u/PamelaBreivik

ABMM is obviously a hot topic on this subreddit, but I think most people don't realize ABMM is the main reason Arc Raiders is accessible to both casual/social players and PvP tryhards. **Every other extraction shooter out there is either single player or a sweat fest. There IS a market for social extraction shooters, and Arc Raiders has claimed it.** Social extraction shooter players are here and, as far as I'm aware, the developers intend on keeping them. Flooding the subreddit with anti-social PvP ragebait won't change that.

While the PvP tryhards will bitch about PvE players on Reddit saying "they're playing the game wrong, stop complaining", social players are trying to defend themselves while playing the only game on the market that offers a social experience in an extraction shooter. Tarkov? Not a casual game, barely social, practically only shoot on sight. Marathon? Also shoot on sight, rarely social, lost most of its playerbase in the first month, barely even worth mentioning. Escape from Duckov/Zero Sievert? Single player, top down, completely different style of game except that they're both generically extraction shooters. Not appealing for most FPS players and certainly not fulfilling for the social aspect. Some people like playing games with their friends and that's okay.

I feel like "PvE player" isn't a very correct term. While there are some people that exclusively PvE and just die if shot that, that's stupid. Most of the people labelled as "PvE players" should be called "social players". However since everyone on this sub says PvE, I'll use that.

Playing duos/trios doesn't just suck for PvE players though. It affects everyone. The reason you don't see PvP players complaining about it is because they either don't notice that half of their competition doesn't want to fight/sucks at fighting and thinks their squad is goated, or simply doesn't care that they're just slaughtering players trying to kill some Arc or complete quests or help other players out and they're just wasting people's time. Killing people for their loot (or to stop them from taking loot you want) is one thing, but just killing everyone you see when it serves you no advantage is just wasting other peoples' time. PvP players in duos/trios are just playing in easy mode, and for PvE players, it's often not worth it to bother gearing up for PvP. Even if PvE players geared up for hardcore PvP, they're not going to shoot first, so the PvP players will always have an advantage over them regardless of how much equipment they bring. The matchmaking as-is enables PvP players in duos/trios to get easy cheap kills and the only logical conclusions are:

PvE players are forced to stop playing with their friends (feels bad for a social videogame, what most people end up doing anyway).
PvE players are forced to play a specific way, switching to shoot on sight and hardcore PvP (feels bad for trying to play a videogame, excludes large portion of the playerbase).
PvE players quit (bad for everyone).

Just some guesstimates as to why playing with your friends sucks:

Let's say player count is 50k.
Some people are AFK or screwing around in the stash/traders/etc, so let's say 35k people are actively trying to go into a raid.
Let's say there's seven active map events, so an average of 5k per map. However, since some will be more popular than others, maybe a queen gets 10k players and some random no-weather map gets 2k players. We can both look at average (5k) and worst case (2k).
What percentage of players queue up for duos or trios? I have no idea. I assume the vast majority play solo, but for the sake of argument, I'm going to guess the percentage for solo, duo, trio is: 90%, 2%, 8%. If we just lump duo and trio together as 10%, that leaves us with 500-200 players.
If players average 20 minutes per raid, that means with 500 players, one queues up for your map every 2.4s. With 200 players, one queues up every 6s. For 20 players per round, that means 48s-120s wait time to queue for a single match, which DOES match wait times I often see.

And all of that is not even factoring in ABMM. That's just putting everyone available into the same lobby.

If we oversimplify ABMM to split the playerbase into thirds, that would result in triple wait times to matchmake with players with similar playstyle to yours. Personally, I'd rather wait longer than have ABMM pool everyone together. One solution would be a maximum ABMM deviation between players. The range doesn't even have to be very narrow. Mixed and PvE is fine, mixed and PvP is fine, but PvE and PvP players in the same lobby is just less enjoyable for everyone involved. If the aggression range is -1 to 1, I think the maximum deviation should be somewhere around 0.75-1.25.

Another solution to address the previous concerns is the matchmaking having a maximum queue time and if not enough people are found within an ABMM range, it just sends the people available. This will be required regardless once player counts drop low enough or people simply won't be able to play.

For all of the primarily PvE/social players out there, you have my sympathies. This subreddit is filled with people who just say "you bought a PvPvE game, don't complain about PvP" and completely ignore the counter-argument of "this is the only social extraction shooter on the market and you and I both chose to purchase and play this game, so just like I have to accept there is PvP in a PvPvE game, you have to accept there are social players in a social game."

Besides, their argument is moot anyway. **We're not saying we don't want PvP. PvP is fine and a natural emergence of the game. PvE-only lobbies would completely ruin the cooperation and social dynamics. We can only have the cooperative lobbies we know and love (at least, in solo queue) with PvPvE.** What I'm complaining about is feeling like I'm being punished for trying to play with my wife. It's significantly more difficult to complete quests and stuff if we queue up together. Duos/trios are rarely social, often being shoot on sight. We don't want highly-social and highly-aggressive players to be put into the same match. It's discouraging for social players and it's just target practice for aggressive players. For wanting to make progress in the game or play in a social manner in this social game we purchased, we're encouraged to just not play together. That feels bad.

All constructive feedback is welcome. However, I am curious to see how many comments below are people just repeating "you bought a PvPvE game, don't complain about PvP" and not only failing to understand the points being made here, but proving them.

Edit: As a consolation prize for you social players out there, even though we feel like we're in the minority on this subreddit, look at the upvoted versus downvoted posts. We're not in the minority. It's just the toxic minority that want us to feel that way.

Anyone know where to find the “No Way Jose” bit

The only game that punishes you for playing with your friends.

What are the best type of skeleton warrior? I like skirmishers for numbers but I feel like reapers do more damage.