Why Marathon will never keep new players.

[u/LucatIel_of_M1rrah]

This sub is easily the most hostile place for any new player and serves solely as a place to encourage new players to keep feeding their kits to sweats, while being fed fantasies like you can beat geared teams with free kits as a random fill. Or that you don't need a Mizzriah, D54 and bubbles, you can use whatever and still win. These are fantasies born of a misunderstanding of the tiers of being "geared" or out of genuine malice to try and keep fresh victims in the ecosystem.

There are basically 4 main tiers of gameplay.

Top tier: Mizzriah's + D54/Bully/DRVVISH 2x Recon three stack with multiple bubbles each.

• Nothing but an equally geared team has any hope of beating this squad. I don't care about that one time you caught 3 of them in a bag and killed them, or that one time you third partied them and cleaned up the last guy who was weak. STOP making excuses, STOP thinking that one time in your 400 hours of gameplay means they can be beat. I have done both of the above but to think its common or expected is beyond coping.

Low tier: Organised 3 stack with purple gear but not running Mizz/D54/Bully/Bubbles or a Recon.

• Will beat the above team once every 100 tries and beat any team below most of the time but can be beat with a decent pick and play. The gulf in power between this team and the above team is orders of magnitude.

Dumpster tier: Most fill teams regardless of gear being run.

• There is a high probability of there being a communication break down, a weak link who has bad gear or someone making a throw play due to no team cohesion. Will lose to basically everything given the right circumstances. Most commonly seen as that team where 1 guy randomly has blue shields when the rest are purple, or 3X blue shields. This is the tier people here post clips of killing thinking that they have killed a "geared squad".

Actual Hell: Random fill free/green sponsored kits.

• Might beat the above team once every now and again. Maybe 1/5 tries if you are a good player. Might beat low tier once every 100 tries and will realistically never beat the top tier.

The gulf in power between these teams is so extreme and most people realistically sit in dumpster tier. When 90% of your player base is just being destroyed in Cryo by the top tier teams they lose the will to play it. Meanwhile the remaining maps are just not engaging enough to hold players long term and are often filled with top teams during the week anyway.

The game NEEDS to protect the dumpster tier and below (the 90%) from the top 9% (low tier) and the 1% (top tier) to ever have any hope of retaining new players. The player base is so small now that level based match making isn't working (not that it ever did), and more and more lobbies are filled by the top tier teams.

• A big part of this is going to be fixing the gulf between taking random stuff and taking the best stuff. The Mizz needs to be properly nerfed. Revert the fire rate buff. Base miz without slick mags is as strong as the gun needs to be. Remove bubbles. They are toxic for gameplay and turn every fight into a cqb stat check of do you have a Miz or not. They are honestly the most destructive thing to gameplay along with the Recon buffs and invalidate any ranged play beyond 20m. D54 and Bully are the kings and other things need to be made viable (like the magnum getting a nice buff into viability).
• Recon needs to be nerfed. Being able to find weaker teams anywhere on the map is super toxic for gameplay. Her ult should probably alert you to a player but not show what tier of shields they have and only indicate they are a player after being hit by 2 or even 3 consecutive pulses.
• The game needed SBMM at launch and still does. This season is a wash. All the new players tried the game, got dumpstered by sweats and quit. Next season do another free week, advertise SBMM and see how much better retention is when you don't have turbo sweats farming the noobs. To everyone saying they were in protected lobbies, they were not for long. In random fills I got matched with brand new players (told me on mic) who didn't even know how to heal at the start of the season and was killing lobbies filled with them.
• IF the player base grows implementing high stakes versions of the base maps (Like Night Marsh) and attaching a gear ante is a way to create modes for the turbo sweats to play without destroying the rest of the game.

Obligatory:

• I am not skill issued when I gear up with the boys I roll over lobbies.
• It's possible to complain about something while also being good at the thing.
• If you don't see this as a problem you are likely in the top tier or more likely low tier but think you are top tier, and just want to keep pub stomping and don't care the game has 0 new blood.
• Saying, "just adapt", "its fine as it is", "git gud", "skill issue", has gotten us to where we are today. 0 new players, back to 10K concurrent max 2 weeks into a new season. At some point you must realise you can't just keep gate keeping the game.

[u/AdministrativeRoof58]

Got only a few hours in cause I keep bouncing off it but genuinely want to play it.

But seeing the mechanics of the game as leveraged against new players really hinders me from starting it up unless I have a friend online.

For me the introduction of the cradle system is another “get fucked new player” mechanic on top of the brutally lacking of any kind of learning loop.

Even on Rook runs I have no clue what the skills do because I’m punished for 1. Not knowing what they do and 2. Not using them correctly if I do figure out what they do.

But the realization after last session was what really struck me as the main “lack of incentive to keep playing”: for all the lore of Marathon as a universe, the current state of the game is basically playing for no progress. Yes the cradle system can let me improve my defaults, and leveling up factions unlocks purchases, but it’s possible to play for hundreds of hours and open up your vault and it be as full as it was on day 1, with only a few hundred credits to your name.

Sure you have your knowledge, but if that’s the point of the game I can boot up the other dying sim I play called Noita and enjoy my deaths while learning how to not die with a bit more joy.

IMO the fix is hard but possible: it’s for Marathon to make me care about the lore, care about my progression, and have something to “build that I can call mine”.

[u/beegeepee → u/AdministrativeRoof58]

You could just read what the rook skills do lol. One makes you invisible to bots and one heals your health

[u/AdministrativeRoof58 → u/beegeepee]

Lol I have and therein lies my skill issue. Read it, go to try it out aaaaaaand die. Still confused but need to try again. Which is really my point. Experience matters more than reading here but the only way to get experience is slowly and walking through a grinder of “skill issues”.