When starting your journey in ARC Raiders, your interactions with players may usually be friendly. Sometimes, a ratty player may camp an extraction point and kill other players for better loot. Your interaction affects your future matchmaking experience, as your aggression will put you in lobbies with like-minded players. Here’s how aggression-based matchmaking works and how you can use it to tailor your experience.
Your Raid Behavior
The way you act while in a game determines the kinds of lobbies you’ll see in the future. The game server tracks your behavior and places you with players of the same type to keep things fairer.
- If you ever play passively and avoid shooting at players first, the game’s algorithm will put you in matches with other friendly players so that you can avoid more aggressive players. Fighting ARC enemies only will also contribute to your overall lobby balance.
- Conversely, attacking other players first, knocking them out, or engaging in general aggression will put you in an equally aggressive lobby. This is for players who prefer a more traditional extraction shooter experience where every player is out to get you.
- You can also try to be both passive and aggressive whenever it suits you, putting you in lobbies with both friendly and hostile players. This will give you the classic feel of figuring out if a player is friendly or hostile towards you, and make interactions feel more meaningful.
The Matchmaking System in ARC Raiders
The game has three layers of lobby balancing: skill-based matchmaking, squad composition filtering, and aggression-based matchmaking. First, players are sorted by their individual skill, and queued players are placed in a lobby with players of equal skill. Next, the game filters out solo players from squads, ensuring that solos do not match against squads and vice versa. Lastly, players are sorted by their behaviour.
This system also allows new players to match with more skilled friends without running into a competitive, aggressive lobby.
