Many Marathon players are keenly aware of the current grenade meta, but if you’re newer to the game, let me explain. Essentially, in higher level matches, players have been fully stacking their inventory with EMP, Frag, Heat, Chem, and Fletchette Grenades and spam them during firefights instead of using their actual weapons. On maps like Cryo Archive and Outpost, where there are a lot of tight areas, this would be nearly impossible to counter-play. Bungie took notice, and today’s 1.0.6.3 is their first attempt at fixing this meta.
Grenade Stack and Barter Updates
The changes Bungie made are two-fold:
- Grenade stack size for the following grenade types has been reduced to 1:
- Max grenades per type purchasable via Faction Barters has been reduced from 10 daily to 3 daily
These changes accomplish a few obvious things:
- Players simply won’t be able to carry as many grenades into a match as they previously could (probably wouldn’t fully solve the issue though)
- Players aren’t able to fill their entire vault with grenades as quickly as they once could - THIS seems like the true solution to the problem
It remains to be seen if this is the right way to solve the grenade issue, but I do think it’s a step in the right direction. I could see another possible change as being you only have one or two equipment lots for grenades in your bag, and you can’t carry any outside of those slots.
In my opinion, either you should have only enough grenades to help in the most important fight of a run (and not every single encounter during a run), or here should be a counter to grenades like Call of Duty’s Trophy System.
Other grenade changes:
- Claymores now have a max stack size of 2
- Ammo Crates, Smoke Grenades, and Proximity Sensors stack size have been unchanged
C.A.R.R.I. Changes
Bungie also gave the C.A.R.R.I. system a boost with the following changes:
- Salvage quantity dropped from Deluxe C.A.R.R.I. Salvage Crate has been increased across all rarities
- An issue that caused C.A.R.R.I. weapons to not appear if that weapon was identical to a voucher offer the player currently possessed has been fixed
- Previously non-refreshing C.A.R.R.I. offers will now have their stocks reset weekly. As part of this change, the Superior Key Template's stock will only reset up to 1. This does not affect this item's starting stock of 5 or any remaining stock above the weekly reset limit.
Miscellaneous Changes
- Cryo Archive:
- More secured vents have been added between Cargo and Index to help prevent spawn rushing
- Ranked:
- Gold holotag players can now enter high-stakes lobbies
- Platinum holotag players can now enter low-stakes lobbies
- This should help improve long/failing queues
For the rest of the updates, take a look at Bungie’s full article.
See you on Tau Ceti!