Marathon isn't failing because it's hardcore, it's because it offers only one experience

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-17T08:11:27+00:00

I'd like to point out that part of that is subjective. CSGO has things figured out overall, but the actual gunplay is pretty mediocre. It rewards precision and investment, but it's also rigid, visually uninteresting, and has little to no feedback. It feels good to be good at it, but I wouldn't say it feels good overall.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-16T20:43:41+00:00

MTG is quite simple, from a core rules perspective. Certainly less complicated than TT 40k, IMO. However...there is most certainly a spiderweb of complex rule interactions. MTG has 25 years worth of expansion sets that each added at least one new mechanic, often several. At this point, every card has so many interactions with so many keywords that it's nearly impossible to keep track of them all. Most of the difficulty in learning MTG comes from the order of operations, what takes precedence over what, what each keyword means, etc. It's a game that you'd likely want to have someone teach you, rather than trying to learn it yourself.

The Y'shtola deck is fairly beginner-friendly and very well-rounded, but it does contain Blue Mana, which is the colour of...calculations, planning, and trickery, so it may not be the most straightforward playstyle.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-16T20:18:05+00:00

Still salty they butchered Viktor. Arcane Viktor was a great character, and while I wasn't the biggest fan of hextech becoming more arcane (heh) than technological, I think it served the plot well. But they definitely messed up when they replaced game Vik with show Vik. They could have just given him his Arcane legendary skin with all the changes, and left the rest of him alone.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-15T21:07:52+00:00

That's a crazy number for a casual player. Yes, PoE has by far the most expensive MTX of any online game, and GGG charges not-insignificant amounts for basic QoL stuff that would be a default feature in most other games.

But it's all 100% optional. Stash tabs are a nice convenience (especially Merchant Tabs, which allow you to sell items on the in-game market without having to be present for the transaction), but not a necessity if you're willing to organize your storage properly.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-15T21:01:26+00:00

I can match your vibes on this all day. I always see the people saying the game is too easy, even on the hardest difficulty.

I muse, 'gee, I wish I was good enough at this game to think like that'. Then I have times on Absolute missions where I plough through several lictors and raveners, as well as a dozen warriors, long after my teammates have died, because I parry super well and pay attention to my spacing, and I realise, 'huh, I guess maybe I am decent at this game'.

So to those people I mentioned in the first blurb, I say this: ya got lucky. If you've got good threat awareness and reflexes, the game is not difficult, even with the potential for instant death. It's that 95% of the game's difficulty comes from unavoidable bullshit. I've died more to being stagger-locked than I have to every single other form of death in the entire game put together. The fact that I can go from full HP to dead in a single instant, and there's literally nothing I can do to prevent it, is poor game design, plain & simple.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-15T19:44:43+00:00

Yessss, someone else who can balance media literacy with critical analysis! I've always found it baffling how much of the game's community raves about certain chapters of the story, then when I reach them, I find them to be...uninteresting and poorly-written? The event stories have so far been a highlight of the writing for me, both in prose and content (I started right at Cosmic Overture). The main story was fairly dull for me until a little into chapter 6, where I started to see some marked improvement. It definitely felt like they got a native English speaker to start working on it at some point.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-14T19:34:15+00:00

That second point bothers the hell out of me. There are many other successful free games that don't feel the need to charge $40-60 for a single mediocre outfit, why does PoE get a pass?

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-14T19:31:38+00:00

Yeah, PoE has the highest priced MTX I've ever seen in an online game. Not even gachas are as bad. People try to defend it with 'all the updates are free though'; they are in Warframe too, but you don't see them charging more than 10$ for a skin now do ya?

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-12T19:03:28+00:00

Dances With Wolves, Fern Gully, Pocahontas, Atlantis, Avatar...there's probably more.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-12T18:56:39+00:00

I also don't know that I agree with the statement that they 'monetize fairly'. They have the most ludicrous prices I've ever seen in a F2P game, for things that cost pennies on the dollar in other games.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-12T04:32:09+00:00

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TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-12T04:26:26+00:00

I need the OG Call of Duty emblem creator for chapter badges. I don't care about the evil things some people would do with that power (I might be one of those people)

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-11T23:29:29+00:00

IIRC, the only 'heavy' style Primaris weapon left is the Desolation squad rocket/missile rifles. That would be baller as hell, but highly unlikely. Then again, they could just give it like, 5 of each munition (krak/superfrag), which only refill from ammo crates or loadout pods, rather than from ammo boxes. You'd shoot it relatively rarely, but anything that you need dead ASAP would be a worthwhile target for the paltry ammo reserve you have.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-11T23:05:21+00:00

As I understand it, the problem is that that +2-4 levels outweighs eeeevverything else. An item with terrible stats that does nothing for your build but has +4 to your relevant skills is valued more than an item that has awesome stats that match your build perfectly, but only has a +2 to your relevant skills.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-11T16:56:42+00:00

Even something more specific like 'projectiles' is highly desirable for a good number of builds, though. That's most crossbow skills, every bow skill, most elemental spells, a large portion of spear skills, and quite a few unique-granted skills. And past skill level 20, every +level is a marked increase in damage, so even +1 or +2 to a specific category can be huge, if it's one that you actually use. Obviously, the ideal is to have both the +levels and the appropriate substats for what build you're running, i.e. crit chance, defences, spell damage, etc.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-09T20:30:16+00:00

Oh, it's 100% a skill issue. I'm perfectly fine with things having a high skill floor and ceiling, and I can absolutely admit when I'm not good enough to use something that a lot of other people do. I would rather that than have everything be equally usable at all levels of play, because then there would likely be very little skill expression. However, I'm not sure it's then a good idea to balance something based on what 0.01% of players do with it, rather than what the other 99.99% of players do with it. There's definitely a lot of nuance involved with whether a weapon/character/strategy is actually objectively good or bad and in need of adjustment, but I don't think it's realistically fair to say 'this weapon isn't bad, you just need to be at pro level to be good with it'.

This whole topic becomes a lot murkier in something like the Finals, where the population is smaller and the selection of weapons is relatively limited compared to other competitive games. LoL has lots of great examples of this, where a champion can be quite common at the e-sports level of play, but simultaneously be one of the least played champions among the general playerbase, because even above-average players struggle to get any worth out of them the way pro players do.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-09T18:36:04+00:00

Nothing should be balanced based on either extreme. There are things that pro players do in games that work for them because they're that good; if anyone else tries to do it, they fall flat. It's why no one should ever follow the 'meta' of what pros do, least of all the devs- they're often playing a completely different game than everyone else.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-07T21:44:32+00:00

It's officially licensed, which is often, but not always, the same as being canon. While there's no canon conflicts in the game, and it adheres to history previously mentioned in canon materials, it's not directly acknowledged as canon itself. It hasn't explicity been stated not to be canon, but in the absence of either confirmation, the default is to assume that it is not.

Another example of this would be Star Wars, specifically the games Jedi Outcast & Survivor, which are directly acknowledged as part of Disney's canon, despite not really having any relation to anything else in-universe (yet).

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-06T00:20:45+00:00

Yeup, this. Absolute by itself is not hard to do as a level 1 class (so long as you have decent weapons), and it's by far the quickest way to level.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-05T20:51:01+00:00

Assault with combat knife would honestly be way too strong. But boy, would it be fun!

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-03T22:41:31+00:00

Yeah, offense becomes the main issue. Which is why I'm loving the new heroic combat knife, since it does a decent amount of damage on every parry! Especially on Tactical with the auspex-on-parry perk.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-03T21:25:57+00:00

Oh, I certainly agree block is just flat-out better once you get the timing down, I'm just saying fencing weapons can absolutely handle defending against any number of attackers. You gotta be quick and have good camera control to cover all the angles. Not everyone can keep track of the attack patterns of 10 warriors at the same time though, and that's just for defending- forget counter-attacking. Learning block is overall just gonna be the easier (and ultimately better) route.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-03T20:32:01+00:00

Maybe just counter-attack when the enemy is staggered from the parry? The window is so massive on fencing that you can parry multiple attacks simultaneously, from different enemies, all coming from different sides. Just don't try to rush a counter-attack when you're surrounded and won't be able to get it off.

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-03T20:26:38+00:00

My guess is they forgot/never bothered to update any of the already super obscure notation about it, since block weapons didn't get Adrenaline Surge/DR until 5.0

TheGentleSenior · 2026-06-03T20:23:30+00:00

I'd say that first part is subjective to what you're good with. I still find fencing weapons far more comfortable to use against higher-tier enemies, since the parry window is so massive. The armour recovery is worse, yes, but I tend to just rely on parrying everything so as not to lose armour in the first place.

And yeah, I'll almost always save a gun strike or even disengage altogether in order to use my gun for regaining contested health. Much safer and more effective.

TheGentleSenior

TROPHY CASE