Arc Raiders lead was surprised The Last of Us players really liked the game, "they just didn't like to have PvP all the time"

One of the most interesting slides in Arc Raiders production director Caio Braga's GDC presentation offered a breakdown of PvP satisfaction among fans of different games who played an earlier build of Arc Raiders. Players of different games were grouped by game categories, and their feedback from playtests was plotted on a bar graph with a line showing their "PvP enjoyment."

Embark asked playtesters what other games they play and then associated that data with PvP feedback. Unsurprisingly, fans of PvP games like Delta Force, PUBG, Escape from Tarkov, and Hunt: Showdown, were bigger fans of Arc Raiders PvP early on.

Rust fans were also not far behind, followed by fans of more generalist competitive shooters like Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Counter-Strike. Apex Legends players offered a ton of feedback, but ranked in the middle of the pack for actual satisfaction. In an interview with GamesRadar+, Braga focuses on another group: The Last of Us fans, who rated Arc Raiders PvP the highest among the group of "co-op / adventure" players.

This group of games also included Helldivers 2 (who handed in the lowest PvP enjoyment score), Destiny (presumably Destiny 2), Elden Ring, and The Division. Fans of these five games collectively returned the lowest scores for PvP, but The Last of Us fans reported the highest PvP satisfaction among this group, which stood out to Braga.

"My personal surprise was on the other side of that chart," he tells me. "The Last of Us players, and the more story-driven players that really liked the game. They just didn't like to have PvP all the time. They wanted PvP in a certain frequency, and I think they were a bit more interesting to me. My UX and data guy told me that the game looks so good that we would bring those players in. We just needed to find something that is fun and good for them."

I asked if that sentiment helped drive the point that, even after an internal pivot that added PvP, Arc Raiders doesn't have to be about PvP and can support friendlier spaces.

"Yeah, that's even why we use 'extraction adventure game,'" Braga says, rather than purely calling Arc Raiders an extraction shooter. "And there is shooting, but we want to provide fun for all the audience."

In his talk, Braga said "we started to realize that the different demographics actually enjoy their PvP very differently." It was partly a matter of frequency, he said, but satisfying both groups – the PvP fans and the adventure and co-op fans – proved impossible. This was partly what first pushed Embark to split matchmaking the way it does today: there are multiple factors, but your tendency to engage in PvP is also a factor. And to this day, players seek to game their matchmaking by playing passively or aggressively, pushing their internal rating toward lobbies that suit their preference or mood.

As Arc Raiders gets stale for some, lead dev says players "reaching the end of our content" are a top focus: "We want more for them."