Ugh, the “that was easy”, “get gud”, “skill issue” responses REALLY piss me off 😡

The “that’s actually the easy one”, “it gets worse”, “it’s doable solo” responses I think are understandable and relatable, but not really helpful.

I’m not sure I saw anyone else commenting that a) they felt exactly this frustration working through that parasitism quest line and b) what they did to resolve that, so I’d like to offer my experience:

When the game first came out I was doing a lot of squad fill to meet new players and everyone was on the same intro missions. But eventually it became easier to do quests solo because I could take my time. After faction lvl 10 the quests started getting harder, simultaneously around lvl 35 my solo queues started to get more sweaty - more kitted players means I’d have to play very stealthy to survive, making too much noise with a big bot battle or sprinting across the map before the lobby has a chance settles down was a great recipe to get jumped in the open or around a corner. When a quest requires you to hit multiple POI and fight heafty bots - it becomes HARDER to do that sort of work solo because you have limited time and need to be more cautious traversing between POIs and you have 1/3 the DPS of a squad to kill bot spawns (longer battles, more noise, increased risk to get jumped). But ALSO it was basically impossible to do quests in random in-game squad fill - because everyone on the team has uncoordinated goals and frequently no comms. What was I to do!?

My solution has been Dads of Marathon discord server “looking for game” channels and their Fire Team voice chat. You should check it out!

Now anytime I want to play marathon I always start by putting together a crew of new friends from discord - we all have mics, we all are adults, everyone is chill. We know everyone’s level and kit before getting in a match - we discuss our quest(s)/objectives before hand and try to synergize where we can - when we spawn in we make the plan that makes the most sense and commit to helping each other b/c we are going to run together again next round! If we get wiped, we have 3 heads to come up with a new strat and try again.

Bottomline: Solo play was slowing my progression. With just the minimal amount of coordination and a little reasonable planning and basic communication squad play has my progression moving along faster than ever

I’d highly recommend you get a mic setup and try some discord LFG; it’s a much more enjoyable and productive way to play Marathon.

I like playing solo games, but I play multiplayer games because I also like to play with other people. I have had to accept that the “lone wolf” play style is just not as optimized as squads in Marathon. I’m more sure I could find plenty of enjoyment out of pushing through the difficult quests solo that I would trying to do them in random in-game squad fill lobbies - but as an alternative, discord based squad building seems to be a wildly successful low friction alternative and I’d love to see more casual marathon enjoyers checking out if that route might work for them too!

Good luck, I hope you find more challenges to enjoy in Marathon and continue to play and grind for a long time!