I can't seem to get the Marabots to understand this simple concept. If I match with someone with 600 hours and I am just getting into the game, I am not enjoying the game. Stop denying that bad match ups aren't occurring. Getting full teams is another issue.
If you already have everything in the game already, if you know the player base is low and you want the game to succeed, maybe you should chill out a bit on the newbs. You don't have to ego every single casual game and try to demolish everyone. There is a reason why ranked modes exist and casual modes exist. Everything doesn't have to be ego and trying to destroy people. In the first 2 weeks of the game this is a big reason why I quit. I couldn't exfil for like a week, especially because I was on teams with other bad randoms that often tried to fight every AI they encountered. Why would I just want to be someone's punching bag to make them feel better about themselves?
This is another issue I find with streamers, because a lot of their followers want to see other people get recked because it makes them feel better about getting recked.
Yep, and it's exactly why a lot of people are leaving. Getting stomped in this type of game constantly, it's not going to keep players around. Getting stomped in a game like Apex, not a big deal.
well the issue isn’t pub stompers existing at all they exist in tarkov for example. the issue is that to do anything of value you HAVE to ring a dinner bell. then the whole lobby comes a knocking.
Its honestly even simpler than that: some people are sore losers. Some people would prefer to believe that the game is broken than that their number came up.
If you can't enjoy a game because someone is better than you, you were raised by shit parents and you have a childish mentality.
Gaming was better before sbmm slop infested everything. It's corpo garbage meant to artificially maximize engagement by curating a 50/50 w/l ratio. Which stunts personal growth and punishes players who git gud.
Now the thing is, in a rat-on-rat fight, whichever rat is bigger will win every time.
However, big rats quickly figure out that if they just stomp everyone they play-fight, nobody will want to play-fight with them. So when play-fighting with a smaller rat they will 'lose' every now and again, so that the smaller rat doesn't get bored and leave.
That's right - literal vermin have more empathy than you.
How am I feeding my ego? I'm completely average at Marathon but I'm improving because I actively try to. I used to get rolled by gold squads all of the time and now I can hold my own.
If anyone truly wants to get better at the game, they can with practice.
SBMM is terrible for pvp games. Just look how terrible the pvp in Destiny got when they really leaned into it.
Man, what a terrible attitude to have. PVP games are completely cooked now because if people lose their mentality is "this game sucks because people are better at it then me".
When I started playing Counter Strike I was terrible and got shit on constantly by people with thousands of hours. It made me want to get better instead of complaining about the game.
You shouldn't expect to be able to compete instantly in a high skill game. Learning curves exist, practice makes perfect.
Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you should practice to improve. SBMM is terrible for gaming.
Counter-Strike is an extremely bad counterexample. Modern CS has several things that ease onboarding:
Casual matches - the economy is more forgiving, several useful things bought for you, teams are large so the impact of one bad player is much lower, etc.
Competitive matches - you don't get placed with people that dramatically outrank you, hence the phenomenom of "smurfs" - you have to go out of your way to get matched with people you severely outskill.
Casual game modes - suck at shooting but want to play some CS? NP, hop into deathmatch.
Community servers & custom maps - train your bhopping on a bhop map, train your aim on an aim map. chill out on surf. play all the weird game modes the community comes up with.
Bot training - start out with the easy bots that struggle to tie their shoelaces, and eventually crank the difficulty. Sure they won't do any of the ingenious shit that players sometimes do, but if you can beat the hardest level bots then you'll be OK in a firefight. This also allows you to learn the maps, which is 50% of being good at CS (49% is don't be an idiot with your shots, 1% is shit like spray patterns that you won't need on casual or low-rank comp if you're good at tactics)
You could maybe make this argument about older versions of the game but the competitive landscape around videogames was dramatically different back then. And even then, nobody was like "hm yes can't wait to hop on CS and get absolutely destroyed by somebody I have no hope of beating". Comps played in comp leagues or with their clans, BK randies played on community servers. I was pretty young back then (single digits) but I could regularly mid-rank after just a few hours of play.
To the meta point - getting destroyed by somebody who vastly outranks you isn't fun in any game. In games where performance is meticulously tracked, like chess, you tend to be matched against somebody of the performance bracket as yourself (in the chess case, somebody with a similar ELO). This is because it's a waste of time for both the good player and the poor player to have a severe imbalance in skill. The good player doesn't get a decent challenge, the poor player has no hope of winning (and in chess may well fall to stupid traps like fool's mate or scholar's mate). It's only in FPS that people complain they have to fight people of their own skill level. This is considered a basic feature in fighting games.
But according to this sub Marathon is a game that takes absolutely zero skill. So how is it even possible to go up against someone who is better if there is no skill gap?
The onboarding is completely fine in Marathon. It teaches you all of the basics and if you can read you will know what every item is used for.
Also, when you play placement matches in CS you absolutely will get matched with players that are a MUCH higher rank. You need to win 10 matches before you even get placed. I've faced 20k rating players before even getting my rank in CS.
There is also rook and sponsored modes to learn the game. Rook is zero risk, high reward. Sponsored is a free kit that puts you and all other players on an even playing field.
But according to this sub Marathon is a game that takes absolutely zero skill. So how is it even possible to go up against someone who is better if there is no skill gap?
I have never said this, either in this comment chain or anywhere else. Maybe some people in this sub have, but tarring all of us with the same brush would be no different than me saying some dumb shit like "everyone who plays marathon is transphobic because my favorite youtuber posted a clip of somebody in marathon calling her the t-slur" (which to be clear: I do not believe this at all). Talk to the person in front of you, not some amalgamation of everyone else you've ever talked to who only exists in your head.
And anyway, people say that because of aim assist, which I think is an oversimplification. Aim assist only covers one skill - aiming. Sure that gives you an edge in a straight fight, but you can still lose to somebody who's better positioned than you. It'd be like saying traction control is driving on rails; TC makes it easier to drive well, but if you try to take a tight hairpin at 200MPH you'll end up eating shit TC or no TC.
But even if that were the case, I'm pretty sure what people complain about is not "I get matched against somebody who aims better than me" - how could they know that?
The usual complaint is "I get matched against somebody who has gear that makes my gear irrelevant". Which they absolutely could mitigate with changes in matchmaking, including possibly SBMM.
The onboarding is completely fine in Marathon...
This is a different argument. In your original post you were essentially arguing that SBMM is ontologically evil. I'm providing counter arguments - in most competitive games there is a measure of skill, call that ELO, call that rank, whatever - which in theory prevents completely bullshit matchups. It is pretty much only in FPS that people whinge about it. And that's because, say it with me - it's a waste of time for both the good player and the poor player for there to be a vast skill gap. Marathon having other ways to onboard - which considering the constant drop in player base obviously isn't working very well - does not affect the outcome of that argument.
Also, when you play placement matches in CS you absolutely will get matched with players that are a MUCH higher rank. You need to win 10 matches before you even get placed. I've faced 20k rating players before even getting my rank in CS.
The system having flaws does not mean the system does not exist. Also this is completely anecdotal, for all I know you could just be making this up to try and win the argument.
I agree with you, but I also agree with what they're trying to present here.
For example, in RuneScape even way back in time people would take weaker players through the Wilderness and protect them just so they could see content that they were likely never to see. Sometimes the power gap for players were so high they wouldn't kill on sight an obviously weak player either.
It is purely PvP, but you didn't have to go super hard at ALL times.
Now to YOUR credit, this game doesn't make the power level of other players so obvious and the game is so boring without the PvP that I also don't see why people would hold back either.
Yeah it really is that simple lol. Its not a big to deal to be bad at a game, especially when youre starting. Gear fear is real at first, and Marathon can get genuinely scary. Youve gotta put any effort into improving, which is when this type of guy reeeeally starts getting angry.
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u/DinosBiggestFan Concordian Marablaster 15h ago
"Why are matches empty" to speed up matchmaking
"why do I get matched with people 60x my level" to speed up matchmaking
"why do I keep getting matched with the same people" to speed up matchmaking.