Arc Raiders has only been out a day, but it has already surpassed a Steam concurrent peak player count of 264,673, making it one of the biggest extraction shooters ever on Valve’s platform.
whats an extraction shooter?
‘One of the biggest’ You mean ‘one of the only’? Extraction shooters aren’t common that I’m aware of unless I’m out of the loop. The only big one before this I was aware of was Tarkov.
And tarkov isn’t even on steam… yet?
How do people feel about this company using generative AI? That was a concern of mine around The Finals; they’ve defended the decision on voice acting and it made me wonder where else they’re using it.
I don’t mind. The result speaks for itself
massive corpo. fuck 'em.
giant companies are a greater evil than generative AI in the hands of the small
still against the whole AI situation in general right now, but doubly against giant corpos using it to increase wealth
IGN put out a first preview video of Arc Raiders couple months ago and it was borderline hit piece. The quality of the video was unbelievably bad. They made the game look muddy, dated, and choppy. This wasn’t IGN trying to showcase the game on some realistic typical gaming hardware. In reality the game is well optimized and visually really good on moderate level hardware. I hear the game looks fantastic on consoles. Maybe they’ll do a full review now that the game is finally released but I question the journalistic integrity of IGN.
Maybe someone else on the IGN payroll will do a proper review because a big reason the review was ass is because the reviewer was also ass. He was literally pressing the “ESC” button at the bottom left with a mouse. IMO the biggest crime of this IGN review is that the reviewer still works at IGN.
IGN: “Traditional gamer journalism is dying. Please support honest journalists.”
Also IGN: “Good work, 47. Now publish the article and locate an exit.”They’ve done this with a few other games. I remember the EU5 review being really choppy and it turned out they were running it on like 6-7 year old hardware. It might just be a cost cutting measure to not buy the latest stuff for all their reviewers but I basically ignore most of what they say now.
Arc Raiders is a fuckin blast. Having just as much fun with my group on this as we did in like helldivers and hunt showdown, but Arc Raiders has real depth that I think will keep us coming back. This game feels special and I hope it’s can go the distance for my group and I because it’s one of the best group games we’ve played in a while.
Solo is fun too, it’s just a completely different game. It’s more tense, more stealthy, and you’re 100x more likely to find friendly players which is really cool.
It’s hilarious how different people respond to playing it solo. Some people say it’s the tensest thing ever but I’ve also seen a video from an elderly cozy gamer who thought it was the most relaxing thing she’d seen in a while. I’m more in the latter camp, been playing solo since launch and it’s been pretty chill.
I think both sides make sense here. If you shoot at everything that moves and refuse to cooperate it can be a hell of a ride. But if you focus on looting and are willing to socialize it can be almost a cozy experience. It reminds me of Team Fortress 2 where players would sometimes just make up their own rules mid game and turn everything on it‘s head.
See that’s interesting because it’s more cozy for me when I shoot on sight and more tense for me when I socialize. I’ve lost loot when I’ve tried talking it out and maybe that stings more because assuming I lose some of those engagements I must have saved more loot than lost when talking.
Idk, it’s the social pressure like in a fictional apocalypse of like “will these humans be friendy or not”, they’re unpredictable. Also I think the map has an effect on friendliness as well. Like Dam had a lot of friendly people but blue gate was like 50/50 at best.
It’s just so cool that the game can change so much from playing solo vs squads.
I think it’s the difference between having gear fear and not having gear fear. As someone who comes from Tarkov ARC raiders solo is kind of a walk in the park because gearing up is much easier. Meeting other players is about 50/50, either they start shooting without asking questions or they’re cool after you say “don’t shoot”. I hope this vibe doesn’t die off when the player count drops. Yesterday I had a raid where I met another raider, we agreed to not shoot each other and then impromptu teamed up and took down another team of raiders. We then found a third raider and the three of us extracted together. It’s pretty rare to team in up Tarkov because most people shoot first and ask questions later.
But I can see how it’s absolutely stressful for some people because gear fear makes you think the stakes are much higher than they really are.
Uses Kernel Level Anti-Cheat
Aaaand I’m out. Soooo many shitty new games.
Not all kernel level anti-cheat are the same. Riot’s Vanguard and whatever Battlefield 6 uses requires TPM and SecureBoot and they quite invasive. I believe Vanguard just runs in the background even when you’re not running the game. which is awful. Arc Raiders devs made some pragmatic concessions to allows the game to run on Proton and Steam Deck which is pretty good.
And worth pointing out that the Linux version of EAC (which is what Embark games use) runs in user space. It’s literally not kernel level anticheat on Linux.
Kernel Level Anti-Cheat For Windows Only. Embark specifically publishes a build for Proton Users validated by Codeweavers. We don’t have to worry about it :)
This is the same story for The Finals by the way.
Common Linux W
Oh interesting…
Yep. Honestly if someone still uses Windows but complains about kernel level anti-cheat they’re hypocrites and only have themselves to blame. If you want sovereignty as a PC user you have to put in the minimum effort and not just sit on your ass and wait until big corp is spoon feeding it to you. That day won‘t come.
ProtonDB reports say that it runs great under Linux, including multiplayer, so I’m not sure if kernel level anti-cheat can really be in use. Maybe it’s just under Windows?
I’m gonna give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work I’ll refund I guess.
I played in during the free weekend earlier in October, only fiddling I had to do was change to Proton Experimental, after that it ran perfect.
I’m on an Arch distro, worked just fine for me on the free weekend.
I ran it on my steamdeck! :)
I just picked it up to play with a couple buds, and it’s GOOD. $39.99 good? No, just good. The vibe is great, the gunplay feels good, the extraction is forgiving. Definitely worth the price in my opinion.
Wait, you say it‘s not $39.99 good but still worth the price? That‘s as much of a direct contradiction as possible.
Fair, but what I’m saying is that it’s not only worth the price but I’d pay more having played it. 60 bucks? Probably not because I know I’m not that into extraction shooters, but it doesn’t feel like a discount game. Also, I was in my cups when I typed that.
Out of what? Like 5 extraction shooters? I don’t get the popularity, it’s pretty damn bland and shoves MTX in your face like crazy, but I have been pretty out of touch with the mainstream market for a while now.
So basically you have not tried it but complain about things you expect because…? Are you an EA or IGN employee or something?
I tried it. It’s pretty bland, I already said that. You are allowed to enjoy it, that was just my opinion. No need to get defensive.
What MTX are you talking about?
What extraction shooter doesn’t have MTX? This one? Other than Tarkov (which does) AR is the only one I’ve seen that isnt F2P.
Skins and such that cost as much as the game itself. The industry has gone crazy and consumers keep sucking it up.
“Shoves MTX in your face like crazy” = skins in a STORE tab?
Yeah, don’t think I will continue the conversation.
One look at the menus says otherwise, but I’d rather not continue the conversation anyway.
You know what’s cool? Skins don’t impact gameplay at all! You don’t actually have to buy them!
Things being cosmetic does not justify the outlandish price. 20€ for a skin, emote and some trinkets is a stupid price.
(They forgot we used to change what our character looks like for free)
Exactly! A good example of consumer complacency!
