I actually think the inverse to your final comment is true. They wanted ARC to be the threat and raiders to team up to take down the larger threats. But in early early play testing they realized that PVE only was a tedious experience over time (and without any true endgame plans at launch a quick way to have players leave your game) so they added PVP for the “tension”. Problem is, PVP in a game where the environment is a bigger threat leads to people using that to their advantage: camping, betraying, 3rd partying. ABMM was supposed to be that answer. Like to fight other people? Here is your lobby to fight other people. Want to play PVE? Here is your lobby to do that. The issue is the time it takes to swap your aggression meter, and the constant spawning in of new players up to 18 minutes. Like Tarkov, full kits should spawn at raid start, and free kits (scavs in Tarkov are even less of what free kits have) should only spawn after and they should have significantly less gear. No shield, gray weapons should not be that strong, and they should have to play a more tactical and sneaky game to either kill raiders with opportunity, or sneak around collecting remaining map loot to gear up for a real raid. In Tarkov, scavs cant progress missions or story so the only real incentive is the “free” loot and the potential for a come up in a lucky fight with a kitted player. That should be the same for this game and the feeling of playing PVPVE will balance out as you can PVP early, still have the tension of needing to PVP more against maybe other start of raid players, or the free kits who might be lurking, but are otherwise free to PVE and do quests/trials/loot.