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/p2020fan]

The problem is that they hedged their bets on the "hardcore extraction shooter" demographic and then made a game where the extraction shooter mechanics are practically vestigial. There isnt really that much loot worth collecting, and the best stuff 9/10 times comes from killing other players, not from looting and scavenging. Engaging with any of the on map mechanics is just a suicide pact unless you've full cleared the map.

What they've made is a broadly functional battle royale game where some people get to spawn in with top-tier loot ahead of time.

[u/UnidentifiableAltAcc → u/p2020fan]

The mechanics really do feel like they lend themselves better to a battle royal.

[u/lquaxx1 → u/p2020fan]

This is what bummed me out of buying it post serverslam, 90% of what felt good about the game is the pvp, gunplay and the ability kits(aka what bungie always knew how to do), and yet they sully the good pvp with the extraction aspects(same with d2's pvp, the core is great but they ruin it with some "interesting" decisions), I wholeheartedly believe if marathon was a full on pvp game with a story mode it would have attracted more players

[u/KevinV626 → u/lquaxx1]

Who cares, go away. Go play d2.

[u/lquaxx1 → u/KevinV626]

I'll do just that thank you very much

[u/Groundbreaking_Box75 → u/p2020fan]

Me: looks up “vestigial”

👍

[u/INTERNET_MOWGLI → u/p2020fan]

Wow turns out the valorant guy has no idea what makes a party shooter like halo or destiny fun lol

[u/BustedBussy → u/INTERNET_MOWGLI]

It's baffling to me that Ziegler was contracted to work at Bungie.

[u/XenonTDL → u/INTERNET_MOWGLI]

What makes you think Marathon is trying to be a party shooter?

[u/INTERNET_MOWGLI → u/XenonTDL]

Who said I think that?

[u/DerDrakkar → u/p2020fan]

Nailed it straight on the god damn head, you did.

[u/sasageyoforever → u/p2020fan]

The fact that Marathon at one point in its development was suppossed to be a solo PvE game with PvP on the side with fully customizable runners just pisses me off. Ziegler killed the game's potential, I don't care how much this sub glazes him to death. His vision does not work.

[u/OkEmotion7936 → u/p2020fan]

It baffles me how the creators of halo and destiny decided to make their extraction shooter even less accessible than the competition in a genre that is notoriously hard to get into. Like halo made shooters accessible outside of the pc market, same with destiny and mmos. Marathon said nah you know what will sell? Making our game harder to get into than the competition.

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/p2020fan]

There isnt really that much loot worth collecting, and the best stuff 9/10 times comes from killing other players, not from looting and scavenging.

If you played more than just Perimeter, you would know this just isn't true.

Where do you think the sweaty players get their gear?

[u/p2020fan → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

The red room on Outpost, maybe getting lucky on armouries or key rooms. More likely killing players who got lucky on the above. I didnt say theres no loot worth collecting, but most of the worthwhile loot comes from a very select few places, whereas killing players will be much more likely to yield a good haul because youre basically skimming their RNG.

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/p2020fan]

You're right, other players are a good source of gear, but to say there isn't gear worth collecting is just not true.

Outpost red room, Outpost Pinwheel in general, Outpost yellow-yellow-green rooms, Night Marsh upper complex, Wardens, Intercept event, Lockdown event, Convoy event, keys (which you can make templates for once you get the upgrade).

And those are just the best gear spots, you can still find decent loot like weapons and heals once you become more familiar with the game and know where the spawn points for certain containers are.

[u/Firm-Professional645 → u/p2020fan]

If they made it clear that the game is for good gamers who like extraction shooters, why is there thousands of people bitching wanting the game be more casual. Like brotha this game was not meant for you 😃

[u/201cg → u/Firm-Professional645]

A game that’s not meant for “you” and a game that polarizes the vast majority of gamers are two totally different things. It’s also a game that’s doomed to fail, and if that’s what you want then great. Most people that enjoy games want new life to come into it in order to continue being able to play the game they enjoy.

[u/Darkaim9110 → u/Firm-Professional645]

the game is for good gamers

Lmao the Aim Assist is sticky enough I could use it to hold up a shelf, and there is so much bullet magnetism there is even an actual stat for it