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When did people start hating challenge in video games? I feel like back in the day challenge was seen as cool and fun and something many looked fondly at even if they themselves couldn’t beat it Now anytime something is hard its seen as unacceptable…

Congratulations to all the runners who’ve been battling it out in the floating death fridge we call Cryo Archive! We’ve been watching and ingesting all the thoughts and feedback that we’re hearing, aggregating it and taking it down in notes. After this weekend we’ll spend some time looking into feedback and thinking of the next iterations we want to make: Main topics we’ve noted so far: - Scheduling : options for players who can’t play on weekends - Solos : is there any way to play this map without joining a crew? - Subroutines: can subroutines be more guaranteed as a drop from vaults? Any of these may take some time to figure out so I can’t guarantee quick solutions here but we’ll definitely discuss these topics as a team this week. Thanks for sticking with us as we evolve the game, and helping us fight the good fight against the cyborgs, robots, and aliens!

Cryo and Ranked are coming and we're excited to see players battle it out over Tau Ceti and traverse into the big scary moon-like ship in the sky. We've put out a few posts about Cryo, poured through the variety of comments and feedback we've seen so far, and wanted to take some time to explain some of the initial decisions we've made around Cryo and Ranked with regards to weekend scheduling. So without further ado, here's what we have been thinking: 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. We also acknowledge 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. We'll be looking into what we can do to retain these considerations and potentially accommodate this in the future. Things we may iterate on in the future: - 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 - Looking at any other conditions (solo experience, crew fill experience, etc.) and iterating on it! Marathon is an evolving game and part of evolving is seeing how this initial launch plays out and adjusting as we go =). Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming and we'll update you when we figure out the next evolution.

Access granted. You have found your way to the Marathon. The ice around Cryo Archive cracks and groans. It seems nothing can stop you from getting in. It will be interesting to see if you can get out. 10 AM PT, March 20, 2026