u/Rodd-200

It's impressive what Housemarque achieved with Saros. They managed to improve everything compared to Returnal, especially the sense of character progression. Until now, Returnal was my favorite game, but Saros managed to surpass it and i just finisehd act 1.

The weapons are extremely well designed, and the way the character attributes influence weapon performance and their different variations is all very well executed. Zero complaints about the game's quality, including the story. Its been really interesting to see how expeditions I, II, III, and IV failed while trying to extract lucenita. And even knowing some spoilers about the ending, I'm still curious to see how everything develops until it gets there and what the consequences will be.

Its a real shame that Saros is selling so poorly, largely because of price and difficulty level that many people consider very hard, when in reality, its much more manageable than Returnal.

10/10, and I don't need any more facts to convince me.

Initially, I only knew Marathon as an extraction shooter. It was my first game in the genre, and I had a lot of fun with it, I can’t deny that. As the weeks went by, I started noticing a growing wave of criticism surrounding the game, both constructive and unfounded, whether regarding the PvP/PvE balance or more technical issues. From that point on, I saw the debate between Arc and Marathon players only getting bigger, while the game I loved kept losing players and matchmaking times kept increasing.

My free time started becoming more limited, so I decided to give another multiplayer game a chance. Since Arc was at the center of the discussion I had been following, I decided to try another extraction shooter, even though it would mean leaving Marathon behind, which honestly wasn’t something I wanted to happen.

After playing 50 hours of each game, I came to the conclusion that Arc Raiders fits much better with what I’m looking for than Marathon,  not because Arc Raiders is more accessible, but because it has a much more solid foundation, fully embracing both the PvE and PvP aspects.

I started playing ARC with a PvP mindset. I wanted to encounter those players who criticized Marathon it PvP aspect.

In my first matches, I jumped in wanting to shoot and kill everyone. I had good PvP results, even with limited resources and gear. I knew my kills would be limited by my inexperience in ARC, but I was willing to take a game focused on PvE by the player base and turn it into a PvP experience.

However, what I actually found was a game that was EXTREMELY welcoming toward cooperation, with players genuinely engaged in communicating and helping each other for character progression. That’s when, very naturally, I became a 100% PvE player. I was really surprised by the quality of the ARC AI and by how satisfying it felt to dismantle each machine in a specific way. The more I played, the more I understood the strengths and weaknesses of every weapon and enemy.

To sum it up: after reaching 50 hours in Marathon and another 50 hours in ARC, I never went back to Marathon. Today, I have more than 130 hours in ARC after completing my first expedition, returning to level 1, and feeling genuinely excited to progress through everything all over again.

I absolutely do not want Marathon to fail, quite the opposite. But I think that for people who enjoy alternating between multiplayer games and singleplayer games, Arc Raiders becomes much more inviting, especially because it appeals both for those players looking for something casual, without mandatory wipes, and for those who want to keep playing consistently even after expeditions and their benefits for doing so.

What Marathon is missing imo are these important details that also give attention to the more casual audience (or someone who doesn’t want to feel like their progress will lost every three months)

If Marathon offers a longer reset cycle (maybe every 4–6 months) and focus more on cooperative content, I believe the game could survive with a healthy community. For now, i cant see SONY supporting this game for more than a year if the player base keep recording less than 8-9k a day. 

Right now, I can only think about playing Arc Raiders, even though I had already played twice as much Marathon.