Somehow, Arc Raiders has managed to attract a community of people who aren't completely cutthroat. Occasionally, they're downright lovely, in fact. Nobody is more impressed than developer Embark Studios, as the team is more bloodthirsty than we generally are.
Robert Sammelin, art director at Embark, spoke about the Arc Raiders playerbase being so nice to PCGamer. "I think internally we were hoping that we would strike this balance of having people almost apprehensive on how they're going to interact with other people," he explained, "that there is this tension, this underpinning of threat, but also the greater exterior threat with the arcs would perhaps invite these sorts of cooperative scenarios."
He then reveals that during testing, they thought things would be a little different based on their own behaviour. "I think internally, playtesting with devs, we're way worse people than the community when it comes to how we engage in combat," he adds. "We were certainly hoping that we would see cooperation happen, but I think to the extent that it happens at launch, and seeing how people treat each other socially is heartwarming, it is really uplifting to see."
It certainly is quite nice. Arc Raiders incentivizes being uncompromising, because you can loot dead players for everything they've picked up. Ergo, you can watch someone collect something, then take them out and take the prize back to Speranza. But people aren't doing that as much as you might think - and this is born from stats, not anecdotal evidence.
"We got some figures on how many people have been downed by another player, and they were surprisingly low," Sammelin states. "But there's also quite a different experience in playing with a squad or solo. I think that also opens up for a very different experience, depending on how you choose to engage with the game."
Perhaps the murderous robots are the x-factor here? Or maybe we're not really as bad as most multiplayer lobbies would have you believe. Arc Raiders proves one thing so far: you don't need toxicity to be successful, and that's more valuable than any loot.
