In ARC Raiders karma is real
If you shoot first, apparently, this game remembers. This YouTuber ran a test that seems to prove ARC Raiders lobbies aren’t random, but more a moral resume of your prior misdeeds. Go complete rat, and you’ll find yourself surrounded by folks who find bullets a warm and friendly greeting. This game’s vibe check is server-side.
As he explains at the start of his video, the results are staggering. To summarize, the overwhelming majority of matches on his friendly account saw players communicating on proximity chat, sharing items, reviving downed players, and teaming up to take down tougher Arc enemies like Bombardiers and Bastions. On the other hand, his PvP-focused account saw almost everyone he encountered start shooting him on sight. As a result, he engaged in PvP back.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from these findings is that if you’re mostly finding friendly lobbies, it only takes a couple of PvP-focused games for you to be put into more aggressive visits topside, but it’ll take considerably more friendly encounters for the reverse to happen. So it is easier to find yourself amongst hostile players, but persevere and you’ll start finding friendlier folks to play with.
Our social scientist/YouTuber ran 200 hours of gameplay with two different styles: account A as an aggressive murderer, and account B as Mr. Congeniality. The results were clear: kindness begets kindness, and aggro sees aggro. The devs at Embark Studios confirmed the game’s matchmaking is behavior-based. So, ARC Raiders is one of the few places where how you are doing unto others actually affects how they do unto you.