Marathon game director Joe Ziegler has posted a defence of the decision to release the game’s new Cryo Archive map as a weekend-only event. The time restriction has understandably left the more casual Marathon players a bit miffed. It has driven our own Oisin into the arms of Peggle. But Ziegler argues that it’s important for three reasons: encouraging players to prepare adequately, avoiding the “flooding” (hey, is this another Halo reference?) of the game’s item economy with overpowered Cryo Archive rewards, and ensuring a consistent player pool for the purposes of speedy matchmaking.
To this, I would add: Bungie and live service game developers at large tend to do well out of the old FOMO. Always leave ’em wanting more, especially when it comes to treasure-filled space tombs.
Cryo Archive is Marathon’s first jaunt inside the hull of the titular Marathon, a derelict colony ship that went missing yonks ago and is now jam-packed with enigma, also exquisite rifles and murderbots. Specifically, Cryo Archive is the Marathon’s first deck, “a labyrinth of cryopods, medical bays, and storage wings where colonists once eased into and out of deep sleep on their journey across the stars.” To access it, you’ll need to be Runner Level 25 with all six factions unlocked and a 5,000 credit loadout.
Sounds intriguing! Ah, but I’m busy this weekend, fumigating my sock drawer and trying to find a new lid for my saucepan. Why are you punishing me this way, Bungie? Here’s the relevant excerpt from Ziegler’s Xitter defence of the weekend-only provision.
We are of course always iterating and are open to looking at other options in the future, but the Ranked/Cryo Archive weekend decision is really built around three points:
Preparing: We acknowledge that players will lose a lot of gear on Cryo and Ranked because it is intended to challenge you to your limits. As a result of that, it’s important that Cryo and Ranked feel like an event you can schedule towards, grind gear up to do, etc. The loop of spend time grinding gear to spend it in Cryo or Ranked is reflected in this choice as a weekly cycle.
Economy Talk: We have some great rewards on Cryo that kind of break the bank when it comes to economy and power gain. If we were to look at having it open all the time, we’d probably have to adjust how frequently you can earn these rewards so that we don’t flood the game with amazing loot all of a sudden.
Logistics Time: Cryo and Ranked both have entry requirements (gear ante) that are built around the idea of you matching with other players on an equal investment level. They also both have a high level requirement to ensure you’ve experienced enough of the game to understand the challenges inherent to the game. This inherently makes the amount of people in that queue at any time unpredictable. Both of these experiences also need a consistent flow of players in the queue to make sure matches are full to retain the challenge. To reduce the match times and allow players to find matches quicker, making it a scheduled event means more players will show up during that window and feed the queue pool better.
Ziegler acknowledges “that there are likely some who cannot participate on the weekend or are excited about the experience and want to no-life it for weeks, and we appreciate that.” They’re thinking about how they can do things differently in future. Specifically, they’re thinking about “staggering Ranked and Cryo queues more so they overlap less”, “looking at changing the days we do either Cryo or Ranked”, “changing the ante values of Cryo or Ranked”, and “looking at any other conditions (solo experience, crew fill experience, etc.) and iterating on it”.
That bracketed part might catch your eye. Cryo Archive has been heavily pushed as an experience for squads, with a PvP emphasis and map-wide puzzles redolent of Destiny’s raids. I accept that these experiences are designed to be shared, but I have to say, I do generally prefer visiting ancient derelicts on my lonesome. Here’s a relevant take from Julian: “my overriding feeling while playing Bungie’s multiplayer game is I need to be alone to enjoy it, and that can’t be the result they’re hoping for.”
