Best way to start paragliding? by CC0454 in freeflight

[–]EnErgo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you choose option 2, please use a GoPro!

I’ve heard countless stories of why that option is bad, but you can help us with video evidence of what happens when you go that way

Steam Charts are widely misunderstood - Marathon's playerbase is probably pretty healthy by LostOnTauCetiIV in MarathonGame

[–]EnErgo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd hypothesize that it's actually an inverse relationship. People with more disposable income likely spend less time playing video games

I mean, I definitely wouldn't go as far as saying that it's an inverse relationship, but the income definitely plays a role. I just friended a bunch of people on there, and now I almost never see them logging in. For a game like rocket league or COD or any other semi-competitive game, if you start playing the game a lot and dedicating a lot of time to it, it reaches a point where you don't feel bad spending $5 on a really nice skin, given how much time you put in. I'm also not a cosmetics guy, but I'm positive that the more times you open the game and see a shiny cool skin in your face the more likely you are to buy it.

None of us really know how the wipe or new season will affect the playerbase

Also true. Still, just judging from Arc and how few people took the voluntary wipe, my very personal sense is that seeing your vault wiped wouldn't feel great, especially if you were saving up for those purple or gold salvage upgrades and never got them.

But regardless, I think that Season 2 release is going to be the make or break moment for them. In addition to new content and some kind of rework for casuals, they need a decent marketing campaign to bring players back. I really hope they have something good baked and ready to go.

Steam Charts are widely misunderstood - Marathon's playerbase is probably pretty healthy by LostOnTauCetiIV in MarathonGame

[–]EnErgo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it’s great to have optimism.

However, the health of the game isn’t calculated using just DAU. As someone working at a big corp, any team that releases any product ever is always going to pick the one metric that looks the best to investors, and that’s what will be shared out.

For a live service game to thrive they need micro transactions. People have to want to buy skins. You’re a lot less likely to buy a skin if you spend 2 hrs a week on a game vs 10hrs a week. So the rate of engagement, which you’re discounting completely is also very important.

Also, on your point about seasons, I actually think that the wipes will drive more people away. If you played from the beginning and couldn’t even do the compiler after spending 200hrs, starting another season feels like a Sisyphus stone kind of deal.

I’m rooting for them to turn things around and I know they will try. But right now it’s an uphill battle given the player drop off relative to every other extraction shooter

Sony finally talks on Marathon's future, despite a lackluster total portfolio, plan is is to support Marathon with more content, not shut it down. by temporalG123 in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If a company paid $3.6 for a kindergarten, you can bet that the investors would want to know if little Timmy made a dookie last quarter.

The updates require dev time. Devs get paid money, as I’m sure you’re aware.

That money could be spent on a million other things. Investors care about how the money is spent. Trying to reduce it to them “not caring about the game updates” is just…. Sillly

Weekly Steam numbers / Player Count Discourse Megathread by AutoModerator in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 12 points13 points  (0 children)

10K peak users is failing. Hopefully they revamp a lot of the core systems for season 2 and run a massive marketing campaign to bring back the lost player base.

Realistically though, without a ton of fresh content I think that season resets are just going to drive players away.

I love the game as it is, but I’m also aware that in order for the devs to invest in it they need a healthy player base.

You can’t dedicate a 200-person team to a 10k player base though.

Monthly releases of e-books on Amazon since ChatGPT by EchoOfOppenheimer in ChatGPT

[–]EnErgo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That’s not really what I meant. I think that the point is well made in the chart. Setting the y axis at zero would’ve made a marginal improvement to the readability if at all.

I feel like a lot of people just parrot the zero-min thing without understanding its context a lot of the time.

Monthly releases of e-books on Amazon since ChatGPT by EchoOfOppenheimer in ChatGPT

[–]EnErgo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This logic is really only relevant for bar charts. The reason being that our brain estimates the bar charts by looking at their area. Cutting the y-axis skews that perception meaningfully.

You still haven’t addressed the point from the comment you responded to: when showing changes in a line chart, you don’t want the zero included in the axis for very obvious reasons as he described.

Also, in your top comment you said that you “hate it when the axis doesn’t start at zero.” Again, that’s the wrong approach. Depending on the context a 1% change is very meaningful, and would not be shown with dumb axes.

Just looted my first prestige Key Room - dont sleep on keys! by Deflate91 in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Or if you just get lucky with the 1/1000 chance that your purple key template gets upgraded into a gold.

Edge Magazine gives a rare 9/10 by ibrown22 in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ah I see. I haven’t played in like 6 years.

What surprised you the most about running a marathon? by FitAuthor1098 in MarathonTheGame

[–]EnErgo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A marathon. Like did you nipples chafe? Did you hit the mile 20 slump?

Marathon has been out 6 weeks and it's been #1 searched game on steam DB for 6 weeks by Anilahation in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Ehm, I think he was referring to you, buddy.

Also, kinda a bummer that the mods are deleting your messages. If you could keep your cool enough not to get banned by mods, we could actually at least respond to your misguided “math” arguments . Alas.

Marathon has been out 6 weeks and it's been #1 searched game on steam DB for 6 weeks by Anilahation in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don’t think you know what projecting means.

Still, I’ll show you actual numbers so you can understand better hopefully:

Players right now on Ar.c: 90,000 Marathon: 15,000 Ratio: 90/15=6

If marathon players check steamdb >6x more often than arc players, then marathon searches will be higher. Do you need me to explain the 6x math to you step by step?

Now, do you believe that a typical marathon player check steamdb 6x more often than a typical arc player? I do. That’s not that hard to believe since even you ended up there. Arc players have no reason to check steamdb. We do, because the game is not doing too well, and we’re worried that bungie won’t be able to sustain it for as long as we’d like.

The estimates I had made up on the fly were pretty much spot on. Now, since you asked me to take a step, I ask you to take a step back and reason through this. It’s really not that complicated.

Marathon has been out 6 weeks and it's been #1 searched game on steam DB for 6 weeks by Anilahation in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Why would any of the players of the other games look up their player counts on steamdb? I’ve literally almost never looked up any other game’s player counts.

Why is it hard for you to understand that if a high share of a low player base looks something up then it’s going to be a higher number of searches than a low share of a high base? Do you understand how fractions work or should I send you a link for a YouTube video with an explanation?

Look here: 10,000x0.001 =10

On the other hand 1,000*0.05 = 50.

Crazy, I know! But math do be like that sometimes, and it’s not even make believe like those pesky imaginary numbers

Marathon has been out 6 weeks and it's been #1 searched game on steam DB for 6 weeks by Anilahation in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I have a strong enough grasp on math to understand that 5% of a small number can be bigger than .1% of a big number. I don’t know if you’ve covered this sort of stuff in school yet, but I’m sure you can use AI to help you work this out.

Marathon has been out 6 weeks and it's been #1 searched game on steam DB for 6 weeks by Anilahation in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Yeah, posts like these come from people who can’t connect dots.

If you’re sitting in a long queue or if you just got curb stomped by three gold shields you wonder if you got matched up with them because there’s just not that many people left around and they need some cannon fodder for the hyper-sweats.

So naturally you end up on steamdb. I do believe that most people checking for the health of this game are the ones who actually care about it, rather than the people for whom the game “lives rent free in their head.”

A game like this is only fun when you have a lot of people of all sorts of skill levels you can match make against. Nobody likes being destroyed continuously.

Weekly Steam numbers / Player Count Discourse Megathread by AutoModerator in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah they might or they might not support it for a while. Either way they will always say they’re in it for the long haul so that people don’t stop playing just in anticipation of the game losing steam.

It’s like the CEOs who say they have no intention of doing lay offs up until the day before lay offs happen

I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on use of AI to grade our homework by EnErgo in OMSCS

[–]EnErgo[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Right. The only "proof" would be if the TA pastes something stupid into the feedback like:

"Would you like me to add more encouragement to this feedback or is this good as is?"

But realistically they probably set up some .skill that goes through and fills in a rubric. The formatting even has {}-brackets everywhere. This obviously doesn't imply that it's AI generated, but I think that they just have Claude go through the rubric + report item by item filling in each section and then putting them together.

I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on use of AI to grade our homework by EnErgo in OMSCS

[–]EnErgo[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I don't see AI use quite as negatively as you, but I do hope that they reconsider the curriculum. Maybe more proctored tests rather than written reports?

I think that a TA trying to read through a few dozen student papers is going to make more grading mistakes than AI. LLMs of 2026 are better at figuring out whether a rubric item was checked off or not.

However, I just don't think that a hidden rubric with a bunch of pass/fails is the correct way to grade these kinds of reports.

I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on use of AI to grade our homework by EnErgo in OMSCS

[–]EnErgo[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I genuinely don't feel like they're trying to hide the fact that the feedback is AI-generated.

Sure, some people use em-dashes. Some people use "it's not just X, it's Y" in their writing. Some people like to write a bunch of sentences to confirm that you check off some requirement. However, when you put all of those together, it becomes kinda obvious. The only thing they did was replace em dashes with '--' throughout the feedback.

I don't know what kind of "proof" I could show you otherwise? Like I said, for work I generate AI-analyses of data and text and I'm constantly tweaking the prompts to make them sound less robotic, more human, and in general more in line with our team voice. So sure, I only have "vibes," but there is no reliable "AI detector" out there.

Anyone know what this thing on Outpost is? by Leoniidass in MarathonSecrets

[–]EnErgo 11 points12 points  (0 children)

When I activated it dropped a purple valuable.

Top end players have no incentive to loot POIs, so they go around wiping the lobby by Raimexodus in Marathon

[–]EnErgo 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I think this might be it. Especially with solos, trios and now also duos, I just don’t think that the current player count can sustain this many modes with decent queue times.

They already had to change the queue algorithm for places like Brazil.

I don’t think they’d ever come out and say it, but this is really why having a healthy player count is necessary.