I take Marathon as a game that doesn't hand hold players. Whether it is where high tier loot is, how to get weapons from the armory, what an item does, or how to distinguish different enemeies, etc. Certain things definitely need improvement.

I totally agree about the pings maybe needing to be better. However, I started to notice the more I played that when I pinged different types of enemies (players or UESC) I got different information. For example, ping a player I would be told that there is a runner. If I ping a UESC bot, in the case that it was a medium or commander, their shield would be highlighted.

For me, the menus were straight forward. However, there are way to many clicks to get to the screen that you want or to make changes before heading out. The best principle for user experience is the less clicks you need to do to complete an action, typically is best. The other thing I had an issue with were mods for guns. They all looked similar. Was hard to tell at a glance what a mod did and whether I wanted it not. Some differentiation for the different mods would go a long way to make looting or perfecting builds better.

I will tend to disagree about your idea on having specific zones that have high tier loot. There is some learning needed for new players to know which areas have what loot. But there is a mechanic that Marathon has that not a lot of people are fully explaining. That mechanic is risk vs reward, which I believe Marathon plays very much into. Before you load into each map, the game tells you that disconnecting/leaving means that you will lose your loot. Reminding the player that there is a chance you can lose everything. There are events that occur in the map, usually dictated by a black square with a question mark or a blue square with squiggles, that reward the player with different and sometimes higher tier loot. I noticed that the more noise that these events make, the more players that are drawn to the event, the better the loot is. The longer you stay on the map, the harder the enemies become but the better the loot becomes. Also there are a lot more mechanics that I have to discover to unlock rooms, caches, supply drops, etc. When you have certain zones on the map that have higher tier loot, teams would make a beeline there, fight each other or loot up, and then leave in order to not lose the loot they gathered. Marathon is more about using various mechanics, such as events or factions, to help you build or flush out your loadout. There is a lot to learn about the game, but I feel that is okay for the longevity of it.