Arc Raiders' Frozen Trail update is the talk of the town, but an even bigger change could be on the horizon. From October 13 through October 20, developer Embark will test something that some players have wanted from day one: a pure PvE mode. Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal tells me this test is an essential step toward answering a question that even the devs have had since launch, even if it ends up splitting the game in two one day.
Originally, Arc Raiders was a pure PvE game about fighting giant robots. It only pivoted to a PvPvE mix very late in development. The devs also ditched the free-to-play structure and put everything they had into the extraction shooter basket, and miraculously, it paid off. As a result, going back to pure PvE feels like a huge risk.
"Naturally, we were a bit like, 'Are we gonna open this door? What does that mean?'" Grøndal says. "We had that question ongoing for a long time, maybe even too long, to be fair."
An Arc Raiders PvE mode is just a limited test for now, but Grøndal suggests there's potential for much more. I asked if he can imagine a world where Arc Raiders is essentially split into two games – the game we've known, and a pure PvE version – and he reckons "it's very possible."
"I mean, the community is already split along those lines," he continues. "If the game eventually will represent that? Quite possibly. I think it's important to respect how the players want to enjoy the game, even if it doesn't necessarily fully gel with what we thought the game was initially or how we designed the game to be initially. It's possible. Of course, it creates some challenges on our end. We need to figure out what we really mean by that."
For all the demand for it, there are also concerns around what a PvE mode could do to Arc Raiders and how it will feel to play. Will it ruin the game's tension? Will it undermine that beloved camaraderie when you aren't choosing to be friendly? Will it warp the economy or split the player base?
"I mean, all of these are valid risks, right?" Grøndal responds. "Which is one of the reasons why we wanted to run a test which is somewhat limited around some of the higher-end stuff. It will affect, or it has a chance of affecting, the overall experience. This is also why we wanted to just get it out there, look at the data, look at what the feedback says, and then really figure out what the best way forward is.
"I think there's a lot of valid concerns, and internally at the studio, that has been expressed, both sides of that coin. It's not like everyone was high-fiving Aleks when we introduced this idea to do this test. That's not the case. There were some real concerns there too. But at the end of the day, I really feel like we need to answer this question, at least to ourselves, and of course also to the players."
