Not just your experience, all of the games I've seen have a steady pulse of reviews about giving up due to of older players shitting on newbies, with devs silently endorsing it or having their hands tied by management because either "that's the way it's meant to be played" or they have a microtransactions shop and this toxicity encourages petty rage spending to catch up. And it works, because despite the mixed or barely positive reviews, these games still enjoy a steady stream of players enjoying the cycle of abuse. I'd consider it an exploitation of the "do unto others what was done unto me" psychological thing we humans tend to have going on.

Up to the devs. There's no objective should or shouldn't it's just a matter of opinion. Would it be nice? Yea. I get not wanting to play a game where you have to worry about coming into conflict with other players. I don't like those types of games either. I also don't buy them.

I am talking about using mods / "cheating" in a game that has an online function. If you mod Elden Ring, youre most likely playing offline and not ruining other player's experience. But you can't mod/cheat a game that is online only without ruining other player's experience.

The game was originally planned to be a PvE only game, but the game wasn't fun according to the data by their playtesters There's work that is involved in properly making and balancing and creating content for a different mode. You design the entire game around how you play it, in those case PvPvE. So no, they shouldn't. And neither should devs be forced to make a game they don't want to make. If you remove the PvP from the game as-is, you will lose out on a lot of what the game is supposed to be, and the interactions and moment-to-moment gameplay you have. Not to mention you're gonna split the playerbase which is rarely healthy for a multiplayer game. There's a reason PvP is included, and that's because it a straight up impossible to implement the sort of dynamism and unpredictability PvP adds. There's not a lot of games like Arc Raiders, and it is the kind of game that I want. Not every game is, or should be made, for everybody. That's how you get the sort of environment of undifferentiated AAA games where they all look and play the same all designed by committee to appeal to the greatest amount of possible to earn as much as possible

Absolutely they should. PvPvE is great but its way too intense and sweaty for a long session.

Literally can only be improved by it. The only people it hurts are people who want to do PVP with players who *don't* want to do PVP, and I'd rather that kind of scumbag not play the games I play in the first place

Oh, sry I am easy to trigger on this point:(

Pretty sure Lazerpig made a 20min rant video about this exact topic, specifically regarding why Sea Of Thieves sucked as a result of its forced-PvP for PvPers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGWOgMcMJ8c

Everyone has already given great answers, so I’m going a bit off-topic. I recommend checking out [Forever Winter](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2828860/The_Forever_Winter/) for a PvE experience similar to Arc Raiders. Read the reviews, try it, refund under 2 hours played if it’s not for you

I've had my eye on Forever Winter for a little while, but the mixed reviews put me off it. Also, I really like Arc Raiders' aesthetic.

Yes, because gamers turn into scum whenever PVP is involved.

The problem is that they're beyond another type of enemy. There's a a sizeable portion of players that loves just killing other players, not to loot them (because they're nebvies, there's nothing to loot), not to defend something, or whatever, just to relish in the carnage of helpless others. I'm like your friends, I just never play a game if there's any PVP involved. It's not worth it. I play to have fun, not to be a perpetual victim.

I honestly think FW is a better game than Arc, but with a ton of janky more. Beung a small indie team, they can't compare in terms of polish, but the vision and the work they've been putting into the game are a great sign of what's to come. With ARC, although I do somewhat trust Embark, I'm not sure they have a good vision for it.

It's complicated, but I think no. But maybe they could have certain maps where it's PVE. I've recently played the pve only fork of The Cycle Frontier, another pvevp extraction shooter that got shut down a few years ago, and the pve only mode is considerably easier, to the point where the tension from the full game is not present. So a game designed to be PvEvP would probably feel soulless without part of its intended game design.

A game doesn't have to offer anything, if they can offer modes without compromising on their artistic integrity good for them otherwise just make the best game they can without catering to the largest demographic.

No. They have a vision and implementation that they want to balance and trying to shoe horn another game mode isn't exactly easy for them to try and balance while attempting to maintain the core game.

I don’t want to tell others what to do with their art, I would certainly appreciate that. For every PvPvE game if they replaced the human opponents with NPCs I would probably be happy. I avoid PvP games. There is enough toxicity in the world without willingly subjecting myself to something that has been specifically created to generate toxic situations and behavior.