One debate that has been swirling around Arc Raiders for some time now involves Free Loadouts, whether they should exist at all, be nerfed, or sentenced to always join matches late as penance for not putting anything of worth on the line. But I really don't think any of these solutions are viable options.
Issues with free loadout players have been exacerbated by Stella Montis, the smallest and most aggressive map in Arc Raiders, as players are seeing more killer free loadouters than usual. People who use free loadouts get given a low-level gun, ammo, shield, and health, not a lot, but enough to do well, but with none of their stuff on the line, so they can be more aggressive than usual.
"I like how the game is PVP I just feel like those free loadouts are aggressive, careless and rush in with no worries," one player says. I've certainly played carelessly with nothing on the line, and there are a good chunk of players who use free loadouts as a way to grief other players with no consequences.
Just the other day, my squad encountered a couple of free loadouts who just wanted to scrap. We loaded in at the start of the game, and within a few minutes, shots were being fired at us from across the ridgeline. They were acting super aggressively and recklessly. We were surprised that a duo would so readily pick a fight with a trio. But acting recklessly isn't always a positive, as we were able to distract and take them out with little to no effort. Rummaging around their corpses revealed a free loadout with zero loot—we'd unknowingly stumbled into their own personal Fight Club.
But in my 50-plus hours in Arc Raiders, this isn't a hugely common occurrence—if anything, I find that people with better loot and guns are more up for a skirmish, if only to test out their gear.
Free loadouts also fulfil an important service of lending a helping hand to newbies or those who are still trying to find their footing in Arc Raiders. Hell, I'll use it sometimes when playing with friends who are new to the game. It means I can show them the ropes without having to worry about getting downed or putting any pressure on them to hit their shots to save my valuable loadout.
I haven't heard many Arc Raiders players saying that free loadouts should be entirely scrapped (primarily for the reason I talked about above). But there is a growing sentiment that free loadout players need to be nerfed somehow.
"I've seen a lot of streamers and a fair amount of conversation on this subreddit about having free loadouts be prioritised to come in later in the round," paradoxialup says in a Reddit post. "While taking in a loadout of your own, you would spawn in sooner than the actual time of the match starting. I personally think this sounds like a great solution, as if you’re going in with a free loadout, you have zero risk whatsoever, so the amount of reward should be lower."
This seems to be the consensus between free loadout haters, with streamer Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins also chiming in: "We should never get first spawns—we should always be loading into late raids with free loadouts. They should never be giving people with free loadouts fresh raids."
I actually wouldn't mind spawning into a match late with a free loadout. I spawn in late with regular loadouts, enough as is to not really notice a difference. Even so, I don't think this is a viable solution.
No one should be spawning into Arc Raiders games late. It's a feature that has always puzzled and annoyed me. At first, I thought it was a mistake or an issue with matchmaking, but as I realised that it was a purposeful feature, it pissed me off even more.
Spawning in late already sucks—there's no loot left, all the good spots have been rummaged through, there are fewer extracts open, and players are more aggressive because of the lack of leftover loot and fewer extractions. I always write off late spawn games.
But what pisses me off more than spawning into a game late is spawning in early, and fighting a bunch of players only to win and get away with depleted health and ammo. Only to then fight a group who've just spawned in with fresh health and untouched stacks of ammo. If anything, I think spawning in late would give free loadouts a leg up, as regular players are likely playing with less resources after fighting other players or arcs for the first half of the game.
So what do we do to combat aggressive free loadouters with nothing to lose? Well, it's a mindset. I'm now going into games acting like every loadout is free, or at the very least not mine to keep forever. Guns will be lost, scrapped, or used—it doesn't matter to me what happens when. Try reading The Idea of the World by Bernardo Kastrup or Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up—it'll help get you there.
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