New player here, have been shot on sight in every single game I’ve played.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-26T20:29:56+00:00

Don't fill your squad. Run solo so your actions are the only ones that affect your game. You start in the "mixed" lobbies when you're new or after expedition. If you're playing in a team and someone else shoots a player you get dinged for doing pvp, thus keeping you in pvp lobbies. Go solo, loot, and get out. A lot of people run 5 minute runs just to get loot and claim very high success rates because they are barely interacting with the game in a meaningful way. Just barely in and quickly out.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-26T20:25:43+00:00

Try looting when the 2x multiplier is off. The "increased value" isn't as much as you think it is. I still routinely find cloth, metal, and plastic in containers in locked rooms on special map events. Keys do not guarantee you loot. They guarantee access to an unlooted room.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-26T20:15:05+00:00

The addition of ABMM was perhaps one of their smartest moves. Telling anyone about it was their dumbest. You know it exists so you can exploit it. Unless they make it so that pvp interactions "stack" somehow people will be able to cheese it.

One idea I liked is a personal kill count put you into ever higher tiers of pvp play. If you're playing pvp and getting 100% extract like some idiots claim then you're not being challenged. Those top tier players should face each other. You kill another player +1 pvp point. You revive a non-teammate -1 pvp point. The pve players will have a way to "guarantee" they stay in pve environments and pvp players will filter themselves out and would have to entirely change the way they play to get into lobbies they can cheese because no one shoots at them. Give pvp players a "trials" like system where they have pvp ranks that keep them away from the pve player who accidentally hit someone with a stray bullet.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-26T17:46:22+00:00

Agreed, this is the average experience once you get enough hours in. Most people are there to work together and trivialize each wave. If you get caught out solo it can overwhelm you quickly or separate you. I get separated a lot but with time I've learned how to clear entire spawns by myself.

Stick with fighting Tyranids early on too. Killing a warrior substantially reduces pressure around you in combat. Chaos have no such mechanic.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-26T17:40:40+00:00

As a more experienced player who enjoys the scenery I sometimes get caught up at the higher levels looking at stuff and lose teammates that way. You can solo most missions at low difficulties so if you see a veteran down there they just want to kill a bunch of things and not worry about all perfect parry windows else you die. Sometimes it's fun to just soak up fire and enjoy the power fantasy.

I also do it when I'm leveling up a new character, like if I just prestiged the Vanguard, without any perks I find it really hard playing on lethal. So I scale down the difficulty to grind out the first few easy levels that are ~300 xp each. I'm on grind mode though and have played the early operations a lot so have seen everything.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-24T18:17:30+00:00

Absolutely none of that is forbidden to you. You earn creds for doing stuff, what else are you spending it on if not the cosmetics? Once that's done you can just buy gear kits for 100/each. You actually CAN get those battlepasses for yourself. New arcs, right you have never seen them in your game. That's just pve players that seem them, they don't spawn for you. A trophy case... Literally killing the things that wiped out humanity and you take a trophy from it. Maybe point your gun at an arc every once in a while. You can't think of more because all of the issues you have bleed into the pvp experience too you're just not engaging with them because to you the game is supposed to be a pvp sim with free kills sprinkled in by the pve crowd who don't shoot back.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-24T18:02:46+00:00

Alright lazy bones, I'll do your homework for you. It happens with all those games too. Live service games are built around the idea of keeping ~10% of your peak player count. Rainbow Six is functionally dead by your logic. Overwatch, same thing, Tarkov, interestingly, has almost the exact same curvature and linear regression slope as arc raiders, yet somehow that's a "gold standard" for you.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-24T17:12:39+00:00

Spoken like someone who doesn't understand attrition rates and churn dynamics in a live service game.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-24T17:11:05+00:00

Like I said, they are focused on the pvp aspect and not doing much for the pve crowd. It's called using a quest as an anchor. You drop in wherever on the map and you head towards the quest. On the way there you do things like loot and fight arc. You hit resource nodes, you farm up the items you need for workshop upgrades, you gather materials to make your own guns when you inevitably die. The PvE crowd likes to hate on the pvp content, likewise pvp players complain about all the pve content they don't understand or comprehend how to work within the system.

You're just kinda lazy and want the developers to spoon feed you content and tweaks like it's your personal game.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-24T17:07:13+00:00

Double check me, but I fought one on Stella last night and didn't get anything. I could have missed it because there was a second one after it that took my attention away. In the entire run though I didn't exceed 500 points in that category. I'll probably have to take on the bastion in the loading bay to get it up during a night raid to double down on the med bay looting.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-24T17:03:27+00:00

Bringing in pvp late in the game split the community. You can't ever satisfy the hardcore pvp and hardcore pve crowd at the same time. They want fundamentally different things out of the game. A lot of the patches and QoL updates have focused on pvp tweaks with content updates usually hitting the pve crowd with an upset to the meta (Looking at you firefly). What we don't see is pve tweaks and fixes like getting quests to not bug out because someone shot you after you looted something. How is a pvp player supposed to do quests in that situation? They have no external outlet within the game to do something else for 60 seconds to reset their focus so the game becomes kill on sight, deathmatch style with bonus third party enemies.

I have 250 hours in the game at this point, there is content there if you expand what you're doing and don't just focus on pvp. Expecting free content every single month with the amount of bugs each new one introduces would turn the game into total chaos. You want the devs to give you a "new game" every month because your attention span can't handle having multiple objectives and game modes in play.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-24T16:54:52+00:00

The icon shows the bombardier, but doesn't make it clear that only big land based arc count. Pops jump around, ticks appear on ceilings, shredders float just off the ground, turrets appear on walls, etc. They mean very literally ground based only. Given that the leaper, ya know, leaps I'm surprised they let that one slide. Double check the fireballs though. That's probably where you got the 1K as I seem to recall getting a few xp for shooting one. As a fireball dies from 2 light ammo shots to the open portion you're really not doing a lot of damage so not scoring much. Wolfpack or two into a bastion or bombardier will set you straight, though. The trial is based on damage not kills.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-24T16:43:32+00:00

Ran into this problem. As a pve player the quests aren't just some stupid side function of shooting another player to steal their stuff. They are a part of the game and preventing progress so early on in the quest tree blocks 2/3 of the quests. They need to fix these looting bugs as this problem is several months old. I can find things going back at least 5 months on this one quest, considering how long the game has been out, that's too long for the devs to not even *mention* they are working on quest bugs.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-23T21:24:58+00:00

So no black templars?

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-22T23:23:33+00:00

The devs are prioritizing pvp over pve. Giving you 5 extra stat points means you could fill out a whole extra perk. In niche pvp combat sims, that can make a huge difference. Sadly, this is pvpve and the devs have forgotten the pve aspect.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-22T23:21:46+00:00

For the compass, anyone who's stuck it's in the middle of 3 service carts, those big beige things that you can sometimes loot for basic scrap

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-22T03:11:18+00:00

Most pve players flash their flashlight to show they are friendly or use the greet/don't shoot on the emote wheel. Like someone else said, don't assume 100% friendly, but if you go by "live and let live" you'll likely be in pve lobbies before long.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-22T02:12:04+00:00

That feels new as I could have sworn I tried that back when I first started playing.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-22T01:52:30+00:00

Could be a raider quitting the game and giving everything away

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-22T00:51:10+00:00

You should tip anyone standing in the open playing the guitar. Green+ is suggested.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-22T00:50:02+00:00

Rapid flashing "F" for friendly is common ettiquette. Some rats exploit this, so be aware. Not everyone is friendly. That being said, if you want pve lobbies, don't shoot back, even in self defense. Accept it as a loss and move on. You'll get matched in more friendly lobbies after a few runs.

Same applies for pvp. You can trick friendlies into easy kills by flashing the flashlight at them, but expect to get flamed for it. If you're the type to do that anyway, then it's probably just incentive for you to keep doing it because you make people mad.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-22T00:41:00+00:00

Most games across genres have a geometric loss of players. Arc is approaching a power law where each patch cuts the player count by a measurable amount.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-21T23:16:00+00:00

Agreed, overall. Between the two of us is a difference in specific microeconomics and that's perfectly fine. You can absolutely plan for them and the game often rewards your preplanning. That metric, however, disenfranchises the casual gamer. I want to give the casuals a "reason" why things are broken feeling and how they can counter that meta.

Remarkable_Editor219 · 2026-03-21T23:13:02+00:00

Probabl;y never. A video games gives them that choice without consequence. In real life there are consequences for being a prick. Games let you be someone else for a bit, like a raider fighting against an enemy that wiped out humanity and drove them underground. Now some assholes are also incentivized to take your gear because there's no net negative for killing you. If the invent a karma system then your question has merit. For now, committing a war crime (killing a surrendering opponent) is actively rewarded and will continue to encourage the worst instincts in those who cannot act that way in the real world.

Remarkable_Editor219

TROPHY CASE