Arc Raiders update changes how matchmaking works

Play your own way

Arc Raiders may have tailed off since its period of extraction shooter dominance at the end of last year, but it still boasts a very healthy player base, with a peak of 40-50,000 concurrent players every day on PC alone, according to SteamDB. And if there's one thing that may bring lapsed players back to Speranza, it's introducing something that everyone's been asking for from the moment they first went topside.

Arc Raiders' matchmaking has been the subject of much discussion, because it's one of the first games to use an aggression-based system. The more you engage in combat against other players, the more likely it is you'll be matched with others that also enjoy PvP. If you only ever fight Arc enemies, you'll be in considerably more "care bear" lobbies. Players are assigned a hidden rating that is used to determine the type of players they will encounter.

However, plenty of players had complaints, because a common behavior is to play friendly when solo, stocking up on gear and completing quests, then going guns blazing when playing with friends to engage in more co-ordinated PvP. But since there was just one rating assigned, doing the latter meant you'd be more likely to encounter PvP when solo too. Not anymore.

With update 1.36.0, your play style is tracked separately across solos, duos, and trios. Here's an excerpt from the patch notes:

"Say you are a friendly solo player, but your two squadmates always want to dominate in trios PvP. Before, being friendly solo could push you into more cooperative trio rounds, and playing PvP-focused in a trio could push you into more PvP-focused solo rounds - so changing squad size meant matchmaking took a bit to adjust.

"Now, there's no overlap. You'll be able to go from friendly questing and plant-picking in Solo rounds to adrenaline-fueled PvP Trio games (if that's how you usually play in those respective cases), by simply changing your squad size. The same holds for Duo - all three are tracked on their own."

Will it see Arc Raiders climb back to its heights as one of the most popular games in the world? Probably not — the upcoming October update, Frozen Trail, is likely its best shot at that — but it is a lovely quality-of-life update that will make for a better experience overall.

Elsewhere in update 1.36.0, there's another new outfit to get by playing Embark Studios' other game, The Finals. The team has also announced their rollout of Denuvo anti-cheat has finished, they're working on even more duplication glitch fixes, and free loadouts being forbidden will be coming to more map conditions.