook.

As we shift into week 2, we're going to let the sun rise over Tau Ceti and move sponsored survival to Perimeter, so you can all warm up from the dark night and enjoy pushing contracts for your demanding corporate clients in the daylight. Details below:

- As of 6/10 10 am PT, we will be disabling Sponsored Survival for Night Marsh and enabling Sponsored Survival for Perimeter.
- Sponsored Survival Perimeter will be available approximately 2 weeks (until 6/24/26).
- Rooks will be available to use in any of the supported queues after this change goes live.

Thanks again to everyone out there and we'll keep you updated if anything else changes. Now back to figuring out some of these other new bugs and weird things happening (so much to do...)

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

Come join us for a night time stroll…

[Marathon @MarathonTheGame]

https://t.co/tnRcQSzPIK

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

UPDATE: WALKING THE PERIMETER AND UPPING THE GAME

We are making an update to the Experimental queue and shifting the Sponsored Marsh map to Sponsored Perimeter. Details below:

- As of 3PM PT Sponsored - Perimeter will become available.

- Sponsored Perimeter will require you to have a free (green/enhanced tier) sponsored kit equipped to queue.

- Sponsored Perimeter will only support crew matching, or pre-made crew queueing.

To commemorate this experiment we will also be upping the floor on sponsored kits. Green sponsored kits will now be free and grey tier sponsored kits will be retired until the end of season.

Thanks to everyone who has been participating in the Sponsored Dire Marsh experiment, we've learned a lot from your feedback and from observing you. As we roll out this new queue, we look forward to hearing from all of you who want to hop in and join us especially those of you at hauler who want to duke it out.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

What!? Sponsored Marsh disappeared?! We'll get it back online in a few. Apologies for the hiccup, we're on it.

[Marathon Development Team @MarathonDevTeam]

We’re currently looking into an issue causing the Sponsored Dire Marsh queue to be unavailable. Thanks for your reports, we’ll update you as soon as we can!

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

We've definitely been talking a lot about nade spam, looking at ways currently to tackle this. We'll keep you updated as we look to solutions.

[Marathon Development Team @MarathonDevTeam]

As we get deeper into Season 1, we've been monitoring your feedback around the current combat sandbox closely. We wanted to talk a little about a few of the topics we're seeing frequently from the community, and some updates we're planning.

💣Too Many Grenades

A big topic in the community right now is that it's not a good experience to open up a fight only to be barraged with dozens of grenades. We're looking to push some changes to stock counts and stack sizes before the end of the season. We're keeping an eye on the overall usage of equipment and will make additional changes as necessary.

🪙Gold Ares Railgun

The Ares railgun with a Prestige mod being able to one-shot Runners with purple or gold shields is unintentional, and we'll be issuing a fix in a future update. We want it to feel strong and fun to use without being so effective it becomes overly frustrating to play against.

🔫WSTR Damage Nerf

The WSTR damage nerf was a temporary nerf and we just released a more nuanced set of changes earlier today in Update 1.0.6.2. While we aren't looking to change the two-shot breakpoints, the WSTR indeed took a bigger hit than we were intending with the temporary nerf and we intend for this change to put it in a better place.

It should have similar effectiveness against AI as before the nerf as well have less damage fallout at range. Go try it out and let us know what you think.

We appreciate everyone's input, please keep it coming.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

UPDATE - SPONSORED MARSH

Thank you to everyone who has been participating in the Sponsored Marsh Queue! A lot of you have been participating, and we've been learning a lot from watching you all play and listening to the feedback around the queue.

As for next steps, we're still finalizing what to do for our next experiment, so we'll be keeping Sponsored Dire Marsh on for at least another week (4/29 - 5/6).

Thanks again for playing, and keep the feedback coming.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

We're looking at trying out some adjustments to pacing on Dire Marsh that we want to test through the experimental queue. As we've been tracking Dire Marsh over the season, we've felt that at times it can feel a bit crowded, leading to some issues where collisions between players happen too early especially around certain regions in the map. As a result we're going to try something on Sponsored Marsh where we'll be reducing the max crew size by one crew and observing to see how the pacing of the matches play out and how in general it feels to have a little bit more wiggle room for players.

DETAILS:
- Change is already live as of 4/22 3PM PT.
- Maximum crew count for Sponsored Dire Marsh will be reduced by one crew.

Thanks everyone, as we roll out this change we'll be looking for continued feedback alongside play observation to help us see how this change plays out, so let us know how it's going out there in the Sponsored Marsh!

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

Matchmaking is a complex series of wires and circuits trying to connect players to give them the best time to match while also providing quality matches. In that complex nest of things we found a bug related to regional matchmaking that is affecting a very small set of players that is unintentionally putting them in matches they’re not supposed to be in. We’re prepping a fix to get in for Tuesday morning 4/21 PT to fix this.

Thanks for helping us find this, we’ll work on smoothing it out.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

UPDATE: WTF WSTRs

We're gonna take a shot at bringing the WSTR more in line. Right now it's become a dominant option and is eclipsing a lot of the other short range options that exist in the game. SOOOOOO... as of Tuesday 4/21 (likely 8AM PT) the WSTR will no longer be able to down an enemy player who has blue shields or above with two shots. The ideal is that in a majority of cases this will force a reload in scenarios where the target has a blue shield, allowing for some more counterplay in these scenarios.

What Will Change:

- Change will go live Tuesday 4/21 in the morning. Likely 8AM PT.

- WSTRs can still down a green shielded target with 2 direct shots at short rang

- WSTRs will no longer be able to down a blue and above shielded target with 2 shots at short range.

We're still keeping an eye on a variety of balance issues. Thanks for all the feedback, keep it coming and we'll keep hammering at it.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

A lot of things in the new mid season update. This new update focuses on a few new ways to interact with other runners, play together, and some rewards related to playing together. Additionally there's some improvements and changes to how Recon works for all of you Recon mains, some solo progression buffs, some progression buffs for new players starting mid season, some adjustments to sniper rifles, and a lot more!

With all the changes in the update we'll be keeping our eyes and ears open for how it's going, so we appreciate any and all feedback you have.

Good luck out there on Tau Ceti.

Check out more info in the post below.

[Marathon @MarathonTheGame]

https://t.co/vTHIU4MMdr

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

UPDATE: FREE KIT FRENZY - EXPERIMENTAL QUEUE - DIRE MARSH SPONSORED

Thank you to all of you who participated in the Duos Experiments we've had over the past few weeks. We're currently working on making duos a real feature in Season 2 and are diligently working on delivering that to all of you who are eagerly awaiting its return.

ABOUT EXPERIMENTAL QUEUES:

The experimental queue is a time limited queue that allows us to preview features in development with you, often with a less-than-complete feature set. This queue allows the Marathon development team to learn and obtain feedback that helps us deliver a more completed feature set down the line. For the sake of queue health and focus we only run one experimental queue at a time. Once we have learned enough to understand our next steps for this feature, we start work on finalizing the feature and move on to the next experiment. Your participation in any experiment is greatly appreciated and is very helpful to us in developing features down the line.

THE NEXT EXPERIMENT:

What happens when you bring a knife... to a knife fight? For our next experiment, starting Wednesday, 4/15 at 10AM PT, we will be enabling the Dire Marsh - Sponsored Queue. This is a new experimental queue that is focused on learning a bit more about our early gear ecosystem. In this queue all players will enter with a free sponsored kit and be challenged to use what they find on Dire Marsh to upgrade themselves and get out! Details below.

DIRE MARSH SPONSORED

Details: The experiment will run for approximately 2 weeks, from 4/15 @ 10AM PT to 4/29 @ 10AM PT. We may change the end timing depending on anything we discover along the way that might warrant us to make an adjustment.

--You will only be eligible to enter the queue if you (and your crew) have a free sponsored kit (white tier) equipped.

--You can enter as a premade duo (crew fill off), premade trio, or crew fill into a trio.

--The queue will only be for the Dire Marsh Zone.

--To enter this queue, you can select "Dire Marsh Sponsored" from the zone list.

What we will be observing and looking to understand:

--How the game plays out with low fixed set gear conditions and caps.

--How the zero to hero play works in low starting set gear conditions and caps.

--Any technical issues that arise.

There are many other changes and additions coming on Wednesday 4/15 PT as well so stay tuned to learn more from the Marathon Discord, and across all the social channels for MarathonTheGame / MarathonDevTeam. Thanks everyone. We appreciate your passion and all the commitment you have to providing us feedback and helping us learn more to evolve Marathon!

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

There's been some confusion so just to clarify there will only be one experimental queue running at any given time. A new experiment will begin on 4/15 at 10AM PT. Thanks!

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

Our experiment is almost complete with the duos queue and we've gathered a lot of valuable information to help us finalize our plans for duos for Season 2. With the culmination of the duo experiment, we just wanted to thank everyone who has participated and helped us learn more about duos in Marathon, and tease that we're looking to bring the queue back better than ever in the course of Season 2. More details to come on that in future updates.

Details:

- On Wednesday 4/8 at 10 AM PT we will be disabling the "Outpost - Duos" Queue.

- There will be a new experimental queue starting on 4/15 at 10 PT. More details about this queue coming next week.

In regards to experiments, we have a new experimental queue we'll be running starting on 4/14. We'll have more information on this queue within the next week, and look forward to you joining us again to help us learn more about additional features we're interested in adding to our game.

Thanks again for helping us evolve this game!

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

That Biotox Disinjector had some sneaky interaction issues. We’ve disabled the M77 gold mod perk while we await to out in a bigger fix. Thanks again for the heads up, we’ll keep watch.

[Marathon Development Team @MarathonDevTeam]

Due to an issue with the M77 Prestige mod Interval Mag that allows it to affect other equipped weapons, we are temporarily disabling the Interval Link perk on the mod.

The rate of fire, stability, range, and precision damage effects will not work, but the other benefits of the mod will still apply to the M77.

Sorry for the inconvenience. We have a permanent fix scheduled for the 1.0.6 Update on April 14 and will reenable the mod's perk then.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

Biotoxic Disinjector. It’s Strong! … too strong. Tonight Friday April 3rd at 6pm PT we will be doing a change on live taking it down a notch and nerfing its damage. We’re likely to make some adjustments to Biotox in the near future and may not stick to this damage nerf but for now we wanted to make sure we could curb a little bit of its dominion in the game. 

The change:
- Biotoxic Disinjector will now deal 35% less damage across the board. 

Thanks for all the feedback and we’ll keep chipping away at our long list of future changes.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

BALANCE SHAKE UP! We're looking to make some changes in the next couple of patches to adjust some of the outliers in the combat space that we've both seen in our observations and heard from your feedback across all of the various (and plentiful) channels we watch. Some of these changes will be likely coming in the next patch, the next set will likely be arriving a week after.

Here's some of the areas we're focusing on adjusting:

- Bubble shields being too easy to get, too powerful to use.
- The Knife scaling too easily to god like power levels.
- Thermal scopes being too present and dominant
- Snipers being too strong in all scenarios.
- Giving Vandal and Recon some more oomph to match their counterparts.

ALSO we're adding some stuff that can help add texture to the outcomes of fights:

- SECRET: A new item to give solos a more common option when downed.
- SECRET: A new item to give a more merciful option between crews.

There'll be a lot more goodies in the coming patches and more details as the patch notes go live.

Thank you all again for keeping the feedback flowing. We've still got a big list of things we're looking into that extends beyond this that will take us more time to figure out and we'll update you as we continue to build on our evolving plans.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

DUOS UPDATE: A CANDLE LIT DINNER ON OUTPOST
We're learning a lot as we go through our duos experiment and so we're moving on to outpost to see how runner pairs do when getting drenched by molten rain! Starting this Wednesday (4/1) at 10am PT, we're going to disable duo queue on Dire Marsh and enable Outpost for Duos.

Details below:

- On Wednesday 4/1 at 10am PT we will disable "Dire Marsh - Duos" and enable "Outpost - Duos" Queue.

- Players in pre-made duos will be able to queue into Outpost - Duos. Matchmaking into a duo pair will not be available.

- This experiment will run for 1 week, ending on Wednesday 4/8 at 10 am PT.

What we will be watching / listening for:

- How pvp and pve encounters play out
- How puzzle mechanics work on the map work in duos
- Any technical issues that occur

Thanks to everyone who has been participating in the duos experiment so far. It's been valuable to observe the data and hear the feedback. We'll continue to beat it up, iterate, and update you as we evolve it.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

I feel you. Comms are always a complicated thing, we want to make sure we're keeping everyone in the loop while making sure we can deliver what we promise when we talk about it. This means sometimes we might be vague because we're still finalizing the details before we can talk about it, etc. But I'm also jumping the gun (apologies to my comms team) cause I know it sucks if you're a player, you're seeing stuff you want improved, and you don't hear anything for a while. Just want to remind you and everyone else we're still paying really close attention and working on improving the game!

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

(update about an update: we have some iterations / big balance changes brewing right now and will talk about it soon)

but... OFF TOPIC: I feel like as a kid of the 90s and a person who's worked on PVP FPS games for over a decade, I may have taken the first two lines of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" too much to heart.

[Ziegler @Ziegler_Dev]

Part of evolving our game is making sure we're continuing to find better ways to improve the technical performance of it. In the mean time, we wanted to make sure we're providing assistance for anyone on PC that is looking to optimize their framerate better.

Thanks for bearing with us as we continue to evolve our creepy corner of the universe.

[Marathon Development Team @MarathonDevTeam]

Not sure which graphics settings to change when playing Marathon on PC?

Our new PC Performance Guide breaks down recommended defaults and how to adjust for your hardware.

Learn more: https://t.co/tUv5RkEzZR