The Reason I Choose Apex Over Other FPS Games

Well thought out. Well said. I agree.

I will add that I've been asking myself a lot of similar questions lately as I've started dipping my toe into Marathon. It's boiled down to, "Why do I hate Marathon, and why do I keep coming back to Apex even though it routinely fails as a game as well as failing me personally?"

The painful answer has a lot to do with sunk cost. It's taken me forever to learn as much of this game as I have and I hate the idea of having to spend that much time again just to learn how to be half-assed at yet another game that I don't really like. But there is more to it than that, and the points you made are good points. While it's taken me 26 years to realize that I don't really like player versus player games, I'm stuck here for the aforementioned reasons. And if that's the way it's going to be then, yes, I too value a relatively level playing field. This game no longer has that, or apparently any aspiration to get it back. But new games, like Marathon, only create the illusion of a level playing field. You have to get to really know the game to fully understand how the field is favoring one player over another, or the way matchmaking is favoring one player over another, or the way that cheating in any form corrupts the process to a degree where you know you can't just re-queue and shake it off. Even though that's we do over and over and over again. What is it they say about the person who keeps repeating the same mistake expecting a different result?

No, the matchmaking in this game is not good, never was, and isn't getting any better with time and a declining population. And the wild imbalances in tuning, driven I would guess exclusively by a desire to sell kit from the store, is just plain embarrassing. I know the good people at Respawn have to eat, but surely there's a better way. JHC, if they sold an aimbot in the store they'd actually get money out of me, and that's notoriously difficult to do for a game developer, and I doubt it would make the game play worse for much of anyone any more than it already does. I often think I must be the last player in this game who isn't cheating. Sad.

Guess I should have tried ARC Raiders instead of Marathon. Live and learn.