Marathon Dev Team Update: A Note on the Season 2 Economy

There’s been a lot of conversations about the loot economy and drop changes in Season 2, and we want to share more about how we’re thinking about the loot economy overall.

Out the gate in Season 2, progression and access to power moved much faster than the previous season. For reference, the average wealth in week two of Season 2 is similar to what we saw in weeks 11 and 12 of Season 1. And while we did want to increase progression speeds, we didn’t land at a place that’s healthy for the game.

There are a few things we’re tracking that are contributing to this accelerated pace:

• There’s an issue causing higher rarity loot to be more prevalent throughout the game than we see internally. This isn’t something we’ve seen in our internal playtests, and we’re still unravelling the source.

• There were various bugs and other issues we’ve fixed in recent updates, such as guaranteed gold drops in places that shouldn’t have them.

• While not the main cause, the influx of Sponsored Kits at the start of the season bolstered progression speeds.

• While also not the main cause, the Sponsored Survival grind combined with an issue with the Complex Control chest also contributed to bloated Vaults.

• The combination of these things has led to increased progression across the board, including with the Cradle.

While we continue investigating the source of the loot drop issues, we've made some tweaks targeting progression, some of which we hope to reverse later in the season when we have other solutions in place. This includes the boosted containers being turned off and nerfs to Cradle XP rates.

Thanks for all of your feedback so far, and we’ll keep you posted on any developments or future changes to come.