Marathon really needs to capture a wider more casual audience.

Disclaimer at the start of this post it's a long one. First I am not familiar with reddit formating so forgive me if this is a little sporadic or chaotic. Second, I have played the game for 300 hours already. I have done cryo successes and failures, I LIKE fighting other teams when I am at an advantage or disadvantage and win or lose, I like the struggle and I like the fight. So before anyone comes after this with a "Oh you just suck, you want the game to be easier, you're not even understanding the whole point of the genre", don't.

Now that those are out of the way I wanted to point out some issues regarding not having a casual playerbase AND give solutions that while they may not be the best, would certainly be helpful. These solutions I've gathered while playing with the overall playerbase, both my close friends which I would consider to be like top 10% of the playerbase (a generous estimate). As well as people I have grouped up with from the marathon discord, as well as the Dads of Marathon discord (btw small plug to both servers, really good people in the games I've had from both places). As well as filling into crew with just random people. I've noted down and injected these topics into conversation with people who have mics. So my selection group is pretty diverse and I'll summarize the crux of the issue below.

We've got to get something that promotes the game towards a more casual audience and we've got to get it fast. These are just some of the issues surrounding the lower player base I was able to put together.

-Que times are insanely long over the past week;

This consensus on this one is really simple and would be solved with a wider audience playing the game, but they need a reason to actually play the game beyond how awesome the weapons and gameplay is. They need good loot, make all weapons drop from sources things like outlands, circuit breakers, misriahs and impacts need to drop as white variants from weapons lockers. These casual players also need to fight people of their gear and skill level but we'll get there.

-Players are often fighting constant teams of the top 10% of the player base with insane gear advantages at this point (WHICH AGAIN, I DO NOT MIND, I AM NOT SPEAKING FOR ME);

Again this is fixed by doing things that increase the player count. Let those guys fight it out with those guys in SBMM or even gear value match making, If they guys who are established want to enter the lower tiers of match making, they have to cripple their brought in loot, or bring a key in that can open a room. They're not guaranteed good loot out of those rooms so it seems fair to me. They could easily be ambushed by freekits / lower gear value players and if they are actually that good and top of the player pool they will likely come out on top anyways, but for the most part it will leave players to fight other players of their gear value. Leave the free kits and the middle tier range gear guys to fight out with each other. A simple solution to this could be a crew gear value bracket system.

-The market and barter economy is WILDLY inconsistent and often does not allow for the low man to get any sort of leg up;

This is just a sort of whole mess. Consistent issues everywhere from purple guns, shields, and implants for GOLD salvage (yuck) to high tier weapons available for next to nothing (green impacts for green mats etc) or what have you. The main thing here, is a salvage issue. There needs to be more purple and blue salvage on the regular (non cryo) maps, and there it needs to RAIN golds in cryo as a result (we will come back to this). The barter system and economy is in tandem with the upgrades from vendors and frankly, their needs to be more salvage to make upgrades easier to get, and those upgrades should be aquired earlier in the season (which I still haven't even finished mine and I play religiously, that's crazy), so that we can then use the salvage for the fun part of the game, guns, shields, implants, and cores for the best part of the game, fighting at high levels. These changes would allow a "catch up" to any part of the game. Just joined half way in a season, blue and purple salavage isn't insanely rare and you can do a few low gear runs to then get to your mid gear runs to then get to your high gear runs and upgrade rapidly all the while doing your questing (OF WHICH THE REWARDS FEEL GREAT, NAILED THAT ONE BUNGIE GREAT JOB). Everything should funnel players back into the main objective of Marathon.

-Cryo Vault is not a feasible goal to even enter over and over for most of the playerbase, but especially the casual base. Furthermore, the loot isn't always worth it.

During my runs, and especially among the fill crews, I ran into a very devestating truth. Most people can't even reliably enter cryo. Those that were able to got stomped because by then there was really geared teams who knew the maps and knew everything there was to know about how to maximize their success. The aspect of this should not change, in my opinion. Cryo is the pinnacle of the game. It should be where the hyper sweatiest nastiest teams are. However, it's a pipe dream for the now fallen off casual player. We saw something similar in PVE Raids in Desiny 2 where the grand majority of the playerbase was terrified of doing these endgame activitys but they were able to try due to the raid having the best gear, and it being pve. So what is the solution here. This is an interesting one so let me break it into two sections.

First, and this one is GOING to be controversial, but I heard it from someone and it really REALLY made me think about how good of an idea it could be for the average player, even if I don't really like the style of it. Once a week, and I mean once. There should be a PvE Cryo with 2 or three teams that, when they load in, work together for. This is heresy for most of us who love the fight, myself included, I know. It is however, not for us. It's for that casual player. This way, even us fighters can load into a cryo, warm up, get some easy loot, maybe help sherpa some lowbies through, and move on to what we really want, the fighting. The loot in this version of cryo should be purple, with little to no golds. Further, it should not allow access to vaults 4,5,6 and of course 7.

Second, and back to the main cryo, the fighter cryo, the lose everything factory cryo. Every item in cryo key vaults 4 and up should be gold, or purple, barring resupply chests, stay with me here. Cryo is already very lucrative for the most part, but it's also the MOST DANGEROUS PLACE IN THE GAME. The teams that will be successful here should be rewarded, and the teams that are able to break the glass ceiling whether through luck, skill, or otherwise need to be fully rewarded for the end tier of the game. I have had cryo runs where I brought in much better gear than the things I left with and it was disappointing. This should be the pinacle goal for the casual player base that everything leads to, but they have to be rewarded for it beyond just "Yes we killed everyone here!" they need to feel rewarded. This also allows the strong teams to continue to shore up gear. It allows progression, and it allows those strong teams to move on to ranked which is where prestige and showing off takes over. This is where the casusal player will likely end up becoming not so much a casual player, and this allows for a longer 3 month season to be filled out with plenty of player engagement.

As of now, the game is showing the cracks of not having a system in place for either a catch up, or easier time getting upgrade materials for the lower playerbase. A special note to the C.A.R.R.I system, it is a great start but it is a kind of system that needs to be present permanently. People already meme'd on the game with the playercount issues and fuck those guys, but this subreddit exacerbated the issue seperately by calling people who had real feedback trash and telling them to go back to ARC. Now to be fair it was mixed in with a lot of people who complained that they died in a "fair" fight, nevertheless we are seeing the effects of people being driven away from the game by gatekeeping elitism, on top of the games already niche vibe.

We need to start being more inclusive to a broader playerbase, the game is fun, but it's Marathon, not Sprint. So let's make the fun last for everyone.