Arc Raiders Community Equally Split Between PvP And PvE

Arc Raiders is at its best when players embrace the improv of random interactions, setting up shop as local traders, forming queues to use computers, or rallying together to hunt down rats while blasting music over their mics. But if you look at the forums, you'll see an endless back-and-forth among the community, as PvE players call those who kill on sight toxic, and PvP players throw it right back at them, arguing it's as integral to the game as everything else.

Embark has tried to remedy this issue with aggression-based matchmaking, pairing players and squads based on their tendency towards PvP, and it even introduced a limited-time PvE event in February. But as it turns out, the playerbase is pretty evenly split, with 30 percent favoring PvP, 30 percent favoring PvE, and 40 percent opting for a mix of both.

"It caught us a little bit by surprise," executive producer Aleksander Grøndal said in an interview with The Guardian. "Pleasantly surprised, just to be clear."

"It Doesn't Always Have To Be About Conflict With Other Players"

A nurse walking down a hallway with a gun in Arc Raiders.

The team "always wanted" there to be cooperation, but Grøndal explained that it "was a little bit surprising to see how many people latched on to that aspect of the game... It kind of blew the whole extraction shooter open, because it doesn't always have to be about conflict with other players."

"I think that people are seeking connections with other players and maybe this is not so easy to do out in the real world any more because people are stuck on their phone," Embark CEO Patrick Söderlund added. "Maybe we have kind of accidentally created a place for people to connect."

Interestingly, according to Embark, solo players are often more friendly than those in squads of three or more.

It's no surprise that unique player-driven interactions are at the core of Arc Raiders, as 95 percent of the community uses proximity chat, but PvP is still crucial to the extraction shooter genre, as we see with that 30 percent statistic. However, what's unique about Arc Raiders is that Embark incentivizes these more friendly interactions, introducing enemies like the Matriarch to push people together, a stark contrast to other games like DayZ which devolved into mindless KOS-fests within months.

Still, it's worth being cautious. That camaraderie among strangers can lull you into a false sense of security, as there are just as many players itching for a gunfight as there are those who just want to chat and help each other out.