Marathon’s competitive mode is so complicated that Bungie made a literal maths test to figure it out, and it actually helps

I imagine it took Bungie a lot of time and iteration before settling on Marathon’s competitive system. After all, how do you structure a Ranked mode in an extraction shooter, a genre where winning and losing isn’t clear-cut? How does starting gear factor in? Does killing players or AI give you rank points? What is even the goal? Kill people or loot as much as possible?

There were a lot of ideas floating around in my head ever since Bungie announced Marathon would have a Ranked mode, and the developer has now clarified how the system works. Understandably, it’s very complicated to make a competitive mode in an extraction shooter. To help you understand it better, Bungie’s made… a maths test.

This ‘ranked calculation worksheet’ puts your understanding of the scoring system to the test with four questions (plus a bonus), which you answer using the data in the given table. So let’s try to answer them to see if I actually learned anything after reading through Bungie’s official explainer multiple times over.

1: Johnnie equips a Silver Holotag. Andy equips a Gold Holotag. Chris equips a Silver Holotag. What is their crew’s score target?

• This is a simple matter of adding up the score target of each tier of tag, since the value you need to earn during a match is a combination of your crew’s tags. So, Gold is 7,000, and Silver is 5,000 each. The answer should be 17,000 score target.

2: Paul equips a Gold Holotag. Ross equips a Silver Holotag. Nikki equips a Platinum Holotag. How many Ranked Points will they each lose on failure to exit?

• If you fail to extract from a match, you’ll lose rank based on the combined value of your crew’s Holotags, so you basically just need to add the values up again. Gold is worth 4,200, Silver is worth 2,000, and Platinum is worth 8,000. In total, each player should lose 14,200 Ranked Points in this scenario.

3: Brian equips a Diamond Holotag. Eric equips a Platinum Holotag. Nick equips a Platinum Holotag. They loot three Gold Holotags. How many Ranked Points can they potentially gain?

• This requires working out to different values, your team’s score target and your ‘overperformance capacity’, which is basically just bonus points from looting other players’ tags or completing events. You then add these values together to work out how many Ranked Points are up for grabs. The combined score target of this crew should be 55,000, while the overperformance capacity is 13,250. Add them together, and you get a total of 68,250.

4: Phil equips a Gold Holotag and exfils after looting 6,000 gear value. How many Ranked Points does he gain?

• This is a trick question. You’ll only gain Ranked Points if you reach your score target and exfil in one piece. For a Gold Holotag, you need to loot 7,000 in gear value, so sorry Phil, but you don’t gain or lose any rank for this match.

Bonus: Eunice equips a Platinum Holotag. How much additional gear value does she need to be eligible to queue for High Stakes? (10,000 gear value requirement.)

• To queue for a High Stakes match, you need to have a starting loadout value of at least 10,000. If I’m understanding this confusing question correctly, then you need to subtract the cost of the Platinum Holotag from the gear value threshold, so 10,000 minus 1,500. In other words, Eunice would need to equip 8,500 worth of gear to actually queue.

While Bungie’s done this math test in jest, I must say, it’s rather helpful in getting your head around the complex system. Holotag costs, score targets, overperformance, it’s all very complicated. However, after studying the learning material (Bungie’s blog explaining Ranked), I think this competitive mode could be a real game-changer. You know other players will have at least a certain level of gear worth taking, so you won’t be wasting energy and risking resources on free loadout rats.

It’s Marathon’s risk and reward taken to its logical conclusion, encouraging you to complete map events and take on other players in PvP. In other words, to experience Marathon at its best.