Marathon’s most controversial feature, aim assist on PC for those using a mouse and keyboard, is being removed already after developers came under fire for its inclusion.
While access to Marathon’s Closed Alpha has been rather limited thus far, with thousands of players getting in and many thousands more watching online, feedback has nonetheless been piling up for Bungie.
The studio behind Halo and Destiny is trying its hand at an extraction shooter, but the early response hasn’t been overly positive, with some even calling for a delay to overhaul core components.
One issue has stood out from the pack, however, as players on PC have been outspoken in their hatred for a particular feature. Now, after a week of immense backlash, devs are removing PC aim assist entirely, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Marathon devs to remove PC aim assist
As confirmed in the early patch notes for the Closed Alpha’s Week 2 update, set to release in the coming days, PC aim assist is being disabled altogether.
“Mouse magnetism,” as it’s referred to in the patch notes, is being “removed” alongside “aim assist on PC.” Furthermore, there will no longer be a setting to “toggle it on and off,” thus creating an uneven playing field.
To keep everyone on equal footing, the option will vanish from the settings menu altogether. There will be no PC players will magnetized aim landing shots they otherwise wouldn’t have.
Moving forward, Marathon will function like any other FPS on PC, relying on your raw mouse input and gunskill to get the job done.
This comes mere days after the likes of shroud argued Bungie was ‘ruining’ Marathon by favoring console players with such a feature. “Mouse and keyboard players feel like sh**,” he said at the time.”
“I get that they’re trying to balance between consoles and PCs, for crossplay, but it’s only going to ruin the PC part of the game.”
Now, it’s clear Bungie heard these complaints and the studio is acting to mitigate all concerns.
Marathon Closed Alpha Week 2 update patch notes
Far from the only change in the second week of the Closed Alpha, there’s plenty more to the full patch notes, which we’ve included below:
Marathon patch 0.5.0.2 notes:
Later this week, we will be releasing patch 0.5.0.2, which includes the following updates:
User Interface and Experience
- Fixed an issue where players’ Bungie IDs were not showing correctly in player tooltips.
Combat
Runners
- Runner’s base health has been increased from 100 hp to 120 hp.
- Shield hp has been decreased by the following amounts:
- Standard (Grey) – Reducing from 25 hp to 20 hp.
- Enhanced (Green) – Reducing from 50 hp to 40 hp.
- Deluxe (Blue) – Reducing from 75 hp to 60 hp.
- Superior (Purple) – Reducing from 100 hp to 80 hp.
- Prestige (Gold) – Reducing from 100 hp to 80 hp.
Weapons
- Removed mouse magnetism and aim assist on PC and disabled the setting to toggle it on and off.
Long Shot
- Increased Longshot sniper damage by 11%.
Overrun AR
Stability
- Fixed an issue causing crashes when using certain GPU hardware configurations.
- Fixed an issue where players pressing the sprint key while in ADS could cause a crash.
- Fixed issues that could cause dedicated servers to crash.
