Nigga, it's a fucking Thursday I'm shocked it blew past 100k and still at 120k.
Marathon server slam is live right now, and it's doing much better than Highguard, but it is already losing players, with numbers already lower than the initial launch. While this is not the catastrophic 90% loss in concurrent players since launch. It managed 143k concurrent in EU prime time, with mostly flat numbers so far. This is a clear indication of "retention leak."
This game hinges on the nostalgia with Destiny, and for that game, the EU player base comprises of 41% of the total player base, with the USA only consisting of 26% of the total. This is why the flatline during the EU primetime is a red flag. We'll see how things go with this game, but they are gonna be facing an uphill battle to stay relevant.
Looking at posts on X and other places, players like the gun play, feeling impactful, and many say it's probably one of the best feeling gunplays so far in gaming.
But a lot of people are not happy with the long tutorial, and the game's complexity feels like it exists just for complexity's sake. Others are not happy with the cluttered UI, calling it a mess with overlapping HUD elements that are distracting. Then there are complaints with the menu elements that are confusing and counterintuitive.
Bungie’s game director dropped a post with tips to help players with the game's complexity, but most FPS players in these types of extraction shooters aren't looking for artificial game mechanic depth, but rather, they are expecting the depth coming from player strategies, not walls of text.