Over the past few months, Embark has been pulling some levers behind the scenes to improve Arc Raiders' matchmaking. Despite the devs previously saying matchmaking wasn't "binary," it didn't feel like that in practice. My solo lobbies were peaceful walks in the park, while trio lobbies were much more violent.
From these experiments, "one change has stood out with the community," Embark explains in a new blog outlining changes. That being, "defending yourself is no longer treated the same as starting a fight."
At launch, fighting back against aggressors would, for some reason, contribute to your playstyle profile, so to speak. In a mythbusting update at the end of May, defending yourself was finally changed so that it mattered less than initiating the fight, but it was still considered aggression.
In today's update, 1.39.0, defensive PvP no longer has any impact on your matchmaking tendencies: "Only the fights you choose to start will influence your playstyle estimate, and defending yourself won't affect it at all."
To avoid any confusion, Embark has explained how this new system works:
- You and your entire squad will be considered 'defending' if an enemy player damages, downs, or knocks out any of your crew.
- The more drawn-out the fight, the more weight is given to the aggressors. A sustained shootout with high damage and downs is more impactful than a brief exchange with one side fleeing.
- Third-partying, meaning entering a fight between other squads, counts as starting a fight.
In the same blog, Embark has also confirmed that the separate squad-size matchmaking changes from 1.36.0, and the matchmaking optimisations in 1.38.0, are still active.
The changes so far have been well-received by the community, and hopefully set the massive Frozen Trail update in October on course to be a resurgence. Arc Raiders has been in a bit of a slump since the announcement that major updates would now come every six months instead of the, frankly absurd, one month.
