It seems like the following is indeed interesting, yet I’ve never ever experienced Arc Raiders myself! Have you? ^^
But often, players are just talking. A YouTube video called The Humans of Arc Raiders, inspired by the photographer who interviews strangers in New York City, includes conversations with randomly encountered players. They talk about family struggles, work lives, depression, autism and, in one case, a lung collapse. In one conversation, a heavily armed player in green armour named Poopy candidly asks another raider: "What’s it like having kids, dude?”
When I first jumped into Arc Raiders, I found a dichotomy on the topside, where birds sing and plants thrive among the carcasses of downed machines. The more I wandered around this 1970s-style retro-future setting, the more I bumped into other humans, many of whom offered help, such as medical supplies. Mostly we snuck around and battled robots together. It was tense at times, sometimes scary, but often relaxing.
In one session, I encountered another player with a British accent who was also new to the game. "Have you been killed by another person yet?” he asked me, as we explored a burst concrete dam complex. "Because every person I’ve met has been friendly,” he added. “No one kills each other.”
Source [web-archive]
To me it seems like any kind of communication in multiplayer games has gotten less and less over the years. Used to be pretty common to just talk about random stuff with random people in games like CS, DayZ and even Overwatch years ago, but in recent years, I hardly remember any instances of people using voice chat at all, let alone using it to say anything positive. So if this is true and common for Arc Raiders, which I haven’t played, it seems to be a positive outlier. Also curious about other people’s experience.
My experience has been the adoption of Discord for communication in game has been a negative factor in the social aspects of gaming. Before, games needed to implement their own comms, which would encourage players to communicate as part of the game experience. But now it’s expected that you’d talk on discord instead, so there’s less need for games to be a social experience.
Speaking as someone who’s only been playing ARC Raiders for about a week, this does happen pretty often. The game uses Aggression Based Matchmaking, so there is still PVP if you want it. But if you want to be friendly, team up and chat with randoms you meet, and generally coexist with fellow players, it’s totally doable and actually happens fairly often.
Bumped into a guy on the map Blue Gate in a residential area. He was in a rush to get somewhere, but when I told him I was new to the game he stopped and gave me a couple blueprints for guns and a few tips for the map we were on.
I wish Escape from Tarkov had something like this.
Lol, good luck. EFT is about making everyone else more miserable than you. That’s how you win. 😂
Like og wow
So I bought arc raiders. Even though I don’t like extraction shooters.
Hopped on solo, came up on a pair of raiders getting fucked up by the arc. Saved their lives.
Crouched in a corner to look at my inventory since this was THE VERY FIRST TIME I PLAYED.
One of the two people I saved, naded me. Just chuked a sticky grenade right at me as I browse my menus.
Then said I was camping in a corner and was going to kill them. After I JUST FUCKING SAVED THEM!
the guy tried to argue with me. I deleted and refunded the game.
Fuck you too guy.
Why though? It’s just pixels, laugh and go again, you have unlimited free kits, and every raid is different.
A shame. You could’ve seen the people who yell I’M FRIENDLY I’M FRIENDLY before shooting you in the head.
One thing I appreciate about the game is the natural enforcement of rules. Usually, in a game we see strict, coded enforcement: You’re not punished for attacking a teammate, you either physically can’t, or you’re removed from the game when it’s demonstrated to be intentional.
In Arc Raiders, if there’s no witnesses, you CAN get away with murdering another player. It comes with risks, for instance people could hear and deduce the situation. I think having that as a possibility actually makes the friendly interactions feel more positive. It’s more of an intentional choice.
There’s perhaps something interesting to say about game design mechanics there - where something exists in the game but is not actively rewarded or encouraged nor punished.
Having played the game I disagree entirely. People were blood thirsty and pretended to be helpful only to kill before extraction. The DON’T SHOOT emote was used 100% of the time before they shot me in the face.
0/10 don’t recommend.
The game puts you in different lobbies depending on your play style. Care bears get matched with other care bears. Murder bears get matched with other murder bears. If you are finding yourself only getting matched with murder bears, examine your play style.
murder bearsintensive Care Bears
Don’t Care Bears
I bet the big difference is time. When do you play vs the journalist?
8pm central time vs 8am central time, vs 3am central time probably bring in very different people.
Kinda like how a bar or pub shifts during a day.
