Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios is bowing to the pacifists and trialing a PvE mode in their extraction shooter. If you play between October 13th and 20th, you’ll be able to flick a toggle that means you load either into the traditional world of Arc Raiders, where human players vie for the valuable scraps left behind in a ruined world watched over by killer robots, or a slightly safer version where the machines are still deadly but the humans can’t hurt you.
“We’re seeing a large and growing group of Raiders who come to the Rust Belt for the co-op and the ARC, not fighting with other Raiders,” Embark say in the post announcing the trial. “That group has become a core part of our community, so it’s important we learn how to support them properly rather than leave them working around the game.”
To back this up, the studio share some data they’ve collected, showing that there are now more players that play only friendly co-op and never attack other humans than the merciless pure PvP bunch. Apparently the PvP group has remained at a stable 34% since the game’s launch, but the number of mixed players, who spend most their time being affable members of the post-apocalypse society but occasionally dabble in wanton homicide, has shrunk, with most opting to become full-time peaceniks.
You VILL play the game the way we want you to!
Part of the core design was the risk that maybe another raider could turn on you. The devs continuously hammered home that this was a core part of the game which couldn’t be changed and would result in a lesser game. So was that a lie or is the PvE mode going to be a fundamentally worse game?
Each PvE only match is going to be a foot race to see who gets to the loot and extract first with zero risk; the bots pose so little danger that you could run around with an empty loadout and not worry about losing anything. Conversely, each PvP enabled lobby is going to be a deathmatch with no looting because you have nowhere else to use your weapon loadouts and you have the PvE mode for looting.
Looting with no risk gets super boring super fast; unless they provide some steep incentives for NOT queueing up in PvE only, this game is going to fall flat on its face.
The game was initially planned as a COOP only game, so no big surprise. The game sadly got basically “culture war´d” by a shitload of toxic people. A lot of them were not even playing the game. They always tried to create a lot of friction in the player base, but they eventually left and got bored and moved on.
The biggest problem the game has that it has basicall no “endgame” content. Engaging the largest Arcs is not worth it and the game needs more complex content that maybe goes a bit into the direction of dungeons of Destiny 2 or at the very least some of the more complex public events.
Good developers pave desire paths when they appear.
Bad devs try to force the players to “correct” their playstyles because they are enjoying the game “wrong”.
It is mind-boggling how much more common the latter is.
The ARC devs have been the latter up until this point.
I knew it was a risk when I bought this game intending to play solo. About the 9th time that strangers killed me during extraction after being “friendly” through shared firefights, I uninstalled the game.
This mode might get me back in, if for no other reason than sunk cost.
I couldn’t deal with the sociopathy anymore either. Like I’m trusting you thru the entire raid and then betrayal at the exit… I know it’s just a game but there really is something twisted about it.
I basically detested the whole game. The core loop is just sneak and loot trash. Carry trash to extraction where someone will try to grief you. The guns felt meh. The AI voice thing was just weird.IDK if there was a story in there, but after 5-6 hours I was completely over it. Even with PvE I have no interest in the game itself because at its core it just felt like a shit version of fallout.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I don’t hurt other people and I think most don’t but I feel like that what makes other people feel nice, knowing they could hurt you but choose not to. If I’m in trouble I think most people are more likely to help than hurt me. A little bit of danger makes it exciting.
This happened with Ultima Inline years ago, they made two servers, one for people who wanted PvP and one for those who don’t, and you could switch between them relatively freely. The PvP side ended up being a total death trap where you would get PKed instantly while the other side felt too safe.
I’m also unsure that a PvE mode will be good for the game. I know there are some people who don’t want anything to do with PvP, but I think what the majority are tired of when it comes to PvP is deception. Players acting friendly but then killing you when you least expect it.
I think what the Chinese dev team is doing might be a better fix. That or a faction system, so you can immediately see if another player will be hostile
