I’ve been playing Arc, it’s really bothering me that it’s getting less and less friendly though. This isn’t helped by the fact it is the only shooter I’ve ever played where someone killing me doesn’t just make me annoyed at dying but it makes me feel sad that someone was a bad person to me. The game offers choices, you can be good or bad, and I genuinely feel quite sad when some of these people are bad. Never felt that before in a shooter, it’s partially driven by how good interactions can feel when people are cooperative.
This is all solo of course. Duos and Trios are both shitfests that just feel like a BR. The interactions in solo that aren’t hostile are where the magic happens, it’s those interactions that make up all of the interesting online videos and it’s those interactions that are the biggest thing setting it apart from other shooters. Nothing else has anything quite like them. The problem is that it’s getting worse over time. I hope the devs can recognise this is the magic and try to capture more of it. I don’t want to remove pvp, I just want to encourage people to choose it less frequently.
Might be a different game on EU compared to US too.
I wonder if there’s a consistent phenomenon with online games where anti-social or meta-chasing players actively churn out all the fun/kind players every time.
I’m not sure about that. I’ve been turning it over in my head for a while though and think the issue is there’s a lack of consequences in this world. There’s no reputational effects. There’s nothing that comes back home to Speranza. People won’t notice that someone is a murderer eventually. You don’t lose access to the human city for being a bandit who is actively harmful to a war effort. Etc etc.
Even in a lawless society, reality has consequences for this behaviour. And reality actively encourages cooperation far more than a game like this which actively rewards NOT cooperating.
The pvp is necessary, both for the tension of the game and for the player choice of cooperation to feel as magical as it does. I wouldn’t want to change it. But I think far more can be done to encourage cooperation too.
Additionally, they have a serious problem with the mechanics rewarding the player who shoots first. If you’re the first to shoot you start a fight at a 50% hp advantage. The other player does not have time to heal and reset the engagement. 9 out of 10 times you lose the engagement. This could be changed, there are ways to mitigate this advantage and give players the ability to reset to neutral for a fair fight. This would alleviate many of the games issues such as extraction camping, corner peek ambushes and betrayals. Being able to reset these moments to neutral would remove most of the frustration players have with the game. I have a few ideas for this. An augment providing an anti-ambush shield that cracks on first hit, disengages for the player when shooting (like a Dune shield) and recharges automatically out of combat would effectively mitigate ambushes. Another option is a mixed shield, light in front, ultra heavy in rear, mitigating those shots in the back you get so often.
I don’t think they’re ever going to make an online game that isn’t the playspace of right-libertarians because that’s the dominant ideology of the people making the games for the forseeable future. People like Ralph Koster get ignored and treated as annoying or crankish when they talk about online ethics in games and how much more dynamic and robust the MUD/early-MMO space was in terms of taking online games as a new frontier seriously rather than simulated dimensions for christian-libertarians.
The studio are all Swedes. They’re probably socdems.
Also the game they wanted to make in the first place was purely PVE cooperation game. They pivoted to pvp with only 6 months remaining before planned release, it was not in their original plan at all.
I believe that they might consider this.
I do like Koster though. Even if he is a bit bought in on AI-brain techbro shit, he fundamentally likes communities and positive emergent player interactions.
I would say easily most, maybe 90% of my interactions are friendly. I try to say hello whenever I hear people and I have experienced rats but they’re pretty far and in between. I don’t generally play shooters either but I have played a lot of mmos and Arc does a pretty solid job of promoting cooperation despite the general culture of the genre.
Nah we’re all playing Arc Raiders.
I’ve been playing Arc, it’s really bothering me that it’s getting less and less friendly though. This isn’t helped by the fact it is the only shooter I’ve ever played where someone killing me doesn’t just make me annoyed at dying but it makes me feel sad that someone was a bad person to me. The game offers choices, you can be good or bad, and I genuinely feel quite sad when some of these people are bad. Never felt that before in a shooter, it’s partially driven by how good interactions can feel when people are cooperative.
This is all solo of course. Duos and Trios are both shitfests that just feel like a BR. The interactions in solo that aren’t hostile are where the magic happens, it’s those interactions that make up all of the interesting online videos and it’s those interactions that are the biggest thing setting it apart from other shooters. Nothing else has anything quite like them. The problem is that it’s getting worse over time. I hope the devs can recognise this is the magic and try to capture more of it. I don’t want to remove pvp, I just want to encourage people to choose it less frequently.
Might be a different game on EU compared to US too.
I wonder if there’s a consistent phenomenon with online games where anti-social or meta-chasing players actively churn out all the fun/kind players every time.
I’m not sure about that. I’ve been turning it over in my head for a while though and think the issue is there’s a lack of consequences in this world. There’s no reputational effects. There’s nothing that comes back home to Speranza. People won’t notice that someone is a murderer eventually. You don’t lose access to the human city for being a bandit who is actively harmful to a war effort. Etc etc.
Even in a lawless society, reality has consequences for this behaviour. And reality actively encourages cooperation far more than a game like this which actively rewards NOT cooperating.
The pvp is necessary, both for the tension of the game and for the player choice of cooperation to feel as magical as it does. I wouldn’t want to change it. But I think far more can be done to encourage cooperation too.
Additionally, they have a serious problem with the mechanics rewarding the player who shoots first. If you’re the first to shoot you start a fight at a 50% hp advantage. The other player does not have time to heal and reset the engagement. 9 out of 10 times you lose the engagement. This could be changed, there are ways to mitigate this advantage and give players the ability to reset to neutral for a fair fight. This would alleviate many of the games issues such as extraction camping, corner peek ambushes and betrayals. Being able to reset these moments to neutral would remove most of the frustration players have with the game. I have a few ideas for this. An augment providing an anti-ambush shield that cracks on first hit, disengages for the player when shooting (like a Dune shield) and recharges automatically out of combat would effectively mitigate ambushes. Another option is a mixed shield, light in front, ultra heavy in rear, mitigating those shots in the back you get so often.
I don’t think they’re ever going to make an online game that isn’t the playspace of right-libertarians because that’s the dominant ideology of the people making the games for the forseeable future. People like Ralph Koster get ignored and treated as annoying or crankish when they talk about online ethics in games and how much more dynamic and robust the MUD/early-MMO space was in terms of taking online games as a new frontier seriously rather than simulated dimensions for christian-libertarians.
The studio are all Swedes. They’re probably socdems.
Also the game they wanted to make in the first place was purely PVE cooperation game. They pivoted to pvp with only 6 months remaining before planned release, it was not in their original plan at all.
I believe that they might consider this.
I do like Koster though. Even if he is a bit bought in on AI-brain techbro shit, he fundamentally likes communities and positive emergent player interactions.
I would say easily most, maybe 90% of my interactions are friendly. I try to say hello whenever I hear people and I have experienced rats but they’re pretty far and in between. I don’t generally play shooters either but I have played a lot of mmos and Arc does a pretty solid job of promoting cooperation despite the general culture of the genre.
lol that’s not true on EU at all
it’s more like… 70% shoot me on sight, 30% don’t.
That was the other game that caught my eye T_T