But PvP is Central to The Experience
Arc Raiders isn’t actually a PvP game, and that fact is what fuels the incredible social dynamics that are thriving within it. You see, Arc Raiders is actually a PvE game with PvP elements. Don’t believe me? Let’s run it down.
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PvP in Arc Raiders is entirely optional, you have to choose to shoot another player. The quests are PvE, the Trials are PvE, the expedition is PvE, and everything you need to upgrade your benches and gear is all PvE. Nothing in the game or lore actually encourages PvP aside from a stray feat or two.
The goal of the game is to go out, find loot and materials, and extract safely. Attacking other players is actually the least effective way to obtain loot in the game, no, seriously, it is. Every time you attack a player with the intention of looting them, it’s like playing a slot machine that could result in your death.
You have no idea what any given player has on them. But the odds of them having rare gear are relatively small. The chances of them having the exact materials you need at any given time are even smaller.
You put yourself in danger for a small chance of getting something good. Even if that player doesn’t manage to take you down while defending themselves, you alert other nearby players to what happened, and they may come and investigate. In many locations, the Arcs themselves may third-party you.
If you die, you get nothing, and even if you were using a free loadout, you still lose the time you invested into the attack, time you could have used gathering stuff you actually need. The best way to collect materials is to simply go out and search for them, or even teaming up with other players to hit locations faster and bring down the larger Arcs. There is more than enough loot on the map for every single player to exit with a full inventory of things they actually need.
What makes this very interesting, however, is that while everything I said is true. The existence of PvP, is absolutely central to the Arc Raiders experience. The fact that you can be attacked, and you can never be sure who to trust, is what makes the rest of the game actually work.
Team-ups and cooperation are meaningful because they’re not forced, just as you have to choose to attack another player, you also have to choose to trust them. Furthermore, while the Arcs are a huge threat and are another reason that the game works so well, they aren’t a constant threat.
Players can go where Arcs can’t. Without the threat of PvP, that would make large portions of the map safe zones where you could freely loot as fast and loud as you wanted. The fact that a player may be nearby and ready to mug you is what gives the game its ongoing tension, as danger is present from the time you enter the map to the time you leave it.
To take it even further, just as attacking a player can cause the Arcs to descend upon you, the presence of players keeps you from being too trigger-happy with the Arc. Battling the Arc gives away your location to other players, who may come to help you or may come to take advantage of the situation and attack you. In essence, Arc Raiders does exactly what it needs to do to be the great game that it is.
So why does the game cause such big feelings within the community? Go into any Arc Raiders community, and you will see a schism of factions at each other’s throats. Some even go as far as to call for a PvE mode, which would cripple the game’s very identity. While another side completely disregards any complaints about PvP, and chastises anyone who complains.
Well, the answer is due to another part of the game’s interesting social dynamics. Arc Raiders actually relies on some members of the community being, well, villainous. If 100% of the community were always friendly and cooperative, all that danger and tension would be lost. However, being villainized, so to speak, feels bad. It kind of has to, and it’s that bad feeling that makes some folk, including me, reluctant to force it upon others.
The fact that dying has stakes and that it feels really bad to get taken down actually fuels the friendlier side to some degree. I don’t want to make others feel bad, I don’t want to ruin their experience, so I don’t attack people without a reason.
The Arc Raiders’ “villains” find that attitude infuriating because, well, it reflects back on them. “How dare you feel bad about shooting someone in a video game when they don’t?” Arc Raiders brings up some rather uncomfortable conversations that not many games do.
In most games, what you do in them doesn’t reflect upon your character outside of the game at all. Studies have proven this. However, most games aren’t like Arc Raiders. The other players aren’t NPCs, and they aren’t your enemy. There are no winners, no losers, no K/D ratio or scoreboard. There’s no enemy team, and no reason to attack them…unless you make the personal choice to do so.
You have to choose to make someone feel bad, to potentially ruin their experience. That fact makes both sides feel things they wouldn’t normally feel. If you get attacked and downed, it not only feels bad that you are losing stuff, it also feels bad that another person chose to do that to you when they didn’t have to. And on the attacker’s end, they are getting villainized. People beg, plead, call them names, and try to make them feel bad for playing the game, at least from their perspective.
This means Arc Raiders will always cause strong feelings in the people who play it. It’s not really a side effect, it’s intended. Those strong feelings help fuel the very social dynamics that make Arc Raiders work.
So does this make players who attack on sight bad people? No. There could be numerous reasons to attack another player, even if you are friendly. I play as a rescue raider and I help people as much as possible, revive them, and save them from Arcs and aggressive raiders. I don’t feel bad about putting down an aggressive raider, as I’m only inflicting upon them what they intended to do to someone else.
Yet, as friendly as I am. I attack on sight frequently. Every single Raider encounter is a risk assessment. They might be acting sketchy, or I believe they will attack me as soon as I turn my back. In other cases, I’m guarding a room I want to loot, and chasing off others. If they leave, I don’t pursue, but if they try to fight me, I take them out.
Other times I have to make a snap decision on risking myself on the chance of them being friendly. Someone might come charging into the room, and if I hesitate even for a moment and they aren’t friendly, I might die instead, so I down them. I carry defibs, so if I feel like I’ve made a mistake, I’ll revive them. But trusting my gut has worked out pretty well. In most cases, I assume someone had a reason to shoot me.
However, there is an area where things are much less grey. Lying, betrayal, extraction camping, and otherwise playing as dirty as possible might very well reflect on someone’s character, and that makes people uncomfortable too.
When someone lies, or when they pretend to be friendly and later stab another person in the back. It had nothing to do with playing a video game. They lied and deceived another very real person, in a game where deception is not a game mechanic, this isn’t Among Us. They likely did so by talking to this person with their very real voice. That’s somewhat beyond engaging in just PvP, and well, to be blunt, it’s very ugly behaviour.
Deception and extraction camping is painting a picture of what a person likes to do when there are no repercussions. To betray the trust of another person, or to sit 20 minutes in a bush at extraction in the hopes of ganking someone who spent that 20 minutes actually playing the game, is not a person I’d like to hang around with outside of the game.
Trying to defend the behaviour by saying “It’s just a game” is a vast oversimplification. Getting your kicks off of ruining another person’s time is not something well-adjusted adults do. It’s something that children who haven’t finished developing do.
Just because Arc Raiders gives you the freedom to do something doesn’t mean it’s not crappy behavior to do it. It means that a game has to physically restrain you from being a jerk, or you’re going to act like a jerk. Arc raiders gave you freedom, and this is what you chose to do with it. That is on you.
Regardless, the magic mix that makes Arc Raiders great is incredibly interesting, and I’m curious to see how the social dynamics evolve as Embark adds content and makes tweaks. Maintaining a tight balance of incentives for both cooperation and hostility is a monumental task, and I hope they can keep the scales even because Arc Raiders really is something special.
