The CEO of ARC Raiders explains that the developers do not want to deliberately promote PvP, as it is not primarily about battles between the Raiders.
What system does ARC Raiders want to do without? ARC Raiders might do without PvP leaderboards in the future, at least that is what Patrick Söderlund, CEO and co-founder of Embark, indicates in an interview with GamesBeat on YouTube. Similar applies, according to him, to the introduction of some kind of “archenemy system”.
The mentioned PvP leaderboards were about a classic ranking system that shows which players have shot down the most Raiders or stolen the most loot from other players.
“It was never the idea of the game to shoot other players”
What exactly does he say? Söderlund explained in the interview that he does not know how the team currently feels about the potential introduction of leaderboards. However, he believes that one of the appeals of the game is that there are no leaderboards or anything similar, and ARC Raiders is not competitive.
Söderlund elaborates that the team does not want to deliberately promote PvP, even though it is part of the game: “In this game, it is not about shooting other players. You can do that if you want, but it was never the idea of the game to shoot other players.”
Internally, many discussions on this topic have already taken place, but PvP is rather something they want in ARC Raiders up to a certain point, to create excitement in the rounds – and not to create a purely competitive PvP landscape. And such a leaderboard would encourage players to shoot at other players.
What else does Söderlund say? He then talks about how the possibility of PvP contributes to excitement in the raids. The sound design of the shooter plays a significant role in this, as you hear shots, nearby footsteps, and feel that something is happening on the maps, indicating that other players and thus potential threats are nearby.
Söderlund recounts that during a test, the flares that Raiders shoot into the air when they are shot down were not in the game anymore. He demanded that they be brought back because they are an iconic part of the game and signal to other players that something has happened there.
In the same interview, Söderlund also confirmed what many players had suspected for a long time: There is indeed “aggression-based matchmaking” in ARC Raiders. You can read more about it here: If you shoot in ARC Raiders without warning, you can be sure that it will happen to you too
