Marathon has received a massive mid-season update, bringing with it a host of balance changes, major adjustments to powerful tools, and new cosmetics. But one of the most interesting additions was the C.A.R.R.I feature – which promotes something truly alien to the mostly ruthless playerbase: being friendly to each other.
If you aren’t familiar, the C.A.R.R.I feature rewards players with special commendations for assisting enemy players with contracts, extracting from the map together, and being an all-around pleasant character in Tau Ceti. You can then exchange these commendations for faction XP boosts and other prizes.
This, as you can imagine, is a sharp deviation from the established shoot first, ask questions later approach the majority of Marathon’s players have been aligned with. The game has proven more ferocious than its peers like Arc Raiders, so how have players reacted to this curveball?
“It’s really f****** sick,” writes user GringoinCDMX on the Marathon Reddit. They shared an anecdote where they and other solo players openly communicated and collaborated on Perimeter. Then, extracting together, they were able to group up for another match, describing it as the “most fun I’ve had in the last week playing.” This new ‘Stay Together’ mechanic is a major part of the mid-season update.
Wider discussion around C.A.R.R.I is ongoing, as players try to figure out how they feel about its wider impact on the game. “As somebody who has not put hours into the game to bleed it dry of all content within the first month, I like this update because it’s specifically for people like me,” wrote MaddyCafe. “I’ve had people be really friendly on Outpost and Perimeter to help each other get commendations, but Dire Marsh is still shoot on sight apparently.”
Others collaborate this sentiment with their own experiences, with many happy to find their pre-existing helpful behavior now rewarded. This includes Potential Owl, who wrote: “I really like the extra incentive we get from helping people complete contracts. I was already doing that before this update but now this is just the cherry on top. And spending the commendations on factions reps is god send, spending it all on Cyac so I can unlock max vault space”
However, this newfound spirit of friendship has also allowed those who wish to stay brutal killers to take advantage of the current friendly vibes. As another user described: “I had one team corner me as a Rook, offer to be friendly because they “wanted to give me something” and then offer me the Gift of Silence as soon as I popped out […] I’m not mad about it, but it seems like at least some players are reacting to the C.A.R.R.I system by being even bigger b******s than usual.”
Indeed it seems like many aren’t keen to change their ways just yet. As user Surrealmirror summerised: “[I] Played a few hours and nobody was any nicer.” Who knows? Maybe this will change in time.
This mid-season update comes alongside a new experimental game mode that forces players to enter matches with free sponsorship kits, rather than their own powerful loadouts. So if you fell off the Marathon wagon, maybe now’s a good time to check it out again.
