Marathon moves away from Seasonal structure as next major update delayed to December

With Destiny 2 all-but-dead at this point, the team at Bungie have been putting all of their eggs into the Marathon basket. Even so, the PvP extraction shooter has run into plenty of setbacks since its arrival earlier this year – including the departure of its game director Joseph Ziegler. While Marathon’s next major update was originally set to arrive next week as part of Season 3, Bungie have now revealed that they are overhauling how future updates will be released; with the next content drop now being pushed back to December.

Taking to their blog to make the announcement, the Marathon Dev Team confirmed that Season 3 will no longer be launching on the 22nd of September. In fact, it appears as though there won’t technically be a Season 3 at all, with Bungie writing:

“We previously shared plans for Marathon’s next major update to launch on September 22. We know many players were looking forward to it, and we appreciate your patience. We are adjusting our plans to ensure the update meets your expectations. The content originally planned for September will now arrive as part of our Symbiosis update on December 8.”

Although this does represent a delay of sorts, the team have claimed it to be part of a wider shift in how future updates will be released, claiming to be “moving away from a strict seasonal schedule. Instead of tying major updates to fixed seasonal deadlines, we’re giving the team more flexibility to build, test, and improve features before they are released.”

While a disappointment given the fact that Season 3 was meant to see the permanent addition of PvE to the struggling live-service shooter, Marathon will instead be getting a ‘refresh’ in October; introducing the following:

• A progression and economy reset
• A new Rewards Pass
• Quality-of-life improvements
• Live tuning and balance updates

Alongside this, the previously-released experimental PvE mode ‘Vault Breaker’ will be returning for a limited time, giving the team “additional data about how PvE fits into progression a few weeks after a reset.”

Assuming it doesn’t get delayed further, December’s update ‘Symbiosis’ is being described as “the first major step in Marathon’s next chapter” and will bring with it a permanent PvE experience “providing a new way to explore, progress, and engage with the world beyond traditional PvPvE extraction gameplay.”

Beyond this, Symbiosis will also introduce a number of welcome additions across the board, including:

• Refreshed Perimeter experience
• New social space
• Firing range
• New Runner Shell
• ‘Experimental’ PvP Team Deathmatch mode
• “Several improvements to the new-player experience”

The full blog post can be found HERE and goes into greater depth regarding Bungie’s mentality. With Marathon currently suffering from its lowest player count since launch (at least on Steam), it will be interesting to see whether this delay ultimately helps or hinders the game in the medium-to-long run.

KitGuru says: Were you looking forward to Season 3? Is this delay for the better? Are you interested in a Team Deathmatch mode? Let us know down below.

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