We are closing in on the first anniversary of ARC Raiders, and in under a year, the game has undergone some radical changes that have pushed it far from its initial vision. There are countless additional pieces of content, from new ARCs to maps, mechanical adjustments to free loadouts, but perhaps the most interesting updates have happened to the matchmaking system. The game doesn’t have a traditional ranked ladder to determine which players you are matched against; however, there are dozens of other metrics behind the scenes that dictate who ends up in your lobby, and one of the most important is how aggressive you are as a Raider.
Over the past few months, the devs have tweaked the exact parameters for deciding what aggression actually means in the context of an ARC Raiders match, and with this most recent update, they are taking major strides into a PvE direction that had previously only existed in the background. Before, if you were getting shot at and chose to fight back, the game placed a big weight on that action and considered it to be one of aggression, not defense. Now, though, when retaliation happens, you are no longer given an aggressive metric or scoring when it comes to matchmaking, assuming you didn’t shoot first. This means that defensive PvP will keep you in those quieter lobbies, and as a result, we may see a much bigger gap appear between the lobbies with bloodthirsty scavengers and calm material hunters on the lookout for rare items, dividing the community between those who love fighting and those who hate it.
The Gap Between PvE and PvP in ARC Raiders Has Never Been Wider
The beauty of extraction shooters, specifically PvP-inclusive ones, is the ability to play however you choose. As soon as the map loads in, you have all the freedom to go hog wild and shoot anything that moves, or if you are more of a pacifist who just prefers exploring and taking out occasional AI enemies, then you are more than welcome to do so. In ARC Raiders, the reason this topic is so interesting is because of when these two opposing playstyles crossover. PvE players get frustrated when they are gunned down for no good reason, especially if they call out “don’t shoot” or attempt to defuse the situation, and PvP players don’t get what all the fuss is about, proceeding to hold that trigger down without a care in the world.
Put the consoles in the correct order.
In order to make both sides of the community happy, and those who may hover somewhere in the middle, Embark has refined the matchmaking system to factor in how aggressive you are as a player, i.e., if you like PvP, then you will match with other PvPers, and vice versa for PvE. For the friendlier Raiders, they do take up a sizable percentage of the player base, and so their opinion certainly matters to the developers, and as a result, we have now been given a more extreme version that should keep everyone happy, at least for the time being. By letting you fight back when things go south, the game should feel less punishing, as there is nothing worse than wanting to avoid conflict, but being forced into it and effectively penalized for returning fire.
There is one interesting consequence of choosing this more definitive style of matchmaking, and that is the game will look vastly different from player to player, depending on their playstyle. PvP players won’t really notice a lot changing in their games, but PvEers should see a sizable shift in how loud their lobbies are, turning one side firmly against PvP further than ever before. Funny enough, the original idea for ARC Raiders was for it to be a PvE game, where the main focus was on fighting the giant robots and working together to make it out alive. As time went on, the developmental direction clearly switched to the model in place now, but the community has been asking for PvE-only modes ever since the game launched, and so, even though we don’t currently have an exclusive, no-player combat event or map, I think if you are someone who really hates the PvP, this is about as close as you’re going to get for now.
ARC Raiders’ Respect for PvE Players May Be Missing the Point
From my perspective, I do appreciate the idea of having a kind of matchmaking system that fits player styles against one another, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel as though this approach works directly against what makes extraction shooters so enjoyable to begin with. I was never the biggest fan of the genre, spending maybe 100 or so hours across various titles like Tarkov and ARC Raiders, yet in my time playing, it was the player interactions that were always the highlights. There would be times when I was scouring the outskirts for loot and heard a nearby player doing the same, and the tension that arises from that first meeting where you have no idea whether they are going to shoot you in the back the second you turn around or leave you be is exactly what drew me back again and again for weeks on end.
By being much stricter in how the lobbies are match-made and how you are measured internally, that tension begins to evaporate, turning the PvE lobbies into something almost relaxing rather than stressful. Now I will say that I don’t lean heavily into either direction, but I did favor being more friendly with ARC Raiders for the most part, yet if I rocked up and saw a player and knew that the chances of them being kind were way higher, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as engaged as in the situations where a single misstep can all it takes to end the run. That doesn’t mean to say that there shouldn’t be room in the genre for different kinds of players, and we have already seen quite a few newer games that either tone down the PvE or remove it entirely, but I think the dilemma that the bigger games need to solve is who to tailor the experience to, and thus, how to balance the game around them.
Look at Marathon, for instance, which recently added a separate PvE-only mode that functions almost like a rogue-like mode, whilst still keeping many of the best elements from the base game intact. What Vaultbreakers does for the game is give content that PvP-centric players can enjoy, whilst ensuring their vision for the premier extraction mode remains constant and true to the tenets of the genre. ARC Raiders, on the other hand, is trying to keep all its eggs in the same basket, catering to all kinds of players at once, which in turn means that in the future, the divide between the sides of the community is only going to get bigger. Whether that will negatively impact the game is unclear, but I think I speak for many when I say that it would be much more valuable for there to be a dedicated PvE mode, rather than turning the existing extraction loop into a makeshift one.
ARC Raiders
10/10
- Released
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October 30, 2025
- ESRB
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Teen / Violence, Blood, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
