Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders has just wrapped up testing a strictly Player-Versus-Environment mode, and they are making a grave mistake
Between long content droughts, punching the air as I’m sent back to Speranza after losing my entire net worth to a corner-camping rat, or the copious (if occasionally hilarious) bugs and glitches, ARC Raiders hasn’t been able to shake me since it came out October 30 of last year. It may not be a spotless shooter, but there’s simply too much fun to be had, and I love clocking into the sterile hallways of Stella Montis each weekend to find them lit up by a raider’s harmonious singing, or the warmongering camaraderie of a network of Speranzans.
Player counts dropped considerably after the game’s winter halcyon days, but Embark’s latest update Frozen Trail has got the community tethered again. It brings a new map Pendola Pass, advanced, end-game weapon modification and a new outpost for each raider, bringing some more much-needed storage and immersive meta-progression. Additionally, ARC Raiders receives its first, well, raid, as exceptionally rare vault keys can be scoured for and crafted to infiltrate the husk of a fallen ARC Emperor, its alloyed insides littered with new Hydra ARC turrets and lots of juicy loot.
As raiders old and new flood the surface to face down these Bullies and Hydras amid the slippery slopes and dormant flash freezes of Pendola Pass, Embark Studios felt it the best time to test what a vocal minority of the community has been begging for: a fully-fledged PvE (Player-Versus-Environment) subsidiary game mode. This opt-in playtest was held from October 13 to October 20, removing hostile player interactions at the cost of a slightly lessoned loot pool and inability to participate in major map events, such as night raids and hurricanes. Downed raiders were now also targeted by ARC enemies if caught moving in this mode, ensuring that raiders aren’t so immortal as it may sound.
For a mode that has been the principal subject of each of the game’s forums and comment sections, the <a href="https://comicvibe.com/from-ray-tracing-to-dlss-rtx-gaming-laptops-bring-more-to-the-gaming-experience/” title=”From ray tracing to DLSS, RTX gaming laptops bring more to the gaming experience”>experience of actually playing it felt disproportionately vapid, limbless and uninteresting. Without the adrenaline of uncertainty when encountering another raider as a conversation starter, it feels like people mosey on by, and the excitable chatter among friendly raiders making the brave decision to trust one another has found its untimely grave.
Ironically, a mode that is supposed to unify the playerbase through making teamwork the only option makes ARC Raiders feel as though it is socially dead. The lack of player-on-player threat to make raiders hit the breaks turns these PvE servers into an emergent form of a quick match lobby, whereby people simply get the loot they’re looking for and exfiltrate back to base without so much as a missed measure. If the community wanted a game type like this so assuredly, it shouldn’t feel like they’re all so itching to get back out.
This is all without mentioning the dangerous precedent that player segregation sets for the default game mode’s general matchmaking. While Embark’s hidden aggression-based systems have led to frustrations or exploits to deliberately tinker with one’s matchmaking possibilities, there is still a largely peaceful third of the playerbase living out their lives on the surface in self-made ‘PvE’ lobbies, living under their own internal rules, social norms and moral codes that render attacking another player a fool’s gambit.
PvE already exists in ARC Raiders for those who want it, totally unneutered in its latent loot potential or map condition options while still preserving the slim chance of a raider blasting you in the back when no one is looking. Moving this pacifist subculture into its own space feels almost unintentionally exclusionary, like putting different year groups into separate playgrounds. It also means that the likely result of the game’s regular matchmaking will be servers where these oh-so-liberal concepts like peace and harmony don’t even enter the raiders’ collective consciousness, forming bull-like clusters of antagonistic gear pillagers and silent, Snap-Hooking sweatlords.
Perhaps that is too doomerist or hostile of a sentiment, but I’m also legitimately worried for the longevity of ARC Raiders if our playerbase is tethered in two. I only played half a dozen matches of this borderline-graveyard shift of a mode, but I’ve also played enough of normal ARC Raiders to know that this wasn’t working. The choice to police or eject the inter-player dynamics, all-out wars and vainglorious raider roleplays that made the game explode across the internet in its opening months feels iconoclastic and strange, as if the oscillating beauty of the game’s one-of-a-kind matchmaking is about to be entirely left behind.
For now it’s just a speculative playtest, but I hope that direct PvE doesn’t come to ARC Raiders(no matter how easy the devs claim that shift could be) just as I would hope we never receive the dedicated PvP game modes currently being explored by Bungie’s Marathon, which seems a desperate move at maintaining the playerbase of a game that unfortunately cannot gather steam. We aren’t children, Embark. We don’t need separate playgrounds.
