Prerelease playtests of Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders did not, apparently, expect players to be as kind to each other as they have been. Kindness was on the table, obviously, but those internal playtests showed that (generally speaking), players “never worked together.”
“It is not at all how it was working in our tests, either for ourselves or the previous tests. It was hyper, hyper aggressive.”
This information comes to us through an interview with PCGamer, where Arc Raider’s design director Virgil Watkins spoke on the game’s early development and player behavior.
“This kind of surprised us,” Watkins said, “in exactly how many people latch onto, and are having fun with, these [PvE] elements of the game.”
Embark Studios found itself in a “precarious situation” not long after the game released. The game catered a lot to the ‘PvP-enjoyers’ they were expecting to see. But with cooperative players so readily jumping in, the developers had a new opportunity – and a new challenge – when designing new mechanics.
“It certainly encourages us to lean more toward giving opportunities to have friendly and fun interactions,” Watkins explains, adding: “We just have to primarily make sure that the PvP side of the game is as fair as we can make it.”
“We still have the mantra (and this is even regardless of the formation of this PvE heavy audience) the mantra is that the game never asks you to fight other players. That’s entirely your own decision.”
Arc Raiders Does Factor Your Behavior Into Matchmaking, But Not The Way You Think
This PvP/PvE divide is further emphasized by a matchmaking quirk that has quickly become one of the most unique parts of Arc Raiders.
Players are more likely to encounter others that play like they do. The community has taken to calling it ‘aggression-based matchmaking’ or ABMM, but Embark Studios would like to emphasize that that’s not quite how things work. “It’s not nearly as binary as people think”, Watkins said. “There’s no such thing as a friendly lobby or an aggressive lobby, the system is still mixing everybody”.
There’s apparently a lot of superstition among players, where even the slightest hit of aggressive behavior will be met with opponents who will have no issues shooting you down. Much of it, apparently, is just not true.
“People do feel as though it’s incredibly binary, and even shooting one raider, one time, just automatically puts you into an aggressive lobby. But that’s not at all how it works.”
As for direct details on how things work behind the scenes, Embark Studios is staying tight-lipped. They don’t want people gaming the system.
While that kind of server-side information is likely to stay under wraps for a while, the player behavior it fosters will have an impact on how the game is developed going forward.
“You’re always going to have people who have the motivation to fight, because there are people who just like PvP,” Watkins said. And the game’s designers will always have to work with that kind of engagement in mind. But it’s a balancing act, because Arc Raiders also has: “this cohort of players who want to play more peacefully, or roleplay, ensuring that we don’t harm their experience either.”
It’s a tightrope of player incentives that Embark studios is keen to walk, as they develop the game into the future.
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