"We can track who shoots first": Arc Raiders design lead says aggression-based matchmaking is "a bit of a misnomer," and "we don't do anything like skill-based matchmaking or gear-based"

Adding some details to recent comments from Embark Studios regarding the way Arc Raiders' matchmaking groups players by their PvP proclivity, design lead Virgil Watkins says that while some folks may read too much into it, the community's thinking is pretty close to the truth.

Speaking with GamesRadar+, Watkins says "it's a bit of a misnomer calling it aggression-based, and it is something we're going to keep tuning, but people aren't far off in how they think it works."

I wondered if the devs worry some people, armed with a basic understanding of Arc Raiders matchmaking, will try to game the system artificially. Watkins, unbothered, says that's just another "part of the experience." He does, however, advise players to remember that this is just one part of a more complex and evolving system.

"At present, I think we're kind of okay with the fact that you have some agency over the situation," he explains. "If you really want to try to adjust and play in a bit of a less hostile environment, you are afforded [a way] to do so. But it should be clear to people, I hope, that it's also not binary. Obviously you can tell it's weighted one way or the other, but it's never like, you are now only with PvE players, you are now only with PvP players. It's a weighted system. There's a lot of layers to it, so it's not quite so A/B as people might assume.

"And we don't do anything like skill-based matchmaking or gear-based matchmaking," he adds, soundly stamping out some other lingering suspicions. "It's really just this kind of rating system we have that maneuvers, and we're just going to keep monitoring match health and player response, and tune it from there."

This brought to my mind the idea of a PvP singularity where more and more people are tagged as involved with PvP no matter the circumstances, so I asked Watkins how the system registers aggressors.

"That's a good point to raise, because we can track who shoots first and who takes damage and who [does] whatever," Watkins says. "But the one thing the system does not do is attempt to assume intent. If I'm a very bad player and you're a good player, and I'm the aggressor and I just miss all my shots and you defend yourself, the game doesn't know what the intent was. They just saw you kill me because I'm terrible.

"So we don't make any value or moral judgments. It's not the game judging you for your actions. It's purely around, just, are you engaging in PvP at all? So it's a bit of a blunt instrument, which is why we're continuing to add and tune what we do with it. So we have a ton of data to work with for now, seeing how the matches go and where those players are matched up."

This element is also self-correcting in a way, Watkins agrees, in the sense that avoiding PvP because you don't enjoy it will naturally push you toward people less likely to shoot you, though practically it only shifts your position along a gradient of perceived behaviors amid other factors. There are always wildcards in lobbies – wolves in sheep's clothing – and there are always other elements in your matchmaking. But as video game karma systems go – which often fall flat precisely because they are binary and predictable – it's definitely one of the most interesting ones I've seen.

Arc Raiders "Toxic Swamp" map event coming next week according to new raider trials, suggesting Embark has taken notes from FromSoftware.