ARC Raiders has quickly become one of the most popular shooters on the planet. Even players who have never touched an extraction shooter are jumping in to enjoy the intense PvPvE action that awaits, and many of them are praising how well the game handles the interactions between the AI enemies and the other raiders that are all running around hunting for loot.
ARC Raiders moves away from the hardcore scenarios of a lot of other extraction shooters and instead promotes a more accessible and casual-friendly loop that is equally engaging for veteran players and newcomers. On top of this, the developers have ensured that the PvPvE loop remains integral to every match, creating a perfect environment where the players, the environment, and the enemy AI are equally important at all times.
ARCs Are The Main Threat
A Single Wasp Can Ruin Your Day
One thing that ARC Raiders does differently from other extraction shooters is visible in how it handles PvE encounters. Normally, players can quite easily rock up to a fight and take down some simple mobs with no problem, but the ARC enemies present a much bigger challenge. Even the lowest-tiered enemies are capable of dealing some serious damage to unprepared players.
What this means for the multiplayer component of the game is that the enemies can’t simply be ignored, as they will quite happily kill any player they see before any other raiders get the chance. Also, when it comes to taking on other players, if there is a bigger drone like a Rocketeer in the vicinity, players may need to think twice before engaging with each other, as the fight could quickly turn against them as a barrage of missles heads their way.
Meaningful Co-Op
Teamwork Is Almost Always Needed
Because of the brutal difficulty of some of the ARC enemies, players often find themselves needing to hide or even run away to avoid the tricky gunfights. While even the hardest of the robots can be taken down solo, those fights are always easier with an extra set of guns, and with plenty of loot to go around, it benefits everyone to take the ARCs on together.
These spontaneous co-op moments happen far more often than not, and there are plenty of opportunities for players to help out others even before anyone excplicitly calls for aid. For instance, enemies like the Bastions can be heard firing from long distances away, which gives others plenty of time to run over and lend a hand. They may even walk away with a new buddy to extract and protect the loot with.
Actions Have Consequences
Every Gunshot Can Draw Both ARCs And Other Players
The ARC AI is anything but stupid, and there are a lot of situations where players will get caught off guard by how intelligent they really are. ARCs will scan and hunt players with deadly precision, and even before a gunshot is fired, those glowing lasers are a dead giveaway for player activity. This often opens the door for other players to come to the rescue, or to clean up any injured raiders after an ARC attack.
As obvious as an ARC is, a player’s gunshot can be an even more obvious tell, and it will draw the aggro of even more enemies and give the entire server the opportunity to get in on the fight. Sound plays a huge role in ARC Raiders. It doesn’t matter if players are taking pot shots at far-away raiders or sniping down a few Wasps: the sounds they make will have a big impact on how the rest of their run goes.
Less Risk, More Reward
All The Frustration Is Gone
A big drawof ARC Raidersfor many players is how the game handles death and loot loss. When players die, they obviously lose everything they were carrying, except for a few items they may have stashed in their safe pocket, but the important factor here is that no death feels truly heartbreaking. Players can quickly jump back into another run with a free loadout, and even if they die, Scrappy is always there to stock them back up with some extra resources.
The other aspect of the free loadout system is that it incentivizes riskier play. If players attempt to take on a PvP fight and fail, they lose nothing in the process. This allows anyone to switch between bloodthirsty PvP battles and more cautious PvE ones without ever needing to worry about losing a bunch of their loot, as they can quickly recover it the next time around.
Betrayals Can Be Dire
Keep Your Friends Alive
The gaming community is always divided in PvPvE games. There are those who prefer more action-heavy player shootouts and those who opt for more casual looting playstyles. In ARC Raiders, those two approaches cross over in almost every match, as it is very hard to run around the map without bumping into at least one Raider, and whether they want blood or not is a bit of a gamble.
There is as much of an incentive to be friendly as there is to be cruel. The extra help from an ally could be the difference between a successful extraction and death, while a kill could net some pretty valuable loot. However, PvP is never going to be a cakewalk for anyone. For one, that first shot is never a guaranteed kill, and second, a third party could show up unannounced and steal the thunder, making the whole effort benefit someone else in the end.
Loot Randomness
No Guarantees In The Wasteland
One of the most interesting aspects of ARC Raiders is how loot scaling is handled throughout the game’s maps. In each location, there are specific zones that are supposed to hold better loot than others, with keys adding an extra layer to this. However, regardless of how many times players visit the Control Tower or another central structure, the loot they find is never certain.
Players might just as easily get geared up by scouring the outskirts and hunting for weapon cases, or taking out lone ARC enemies when no one is around. This means that those hot spots are not constant battlegrounds for good loot. Instead, the entire map is covered in potentially high-tiered guns and valuable ARC parts that any player with the right know-how can take advantage of.
Lower Power Curve
Fewer Unfair Advantages
An important concept to understand when first stepping out on the robot-infested surface is that good loot is not a surefire way to success. It doesn’t matter if the player has a full pink loadout and enough ammo to take out the Queen solo; a swarm of flying ARCs could still put them in their place. They can never get complacent, no matter how many runs deep they may be.
A free loadout player could also very easily take on a maxed-out Raider, which means that the principles of an over-cautions combat approach and careful extractions apply to almost every single run. There’s also no major shortcuts to the top; players will need to keep grinding just like anyone else. This allows new and experienced players alike to all be in a similar boat when it comes to their priorities for loot and the resources they’re hunting from both ARCs and in the world itself.
