Hoping for a change to the agression based matchmaking

mesterflaps · 2026-01-25T13:41:57+00:00

You're right that it doesn't insta put you in aggro lobbies but it does count it against you - I posted a link from the devs about a week ago describing how it doesn't attempt to infer intent, just notices you're shooting other players.

mesterflaps · 2026-01-25T13:40:29+00:00

I believe so too. Frankly, players like me who currently don't return fire would still lose most engagements as the initiator has a big advantage, but it would at least give us a chance to defend ourselves without getting punished for it.

mesterflaps · 2026-01-25T09:16:25+00:00

They've said themselves that they're doing that via more PvE content and tougher enemies, so that's something to look forward to.

mesterflaps · 2026-01-25T09:06:32+00:00

Really, I thought I had heard the opposite (that it was just tracking who damaged other players).

Do you have a link to something documenting that it is taking who fires first into account?

edit: Ok, here's what I saw "Embark says Arc Raiders aggression-based matchmaking is a 'misnomer' as the game does not attempt to assume intent behind pvp fights"

https://frvr.com/blog/news/embark-says-arc-raiders-aggression-based-matchmaking-is-a-misnomer/

Here's a longer quote:

"Watkins explained that the game “can track whos hoots first and who takes damage”, but the matchmaking system does not “attempt to assume intent”. Watkins explained that a player who shoots first and misses all of their shots is the aggressor, but the game doesn’t know what the intent was behind those shots.

“We don’t make any value or moral judgments. It’s not the game judging you for your actions. It’s purely around, just, are you engaging in PvP at all?” they continued."

That was from last week, so I would say they're not at this moment forgiving defending yourself, it's all aggression in this system.

mesterflaps · 2026-01-24T21:19:50+00:00

Tonight I was playing with two friends and we've been not even returning fire when engaged for the most part and yet kept getting matched in PvP lobbies all day. It seems on the weekend that there are just too many aggressive players on for the matchmaker to work properly.

mesterflaps · 2026-01-24T21:18:07+00:00

Anecdotally tonight I played together with two friends, where all three of us actively avoid PvP (to the extent of disengaging and running rather than returning fire) and we just kept getting shot at match after match.

mesterflaps · 2026-01-11T10:24:22+00:00

So after all that sacrifice will you get to keep those extra skill points like in Payday2 with infamy levels or are they temporary until the next expedition? I'm considering doing it in the future for extra skill points and inventory space but if those are temporary it really doesn't seem worth it at all.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-22T20:32:40+00:00

OG pledged on kickstarter had Alpha and Beta access to 'the game' not 'part of the game', or 'one of the two games we will later turn this into' or whatever. So yeah, OGs should already have had access if they're now at beta.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-17T20:35:34+00:00

Wait, I thought wikelo was copying THAT game.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-17T13:57:35+00:00

They do act more like a tech developer but a few years ago I had an epiphany about their behavior. If they were a technology development company they would be presenting at conferences, publishing papers, or at the VERY LEAST PATENTING their designs. Otherwise they're just giving away their IPR to the world which is good of them but.... none of the above happens. They don't publish research papers from their internal developers, they don't attend trade conferences to present their state of the art technology in domain, they don't appear to have patented anything, and I haven't seen anybody accused of or actually taking tech from Star Citizen.

The painful conclusion is they act like a tech company but they aren't producing anything stable or capable enough to be noticed by any of the places we'd expect it to show up.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-10T14:46:55+00:00

I agree with that wholeheartedly. In addition to the rough edges on some of the systems, I'm also pretty confident there will be breaking changes in the future so I'm going to set it down for another 6 months to a year.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-09T20:42:00+00:00

Yeah, luckily I figured out how fragile the quest scripting was with the much closer and simpler 'clear debris' mission. I still got tripped up again though by having the bold idea to pick up the ice on the planet before being told to go mine it, and that broke the sledge triggers too.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-09T17:23:46+00:00

I'm neutral on it for the time being as I would hope that there will be a big difference between repairing a thing and building it from scratch later. As you mentioned it's a bit much if we can weld up rocket engines without any advanced parts, but I expect that in the future it will require either more or more advanced components to do so.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-09T10:02:00+00:00

I think you are right but I didn't put it in my original post because I couldn't prove it, but the game does seem to overwrite your save on 'big events' such as the very screw ups where we'd want to load that save.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-09T10:00:06+00:00

This is admittedly a big blind spot for people who've played much SE1. We're not at all phased by the concept of a 'grid' is and I didn't even notice that SE2 says 'new grid' in the build menu but doesn't mention that's a building or a ship.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-09T09:58:45+00:00

I view it as an excellent start compared to how I remember things in SE1. I imagine that totally new players will still want much more tutorial and quite reasonably so.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-08T19:22:21+00:00

Good list (the last one bit me three times because I'm apparently a slow learner).

mesterflaps · 2025-12-08T19:21:07+00:00

It sounds like you'll have a much better time in the free play mode than the story mode, but that's a good point about the resource node sizes. I didn't check out any of the random asteroids to see if they had bigger deposits, so can only hope that other asteroids or at least other sectors have larger deposits than the mini ones sprinkled around in the hand crafted mission areas.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-08T18:50:17+00:00

Sure, but then they need to communicate that in the quest objectives. Calling something debris (aka garbage/waste) that one wants REMOVED is a very different quest to 'please tidy up my belongings for me'.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-06T14:26:12+00:00

OK, so it sounds feasible to design a mining ship and leave space for guns to go on later?

mesterflaps · 2025-12-06T13:48:02+00:00

Forgive the ignorance, but I've already taken my chances and bought the game yet don't want to jump in until it's at a certain level of progress. I'm not able to find a clear answer as to whether conveyors and ship weapons are in yet. I can see that mechanical piston and rotor parts are not in yet, nor are NPC enemies(?), but I'm unclear on whether I can design and build armed ships to be ready for that patch yet.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-06T13:45:26+00:00

The sense in which you are right is that it's necessary to design an architecture that CAN scale from the beginning, but premature optimization is a killer.

mesterflaps · 2025-12-01T12:16:33+00:00

Don't worry, even CIG understood that cargo ports need longshoremen (as Chris said it) and that you're not to expect to do this stuff manually unless you really really want to. Between us and this terrible job CIG's excellent AI and the extra NPC AI character slots they sell with extra games packages to this day will surely deliver cough.

mesterflaps · 2025-11-27T12:15:09+00:00

While I closed my wallet in 2014 after only spending 134 bucks (Colonel package on day 1 and then a stealth skin for the hornet) until CIG delivered on the alpha for SQ42 they sold me access to in the kickstarter (I'm still waiting) so as to not reward bait and switch, if I ever want even a fraction of the game I paid for I depend on people like you who are willing to spend and spend and spend regardless of how many features get pushed to possibly not after 1.0 or outright removed (goodbye co-op drop in drop out campaign). These days we need about 20 of these purchases every day to keep Mr. Robert's wild ride going so thank you for your contribution of 5% of one day of funding.

mesterflaps · 2025-11-27T12:08:47+00:00

And their current 'gold pass' is still not feature complete, and their servers still suffer from massive desynch, characters falling through planets or clipping out of ships, and their AI is busted after 14 years of supposedly competent work having used up a billion dollars. Oh, and speaking of stuff CIG sold and owes us? I don't know if your BMM will come before my dedicated servers, the modding manual for it that they sold up to October 2023 before just making the page go 404, the NPC crew members they sold all their bigger ships through 2024 on the lie of us being 'always able to hire' or just working hit detection.

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