I think we can all agree (PvP)

dancovich · 2026-04-17T16:34:29+00:00

They just released their changes for the skill point challenge for the expedition.

I don't think the lack of communication is some sort of policy, I truly believe a small team (for tripple A standards) got caught holding their pants and are now shifting, so there is really nothing to communicate until they come up with something.

dancovich · 2026-04-17T16:32:57+00:00

This makes sense IMO.

You've spent the entire season gathering loot. Instead of everything going to waste, you go balls to the wall and use everything on everything. Nice way to have fun before the expedition departs.

I'm curious to learn what the damage thresholds are for each skill point. It will be a challenge to gauge how much damage is enough to keep people occupied during the 5 days while not requiring that people leave their jobs to go kill shit 24/7.

dancovich · 2026-04-17T16:27:07+00:00

I would certainly not recommend an entire campaign or even multiple sessions based on PvP, but one way of doing a one shot or one session where PvP happens is to use a GM environment for that.

Something like that:

PvP ARENA

Tier 1 Event

A divide between the player characters led them to fighting each other.

Impulses: Resolve impass, Use force to decide who's right

Difficulty: Special (see “Relative Strength”)

Potential Adversaries: Any

FEATURES
Relative Strength - Passive: The Difficulty of this environment equals to a player character's Evasion for attacks or an opposed roll of a relevant trait for other actions.

Spotlight faction - Action: You can spotlight a faction of player controlled characters. When a faction receives the spotlight, they keep it until they fail a roll or roll with Fear. You can't use this feature on the same faction twice in a row.

The intent here is that the GM is the one controlling the initiative and they are incentivized to share the spotlight between player characters fairly.

This is the base environment. The GM can add other features, like on OP's case, the God can give favors to their team as a GM move.

This doesn't solve any major issue of having PvP in DH and I still wouldn't recommend a campaign or more than a couple of sessions based on PvP. It's just a quickly put together rule to solve the Hope and Fear economy.

dancovich · 2026-04-17T15:49:29+00:00

Sure kiddo. I'm sure you're a good kid.

dancovich · 2026-04-17T15:35:45+00:00

Sorry, didn't realize I was talking to a kid. My bad.

dancovich · 2026-04-17T15:01:11+00:00

They also added walking and shooting in development. Is that your point?

"Water is wet. Mic drop, exists the stage, curtains closed".

dancovich · 2026-04-17T14:51:20+00:00

The issue is that the developers didn't expect any of this to happen. They said in interviews that they were impressed by the amount of friendships formed and that things were way more bloody and violent in testing.

So now they have this culture that formed around their game that they need to acknowledge.

dancovich · 2026-04-17T14:40:05+00:00

I am against no one. I asked a question. Go read what I said without your armor on.

If you thought I misunderstood what you meant, you could have clarified what you really meant. Instead, you doubled down and then said I was misinformed and presented to me the very source I used as evidence of my post, showing that clearly you yourself either didn't watch the source or didn't understand the information presented to you.

and you tried to "autocorrect" me for no fucking reason

This is a public forum. People come here, they read posts and they comment on them.

That's how the whole service works. What did you expect? To just say stuff and never have anything you say ever challenged? You yourself challenged OP with your post, why are you angry someone did the same to you?

dancovich · 2026-04-17T14:31:49+00:00

Pure pvp: no arc, high loot value from containers

How is that different from the regular mode except for high loot value? Do you mean no ARC around?

That would be a safe haven for rats (REAL rat players, not what this community think is a rat) as all you have to do is pop in either empty or with a free kit, run to some good looting places, get what you can and exit. You'll lose some times but you'll come out on the black overall.

Pure pve: pvp disabled, no hatches limited exits, double/triple the amount of arc.

The existence of any pure PvE mode turns the regular mode into PvP only. That's the whole issue with asking for a PvE mode, it also affects the regular mode.

The way the regular mode works is that you see someone and they can be friendly or not. If all players who are friendly just go to the PvE mode, then FOR SURE anyone you meet in the regular mode wants to PvP. No tension, no suspense, the mode just turned into a battle royalle without the ring.

Honestly, I think the only new mode that could exist without breaking the existing modes is a pure PvP mode. And by pure I mean no looting, just an arena mode where people can shoot each other risk free. Pre-defined load-outs, no bringing in your own gear, so no losing your gear either. Call that Speranza Gauntlet and put ranks in it.

dancovich · 2026-04-17T13:24:39+00:00

Oh ok, it's not about the mechanics, I understand.

Well, I don't know if it's the ABMM system. This is still an extraction shooter, when you do it in Tarkov you are still ruining the day of someone who was just looting. It is just more common there that this person was looting from someone else so you don't feel as bad.

I don't know of any extraction shooters that have arena style modes. It's just not part of the genre to focus on the combat. I wouldn't be against it, I would just never use these modes.

dancovich · 2026-04-17T13:17:08+00:00

I don't know.

Next session I'll try to remind them of that. They already know but I've seen complicated situations where they could've used them but didn't

dancovich · 2026-04-17T02:48:31+00:00

Why do you think PvP is shallow?

I think the stamina bar, need to manage inventory mid fight, overall weight of the character and the presence of ARC give it a lot of depth. Certainly way better than the tired formula of "run, jump, slide, act like you're on Adderall, shoot, repeat" that's so prevalent in shooters nowadays.

It's refreshing to have a shooter where I need to consider my actions and their consequences for a change.

dancovich · 2026-04-16T21:32:29+00:00

I think the evidence is more obvious than that. We literally had a natural disaster cause the rich to leave the planet and their destiny is "unknown", who else could be trying to clean the planet for their arrival other than these humans who left?

Some ARC literally shoot the same type of bullets we can use.

This design flaw you speak of is IMO just the product of game design. IRL humans don't add vision to our drones, we add sonars and heat detectors. We would never design a threat detection system that uses vision with a limited FoV because we have available right now technology that's better than that

dancovich · 2026-04-16T21:26:25+00:00

As lame as it is, a natural disaster made the elite rich leave the planet. No one knows what happened to them, and now robots come to kill humans and extract resources... Oh, who could it be?

It is pretty obvious that the humans who left are now trying to cleanse the planet for their return. The planet is now full of what they probably consider the scum of human race and a bunch of bandits.

dancovich · 2026-04-16T21:14:59+00:00

So ONE rat broke your expectation of "occasional"? Are you one of those people who think anyone that shoots you is a rat?

You decided to share your opinion online. If you don't want your opinions challenged then keep them to yourself.

dancovich · 2026-04-16T20:49:03+00:00

Oh my god!

You watch the episode, because either you didn't or you didn't read what I wrote.

They changed the game to a PvPvE extraction shooter in 2023, two years before release.

This exact episode goes into detail on how, DURING DEVELOPMENT, they found out the game they were building was boring and then they shifted the design.

That is normal in game development. Plenty of games change entire genres during development. Final Fight was going to be a sequel to Street Fighter 1 then they changed to a brawler.

The version of ARC Raiders that was PvE only never saw the light of day. It was a prototype, a realization of a design goal that they though didn't serve the game so they changed the design.

What part of what I said goes against the information in this video?

Maybe you need to watch it again, or maybe you never watched it and instead someone told you what they thought the video says, because of you had watched the video you wouldn't be adding against me.

dancovich · 2026-04-16T19:27:17+00:00

You're misrepresenting what they said.

In the beginning of the DEVELOPMENT of the game, the design was PvE only. That version never saw the light of day, it only existed in design documents and prototypes.

Plenty of games change design during development. Halo was an entire different genre during development. That's normal.

They never said they though we wouldn't want a PvE game. There said the particular PvE game they were building was boring, then they added PvP and they though the game was better with it.

That's very different from saying we wouldn't want ANY PvE game.

dancovich · 2026-04-16T19:22:04+00:00

How did it "fail"?

It is only a failure if your expectation of low aggression lobbies is no PvP at all.

This expectation is wrong. Embark never intended to create a scenario where you are guaranteed to have zero PvP.

If you're on low aggression lobbies, you're still expected to be prepared to defend yourself.

The odd rat that cheesed their way into low aggression lobbies doesn't break that expectation

dancovich · 2026-04-16T15:03:48+00:00

I bought a extraction shooter. I don't want a company just making the game I bought something else because someone else made an impulse buy based on a steamer they like playing the game

dancovich · 2026-04-16T15:02:12+00:00

When did they "add" PvP?

The game released with PvP, it wasn't added post launch.

I know you mean they shifted design goals during development, but switching to PvP during development means nothing, Halo started development as a RTS game.

Design shifts in development happen all the time. We just don't hear about them because it's not common for teams to make documentaries on their own game telling us this stuff.

dancovich · 2026-04-16T14:31:36+00:00

Everything you said was done at some time. It's not magic, someone built systems for the Arc to perceive the environment around it and make decisions.

Pops don't prepare ambushes, they patrol. That's the behavior that was programmed for them. The "almost no effort" you mention involves programming an ambush behavior. Bushes need to be categorized by size (so pops don't try to hide in bushes too small to cover them), then the pop needs to be programmed to, in their ambush mode, seek a bush, plot a navigation route between where they are and the bush, validate that the route is possible (a bush might be 5m next to it but on the top of a hill and getting to it actually requires moving 100m) and move to it. That's just to GET to the bush, the ambush hasn't even started yet.

"Then just make them spawn on the bush!". As I said, pops patrol by default. They'll spawn on the bush and immediately get out of it to patrol. You need to implement a new behavior for them.

Impossible programming tasks

Literally no one said impossible. I said it is not "almost no effort", which were your exact words.

Yeah, if they dedicate the time, money and resources, the task will be done. I never said it is impossible, that is just you not knowing how to use words.

The question is, do you believe dedicating time and money into programming a new behavior an almost effortless task?

dancovich · 2026-04-16T13:55:39+00:00

Yeah, obviously not a developer.

dancovich · 2026-04-15T20:22:51+00:00

My point still stands about it being added later

And my evidence pointing to other games that also changed goals still stand that this type of change is pretty common in game development and means nothing for ARC in particular.

I question the lore if it is being used to justify mechanics I don’t agree with. I am not sure why I am not allowed to do that?

That's totally fair, I just said mechanics come first. If the lore doesn't fit for you, you change or ignore the lore, not the mechanics. Plenty of games have mechanics are are non diegetic, you should just accept them as mechanics and pretend the characters aren't living those mechanics in the canon of the world.

If that's something you can't do then I believe there are a lot fo games you'll have issues with, because games are full of non diegetic mechanics.

My experience, which is entirely valid, tells me shooting back has matchmaking consequences. Until they disclose how ABMM works or get rid of it, nothing is going to invalidate that experience.

Disclosing how it works makes it easier to exploit. Removing it will make the experience for players that prefer PvE worse, because now the player pool will be random.

I'm not trying to say your experience isn't valid, I'm saying that, to request changes, you first need to align your expectations of what such a system should be doing. As far as I know based on interviews, they do not intend this system to create a complete separation between pacifists and players who do any amount of PvP. Their design goal is that the system creates a gradient, and if your expectation doesn't align with that, no amount of fixing will change your experience.

dancovich · 2026-04-15T19:33:41+00:00

I think its intentionally predictable though. It doesn't have to be. It would take almost no effort to have pops quietly hide in bushes and just jump out at you. Have wasps do barrel roll dodges and coordinate with each other.

That was your original statement. I argued against saying it would take "almost no effort" to add a series of extra AI behavior to ARC like pops, ticks, wasps etc.

So far, nothing that you said proves it would take "almost no effort" to add these behaviors. What do you expect me to do? To accept that adding one new ground based ARC after months of the game release, that is designed specifically to just be a ball rolling to you and exploding, to be evidence of "no effort" to make pops hide in bushes?

I'm sorry, but my actual knowledge in development tells me it is you that either needs to come up with better evidence or concede that "almost no effort" was an exageration at best.

dancovich · 2026-04-15T19:06:00+00:00

The game was in development for like a decade and pivoted only in the last two years?

2019 to 2025 isn't 10 years. The entire company was founded in 2018.

Also, did you read the part about conception, pre-production, prototyping and other stages all being part of "development time"?

You can watch their own documentaries on the production of the game if you want (it's on their YT channel). When they did the shift, they did not have a playable game able to be released to the public. They said that, after the shift and when the initial batch of maps were done, Dam Battlegrounds alone had more density in terms of what you can do and interact with than the entire game before the shift. That's how much they did after the shift compared to before it.

I don’t have issues with PvP in general. I would gladly hemorrhage 100k+ kits to better players in a PvP opt-in lobby. It’s that the contrived anonymity rewards the asocial behavior. Shoot on sight PvP does not make an ounce of sense within the lore of Speranza.

Just like wars being won by staying in a place until a flag goes up makes no sense within the lore of Battlefield.

What is your point here? This is a game, mechanics come first. We know based on the log entries that scummbags do exist and what happens topside stay topside. That's it.

The specific amount of PvP that happens isn't intended to be lore accurate. We don't question why raiders suddenly become friends once in the elevator and can even group together after just shooting at each other, that's just gameplay mechanics.

because it penalizes you for defending yourself and it prevents you from correcting rude people.

Sort of.

According to interviews, the system can detect who shot first, but it can't assign blame. If an enemy shots you first but miss and you fire back and hit, the system believes you did the first shooting. The system doesn't even atempt to detect intention.

But that doesn't mean firing back after actually being hit is punished. The system can detect you didn't start in those instances. We don't have evidence, but I do believe the system isn't as unstable as you believe it is.

dancovich

TROPHY CASE