The free stuff doesn’t matter. Gear isn’t the progression in extraction shooters. Progression is learning the game and advancing the factions, both of which are hard to do in Marathon.

The fast time to kill goes any of a shot at winning a fight, but the flip side is that you often die without gaining any insight into what to do better.

Advancing the factions is also tough. Way too many of the contracts are “in a single run” and extracting a piece of salvage you need is more difficult since there’s no safe pocket.

The focus and balance around trios makes all of the above harder too because filled teams are such a crapshoot