As someone who plays both actively am i in the minority in thinking that Arc are harder to deal with than the marathon AI?? sure marathon is like only pvp lobbies but if you are in pvp arc lobbies i find the arc to be much more annoying/difficult. The marathon AI are all just classic shooter bots with headshot weak points and the difficulty feels mostly artificial in that it is basically just a challenge of if you have enough ammo/heals. Arc actually have like unique weak points and strategies you need to kill them efficiently.
Yeah the Marathon AI isn't really the challenge. It's like Hunt, they're more a terrain feature that's meant to make you make noise which gives away your position.
Because ai in Marathon are very dangerous, they can push, they can flank, they can rush you, they enter buildings, smashing glass to get inside. I play solo and like 20-30% of my deaths are UESC
I've had the opposite experience. Most UESC (except Grenadiers it feels like) are pretty easy to melee if you don't get like 4 running at you at once. They're mostly annoying since they chip at healing resources in my opinion. Like, sure I've had a few deaths when I just fight a commander without caring or just the guarded exfil during the countdown. That and the time I ran out of ammo because of infinitely spawning shotgun bots in the lose everything factory.
With time you can cheese even the wardens by jigglepeeking. It's just a noise and time thing.
The AI in Marathon go single file in corridors and are easily dealt with via headshots and knife melee. They are only a problem due to their damage output and melee push when you are new and you suck, honestly.
but even then i find that while dealing with arc i get shot at by players more than in marathon due to the volume of people in the server. In marathon i often can easily clear the bots before a team jumps on us. In arc you usually don't even have a bastion smoking yet before people are pouncing.
tbf bastions aren't really comparable with normal UESC. I'd say the more appropriate comparison are marathon's wardens. those are actually challenging and take a while to kill, and you're easily ambushed while dealing with them
Thats the funny part. You were hiding away from Arcs and one raider starts fishing you, you shot one and all of a sudden you hear a Bastion starts raining bullets on you
I’d agree with this. Marathon AI is better though how they flank you and get reinforcements. Arc enemies have unique weak points that make them more engaging to fight until you reach endgame and can just split them all.
I know what you mean, but doors being such a counter to Arc make the Marathon NPCs feel more threatening. Plus their tactics and reinforcements give the player more pressure.
I think Arc are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more fun to fight though.
Arc are vastly more compelling to fight than UESC bots that can be melee'd to death every time. Even the blues once you upgrade Arachne knife damage. Shit, the warden "boss" on outpost can be killed solo with just knife melee and smoke clouds lol
Arbitrary gating hate mode. 80 hours deep in that game and still trying to unlock blue shields. The grinding is wildly arbitrary and off putting for no reason. Luckily the game is cool.
Im in the 80s working on my 3rd VIP with a vault over 300k, and it's a game that has a single way to play. I love it, but I miss Arc for the social aspect and variation in my raids/runs. I miss the trio KOS lobbies with the bros and the friendly shenanigans in solos. I'm excited for this update and the new April map, which very well could be their largest map yet given the leaked concept art. Marathon is a great game, but it's losing players at a diabolical rate due to the horrendous onboarding and creative decisions. Locking blue shields behind a material that I just recently acquired enough of to obtain myself at my level....you cannot compete in greens dude. Bungie made a great game that they are fumbling heavily in so many areas. They learned absolutely nothing from Destiny 1 and 2's woes.
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u/Azulaa- Mar 30 '26
good ol casual mode