The ARC Raiders Player's Guide to Marathon (Key Differences)

If you're interested in trying out Marathon as a fan of ARC Raiders, you're in for quite a different experience!

In this guide, we'll cover the key differences you should know about before you spend another $40 on an extraction game.

Along with our list, we also recommend trying out Marathon during its free Stress Test happening from February 28th to March 2nd.

While some players will opt to stay loyal to one of the games, there will definitely be many who hop in between them as extraction genre fans. As we've seen with Marvel Rivals and Overwatch, competition is good for the players.

This guide was adapted from the video created by our expert, SiegeOC.

The most obvious difference between ARC Raiders and Marathon is that Marathon uses a first-person perspective rather than a third-person perspective like ARC Raiders.

In general, this makes Marathon more skill-based as players can't abuse hiding behind walls to get the jump on their enemies. It's also a bit more immersive since you are experiencing the game through the eyes of your character rather than behind their body.

There are some advantages lost to third-person, though. One of them is that you can't really see the cosmetics that your character is wearing, and more emphasis will be placed on the aesthetic of the guns.

Another aspect that should be acknowledged is that a contingent of players get motion sickness from first-person perspective but not as much from third-person.

Overall, though, Marathon commits to the more hardcore vision that can only really be achieved in first-person.

With ARC Raiders have the goal of being a mainstream extraction shooter that is adaptive to how friendly or aggressively you play, there is a lot more room for interactions where players could be peaceful or work together.

Although Marathon did eventually add VOID after community backlash, the world is designed and built for PvP. You might have the occasional instance where Rooks might work together, but for the most part, you should expect players to shoot first and ask questions later.

Due to ARC Raiders's emphasis on casual accessibility, it has a much higher time to kill, meaning it typically takes more shots and a longer time to kill someone on average.

As we mentioned earlier, the third-person perspective can give a big advantage to people hiding behind walls, so this helps to at least give the attacked player a chance to fight back.

In Marathon, the time to kill is much lower, meaning that you will be rewarded for faster reflexes, precision, and smart positioning. You will often be downed without a chance to even know where you're being attacked from.

However, the trade off is that there are more opportunities to scouting for information around you with Runner Shells like Recon and Thief along with more potent defensive options like the Riot Barricade of Destroyer.

In ARC Raiders, the maps are built around big open environments with sprawling POIs, rotating weather events, and map conditions that make you feel the post-apocalyptic survival frontier. This makes the roaming PvE arcs more of the threat, especially the larger ones.

So far from what we've seen, Marathon has maps that are smaller, tighter, and more interactive. For example, you can run into random events and even security celarnace puzzles that may change how you navigate and approach objectives. Since it has more of a PvP focus, this will also encourage fights more often.

When it comes to loot, the two titles couldn't be more different. ARC Raiders is all about resource-based looting and crafting. Since you're scraping by on the leftovers of civilization, normally mundane things like olives or a catbed are seen as valuable. What you find can be used to put together scrappy weapons and gadgets that are ultimately pretty low-tech for a futuristic setting.

In Marathon, the level of tech is much higher, with synthetic augments to weapon and body mods. You're working for various corporations and factions that are often cybernetic themselves, blurring the lines between human and AI.

In extraction shooters, there is always a two-sided gameplay loop split between missions and your main hub where you bring back your spoils, manage your inventory, and make decisions for your next run.

The ARC Raiders hub simulates you building up your little section of Speranza's underground base by upgrading your workbenches and tinkering to make advancements in your capabilities. There are a few human vendors that you do missions for and trade materials with between upgrading your base.

In Marathon, it's all about doing jobs and progressing your reputation with the six factions. Each of them has its own culture, playstyle, rewards, and overall, a much deeper lore than the NPCs of ARC Raiders.

For example, you have the Arachne, a PvP-centric faction with an emphasis on rewarding you for eliminating Runners. Meanwhile, MIDA embraces explosive chaos and sabotage.

One of the main knocks against ARC Raiders is its lack of an endgame. It rolled out Stella Montis, a community-unlocked challenge map and that's about as close as it gets. Once your gear is maxed, you're mostly farming trials and using your gear in PvP or helping friends who are still progressing.

Marathon has a whole ranked system to climb along with faction ranks and eventually the Cryo Archive, which is a hardcore raid zone with tougher UESC enemies, puzzles, and big boss encounters.

For competitive gamers, tick rate can matter quite a bit due to mechanical execution. As a more accessible game, ARC Raiders doesn't prioritize it as much, so it runs at a 20Hz tick rate (meaning that the server updates everyone's movements and actions twenty times per second). For the most part it does the job, but you can feel the latency sometimes.

Marathon improves upon this with a 60Hz tick rate, making it similar to Counter-Strike 2. This should provide for a smoother experience that will let the skillful players truly shine and decrease the likelihood of getting dropped behind walls.