One of the most popular aspects of PvPvE extraction shooter ARC Raiders has been its emphasis on players interacting with each other in non-violent ways rather than shooting each other on sight. In an interview with GamesBeat, Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderlund has spoken about the game design decisions that led to this emphasis on friendly interactions, and why the studio doesn’t want to bring in more PvP-oriented features like leaderboards.
“We’ve had several discussions about Nemesis systems and all types of things,” said Söderlund. “I don’t know where the team are on them right now. I think one of the beauties of this game is the fact that we don’t have those leaderboards and it’s not competitive.”
“We don’t want to necessarily foster that type of gameplay. The game isn’t about shooting other players. You can do that if you want to, but the ethos of the game has never been to go in and shoot players. It’s a part that we use to craft tension.”
Further in the interview, Söderlund spoke about the PvE roots of ARC Raiders, and how it didn’t even have other players in earlier versions during development. Adding other players, he noted, brought in some tension to the moment-to-moment gameplay, and made the world feel more alive thanks to things like sounds of distant gunshots and flares shot up by dead players.
“The game was without other players for a long time,” he said. “And yes, there were instances where the game was fun and there were areas where it worked quite well. But also the minute you added other players and then use subtle ways of signaling—you don’t know how many players are on the server, you don’t know how many players have died, you don’t know how many players are around you—but we signal to you that there are other players. You hear them shooting. That’s why audio is a very important part of this game. You hear them encountering ARC and other players. You see the raider flares as they go down.”
One of the key examples of these “subtle ways of signalling” is the flare that shoots up when a player-controlled raider dies. Söderlund recounted one playtest where the flares were removed, and he insisted on them being added back into the game because “they’re such an iconic part of this game.”
“And they also signal to other players that action is happening somewhere,” he continued. “It makes it feel populated in an important way. And you also know that there could be a downed raider somewhere. Should I go there? Should I take the risk and go there to see whether I can find something, or have they been brought back to life? There’s a tension element in that that’s very important.”
Söderlund had previously also spoken about how the matchmaking system in ARC Raiders encourages players to play in their own styles by matching them up with similar players. In an interview earlier this month, he confirmed that players who prefer PvE gameplay tend to be matched up with others with the same preference. More aggressive PvP-oriented players, on the other hand, find themselves matched up with others who like to engage in more fights.
ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review.
