Bungie Addresses ‘Marathon' PC Aimbotting, Solos Mode
Bungie
The Marathon Closed Alpha has been live for two days now, and has opened up to a good amount of players, but not enough for those who are still missing keys.
There has been a lot of commentary about the first impressions the game has made, but a couple of issues above others. First is the realization that PC has severe aim assist with mouse and keyboard, leading shooter players to say it's essentially a built-in aimbot, and it's turned off many from the game.
But this is where 'it's an Alpha' mode comes in, and after this feedback, it's already clear that this is going to be scaled back. Here's Gameplay Director Andrew Watts on the issue:
'This is something we're trying out as a lever to keep the parity close between mouse and keyboard and controller. We want to get it out and get a feeling for it right now. We don't think it's in the most perfect spot or anything.'
'We're definitely trying to get folks' reactions to this as a lever for getting more parity without losing the skill ceiling and skill expression that you get with the input of your choosing whether it be mouse and keyboard or controller. That's why it's a setting you can turn on and off. We know there are players who don't want any kind of assistance with their aim and want that raw input feel, so that's why it's a toggle in the menu. We're not trying to make it a must-pick kind of thing. This is us getting it out there to get some thoughts on and iterate from there.'
Marathon
Bungie
The goal of the aim assist was clearly to create some amount of parity with console players and their controllers given that the game will be cross-play. But this seems like a dramatic overcorrection and saying that 'it's a toggle' is not remotely a fix for the problem, as then you are just purposefully handicapping yourself against console and especially other PC players who are almost certainly not going to switch it off. The goal, however, does seem to be to scale it back, but it almost certainly will not be removed entirely, as that is not the case with PC Destiny 2. Though there it's nowhere near this intense.
The other request is for a Solos mode, as right now, the only solo play you can do is loading into a normally 3s match by yourself. Lots of tension, perhaps, but far from a level playing field. But Solos does not seem to be in the cards anytime remotely soon. Here's Game Director Joe Ziegler:
'For launch, we're not going to have a solo. But what I mean by we're not going to have solo queue is that you can queue solo in our game — it's just we're not going to have solo-only lobbies. Part of it is there's just a lot of things we'd have to pretty massively adjust about the maps, the loot pool, and the balance of Runners in that kind of mode. Right now, we've mostly designed the game around there being trios or variables.'
It's been said that they tried this but it just didn't work as it was mostly just Voids sneaking around being invisible avoiding other players. So it's more than just flipping a switch and throwing 18 solos in a map together to make this work.
So one of these may be fixed for Alpha, the other may be years off, if it happens as well. We'll see what else changes from here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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