Arc Raiders’ potentially awkward struggle for PvP balance actually makes the game better

When Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders launched in October, it became an unabashed success, quickly becoming most people’s touchpoints for extraction shooters. This genre has primarily stayed away from the mainstream. However, its growing fanbase appears divided over the nature of the extraction shooter itself, asking if players should engage with the PvP side of the game at all.

The division has split the playerbase into two broad camps: those who want to scrap with each other over loot and those who want the social elements to lean towards the more cooperative. However, while critics may argue that these issues threaten to tear the community apart, it’s the tension afforded by this contrast that gives Arc Raiders its extra edge.

Order and chaos

Compared to more bloodthirsty extraction offerings like Escape from Tarkov players, the Arc Raiders playerbase is basically pacifist, generally averse to engaging in PvP if they don’t have to. Some ‘raiders’ have even taken it upon themselves to police others, punishing any supposed PvP players with random acts of vigilante justice.

Curiously, PC players are notably less violent than their console counterparts, while their console-based siblings are happier to spill human blood in pursuit of loot. Evidently, there are still those who champion a more murder-happy path through Arc Raiders’ bleak post-apocalypse.  

That said, there are conventions even amongst PvP enjoyers. In my personal experience, shooting other players in the back will likely be considered a faux pas, indicating that there is honour even amongst killers.

These changes to the social contract seem at first to be completely at odds with the entire point of an extraction shooter, but in Arc Raiders, danger is always around every corner. This makes for a richer social landscape where players must weigh up competing psychological factors. This tension is a distinct feather in Arc Raiders’ cap, and is hard to find elsewhere. 

Sociologist Luke Miller weighed in regarding exactly what motivates Arc Raiders players to be more predisposed towards cooperation than in other extraction shooters. 

“It’s this idea of camaraderie”, Miller says. “You’re in a foxhole with your friends,” and when players get the choice, “they automatically side with other people”. This effect doesn’t appear to have helped the players in Escape from Tarkov, however, where Miller agrees that “you don’t help people whatsoever really”.

Emergent factions

Despite a penchant for peaceful coexistence in many corners of Arc Raiders, the extraction shooter is defined by the potential for devastating losses at the hands of cruel players while you’re hunting for loot. This threat, no matter how likely to become reality in a given moment, gives Arc Raiders a delicious, inescapable friction which, despite the efforts of more peaceful players, is ever-present.   

While much of the wider community can push back and try and maintain some sense of order, the game operates like the romantic ideal of the Wild West: there’s the law, and there are outlaws. You can’t tell which is which at first glance.

While factions have emerged, there is no enforced faction system to reflect this divide. The ambiguity makes Arc Raiders all the more engaging. 

Escape from Tarkov also has tense face-offs and a lack of certainty, but you still have to operate around the idea that most everyone could be a threat. In Arc Raiders, there is a different kind of social deduction game, where players are on the whole safe, but predators are wearing the clothes and face of another friend. 

This is the special sauce at the heart of Arc Raiders. Not only is it a PvPvE experience, but the weighting of each of those elements fluctuates based on who exactly you’re playing with and whether or not they see you as an ally against robotkind or a source of loot. While some titles would be undercut by this ambiguity, Arc Raiders wears human nature on its sleeve and, in doing so, stands out from the crowd.   

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