ARC Raiders is Too Far Gone for a PvE Event to Work Properly

Recently, ARC Raiders received a sizeable update that introduced a new PvE-focused event named Shared Watch. The point of Shared Watch is to work together with other raiders to take down ARC threats, and by doing so, you unlock a string of rewards, including a new skin, some cosmetics, and some Raider Tokens.

The trick is, you get no progress points (known as ‘Merits’) for this event for killing or maiming other players, stripping focus away from the game’s PvP loop. It’s ambitious on Embark Studios’ part, but the problem is, ARC Raiders feels way too far gone to be a proving ground for a PvE-led event, and players are quickly discovering that.

Shared Watch is Great, But Not Practical

Shared Watch gives incentives for working as a team, either with friends or with strangers, to take down ARC enemies. For every enemy you damage, destroy, or assist in destroying, you earn Merits that push you along a reward path. That path culminates in a nice, new helmet for your rooster, Scrappy, but there are other items to secure along the way.

However, Shared Watch also pushes the PvE agenda a little further, attempting to encourage users to work together and stop slinging lead at one another for five minutes.

Last night, I hopped on ARC Raiders with a friend to participate in Shared Watch, and ten raids later, we’d not had a single successful extraction. We were prioritizing Trials, almost all of which are geared this week around fighting ARC enemies, and trying to crack through that reward path.

On every single occasion, we were met with incoming fire from other raiders, despite rarely opening fire first. Twice, we were pushed at extraction and shot in the back while trying to get out of the map. On another raid, we fought to take down a Leaper for our Trial, learning that a duo sat in the bushes waiting for us to secure the kill so they could, subsequently, laser us to death.

This is the go-to standard in ARC Raiders now. There are videos and guides online geared towards ‘guaranteed entry’ to PvE-focused lobbies, which involve shooting no human enemies for around ten raids, but it’s a loose concept at best. Like the game’s loot model, securing a PvE-focused raid is based on RNG, and it depends entirely on who you’re matched with.

I’ve had some wholesome interactions, sure. Last week, I was downed by a Pop on Stella Montis (don’t ask), and out of nowhere, a German fellow ran to my aid with a defib, before promptly disappearing again after wishing me ‘good luck’. These interactions have fast become exceptional, while on-sight gunfights are the de facto standard in this game.

For a PvE-focused event to work in ARC Raiders, and I mean truly work with a 0% failure rate, Embark Studios has to build servers (even temporary ones) that have raider damage switched off or altered. By that, I mean you cannot take damage from another raider, period. On these servers, only ARC will be a threat.

To capitalize on that and keep things balanced, I’d be willing to see Embark Studios increase the risk from ARC on these servers. Make them tougher, more plentiful, more aggressive, whatever it takes. But the balance is, you can’t be gunned down by ARC enemies.

Embark Studios has said time and again that PvE doesn’t work, despite the game’s original operating model being geared towards just that. But as a limited-time event, a map condition, or even a specific map built only for PvE, I think an entire audience would feel validated and well served.

Do you think ARC Raiders needs a PvE mode? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.

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