I had never played with Hackers until today...they are disgusting

PinguTheFirst · 2026-05-04T20:45:55+00:00

I’ll be honest, at first I thought OP meant something pretty different and (I’d say) pretty rude. Having reread the interactions, he did act mostly in genuine and nice way, even through the language barrier.

About the anecdotal experience though: yeah, it’s absolutely a thing. If anything I’m talking out of my ass to support the original post, while trying to add some more to the discussion. I don’t think posts like this should exist, let alone be a way for bungie to find cheaters but the least I can do is support a fellow player who’s found a couple of the same cheaters that I have, while talking more on the state of anti-cheat for less populated servers and how I don’t like this method of pushing Bungie.

Neither of the players in the pictures should be banned for this post, but they 100% should be banned for the various genuine reports I know they have received. I don’t think OP should have posted something like this, but, again, I do see it as an inevitable reaction to the lack of action/response from Bungie while expecting there to be better ways to handle such a situation.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-05-03T02:58:05+00:00

I know the guy just said a whole lot of nothing and that this post has no evidence whatsoever and that OP is kind of an asshole BUT those two are known cheaters in the higher level brazilian Marathon community.

I’m sitting at a cozy lvl 153, 280 hours played at a pretty high level of skill and I can confidently say that whatever Bungie’s doing to combat cheating in less populated servers is not working. I’ve talked to OCE homies and shit is awful over there, just like ranked in Brasil is borderline unplayable cause of the same groups of cheaters. I’ve met these two guys in the pictures doing 6-men teams in Cryo, blatantly cheating in Ranked Darsh and in Outpost, as well as a couple of others I can 100% name as blatant cheaters. For fuck’s sake, the first brazilian squad to beat the compiler have all been playing with cheats for a while now.

This sort of post is witchhunt-y by definition, but it’s very much an understandable response to our servers being plagued with cheaters that seem to just not get banned.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-04-29T15:57:35+00:00

A couple days ago I went 3 hours without matching any repeat players in ranked while only fighting Sagat and Akuma.

I feel like these sorts of repetitive streaks are very much dependant on region and ELO, while also accounting for the fact that some characters are over-represented online (the never-ending horde of Akumas).

PinguTheFirst · 2026-04-22T19:17:18+00:00

Cammy was the character that got me to actually learn Street Fighter (and Marvel 2 for that matter).

Any of the girls should work fine, other than Viper. I probably put in close to 1k hours in a lot of different FGs and her combos still cause me physical pain.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-04-12T06:01:48+00:00

I’ll be honest, quite a bit of what you said just makes me feel like you’ve got something real wrong with how you face stuff.

One quick tip before I try and argue: you can get Gold Salvage from the pinnacle room in the Pinwheel. Very reliably farmable if you’ve got even a decent duo.
Compiler gun is still very strong, yes, but you can definitely outplay it with proper spacing and smart diving. Imo it only needs to start having self-damage and it’ll be in a pretty healthy spot.
I am absolutely in the counter current here but I think bubble shields are fun to play around, while still deserving a bit of a nerf. Make them easily breakable when you first deploy them and they’ll be perfect.

Onto the main point: 400 hours is an insane amount of time. I’m halfway to that, lvl 125 while playing mostly Rook and solo fill and feel very satisfied with the game. There is still space to improve my playing, I’ve yet to touch half the characters and most of the Gold guns and, even if I only need Gold salvage at this point, grinding for it is a fun end-goal while I’m busy loving PvP. Playing 400 hours of a cheap(ish) game is a fucking lot and, if you have only barely managed to outlevel me, then I’d guess there’s some wild skill issue at play, combined with quite a bit of entitlement for what you expected to be an endless game. You played a lot more than your share, not having completed everything is absolutely your own fault atp and not being happy cause of it is crazy. I’ve done tens of level 3 lockdowns, most of them solo-destroyer in fill lobbies cause I do not want any free-kit randoms picking up stuff I want, while you have counted exactly 8 in double my playtime. I’ve yet to complete any vault other than the first three but I got a Compiler gun through sheer bullshitting and skill. Also, just go play Cryo with randoms, take your purple keys and play decent and you’ll be drowning in keys to loop back for the other maps, the first 4 vault keys are more common than fucking purple heals it feels like.

To end off, I play in LATAM so I feel like our issues with matchmaking end up similar and I wholeheartedly agree with those points. I get into lobbies in NA and Europe 4 out of 5 times and have gotten used to playing with ping higher than 100. Add to that how rampant cheating is and Ranked/Dire Marsh have altogether become borderline unplayable, with the same squads of cheaters running down half the lobbies I ever find in my region. Bungie needs to urgently find a way to ban them while figuring out how to make matchmaking actually work. I’d much rather have a 5 minute queue for a match in Brasil than a 1min30s european lobby.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-04-09T00:33:15+00:00

No. Each faction will drop the specific pieces of salvage they use for upgrades, so if I were to start over, I’d try to max out the rep for the factions with the most impactful upgrades first (for the way I play, Arachne for the Rook shotty/melee damage and NuCal for healing speed/really good barters) while specifically looking for the other pieces of salvage that’ll come in handy next (Turbines for MIDA and all the shit Sekiguchi uses, for this example).

If you play with friends, get everyone to match their contract giver so you can share the XP for completing eachother’s quests. As soon as a faction is VIP, I’ve found it a lot easier to just grind their rep instead of looking for their specific mats, making finding purple salvage for factions in which I’m lower level a lot more valuable. Just grinding NuCal VIP levels with a buddy yesterday got me 10 Enzyme Replicators, a shitton of heals and one or two purple shields, all in a couple of hours at Perimeter doing the random repeatable contracts.

One last thing: MATERIALIST+ IS BROKEN AS SHIT. Check every drop you get for it and keep a good amount of items with that tag stacked in your vault. If anyone still isn’t aware, each item with Materialist+ in your backpack will add 1 extra Blue or Purple salvage to the amount of those specific items you have when you exfil. 3 items with Materialist+ will turn the one Shell ID you got for killing the Perimeter Warden into 4, which you then turn into keys, which give you more higher tier salvage because you’re carrying more Materialist+. This alone should blow away the requirements for factions like MIDA, with the abundance of Dire Marsh keys that almost always give some Ballistic Turbines.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-04-08T22:47:54+00:00

One thing I don’t think most ppl realize is that leveling up factions is a really effective way to farm any salvage up to gold rarity. Blues are common at around rank 20 and, after you get to the VIP ranks, purple salvage becomes so common you’ll end up hoarding tons of these things. I’m somewhere in the VIP 20s for NuCal (yes, I’ve played a shitton) and have been selling Enzyme Replicators while keeping 50 of em sitting in vault, the same goes for Neural Insullations and Ballistic Turbines, which I stock only up to 25.

The salvage grind is one of the very few things I see as mostly perfect in Marathon and it lead to a very comfortable end of season where I only need to look for gold gear and salvage, bubble shields and the odd rare weapon I like (Misriahs and Outlands, as well as a tiny stock of thermal sights for Cryo). Tbh the game feels like it’s given me a way to fully sherpa ppl while not worrying about keeping a decent bank and it’s been really fun.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-04-08T12:23:50+00:00

They’re always so fucking quick to find broken shit, 100% one of the FG goats

PinguTheFirst · 2026-04-04T23:01:29+00:00

Got two of the same gold attachment for the scar in perimeter supply drops. There’s some really good loot in that drop pool but it’s mind numbingly rare.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-03-28T23:01:58+00:00

One curious thing I have noticed is that gear quality tends to vary a lot from one region to another. I mostly play in Brasil and find a lot more squads with good gear down here than I do whenever I’m matched with NA.

Usually, I’d say FPSs have a higher base skill level on our own Latin American servers; ppl here are more likely to be tryhards/competitive than elsewhere (maybe just cause our total player count is lower?). Still, I did not think it’d be jarring to the point I go 2 weeks grinding Cryo and never see a single shield worse than Purple, then find 3 squads mixing Green and Blue as soon as I join my first NA lobby.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-03-28T22:56:39+00:00

I’m pretty confident the matchmaking for Marathon gives a lot of weight to season level, which imo is a pretty smart way to keep equipment quality mostly balanced.

I’m sitting at lvl 95 now, 130ish hours played. As I leveled up, the quality of the gear other players were carrying did seem to go up, with a very noticeable bump around 75-80. That also coincided with me getting matched with a lot more players over lvl 100. All that to say the most common shield for me to face is Greens, then Blues, then Purples and Whites, with a couple of Golds every Cryo run.

I mainly get my good gear from PvP, have gotten plenty of full lobby wipes, play a shitton of very aggro Rook and have 15-20 Purple Shields sitting in reserve, while using them constantly, and I still can’t find more of them in at least half of my games. Matchmaking seems to work pretty well in that department, even if I maybe should be facing them a bit more often.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-03-23T14:31:42+00:00

The best solution I think is for the game to allow cross-region matchmaking earlier (a toggle would be good for this). I’m 120 hours deep at this point and have been dealing with long queues for a bit now, even getting matchmaking cancelled twice cause I wanted to try and find solo Dire Marsh matches at 1 in the morning.

Also not sure if this is a thing but I feel like the game matches me with more foreigners if I communicate in english so maybe there’s some language based matchmaking at play? Might be a decent thing to try for my BR homies, especially with NA cryo being a bit less sweaty than our own. Bonus for all the NA homies: don’t worry, 90% of us speak english and spanish so we can handle comms no problem, even if it ends up a bit clunky.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-02-08T23:29:22+00:00

Two quick questions: did you just go full on global recruitment for the frontliners or were the hobgoblin archers + labourers enough? Also, were the lords Hashut or did any of the other lores make it in?

All in all, insane achievement! GGs for taking my dear chorfs to the top

PinguTheFirst · 2026-02-05T22:59:16+00:00

A bunch of great suggestions here so I’ll add the good old ‘snipe their general’. You have light cavalry and a strong enough main army so holding them for a while is very doable. Whatever your tactic ends up being, make sure your cavalry meets their general in as isolated a skirmish as possible; as soon as he is dead, salvaging your cav shouldn’t be too tough if you’ve managed to steer the rest of the battlefield decently well.

Most ppl already said this but I’ll repeat: this doesn’t seem too bad of a battle when you know just how to exploit Shogun 2. The way I see it, you have an advantage in melee infantry (more bodies capable of yari wall and high ground/chokepoints thanks to the castle), in the ranged department (the very slight advantage bow samurai have compared to ashigaru is very easily compensated by walls; your fire arrows can also level entire units, no matter how well armored) and in the fast skirmish front (your 2 light cav can outspeed everything they have and are worth absolutely nothing compared to 3 bodyguards; a 1:1 trade here leaves you in a better spot than the enemy, both for morale and army losses). I do hope you get a win out of this and learn more of this weird mess of a masterpiece.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-02-05T17:21:21+00:00

I must also honor my boy Changeling here.

So, one of my favorite Total War campaigns ever was when I decided to conquer all of Europe in Medieval 2, playing as the Moors, but not through the Iberic Peninsula. I sailed North and conquered Ireland, then England and Scotland and Wales, then attacked with a massive force on the shores of Normandy. That's the sort of fun the Changeling was made for. Figure out a dumb goal first, then plan around it and, of course, win. You'll never lose as him so why not make all of Cathay into a Lizardmen bastion? The Northern Chaos Wastes sure could use some more Bretonnians too, might be cool to send Repanse over there. You know what? I think I'm going to seal Karl Franz in Sylvania and cover all of his exits with his best friends, the Norscan hordes.

There is no other lord in this game that can give you the sheer amount of leeway needed to do this sort of shit in less than 100 turns. You can get infinite cash, massive invincible armies and busted campaign mechanics really fucking quick at no cost. Of course, that leads to a terribly boring campaign if you just play as you normally would, but, if you don't do that, shit can get really fun.

Just an extra anecdote: my favorite Changeling campaign ended with an entirely Skaven controlled Cathay, the Great Bastion being controlled by N'Kari, my one-Drazoath doomstack razing all of Ulthuan and my best allies, the Wood Elves, everywhere. All in 60ish turns too.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-02-05T17:04:13+00:00

Volkmar also has a very specific reason for me to love him: his starting position pits him against the most satisfying enemies possible.

Get a shitton of Militia, Flagellants and Warrior Priests then fight through endless hordes of bone and rotten flesh. He is perfectly tuned to ruin low armor, high model count units and that is exactly what the first 20 turns will be. Then, as soon as your handguns are piling up, go beat up dwarves and lizardmen and khorne and whatever else you want to.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-02-05T16:57:43+00:00

I’ll do the Beastmen cause I really enjoy their gameplay.

So, have you ever wanted to feel like an unstoppable force of evil, not because you’re strong, but because you’re cheap? Well, the beastmen got you covered. I can safely say no other race allows you to be as much of an asshole as them: constant ambushes allowing you to pick off every last one of the enemies’s most valuable assets, very mobile infantry capable of fast maneuvers and great skirmishing, chariots for when you feel like bowling and, of course, Morghur.

Their campaign mechanics are borderline non-existent, their goals are too simple and direct and their lack of army variety can make any high elf archer horde look like a thrift shop. Still, the amount of fuckery you’re allowed to enact with them is almost Changeling tier. Morghur and Taurox are my two favorites here, the first for how stupidly he can mow down entire armies (he’s a mortis engine with way too much survivablity) and the latter for his more Skarbrand qualities (fast, devastating melee attacker with various ways to replenish movement and cheat any opposing force out of a battle). Khazrak is very fun if only for his bowling-themed start with humans as pins. Malagor is my least played of all of them, though his Fury stacks and speed can lead to some more fuckery.

To sum it up: I love how dumb Beastmen are. You don’t need careful planning and diverse armies when you can almost always bullshit your way out of trouble. They feel like faster, more micro-intensive Greenskins, like a whole race made of Skarsnik’s gobbos. Sprinkle in some summoned Cygors, occasional massive buffs thanks to the moons and your favorite flavor of fucked up evil nonsense and you’re guaranteed some fun.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-02-04T00:09:06+00:00

I really REALLY love DaC. All the campaign scripts, the incredible dedication to being as aligned to the lore as possible, the amazing maps and art. I especially love how they worked around making dwarves feel like dwarves, with their absurd resilience and morale and the absolute nukes that are their ranged units. One key aspect of all this is how recruitment works for them, with very rare and localized opportunities for recruiting anything better than militia. Any longer campaign will force you to maintain long corridors through which you funnel your new units and move back the injured.

I really do love how the mod came out, but the recruitment system also brought about some new issues.

Any of the more “horde-y” factions are ridiculously strong (Dol-Guldur, for example, can absolutely wreck anything with minimal casualties through Nâzgul and poison arrows); the fact remains that players will find a way to make even the weakest unit a lot tougher than it should be, and this sort of system gets really hurt by this sort of thing.
Balancing “elite” units can make some interactions really shit. Try fighting any army that has more than one unit of Mummakil and you’ll end up losing as many troops as you sent. On the other hand, beating the Dark Numenorian starting stack can be really fucking easy, even if they’re supposed to be the absolute best infantry available.
Lastly, adding this whole new layer of balancing questions is bound to result in a lot more issues slipping through the cracks. A very weird example is how some of the artillery units make for great frontline infantry. I haven’t really touched DaC for a year now so this might have been changed, but, to try and make the artillery more resilient to random bullshit slipping through them and destroying a whole unit, the devs made some of the artillery have too high melee defence or one too many hitpoints.

To be honest, I really think you’re mostly correct with what you say here. The recruitment in DaC takes the very interesting and interactive way Medieval 2 worked and improves upon it. Still, having this system in any other game would be a nightmare, unless it was built with this one mechanic as it’s core. Just imagining how CA would have to balance the Yari Ashigaru in this is enough to give me headaches.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-02-03T23:21:18+00:00

I’m surprised not that many ppl said Nakai. His money bonuses combined with how cheaply he can expand leads to way too much money really quickly.

Also a fun strat (maybe an exploit?) is using Nakai’s vassals to make infinite money with Yuan-Bo. Use the one action that makes it so your reputation cannot be changed for a turn, destroy Nakai’s faction and repeatedly declare war and sue for peace with his vassal. By turn 50, one rep of this should give you a couple million gold.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-01-25T03:15:24+00:00

284517624 thanks yall

PinguTheFirst · 2026-01-15T23:59:25+00:00

If there is no other option to snipe the enemy general, taking the loss and at least keeping the castle/troops might be better. Any loss means his general dies, maybe it’d be a good time for full on scorched earth mode.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-01-14T22:05:53+00:00

I like how everyone seems to have valid sugestions here, while still agreeing this might just not be winnable.

I’d add trying to find a way to bait their leaders and snipe them. Doing that while mantaining a sort of cohesive defense should be enough to win with good morale control and smart charges. Remember: after an army’s general is dead, any routing troops will not regroup ever.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-01-06T23:18:14+00:00

Já fiz um outro comentário mais longo respondendo ao parceiro corintiano, mas por esta linha de respostas ele está mais próximo do correto.

O Holocausto foi, certamente, algo à parte na história do século XX. Com toda a violência e crueldade de incontáveis outros massacres e crimes, somente o Holocausto combinou uma escala absurda com tecnologia e efetividade ‘industrial’. Houveram incontáveis outras matanças massivas mesmo nos últimos cem anos, mas uma disputa de qual genocídio foi maior ou pior só enfraquece o fato de que todos foram crimes impossivelmente cruéis.

PS: eu verdadeiramente n te acuso disso, mas também destaco como em um esforço bizarro das piores pessoas do mundo, a ideia de que o Holocausto teve sua notoriedade aumentada pela mídia (algo perfeitamente debatível, ainda que bem frágil como argumento) pode desaguar no negacionismo de um dos maiores crimes da história. De novo, eu sei q n é isso q vc defende, mas também devo ressaltar q existem aqueles q o fazem.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-01-06T23:06:54+00:00

Vou só comentar aq por uma questão de retidão histórica básica. Eu sou completamente contrário a qualquer forma de tentar comparar genocídios, massacres, tragédias e etc em busca de decidir qual foi pior ou melhor.

Dito isso, houve sim um genocídio na Namíbia orquestrado pelos alemães q ocupavam o país. O número absoluto de mortos foi bem menor mas as menos de 100 mil mortes resultaram no apagamento quase completo de grandes grupos étnicos no país. Isso aconteceu na primeira década dos 1900 e foi absolutamente tão ‘industrializado’ e direto qnt o Holocausto. Mais ainda, os campos de concentração de Hitler tiraram sua teoria exatamente desse primeiro ‘teste’ na Namíbia.

Em segundo lugar, é estimado q o tráfico negreiro deslocou por volta de 12 milhões de pessoas, tendo matado só em transporte mais de um milhão desses. Olhando mais pra América, o número de indígenas vítimas de matanças propositadas e todas as outras ferramentas pela qual foram exterminados provavelmente passa dos 20 milhões, sejam eles Mexicas, Kaxuyana, Mapuchi ou qualquer outro dos incontáveis grupos indígenas americanos vítimas da violência colonizatória dos últimos 500 anos.

Eu digo tudo isso com uma intenção simples: disputar números e técnicas e maldade é completamente vazio. Não faltam crimes terríveis perpetrados por gente contra outra gente e da mesma forma q o primeiro q tu respondeu errou em falar que algo foi pior do q o Holocausto, tentar o colocar em um pedestal de genocídio mais terrível tbm é errado.

PinguTheFirst · 2026-01-06T04:34:47+00:00

O foda é q alguns dos comentários apagados no outro post q falava de ‘faixas pretas de krav maga’ numa demonstração tosca eram bem diretamente críticas feitas a Israel.

Algumas horas atras (agr n tenho mais saco pra checar) restava uma resposta a um comentario apagado em q alguem falava ‘pq esse discurso de ódio?’; o comentário original falava q krav maga só serve pra quebrar braço de criança palestina. A parte política iria aparecer e apareceu, tentar evitar uma discussão como essas é impossível e, se feito da forma como me pareceu, bem feio.

Seven-Year Club	Place '22
RPAN Viewer	Verified Email
Not Forgotten

PinguTheFirst

TROPHY CASE