Though methane has potential as a new energy source, its utilization is limited due to the bottleneck in methane activation. In this work, we investigate methane activation using additive noble gases to understand the relation between the discharge characteristics and methane conversion. We found that excited and ionized atoms of Ar and Kr considerably affect the methane activation even under similar electron temperature and electron density conditions. In other words, the degree of methane activation is determined by the intrinsic characteristics of the additive gas. We found that methane is predominately activated by electrons when Ar or Kr is used as an additive gas; however, methane is predominately activated by excited atoms with Xe as an additive gas. The difference in the activation species affects not only the methane conversion but also the selectivity of the product species. Among all noble gases, we find that Kr is the most effective for activating methane.