this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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ARC Raiders

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ARC Raiders PvPvE extraction shooting. A game centered around a community of survivors fighting against machines and other humans for resources and survival of humanity.

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Suddenly everyone shoots you in the back in solos - what happened 2-3 days ago? UPDATE: answered, I guess (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Dicska@lemmy.world to c/arc_raiders@jlai.lu
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Solos. I got to the point where it's basically impossible to even start a match. My last mission is the one where you need to find an extremely rare item on Stella Montis, and I loathe it for the same reason I did with the previous (awfully similar) mission: everyone will shoot you in the back there, always impossible to anticipate.

So Stella is one thing.

But at this point no matter which map I choose, not even TWO minutes pass, and I get my shield blown off from behind, from a dark corner, from behind a building I couldn't even see before, and I get rushed by some troglodyte, at which point I'm fighting at a disadvantage.

This all started 2-3 days ago. Raider flares and dead bodies all over the place. What is going on? It's like everyone has suddenly gone feral. Was there some change I'm not aware of? I understand it's a PvPvE game, but up until last Friday it's been usually a mix of friendly and hostile interactions. Now it's pretty much guaranteed I would get shot from behind a corner before I could even react and then get rushed, every single game, no matter what. Bloody frustrating. I can't even just look for friendly players to team up with, because the first one I see is usually the one that camps me down. It feels like something had changed recently, but I don't remember seeing anything related.

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[–] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

You have to play with the aggression based matchmaking of the game.

It's been confirmed fully by devs and I guess it's here to stay.

If you do something like 10 raids in a row without shooting or dealing even 1 damage to another raider you will get placed in super chill lobbies where it's very uncommon to be shot at.

What is very frustrating but important to understand is that the game doesn't care who shot first. So if someone rats you at extract and you shoot back, your "aggression rating" will increase. The next game you are likely to be placed again with more PvP players. Again if you shoot back, it will get worse. It's a vicious circle toward more aggressive lobbies.

So my advice is simple, if you want chill lobbies, go to stella Montis for at least 7 to 10 raids and bring nothing in term of loadout. If someone shoots you, so be it. Run, flee hide, do whatever you can to avoid conflict. And if you die with nothing then it's ok. For that I highly advise not going with a free loadout but with a dirt cheap basic loadout with just a ferro to kill Arcs. That way at the very least you can safe pocket stuff even when players or Arcs kill you.

I call these "expiatory raids". I'm the punching bag of the server but eventually I will be with friendly raiders.

That aggression based matchmaking is particularly bad if you have an hybrid playstyle and play both PvP sessions and PvE sessions. Everytime you decide to change your play style towards other players it will take around 10 raids for the matchmaker to adjust.

I'm not religious but in this case :

If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also

That's the recipe to getting to chill lobbies.

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Wow, I didn't know about this! Thanks, it was super informative. In this case I think I know what's been going on: I've been trying to churn out as many creds(?) as much as I could recently, and one of them is almost only to deal damage to players with X type of weapon. Now, being an otherwise rather pacifist player, I ended up ONLY shooting at players in the last few seconds of the extraction (after the terminal typing thing finished), when they would 100% get home no matter what, therefore doing the least harm.

Turns out, I'll have to ignore 1 cred out of 3 all the time, and I might regain my sanity. Too bad the game isn't programmed to check to see the aggressor, because this means I can't even defend myself (which I would when the situation allows, which isn't always). Therefore I either die running away (failing the mission), or try to fight back and end up getting zerg rushed every match (failing the mission).

[–] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes, i think the mission to damage players is really bad if you are a pacifist player. Also by damaging people you are breaking their gear which I think is kind of annoying.

I would suggest asking nicely to other players if you can shoot them for the challenge (only if you already are on friendly lobbies) and give them some heal afterwards. But to be honest creds are useless for me. I easily reach the soft cap of 800 creds and when I do I usually get a guitar or a hatch key so that I can start to collect creds again. I usually don't do damage for the PvP damage and I sometimes do PvP myself so I can complete some of them.

Also to be fair with the devs, a system that can reliably detect who is the aggressor on an encounter is very difficult to design. People could be taunting other players on proximity chat. Sometimes players shoot Arcs close to you and can inadvertently create a conflict. Sometimes rats fail so hard they deal me no damage and I kill them. In that case the game will definitely think I'm the one that attacked. For such a system to work you would need to detect when someone is shooting at you (even if they missed) and flag them as the aggressor just for the concerned players but not the others. It gets incredibly difficult if you have to account with random solo players banding together.

So the system right now is really dumb, I think it just looks at the average damage you dealt on games and put players with the same score on your lobby.

But also I have to warn that this is not an accurate science (to quote the devs) even some pacifist will seize opportunities if they see you with some good stuff.

For instance, one guy in a super friendly lobby on locked gate heard me dying to a rocketeer and said in chat that he would defib me. He came close and straight up finish me. Technically he didn't deal any damage to me but still betrayed me and took my loot.

And when I get a hullcracker in a raid I'm attacked more often.

Anyway, good luck topside :)

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Yeah, I get the bit about the difficulties of spotting the real aggressor. I just hope that it will get a bit more nuanced over time, because I would rather have something between the completely peaceful kiddie pool and the full on blood bath.

By the way, I applied the tip about becoming a moving target at Stella, and now my lobbies seem to be rather chill again - I'm really thankful for the recommendation above.

I'm also aware of the equipment breaking, but assuming I want to do the feat about damaging players, I don't have too many, even less harmful options. In fact, I have done the bit about asking players to take some damage, but that's at least as slow as shooting two people once in the last few seconds. Also, if your shield breaks from one shot, then chances are it would have been expensive to fix it without, regardless.

And yes, I also spend most of my creds on hatch keys and instruments, but I like to hover it around 650-700, so that I can buy most of the stuff that comes with the next pack or whatever, and by the time I max it out, I usually end up using a key or losing an instrument, so at least it's another thing that keeps me playing.

About opportunitists: gah, that must have been annoying! There was one, ONE case where I wasn't sure about how to use the defib, thought that I had it in my inventory, so it must be active, and accidentally pressed ~~left click~~ (or use? - EDIT: Use.) on a downed player. Well, it didn't res them : ).

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Imma be real with you, and all the other players that got into this game expecting more PvE and less PvP: I didn't buy a shooting game to NOT shoot other people. If you're not my team mate, you're a target. I might not even loot you; I just wanna shoot my guns at you because that's the fucking fun part of the game. Now, I don't camp exits or anything, but I will engage others who are there when I come to one.

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

This is why I had checked with my friend before even buying the game. Back then (as I mentioned above) it was a mix of friends and foes, which I find a healthy ratio. I don't mind the occasional PVP; hell, I wouldn't even mind the constant PVP if it was fair. But everyone is just crouching in a dark corner, and every single fight starts with a sudden ZZZAP out of the blue, and then good luck winning the fight. But constant unfair fights are a separate topic - I wasn't talking about it being like that all the time. My problem is that it changed overnight, and now the game is riddled with feral players everywhere, as opposed to before. That change is my main problem. However, the initial question was if there had been any change I'm unaware of.

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

I have major respect for pure PVP players who don’t rat or backstab. I really enjoy the chess match of fighting, healing, flee, reset, push.

It’s people who act friendly only to shoot me in the back while on the terminal, breaching a door, or looting that annoys me.

The people who drop slurs and insults for getting downed by another player perplexes me. Even if it’s a rat, you are just giving them the satisfaction of upsetting you.

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I think they reset the ABMM after the updates. Last week I got caught in a vicious cycle of being attacked/defending myself and getting PVP lobbies until I finally got back into more chill lobbies. I don’t mind the PVP but it’s annoying when trying to finish projects/quest and not just doing mat raids

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

My problem exactly! It's fine if you're just using it as a regular shooter without anything else in mind - but then I would have bought a regular shooter, without anything else in mind.

[–] inlandempire@jlai.lu 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Could just be the weekend which brings more players

Can also be that we're soon in the expedition windows, maybe people have finished their project and are gravitating towards PvP to wait

Could be embark tweaking the matchmaking in secret

Could be just a series of bad luck

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Could be just a series of bad luck

I played a few more today, after making the post. It's DEFINITELY one of the other 3 possibilities : ).

[–] regdog@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe you accidentally enabled "solo vs teams"

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I just checked. I didn't. (EDIT: I just got killed by another one right before typing this)