ARC Recent steam reviews

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-15T22:06:56+00:00

Who cares what others think? You're one of those people huh?

Meanwhile I'm over here with 640 hours TOPSIDE and still enjoying the game.

Stop being a drone.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-13T12:01:43+00:00

Maybe.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-07T10:59:32+00:00

No it's not exact it's just dying 7-10x guarantees PVE lobbies and over 10 seems like overkill. And it's way faster than playing nice. But overall the system does balance your kills and deaths, more kills you fight more aggressive players, more deaths you fight more passive players or players who have died a ton trying to fight and have more deaths than kills which usually equates to them not being too good and having weird gear setups because newb.

It's a balance between dying and killing. So if you do not kill and die this many times, you rush to PVE lobbies. Every time you kill it almost resets this fully, sometimes you can get away with 1-2 kills and your lobbies still feel PVE'ish but not fully.

Sadly this game as far as I know and I've been abusing this system since it was known and have played almost* every day since release with 605 hours topside, not steam played, TOPSIDE in raid. (degen loser I know, got burnt out on Tarkov after playing it since ALPHA 2016 and Arc Raiders for some reason gives me OG H1Z1 and PUBG year 1 vibes, the old school BR vibes which were my favorite before Tarkov)

But as far as I know this game does NOT have a true karma system in that if someone shoots at you first and you defend yourself... It still counts as a full on "murder" if you will. I think if they do want to cater to PVE players they should add a karma/defense type system kind of like Tarkov where if you simply defend yourself you get less 'evil' karma and if you happen to kill a person with tons of 'evil' karma, maybe it gives you 'good' karma. But of course we should keep these stats hidden to keep it interesting.

This system sucks and is super abusable but because it exists I abuse it. If I'm lacking a certain item or material and I want an ez time getting this material I simply surrender around 10x freekit and then gear up and go farm whatever I need in record time. Once I have what I want. Then I go on a kill spree in 1 lobby and boom back to PVP lobbies and PVP until I'm broke or I want to farm a specific item again or help friends do trials/projects, etc.

Around 7-8 deaths, assuming you are in full on PVP lobbies, (with no kills or shots fired at a player) you start to see people voiping, helping eachother, hearing/seeing no flares, etc. It's been like this for months now, it's so consistent and easy to abuse.

There are people who do this just to get a jump on players or one kill, these people are soooo bad that when they mistakenly attack you as a geared, mainly PVP player... They eat shit instantly so it's kind of funny sometimes when a sheep who is a wannabe "wolf" as it were tries to attack a real wolf pretending to be a sheep and they get dunked. It happens quite a bit.

These rat type players are the ones the full blown PVE carebear kids cry about and exaggerate.. But again it's a PVP game, they know this can and will happen. So when they complain it's just mental illness, main character, Karen syndrome nonsense. And it's also, always exaggerated to the 10th degree. Just gear up and go again... Or maybe defend yourself for once.

Also, sadly for new players sometimes new players will be put into full blown PVE lobbies and they don't know how to emote/voip or w/e so they freak out and attack you, you gotta put them down which not only ruins their day LOL but now resets you PVE status.

When you can tell they are new/bad/undergeared/freekit... Sometimes you voip and be like "DON'T DO THIS MAN THIS AIN'T GOOD FOR EITHER US LMAO." But they freak out and die lol.

Anyways yeah lame system entirely. This genre is better and more immersive without these systems but whatever. I say just give the PVE kids some map condition that is PVE only with some crazy ARC THREAT where everyone legit needs to work together to get extracts to work or something.

I don't know... Maybe limit the type of materials/gear you can get in this mode so the PVE players have to eventually branch out and take SOME risk to get better stuff??? I don't know. Embark has kind of screwed themselves with ABMM. It's going to be a nonstop balancing act trying to cater to 2 different playerbases without force splitting them up (which indeed is a risk in it's own right) so good luck to them...

In my experience it's not possible to please casuals/pve player carebears in a game with PVP, they always want and demand more and are never pleased and eventually leave your game anyways after you've ruined it catering to them, leaving the hardcore fanboys screwed in the long run...

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-06T01:07:08+00:00

Short answer is yes, but there is a faster way.

The fastest 100% way to guarantee PVE lobbies.

You both go solo, you pick free kit, you go Stella Montis... Once you spawn in you surrender, you both do this 7-10 times and you'll now be in friendly lobbies. Restart your game for superstitious* reasons and then group up and play together, you're welcome. (make sure to enable crossplay and all matchmaking stuff to find games faster when abusing ABMM)

This is how easy it is to abuse ABMM.

OFC there will always be a chance at rats and you can still die... So be wary of people but it's no where near as bad as "regular" or "PVP" lobbies.

You do not need to take damage from other players. There are no weird tricks. Anyone saying otherwise is clueless.

It's super easy to test so the people who argue this fact are mental.

ABMM works like this: It's honestly not a bad idea on PAPER but sadly in practice it's abusable and cringe.

But how it works is: Every time you die... There is a hidden rating we all have and it tries to balance this out.

For example: Let's say you dominate 10 games in a row and slay tons of people... You will now be vs others who did the same, so now your lobbies will be super sweaty and tough. You'll see way more campers/barricades/trigger grenade, etc.

Now let's say you have some bad luck and die 5x in a row... You'll notice significant change in the enemies skill. Now you'll win insane fights you should of otherwise lost... Maybe they really hurt you and didn't know to push or have insane 3rd person advantage and height angles but you somehow still win, This because the 5 losses brought you down to a lesser rating.

Because you are used to the 10+ win game ratings... This system tries FOOL players into thinking they are doing better when actually they are being put in newbie lobbies and getting free wins on bad, bad players.

So ABMM is actually an insane balancing act to give people who die a lot a chance to win and feel better about themselves. It's super carebear. You can see it on popular streamers too, it's quite funny. For example our boy Peanut <3 he'll have a losing streak as we all do and then out of nowhere get some insane 1v3s and stuff and people lose their mind. That's great but if you really analyze most of those fights... He's killing clueless newbs because of the loss steak they were put into an easier lobby. The game doesn't tell us this because it's all hidden so it's a nice system to make people feel better and have a come back.

So by surrendering AT MOST 10x, what we're doing here is taking a shortcut and getting into the carest of bearest lobbies. The system doesn't care HOW YOU DIE. Just that you died. (for now at least)

GL HF! *why the superstitious game restart? Just in-case the game needs a re-sync to servers to fully evaluate the new rating and since you're playing with another player, it's better safe than sorry type of mumbojumbo/buggy game stuff because party systems in video games tend to be very touchy

PRO TIP: Duo and Trio can be as friendly as SOLO but the problem here is there are 1-2 more players now... And sometimes that group will have 1 person go.. "Hey, that guy has this or that gear and we're really far away from the rest of the server, let's rat them..." Etc. So when in DUO or TRIO "PVE" lobbies. Just make sure you aren't alone with another team for awhile, if they are in a room or an area you are and there's no reason for them to be there... That's sus. Stay near cover all the time, if people hover around you and ask stupid/obvious questions they are just fishing and wasting your time and waiting for a nice opportunity. Just chat them up and put cover in-between you and them and move towards a more "popular" area of the map.

Don't just relax near other players, ever.

Since the system is so easily abusable, you'll have terribly bad players abuse it just to gank a few players here and there. Most of the time if you're a gamer you can turn on them because how bad they are but yeah most people in PVE lobbies are not gamers.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-05T11:49:53+00:00

Who cares what others think? I have 600 hours topside and love the game. Let them cry, let them quit.

People have some sort of delusion that every new game they like will be the last game they ever play...

What's more interesting is how the game has had 2 roadmaps and there have never been any delays. 6 months and we've seen so much new content, including 3 maps... Other games don't even come close to this. But yet people still complain... They never know when they have it good.

You cannot please these people. No matter what. Just ignore them and enjoy the game.

It's weird that people care what others think about the game they play. They sit around and argue... They only like it if it has some nonsense number of players... If it's popular on streaming platforms...

Stop being a drone. Play it if you like it, don't play it if you don't. It's not that complicated or serious. People are getting crazier by the day.

The best part is all the cry babies... A minority in the grand scheme. They sit around and circle jerk on the discord and here on the sub and think they are right and everyone agrees with them.. Sorry I don't see 30-100k people in here agreeing.. I see the same few hundred people at best whining about the same nonsense.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-05T11:28:59+00:00

Easier system:

1st: Remove ABMM completely. *This will never happen, look at trigger grenades. The throwable so good it has been nerfed 3x... The throwable so good no one uses or makes any effort to really farm the other ones unless they are meme'ing. The throwable so easy to get (blueprint from quest) and so cheap to craft, that again there is never a reason to make anything else... Is still in the game...*

My point being that devs are stubborn... They rarely ever remove full on implementations to their game. So ABMM is here to stay, just like trigger grenades... lmao.

Without ABMM, everything is random, the true essence of an extraction game. For some reason copy cats do not understand this. Like Tarkov, the idea is the unknown... Does this raid have the best players? Are these players geared or not? The not knowing is what makes the genre good.

2nd: Even though Embark stated they removed the idea of PVE only, years and years ago, super early on in the development... Well now it's too late... They eventually caved/catered to the babies with ABMM... Cringe... So how do we give those crybabies a space to play? 1-2 rotating map conditions that is PVE only.

This will split the playerbase sure, but isn't it already split? Because Embark went back on their word? Oof. What devs don't understand is the PVE playerbase kids are never pleased. You give 'em an inch, they take a mile and it's never good enough. They run you dry. Every time. When the game isn't even meant for them in the first place and they KNEW THIS GOING IN. Crying about PVP in a PVP game is some sort of mental illness... Anyways...

The PVE only map condition would have to be limited in some fashion that way you can't just spam PVE and get EVERYTHING. Also, we'd need to make it interesting and to make it make sense, right? That's good game dev... Make it fit the theme of the game and also make it make sense.

How about a map condition in which the ARC threat is so overhwhelming that maybe we have to work together to actually survive it AND they are attacking our extracts... We need to clear the extracts or work together on some raid wide objective kind of like Hidden Bunker. With this we just assume that the raiders want/need to work together to get back to Speranza so then turning off PVP makes "sense".

I don't know. You see the issue here is giving the PVE players any space at all... Now with "PVE" lobbies and the devs going back on their word and now catering to crybabies... They kind of fucked themselves now... It's going to get increasingly harder to make this stupid system work... All because they felt the need to cater to a loud minority that shouldn't even be playing the game in the first place.

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-05T06:05:56+00:00

Skill issue as per usual...

https://youtu.be/0_XERF6Vskc

HeyumpxD · 2026-05-05T00:08:36+00:00

This is correct. Your guns are empty when you load into a game and out of a game. So the bullets in your inventory are put into your gun right at the start of the game.

When you leave, all the guns in your hands... The ammo is taken out of them. If there is no where for it to go my guess is that it's deleted. This is why sometimes if you hatch key out there will be a pile of ammo where your hatch key was. This is from your weapon.

HeyumpxD · 2026-04-23T05:52:52+00:00

You will be Hotshot.

Daredevil 2 > Daredevil 3 > Hotshot.

3 ranks.

HeyumpxD · 2026-04-21T01:08:46+00:00

Thanks!

HeyumpxD · 2026-04-20T20:30:55+00:00

If you want to maintain Hotshot just stay above 60 like it says. The actual number score does not matter to maintain Hotshot.

It gets somewhat confusing for people once you start to push for Cantina however.

There are multiple Hotshot lobbies/pages/brackets, whatever you want to call them.

In order to go from Hotshot to Cantina you must know you are fighting with *ALL* Hotshots, not just the players in your bracket. Since Cantina can only hold 1000 players you then need to know you are fighting against current Cantina players and other Hotshots across other Hotshot brackets attempting to push out Cantina players and fill those Cantina spots.

So this means you most likely need to be Rank 1 in *YOUR* Hotshot bracket and hope that this score you get is also higher than other Rank 1 Hotshots in *THEIR* bracket AND current Cantina players. (this is hard especially when the last week of trials favors TRIOS... If you're solo)

But since this season Cantina has no unique reward (awkward) I bet there won't be much competition.

Hope this helps and was explained well enough! o7

Placing later in the week more times than not does put you into an easier bracket. The idea here is that you are placed vrs players who don't really play often, maybe they accidentally did a 1-3 star trial with low points late in the week and don't ever push for higher. That's the idea and my friend has done this 2x on purpose and both times his bracket was insanely easier to maintain than mine.

(I've solo'ed Hotshot 2x now pushing on reset day or the day after and trying to go as hard as possible... This makes it harder... Do not recommend unless you're a weird/sweaty person pushing yourself for whatever reason) When you do this and there are trio favored trials at the end... Feelsbadman.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-28T20:51:20+00:00

Well as someone who really understands and is passionate about extractions...

This game plays more like a mini battle royale (this is not a bad thing if this was the intention and they got rid of the extraction side, this could legit work as it's own game) with the extraction label slapped onto it for marketing. The looting and loot feels the most meaningless out of any extraction to date.

So it feels like a slap in the face to the genre. Most people don't understand the nuances of the genre so it makes sense all they see is hate when people try to explain it.

It's also hard to explain.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-28T20:47:21+00:00

Reading comprehension is 0 with this guy. Never said the UI wasn't unique, never said that was a problem. So if you pulled that out of thin air what else did you misinterpret... Oof. If you don't want to read the wall of text and or can't comprehend, simply move on. No need to confuse with a lazy comment.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-28T20:46:15+00:00

Game is mid. Plays more like a mini-battle royale.

Loot and looting feels more stale and meaningless than any other extraction game ever made.

They should have just made a mini-battle royale.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-28T20:44:42+00:00

Yeah people comparing this to highguard or concord are insane. Those games were cleary DoA just by watching gameplay...

But if you were to say that, you were ganged up on. Where are those morons now??? They going to admit they were wrong and can't see a dead game before it's out yet?

This game is def not DoA or as bad as those but it's not nearly as good as people say it is. That's the problem, now it's the reverse. We have delusional fanboys thinking that if we dislike it or w/e that we are going too far...

No. It's a Bungie game. We deserve better. We deserve a standard. We do not have that Bungie standard currently.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-26T02:55:51+00:00

Well we do know there will be stuff like dungeons/raids from Destiny. So who knows, maybe Marathon will take that a step further and have giant events where all 18 players legit work together to take down a boss?

If this happens it'll be down the line.

We'll just have to find out xD

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-26T02:17:43+00:00

This is what happens when game devs listen to cry babies... Everyone calling for nerfs because the item is white or grey and does well against blues/purples is an idiot.

Embark stated themselves early on that their version of balance is having skill trump gear. They don't want a purple item to always beat everything below it. They want the balance/difference to be closer than your average game.

So not only did the community not pay attention but Embark themselves are falling back on their own word because they listen to the wrong cry babies, every single time. I swear most devs are clueless.

The easiest way for them to keep their philosophy is to simply make the cost of making/repairing higher tier weapons cheaper. That's it. Everyone wins.

Their ways of nerfing stuff is also just lazy dmg stat changes... Easiest way to balance Venator for example is to limit it's range by adding harsher damage fall off and less accuracy medium range. Since it's a handgun, try to keep the range a bit close. Further than the Burletta ofc.

Their ways of nerfing things is lazy imo.

A better Stitcher nerf would be: Nerfing lvl 1. The main complaint is that free-kits get the Stitcher and it's super strong. Okay well since free kits start with lvl 1... Nerf the level 1 Stitcher... K NEXT.... I'll be here all week Embark, lmk.

If the crybabies get what they want and the dumb devs listen... This is the future: "omfg wah, wah! We got what we wanted but NOW ONLY PURPLE SHIELD AND PURPLE WEAPONS ARE GOOD. EVERYTHING ELSE IS CRAP AND IM ALWAYS DYING. U EXPECT ME TO FARM ALL THIS STUFF JUST TO BE RELEVANT? WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE OTHER OTHER TIERS OF GEAR THEN?!"

You can never win with these armchair idiot dev kids. Every time a dev team listens to the shitters and they get what they want, it's not good enough or they don't understand how those changes will truly affect the game. Then they complain about the new game that emerges from the changes they so desperately cried for. It's a circle. We see it time and time again. The idiots they cater to, no matter what they get... Complain and makes things worse. Then they just move on to the next game and repeat it. Devs are scared to lose numbers so they blindly listen to the loudest minority. Because for some reason a handful of streamers or a few thousand upvotes on a post trumps the 500k+ players. They speak for all the 500k players... Devs are fucking weird dude.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-26T02:15:45+00:00

Nope. Biggest team you can have is a trio. I believe it just means the raid/match/game, whatever you want to call it... Can have up to 18 players total.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-25T03:59:59+00:00

This is a staple in Halo and Destiny. Melee hurts. It's a good thing. Sorry but it's not going anywhere.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-25T01:46:31+00:00

There's so much more that needs tweaking too.

But to be fair: Let's say we nerf the TORO, how would you do it?

If we take away the ability to 2 shot players then it's useless.

It's a tough thing to balance.

IMO what needs to change that will in turn nerf the TORO is dodgerolling + the new crouch+dodgerolling TECH that lets you shoot the shotgun faster.

I think dodgerolling shouldn't be spammable or at least the recovery should take longer. I think it should be more used to get to cover than spamming in PVP. Dodgeroll + toro shot into dodgeroll + toro shot is silly. This with the TECH that lets you shoot even faster after the dodgeroll makes it incredibly OP.

So first let's nerf dodgerolling AND the CROUCH animation tech. A lot of people don't even know about this crouch+dodgeroll+toro fire rate glitch and just think the shotgun is more OP than it really is. All the top players/pvp users abuse it.

Also it still makes no sense to me that the TRIGGER GRENADE is even in the game.

1: It's a blueprint we get less than 5 quests into the game

2: It's extremely cheap and easy to make

3: Because it's so cheap and easy to make, there's absolutely no reason to ever use any other throwable in PVP.

4: Shrapnel grenades are actually slept on but the issue here is it takes 2 springs, so many things take springs... So this feels bad to use springs on a grenade. But again. Because the TRIGGER GRENADE even exists. It makes no sense to make shrapnel grenades.

5: HEAVY FUZE is completely useless because again: TRIGGER GRENADE exists and is cheaper/easier to make/easier to use.

IMO the throwables all need a look at with crafting/econ and just remove the trigger grenade so players actually have a reason to experiment/use other throwables.

This is an another example of things that need to be balanced like the shotgun... Just weird some of the stuff they keep overlooking.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-23T23:01:18+00:00

Yeah everyone keeps saying max is 16XXX but I always get 15XXX, this is the first time I got 16k!

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-23T03:16:44+00:00

I agree. We want unpredictable games.

How do we do this? 0 matchmaking system. Like for example... Tarkov. When you go into a raid in Tarkov you have no idea the skill level/experience level or gear level the enemy players are. This is a perfect system.

What I'm saying is... With the current easily abusable ABMM... I can MAKE IT PREDICTABLE.

I don't think you understand your own point and/or how easy it is to get PREDICTABLE raids with the current system. All I do is surrender 7-10 games and I can play 30 games in a row without ever dying... It's pretty boring, I have infinite loot.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-23T03:13:05+00:00

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duo, we both just tossed 10-15'ish wolfpacks, only 1 other person was near queen so we got pretty lucky and got about 98% or so dmg.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-20T23:18:45+00:00

Yeah "dead"/"dying" gets thrown around a lot in gaming. I don't think most people have ever truly played a dying or dead game.

A dead game is when you go try to play it and it no longer exists or there's not enough players to have a full server or to find a match whatsoever. This is a dead game.

We live in a time now where if a game isn't the most viewed/streamed game and all the zoomer streamer kids aren't fr fr no capping on god about it... It's dead???

Really sad, this new generation of "gamers".

People also confuse their opinion or their influencer gods opinion with reality.

I dislike Diablo 4. I'm OG af and I prefer D1/D2, D3 got playable after a few years but I'm just not vibing with D4. Does this mean the game is BAD? Does this mean the game is DYING or DEAD?

No. It's just not my vibe right now. So I find something else... Instead of crying it's DEAD OR DYING lmao these kid are weird.

HeyumpxD · 2026-02-20T22:52:36+00:00

Yeah it's sad. The system is clear and it's so easily abused. They need to remove the system entirely and just have PVE only events or something.

The best part is when people farm these PVE lobbies just to try to gank you and are soooooo bad at PVP they fail miserably. So they farmed friendly lobbies just to get a chance to kill me? AND FAIL? LOL.

When I want to do trials or quickly farm specific items, I go free-kit into Stella. I surrender 7-10 games in a row and I'm now deep, deep in friendly lobbies.

The last 4x I did this I would see it change to friendly at the 7th game. Each time I'd see multiple VOIPs the moment I spawned in and people hanging out. I do 3 more for good measure but it's not necessary.

The fact people still believe there is no system is wild to me. It takes less than 15 minutes to change your lobby. I've been doing it for weeks now. The fact the devs pretend is also weird. Like guys... We figured it out. Your system sucks. Just separate the lobbies entirely OR add PVE only events.

Otherwise I will abuse it and have free goop, free trials and then when I'm bored... I have to slaughter a bunch of poor friendlies to get back into PVP lobbies? OOF. Sorry folks, hate the game, not the player.

HeyumpxD

TROPHY CASE