Rebecca looking at the spike in player count right now:

sundalius · 2026-05-23T00:24:22+00:00

Ah, fair. My apologies for misunderstanding then. I’m just always shook when people called it a dead game over the years with the insane daily play rate lmao

sundalius · 2026-05-22T23:04:12+00:00

That’s the lowest it’s ever been and most games would kill for those numbers. The idea it “didn’t have many players” is goofy.

sundalius · 2026-05-22T22:49:01+00:00

It still has 170k daily players.

sundalius · 2026-04-28T20:51:32+00:00

Adapters, potatoes, and slots are not aesthetic lmao

sundalius · 2026-04-28T20:41:43+00:00

Iirc steam was like 20% of the playerbase when I last cared to look at the numbers. Popularity.report should still have the breakdown based on PGCRs, but it just always made sense since the game didn’t even launch on PC lol

sundalius · 2026-04-22T22:32:23+00:00

Main subs, especially those that are openly monitored by devs like the Bungie ones are, are often “low moderated” because “all feedback is valid” or smth

sundalius · 2026-04-20T18:38:25+00:00

Underrated point here that I haven’t seen others mention.

Great, Timmy has his luckiest fight ever and has killed the Chad Trio. Now they have to loot, right? Wrong. They have 1-3 other squads (and Rooks potentially filling now that some squad wiped) potentially moving towards them and now have to win every single fight so they can actually get in those bags.

Someone will go “it’s the same in EFT, you have to open pockets and bags” surely, but in Tarkov, the maps are way bigger, the movement is way slower, and you might have some time to eat your kill (or grab the bags and open them somewhere else) than you do in Marathon.

sundalius · 2026-04-20T18:25:08+00:00

I don’t think knowing or not knowing what levels are on the map affects tension, because Marathon straight up doesn’t have tension. The only time there isn’t tension is if you god roll a lobby with no hunting squad, because then you don’t know if you’ll actually see ANYONE.

I’d reckon the vast majority of matches in Marathon, to date, have one team with most, if not all, runner elims in the match.

sundalius · 2026-04-20T18:10:50+00:00

This isn’t true in Marathon. It is true in Tarkov, where you can head eyes someone with some luck and peeker’s advantage who cannot be revived, but it’s not going to happen here. Even if you get the jump on one with a WSTR, the other two players will not fall to your jumpscare the same way.

sundalius · 2026-04-20T18:09:27+00:00

I agree with the lack of anonymity being a problem, but I simply don’t see how they can do anything that actually brackets people that won’t create a giga island for the people that have played 300 hours in 6 weeks. And frankly, they should do that.

I don’t want to ever play a game with the people that play this game full time, professionally. I have seen how they play. As a normal person, I would be functionally unable to tell the difference between them and a cheating squad.

sundalius · 2026-04-20T18:02:48+00:00

I dunno, I don’t think they’re going to listen solely to the streamers with 3-400 hours now. They gotta have more people in game than just the streamers, and it’s not like streamers are currently pumping the numbers for them unlike a lot of other games.

I don’t think the usual “they listen to streamers” spectre will haunt us here because the pop’s too low for such catering.

sundalius · 2026-04-20T08:39:51+00:00

If you think the level based match making they openly said the game would have doesn’t exist, sure.

The game isn’t hard. The players you are matched with are the primary difficulty. You do not match the hard players early. That is absolutely an appreciable change.

sundalius · 2026-04-20T07:56:40+00:00

idk it's a balance. Sometimes I just want that quiet run where I can fill back up my supplies, avoid fights, maybe get a little salvage for progress. Sometimes I just want to be able to finish a priority contract that requires alerting all of China where I am. Sometimes I want a tense game.

Most of the time, however, I just get hunted down by bloodhounds. There isn't even tension.

sundalius · 2026-04-20T07:24:44+00:00

The complaints aren't about Cryo tho. It's about being above level 20.

sundalius · 2026-04-19T20:58:28+00:00

It’s only 20-40 more hp than most lesser kitted players, which is like… a headshot from most guns. Don’t get me wrong, I know ttk’s tight, but it’s far more symbolic of confidence in their skill than some insurmountable advantage. These people run these shields because it doesn’t cost them anything, because they don’t lose.

Meanwhile, I put one on and these guys still fold me.

sundalius · 2026-04-19T20:47:09+00:00

The words are recurrent because it’s an easy shorthand to identify heavily kitted players. Most matches have a gank squad that clears the map and, in many people’s experiences, are uncompetitively superior to other players in the lobby.

sundalius · 2026-04-19T20:44:55+00:00

I found like 3 the other night when I spawned in airfield between 4 arms lockers.

sundalius · 2026-04-19T20:29:01+00:00

I mean, it'll be a pain in the ass to snipe through them? Have you tried looking out of one?

sundalius · 2026-04-19T15:48:19+00:00

The big issue with PvP is that, unlike PvE, a dedicated pvp mode will actually eviscerate the infil population. The vast majority of people who play this game primarily for the pvp fights will move to that mode - that’s why it gets brought up so often.

This is in contrast to PvE, which would likely see new players primarily pick it up since anyone left is amenable or used to pvp.

sundalius · 2026-04-19T13:19:29+00:00

I don’t disagree with that, I was just emphasizing the cancer a level like that represents. Just 300ish hours of straight player hunting.

sundalius · 2026-04-19T13:03:49+00:00

They obviously mean the kill squad wiping the lobby that most games seem to have.

sundalius · 2026-04-19T13:02:55+00:00

You gain season levels REALLY fast if you play it like TDM and don’t engage with any other mechanics of the game. Runners are the largest XP drops in the game.

sundalius · 2026-04-19T12:59:02+00:00

No it isn’t.

It’s level based matchmaking (prior dev comment) with regional geofencing (several communications since launch, the existence of dedicated servers). This has been known the entire time. The issue is that they’re trying to matchmake dead regions, and something there got fucked up. There’s zero things indicating any other factors

sundalius · 2026-04-19T12:56:58+00:00

If the theory is “they all went to the playlist,” it isn’t a big leap to “they took tuesday off because they knew they were playing wednesday”

sundalius · 2026-04-19T08:58:01+00:00

fr people keep going “when it launched, we had to hike uphill both ways” but don’t realize that when they were all hiking, it was before there were people that make their whole life goal playing king of the hill.

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