Arc Raiders should give PvE a proper endgame

Embark’s week-long PvE test racked up more than 30 million rounds. If co-op comes back, it needs a reason to keep playing that doesn’t come from another player’s gun.

Arc Raiders players completed more than 30 million PvE rounds in a single week in October, and then the option was gone. Embark Studios ended the test on October 20 and, in its update thanking players, said it expects to share more in November once it’s studied the results and feedback.

I want PvE to come back, and I want it back with something worth working toward. A co-op version of Arc Raiders needs goals that hold up without someone waiting around a corner to steal your backpack.

That’s close to why I drifted away from the game in the first place. I thought it was one of the best-looking games I’d played on stream, then hit a point where I couldn’t see what all the collecting was building toward.

I remember sitting in Speranza with a loadout ready, moving an item out of my bag and putting it back. The gun was ready before I was, and I couldn’t name a reason to take it anywhere.

If you missed the test, here’s how it worked. From October 13 to 20, players could switch between ordinary PvPvE and servers where Raiders couldn’t damage each other. Loot value was lower in PvE, and several major map conditions were left out, including Frigate and Redirection, according to Embark’s published rules for the test.

That matters for how you read the result. The test tells Embark how people responded to a restricted version of PvE. It doesn’t tell anyone how they’d feel about a co-op mode with the bigger activities switched on and a reason to keep getting better at them.

The PvP crowd is right about the tension. When another Raider can open fire, every encounter could go either way, and the person waving at you might be the reason you walk home with nothing. PvE doesn’t have that, and it shouldn’t pretend to.

I don’t need another player to be the hardest thing in the room. Give me a machine that takes preparation to beat and a reward that lets me do something I couldn’t do before, and there’s a reason to go back out.

Streamer Loochy raised the endgame problem during the test. As GamesRadar reported on October 20, Loochy argued that Arc Raiders’ endgame wasn’t deep enough to sustain PvE and called the mode “hollow.”

I agree with the diagnosis and not the fix. If the endgame is thin, build one. Putting player damage back on just leaves the same question waiting underneath.

Fortnite taught me what that should feel like. I once spent most of a match planning my route into the last circle instead of chasing every shot I heard, and I reached it with cover and time to choose my next fight.

The match still ended with me looking at somebody else’s character, but for once I knew which part I’d got right. That’s the feeling Arc Raiders PvE should be built around, where the prep you did back in Speranza is the reason you made it as far as you did.

Those 30 million rounds are rounds, not 30 million people voting to keep PvE. Embark still has to work through what happened, and its October 20 post calls the reaction “polarizing.” I don’t have its data, and I’m not going to declare the test a success on its behalf.

My vote is for another test that opens up more of the game. Put Frigate on the PvE list and give me a reason to prepare for it. I’ll worry about the machine trying to kill me when I get there.