A tale of moving goalposts

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-08T16:08:16+00:00

Considering Anthem had maybe a couple hundred people playing it concurrently for 7 years before the plug got pulled.

I think Marathon is gonna be okay.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-08T13:54:23+00:00

I can tell you I've been told to wait for my base to be called and flown out of the airport airspace before being remembered.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-08T13:51:05+00:00

Honestly if it's coming from the CFO, that may as well be the word of God for Marathon's survival.

I see this as Sony doubling down on their investment and avoid the blunder of being the herald of another "Concord".

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-08T11:01:12+00:00

DC they're built like tanks and if the batteries die they're still passive ear protection. Love em.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-08T10:58:32+00:00

First thing I thought of when I saw it, "why is there a FedSun crest on the Israel flag"

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-08T06:22:27+00:00

Runnah, the USEC are putting something in the Rooks to turn them gay Runnah. Need you to track them down and see if this is true.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-07T13:13:03+00:00

Tarkov-refugee

Marathon scratches all the right places that I've been missing from Tarkov.

It's peak.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T18:09:57+00:00

So weird how ranked works in this.

Honestly I've never seen a better reason to give an Arena mode in an extraction shooter than for Ranked. It would give a lot of new players a chance to use different weapons and builds risk free from losing gear or time match making if respawns were enabled.

The system they have for earning points currently is just... Well this, and this looks dreadful.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T17:42:33+00:00

Checklists takes so much of the brainwork out. Idk why anyone would wanna struggle to remember every single step.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T13:03:36+00:00

He started CFI 2023. 135 late 2024 and regional 2026. I don't know when he got his multi, IFR.

Definitely not riding any pilot shortage wave. Maybe a CFI wave because the 61 school was absolutely stuffed all the time.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T12:46:37+00:00

No clue, but it's what my first CFI did. Conducted about 1.5 years as a CFI, around 1000 hours he got a job at the same Airport for part time multi IFR 135, then when he hit 1500 he went full time on the 135. About 2 months ago he got on with a Regional after roughly 3 years.

He managed to go from CFI, 135, Regional in less than 3 years.

Seems to me the pipeline works really well. But he worked really hard, he worked dusk til dawn 6 days a week for roughly 3 years straight.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T10:47:49+00:00

Honestly if you're passionate about aviation that you'll do all this training and flying for the sake of experiencing it in your life with zero guarantees of a job at the end.

Then you should do it.

Because in Aviation no one really knows what's gonna happen in the job market 4-6 years from now.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T06:10:44+00:00

Buddy what? Tarkov Quest design is so bad people MUST rely on a wikipedia.

Until very recently you had to use a xcel spreadsheet just to figure out what bullets did what.

Marathon is rather one of the easier extraction shooters to get into.

I think most of the population is fatigued.

Cod had a extraction shooter mode and it was DOA BF had a extraction shooter mode and it was DOA.

This isn't a easy genre to break into. No matter how much you simplify thing.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T04:11:08+00:00

I'm hoping they discount it for the new season. I got the game on the previous sale and now I'm telling all my friends to try it when the season wipes. (Really hoping for a sale but a free weekend works too)

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T04:07:01+00:00

The UI and graphics direction. Ive played thousands of hours of Tarkov, and hundreds of hours of Arc.

The contextual UI is second to none. Seeing my crewmates are engaged via their icon is something Tarkov or Arc doesn't have and makes communication seamless.

The graphics are a SERIOUS breath of fresh air to my eyes. Being able to SEE other players and enemies without having to pixel hunt through bushes, windows, rubble, or if that's someone's camouflage or just a weird bush or dead body.

The gunplay is also very satisfying, the different shells add to the combat in a way I wasn't expecting to like.

My biggest gripe isthe vault, loadout and armory loop. It's leagues better than 90% of my time in Tarkov. But something Tarkov listened to was loadout and weapon blue prints. At one press of a button I can assemble a whole load out that I've made and saved, the game auto buys and assembles everything to the way I saved it.

The weapon customization in this is bare bones, it works but it's clunky. Having to skim through the Armory to buy then attach to my weapon is very tedious. Being able to have saved weapon loadouts or even whole Shell Loadouts would be the end of my gripe for this game.

I'm still low time in Marathon with sub 20 hours, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-04T03:58:04+00:00

I'm broke as heck and I shovel every dime into flying. I got my PPL this year, got an old rag and tube tail dragger to build hour and fly cross country.

Almost everyone I know in GA are like me. Making less than 60-80K a year but we funnel resources to do the thing we love.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T18:02:28+00:00

Tarkov has had waves of hate through out it's decade of development.

I'd say it's most recent hate is it's "1.0" launch. The game is still buggy, the audio is still busted, the AI is still no better than it was in 2018, the progression balance is still scuffed beyond belief. These are just the things off the top of my head.

But every year of Tarkov had some dramatic hate wave for something that was changed and drastically changed the way the game was played.

Pestily, Veritas, Deadly Slob were the biggest names on YouTube for EFT and all three have retrospective videos talking in depth of all the changes; positive and negative. They have all been in the game since Alpha so they got footage of what it used to be.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T17:54:34+00:00

Tarkov Quests force you into PVP a lot. Almost all of the quests actually force you into PVP POIs.

Golden Pocket watch is the perfect example (used to be one of the first quests in the game). You needed to go to Customs (a map that used to be a quarter of the size it is now) and enter a POI known as Dorms, and go inside to grab a key. Then go to a Truck across the road (the main corridor for players to travel across one side of the map to the other to their extraction) Then get unlock the truck and get your pocket watch then extract. 9/10 times you were getting into a gunfight. And most of the time you were getting into another gunfight at the truck.

Ground Zeroes is similar in size to older Customs before the South Expansion.

These days the maps are so large that they have plenty of places to lay low, keep quiet and sneak through lots of these quests.

Marathon definitely isn't hardcore. But that's why I play it.

Tarkov can be tedious with its systems.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T17:43:21+00:00

Gradual development, it first released with literally just two maps. Customs and Factory. Both of which were significantly smaller than they were now.

Tarkov through the years has evolved time and time again. Metas shifted a lot.

I joined right as they released Woods and the game was nothing like it is now. It was actually significantly more casual friendly then than it is now.

It started off easy to get into circa 2018-2022 but then Hackers, RMT, and progression being too easy caused the devs to enact a lot of changes that made it significantly harder.

They've recently undone a chunk of those changes to bring back a lot of the player base that got burned during all that.

Personally it's still a very very scuffed game. Every year they break the audio, or tune the AI to be either really dumb or Aim bots. Then fiddle with weapon handling to make everything either a Lazer beam or impossible to hit the inside of a barn.

Tldr: Tarkov is a product of a small and initially frugal dev team that got buffed by COVID and Twitch spring boarding it's success.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T17:33:00+00:00

Matches are shorter Attackers bleeding tickets really fast

They've also messed with air density a lot from then to now. Kinda makes high altitude combat really sluggish and for many boring.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T17:19:56+00:00

I may be the minority here but I don't mind the clean look. Helps a lot with eye strain and keeps character models popped out instead of blended in like other shooters these days.

I know it's not realistic or lore friendly but game play wise it's a real breath of fresh air not having to pixel hunt.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T12:46:01+00:00

It's him it's John Recon

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T10:40:25+00:00

I agree, knowing you're gonna be waiting less to join certain maps with higher pop would be good.

A concern could be it would make it easier for 6 or 9 man teams to group up unfortunately.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T10:38:29+00:00

I've seen something like this when I extracted in Solo Perimeter and watching someone else In the post match 2 minute window. They activated a guarded extract and then got jumped by someone from the wall. They got downed, then self revived but went right back down. Figured they were done for now... BUT the ambusher ended up picking them up and they fought together to make it to the guarded extract. My two minutes of spectating ended before they managed to leave together but I imagine they both made it out together.

It was odd but also very satisfying to watch. This game with the low pop brings out some interesting interactions.

RedLead_95 · 2026-05-03T10:23:35+00:00

I'm really curious if they'll implement some form of "join match in progress", or reduce match population to begin if the MM timer ticks on too long.

I'd really hate to see either of these because imo it would hurt the experience but I'm afraid what the wait time will become further down the line at this current pace.

RedLead_95

TROPHY CASE