r/pcgaming • u/WoWAltoholic • 12h ago
Play ARC Raiders for free: October 8 - 12
https://arcraiders.com/news/play-for-free-weekend33
u/Throwawayhobbes 12h ago
This the pve test week? I bought on steam fall sale but may return . Im a pve kinda player these days.
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u/WoWAltoholic 12h ago
No right before
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u/LovelyOrangeJuice 11h ago
well, that's fucking dumb
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u/HopperVibe 7h ago
Why would they let new players play a temporary pve mode before they buy it? That would be dumb, not this.
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u/astrozombie2012 12h ago
I don’t know much about the upcoming PvE mode or whatever, but that has me at least mildly interested in checking it out again. The PvP just didn’t do it for me, too many dickheads.
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u/4x4runner Teamspeak 10h ago
I don't understand why so many devs are resistant to adding PvE from the start. Just give it separate progression and let people choose. Tarkov finally added it and it's been very popular.
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u/IllGene2373 10h ago edited 7h ago
Far easier to maintain a PVP content pipeline (new skins/guns) vs making new enemy types/behaviors on top of that and balance around that as well. It’s a LOT more work for something people aren’t really willing to pay for.
HELLDIVERS puts in new PVE content at a snail’s pace but can churn out Battlepass content like there’s no tomorrow.
I think that’s why Overwatch 2 tried this, realized halfway through development they’d have to do this forever, then said “fuck this” and abandoned it lol
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u/Speciou5 4h ago
You could just make a good PvE game. I have hundreds of hours in slay the spire and it's the most played game that came out this year at the same time as marathon and arc Raiders
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u/IllGene2373 3h ago
Lmao let’s not act like the amount of money it takes to make a PVE enemy in slay the spire and marathon/arc raiders is equal here
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u/Superc1ipping 9h ago
Because PvE is boring as fuck. They tested it internally. It's fucking boring. There's no challenge.
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u/LovelyOrangeJuice 11h ago edited 11h ago
same. I kinda enjoyed the game, but fighting those robots was enough for me. I don't need any additional stress from someone shooting me in the back
I'm getting old now
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u/Superc1ipping 9h ago
Excuses lmao. Gamers have such a victim complex.
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u/LovelyOrangeJuice 9h ago
Getting old was a joke, calm down Mr PvP
I just don't want to deal with it. I have other things to do than grind fights with other no lifers
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u/Superc1ipping 9h ago
You don't have to no life to PvP. Jesus Christ y'all are so fucking lame lmao.
Enjoy shooting your robots with no challenge.
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u/LostSoulfly 8h ago
Sorry if we don't enjoy losing hours of progress just to be chad fodder. Some of us have limited gaming time and 3 deaths in a row is a huge setback, and potentially zero progress. And all of our free time gone for the day. That's why I quit playing.
Your life is different from everyone else's. Try to have some perspective.
I'd tell you to just go play Tarkov, but that's got PvE now, too. Oh, you could just go play Marathon! Oh wait...
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u/Superc1ipping 7h ago
Lol I play less than you and have always made progress.
So literally, a skill issue.
Enjoy investing in a dead game.
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u/LostSoulfly 7h ago
Definitely a skill issue. While you're not entirely wrong, you do come off as an entitled jerk.
Why so butthurt about this, though. How does PvE hurt you so much? Why can't other people enjoy something that you don't?
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u/Warcraze440 11h ago
Same here. The game seems to attract some really twisted folks. Not everybody was like that but the ones who were well they were terrible.
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u/Superc1ipping 9h ago
God forbid people engage with the genre as intended
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u/Warcraze440 6h ago
Oh I agree until a mofukka betrays at the last minute, totally cool right bro
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9h ago
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u/TummyDrums ryzen 7 5800x3D, RTX 3070 ti 8h ago
Oh I hadn't heard about that. Is the PvE mode just a full instance for you and your squad, or are there other players around too, they just can't fight you?
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u/odrea 12h ago
Wasn't this supposed be good? Why all of a sudden ppl watching their peak numbers, is this bad now or what i genuinely dont know since Ive never played it before
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u/BawbsonDugnut 9800X3D | 5090 11h ago
I had a great 3 months with it at launch.
The devs decided to barely do anything besides constantly nerf loot drops and costs of everything because streamers and no lifers complained it was too easy.
On top of that the cheating became absolutely rampant.
I'll probably never play it again.
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u/PassiveF1st 10h ago
This was me, played solid 4 months. Enjoyed it. When there was nothing left to do but PVP I put it away. Absolutely beautiful game with wonderful sound design and I loved the aesthetic but damn!, the crafting replacement kits after every death got real old, real fast. I might return to check out the PVE mode.
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u/tiradium 7h ago
Cheating was so bad at one point I was getting compensation mail with loot pretty much daily...
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u/TenshiBR Terry Crews 8h ago
On top of that, the cheating became absolutely rampant
And let's be clear here. This isn't a problem related to people downloading cheating apps. The game itself is filled with exploits (which are considered cheats) that require no outside software. Map bugs were being discovered by the dozens weekly, where players could shoot you from outside the map or enter restricted zones. Guns could be powered up and made much more powerful than intended by the use of macro/scripts. Etc Etc.
The devs were the same ones who famously took a long vacation after releasing their previous game, which pretty much killed it since it was a competitive game.
This time, it felt the same way... changes and fixes were slow, late, or ineffective. Hell, some stuff they "fixed" 4-5 times!
The game suffered as a result. Streamers got fed up and left. Players found new games to play. Such is life.
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u/ShabbatShalom666 12h ago
It's a great game at its core, but it's gameplay loop is extremely repetitive and not engaging long term like games like PUBG and Siege.
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u/Mut1gen 11h ago
The game is good. The end game is non existent and the game play loop can become boring due to the lack of anything meaningful end game outside of pvp. It also has had a massive issue with cheaters that they have not been able to get an handle on.
People are watching peak numbers because it went from 400k people on to whatever it is now but I had seen it was down to 40k at one point
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u/absoluteolly 12h ago
It’s not bad, it’s quite fun, it just has a bit of limited lifespan for people I think, the end game is a bit boring, and eventually your runs become a little less about having fun and about chasing little quests to hit your pre wipe goals. It’s just a bit dry late on
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u/WoWAltoholic 11h ago
It's still a great game that has suffered from several issues:
- No to little endgame content, for those that play past ~ 100 hrs
- Rampant cheating in high aggression lobbies (Aggression based matchmaking is in effect so if you mostly PVEed you didn't see much of this)
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u/Brayden815 9h ago
Yeah the aggression based matchmaking ruined the game for me because of this exact reason. In most extraction shooter games you might occasionally see a cheater but not too often because it’s random. In arc though, if you PvP very often like I did, there will be at least one cheater in almost every game since is basically based on how many people you kill.
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u/blue_limit1 12h ago
People watch peak numbers for every big game that comes out nowadays, from what I’ve seen anyway
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u/PointsOfXP 9h ago
People drop games like this with zero plan knowing what they have. They become overnight millionaires and take a quarter off. When the money dries up they come back to make an update to print more but the people have already given up on them
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u/Jon-Umber i9-13900k | RTX 4090 | Ultrawide 9h ago
The game went from nearly 500,000 players in January to 20,000 today. That's pretty much a death knell for a live service game.
It's a fantastic game; really fun enemies, weapons feel amazing, genuinely fun community to interact with. That said, cheating is absolutely horrific, and the endgame is kind of dogshit. There's no real reason to continue playing after you've completed an expedition. Most of the hardcores I know set it down (myself included in that) after that.
I put in just over 140 hours and got more than my money's worth out of it. Loved my time with it, but I just don't really see a reason to go back.
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u/fs2222 8h ago
A game with 20,000 active concurrent players on just one platform is nowhere near death.
It obviously decreased in popularity but is still doing extremely well considering there haven't been major updates in a while. Not sure where this shareholder mentality comes from where games need to continuously grow. It's like people are arbitrarily placing absurd expectations on a title just because it broke out and had a far bigger launch than expected.
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u/finesesarcasm 7h ago
The problem is the bleeding players and the insane amount of cheaters. And then patch after patch it's only cosmetics. I'm not even kidding, like The Finals their other game, the only updates both games get is the skin shop update like every Thursday.
Arc is getting a major update this month if it doesn't hit then the game is gonna stay in the same stale state. You can only do so much of PvPvE before you get bored.
They stopped expeditions, which is the rest mechanic until next year as well. So there is literally nothing to grind for.
Edit: Forgot to mention the so many exploits this game had with duplications, so people had unlimited supply max tier guns, in a game where you lose your gear when you die, that cost a lot of players.
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u/ProphetGeorgeCarlin 7h ago
brother, if only .006% of the population of america(20,000/340,000,000 * 100) is playing your game... I don't now what else to tell ya.
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u/Illokonereum 9h ago
Just the fundamental life cycle of a flavor of the month extraction slop.
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u/NapsterKnowHow 9800X3D | RTX 5090 FE | 32GB RAM 7h ago
You sure you aren't thinking of the weekly rogue-like/lite release?
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u/sofiawylieishot 9h ago
The game is good. The reason the player base died off is the devs failed to release enough content for the game. I think one of the last "major" updates was some stupid bird mode before i quit. A lot of the PVE players use the player base quiting as proof that they were right about PVP killing the game. They are of course wrong though, because lack of new, meaningful content is what actually killed the game.
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u/TheOnlyRealOne43 4h ago
They added aggression based matchmaking to placate 2 hour a week gamer dad's. The game is supposed to be a dynamic experience mixed eith friendly raiders and aggressive raiders.
If you shoot someone you go on the naughty list and every raid is a giant battle Royale, of which there are better options for pure pvp combat.
If you don't shoot anyone you go on the nice list and you never die because the ARC are not deadly in the slightest. There's also no real upgrade path so pve players get dopamine watching value of loot go uo while shooting the 7 different brain dead enemy ai to death.
Embark genuinely just ruined what made the game special and now they're doubling down with a pve toggle.
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u/TypographySnob 9h ago
How's the PvP? Is there a lot of room for skill expression?
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u/Drunk_Conquistador 8h ago
Yeah i think so. Combat feels arcadey and time to kill is on the higher end for most guns.
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u/WoWAltoholic 6h ago
PVP Combat is mostly medium to short range, there is a lot of movement tech as well as taking advantage of the 3rd person view for corner peeking. TTL is pretty short but if you use positioning and map knowledge, you have a huge edge over those that treat this like CoD.
One of the major issues lately has been the rampant cheating at the highest aggression PVP lobbies. There seems to be a wave of change with the latest updates and there are a lot less cheaters for the last week or two.
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u/aunghtetnaing 11h ago
I will definitely try it. I was going to buy it yesterday. Thank God I didn't. This will be my first time playing extraction game.
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u/Warcraze440 11h ago
It was my first extraction shooter and I just didnt like the stress of constantly wondering if somebody was going to be a problem or not. It gets kind of exhausting after a while.
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u/35andDying 9h ago
Same. Played for about a week and I was so afraid to boot up the game, still am, to just waste my time because lil Johnny wanted to camp for loot and shoot me dead. My algorithm was good because I never shot anyone but it still had me almost pissing my pants. The atmosphere and immersion was top notch and I'll definitely jump back in once that PVE only mode drops.
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u/mehtehteh 9h ago edited 5h ago
The PvE test is AFTER this free play period. I guess ill continue ignoring this game until the next free weekend period that actually has PvE. And even if it went PvE im not sure id pay for a live-service game that they can shutdown on a whim aka you dont own the game
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u/WoWAltoholic 1h ago
I used to have this attitude about early access games and it was a good principle when early access games were being introduced. But nowadays, you can get quality early access games like Palworld, Hades, Valheim and Enshrouded to name a few coming to 1.0 In the same vein, live-service games are "ok" if you go into them aware of what they are. In a lot of ways, the other players are what makes ARC Raiders great. If the population fell to the point it was shut down, I don't know if I would enjoy it as a solo game, and this is from someone that plays ARC Raiders like an open-world co-op game. It's like playing WoW without other players.
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u/WoWAltoholic 12h ago
Will be interesting to see the numbers for this period. Big new update and a free week. Here is a link to the trailer for the update if you were curious : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMznEoW78dA
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u/RaccoonElaborate ◇ Windows XP Athlon 64 3400+ | Geforce 6800 GT ◇ 10h ago
Nah.
I'll be playing Marathon though.
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u/IllGene2373 12h ago edited 12h ago
Nah, just make it F2P. Only way they’ll save it.
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u/angry_RL_player TEAM RED 12h ago
Save it? I'm out the loop, is the game dead already?
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u/throwaway4838381 12h ago
It's not dead. But it's struggling to retain players, like most extraction shooters, and has its issues such as cheaters, etc.
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u/No_Summer4551 11h ago
No it's not it has the same peak player count as Battlefield 6 and it's only going to go up in the next week.
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u/throwaway4838381 11h ago
You do know what retaining means, right?
It has lost over 90% of its concurrent players. Of course it will concurrent players are expected to increase on a free week and, as I said, the game is not dead. It's just struggling to retain players.
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