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.
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.
‘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.
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.
EDIT: Learned some new things from the responses, certainly an interesting situation. I’ll consider them.
I don’t mind. The result speaks for itself
I mean, does anything in The Finals or this game feel like slop?
Embark released blog posts about how they’re integrating AI into their development workflow back in 2019/2020. The entire studio was founded by former Dice devs bc they were burned out with game development and had quit, then realized they could build tools and pipelines that allowed them to focus on the fun parts of game development, and got together to form Embark and do exactly that. Their vision preceded the vast majority of the public’s awareness of AI, and was not influenced by the current wave of LLMs and generative ai.
If you want to hate feel free that’s your prerogative, but be aware that anything Embark makes is going to be built on tools and pipelines that deeply integrate some form of AI/ML, and just stay away from anything the studio makes. It’s your loss really because their games are the first in a long time (in their genres) that I can feel the love the devs poured in seeping from every single aspect of the game, but again it’s your prerogative.
To defend the voice acting in The Finals - they obtained the consent for all the voice actors they use, and they pay them a commission for each new line they generate. It’s believed that one of the reasons they made that decision was to have things like improvised dialogue possible by the announcers (Scotty and June), for example.
They definitely aren’t cheating people out of money, fortunately.
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.
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.
You can play the flute on top of downed people. Goty honestly.
Not a hard bar for the extraction games published on steam tbh. Glad the genre has a game thats decent after so many years
Come on everybody, we need to make a…
Platform gameDoom cloneCommand and Conquer cloneMMOOpen world gameMOBAPUBG cloneExtraction Shooter
Coming soon: Fortnite Extractimum. Eleventy billion players in two days.
I mean, yea, trends exist.
The world progresses.
This thing is good.
What’s bad is the marketing dark patterns and mtxs.
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.
What MTX are you talking about?
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.
We are certainly not playing the same game, then. All good.
Edit: so, finally back home and started the game. Main screen, after game loads has 0 references to MTX. Zero. Only and only when you go to STORE tab do you get to see anything. Or if you click on RAIDER TOKENS section in the top right. Nothing else, anywhere.
So while I love shitting on game devs, I prefer to do it for a good reason, and not based on lies. You might not like the prices and that’s perfectly ok, noone likes them.
But that does not equal “shoving MTX in your face”.
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)
There are also free cosmetics that you can unlock through quests.
It’s so ingrained it’s actually crazy. All cosmetics should be free.
I’m playing the hell out of Escape from Duckov.
All the fun of a extraction shooter, only single player.
whats an extraction shooter?
Take on missions, collect loot, leave the area. If you die, you lose everything on you. At least as far as I know, I don’t play any but have seen some escape from tarkov videos.
…there are other kinds of shooters?
You mean other than extraction? Sure, arcade like L4D series, rpg like fallout series. Team death match like Quake or COD series, survival like RUST or 7 days to die. There’s lots.
It’s a derivative of the strand-type game.
so um. whats a strand-type game. Man am I super out of the loop?
I want to enjoy the game, but I keep getting got by campers spamming grenades or that one submachine gun. I haven’t even been able to unlock any new weapons or gear beside the base ones because of that, or another map to play on. I’ve played for an hour and 52 minutes, and I really don’t know if I should keep trying or just give up and refund it.
Solo? Try talking to people. I’ve found that almost everyone in solo matches are likely to be friendly if you talk. (There’s also a communication wheel if you don’t want to or can’t use a mic.)
Groups tend to fight 95% of the time though. At extract it’s often OK, but before then not really.
Regardless, it sounds like you just might not be used to the genre. You can rat, and play really safe, avoiding high loot areas where players are likely to be. Alternatively, just pay attention. There’s almost always signs players are around. If you see ARC with yellow or red lights, there are players there. If you see open containers or doors, or destroyed ARC then players have been there. You can also hear footsteps and looting pretty well. Just pay attention and you usually won’t be jumped.
I don’t feel like campers are an issue in the game though. I haven’t experienced it. There are people who will spot you with the third person camera who it may feel like are camping, but they’re almost always just being observant while looting and spotted you first. It’s not like they’re waiting at extract for you. I haven’t seen that once yet and I’ve played a lot of matches.
Uses Kernel Level Anti-Cheat
Aaaand I’m out. Soooo many shitty new games.
Working flawlessly on Linux so far :)
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
