It’s a shame. I tried it last night and it has a lot of good ideas and atmosphere, but it was ruined for me by the one thing that ruins every game in this genre, PvP.
I would eat up a purely co-op version of this, even if other humans were replaced with NPCs, but I don’t have the stomach or tolerance for any kind of PvP.
You aren’t alone on that. One of my friends got it with his new gpu. He tried it not knowing it had PVP and was really enjoying it. Then another player made his life miserable. He quit and won’t play again.
It’s too bad too because me and 3 other friends were also on board with the idea of buying it when he was talking about it. But then we found out it was PVP only and that completely killed it for all of us. So they lost out on about 5 players and 4 purchases from our group just because there wasn’t a no PVP option. And I mean it really doesn’t seem like it’d be hard. Just turn off the connection to other players. If they wanted to go above and beyond, make it so you can play with a small group of friends. But at the very least being able to turn off PVP would’ve been a good idea.
I don’t understand PvP. In games like this it’s toxic by design and I don’t understand how that is supposed to be fun for anyone. It makes me concerned for society that games specifically designed to ruin someone else’s day are this popular.
I feel like the “PvE-only was too boring” argument doesn’t even work. Just add a special kind of extra-dangerous enemy that’s more alert to your presence and acts more tactically compared to the dumber robots, to add the same tension players would add.
Can’t wait for the news about it inevitably dropping in players. Followed by news of permanent server shutdown within the next 2 years (I’m being extremely generous.)
To be fair, I told my friends that I thought The Finals would last only 7 months, but it stabilized around a little north of 10k concurrent players, which is probably fewer than the devs were hoping for but enough to keep it going.
Their handling of The Finals is a big reason I’m going to invest some time and money into Arc Raiders. It’s a really beautiful game with amazing sound design. I urge anyone who isn’t generally into extraction shooters to give it a shot this weekend, I don’t mind dying and losing shit as long as I’m making progress on missions and whatnot.
It’s been the only extraction shooter I’ve ever enjoyed. I’m 100% going to buy it on the 30th, baring they don’t pull a u-turn in gameplay last minute. But I have 0 worries with Embark at this point, as I agree they’ve done an *excellent * job handling The Finals. It’s proof GaaS can be great if done correctly.
God forbid people enjoying their little coop adventures. I will never understand this community’s hate boner for everything online. Just stick to your single player stuff and be happy. Why dig trenches for something that doesn‘t affect you?
Please note that the genre is PvEvP Extraction Looter Shooters. So some games, like Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, are missing from the list because they do not fit that category.
I have tried to play (ie, only played a few hours each, not like multiple days):
The Cycle Frontier
Escape from Tarkov
ARC Raiders (the closed beta in June 2023)
Dark and Darker
Delta Force Hazard Ops
Lost Light
Marauders
Hunt Showdown
Gray Zone Warfare
Incursion Red River
Games that I tried that don’t exactly fit the genre but are close enough I feel like I should include them:
Steel Hunters (the closed playtest in March 2023)
Sea of Thieves
SYNDUALITY: Echo of Ada
Dungeon Stalkers
Its not that I haven’t given the genre an honest go.
I hate that death means I lose not only the items I picked up, but also the items I brought into a match. The behaviour of players in this particular genre is almost always peak toxic. I am thankful that the genre exists, because it is a sponge taking some of the toxic people from other games. The people that derive fun and pleasure purely from ruining someone else’s game experience (like cheating, harassing, etc.) It is not a genre of game I enjoy, because some other players always ruin the fun.
Some games had a PvE mode, which was fine but the loot was limited to be basically useless. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just have separated inventories, and perhaps allow transfers of items below a set gear level to keep the PvP economy balanced.
We used to get multiplayer games that weren’t dependent on some server that we don’t control, and now they’ve all turned into this. Then we read about all the layoffs that happened because this model is inherently unsustainable, and we have a giant gap in the medium’s history of games that we used to be able to play but now cannot because the business made a gamble on a type of game that sometimes becomes a money printer.
It‘s empty because you ignore a shit ton of studios including Embark themselves. Mass layoffs are an industry wide problem with no direct correlation to live service. There is a correlation between live service and AAA studios as well as AAA studios and layoffs though. That doesn‘t apply to Embark. So feel free to eat a shoe when they didn‘t fire 100 people by the end of the year.
Dude, calm down. My point was that there has been like 60 live service games like this that have shut down within the past 5-10 years. Did you see me say anything about the gameplay itself? No, I only mentioned the player base and servers.
Yeah, unless they move their focus towards more casual gameplay as opposed to the sweatfest that is PvP, the game will only alienate PvE players and be reduced to a swarm of toxic PvP-players.
I played it for 2 hours and enjoyed it thoroughly. But I only ran into a player once, the other times I extracted early. But that one time was enough to sour my mood. I hope they do something to limit the PvP.
Basically a bunch of players are dropped into a game map, and normally your objective is to go around and collect as much loot as possible, then after some time or you’re ready to leave, you need to find the extraction point - this will save your loot and that run is over.
Some extraction shooters are PvE, and some are PvP, some are both. If you get killed with all your loot before you get to the extraction point you lose it all. It can be pretty stressful, and unbalanced if its PvP where some players play much more then you do therefore have better weapons etc
You go on a map with A.I enemies and real people. The goal is to extract components that you want, guns, valubles. You lose everything you found on that run if you don’t extract. Other people try the same thing and steal your stuff.
It’s a Battle Royale with a mix of PvE and PvE (usually) where you can find places to “extract” and leave with the weapons and gear you found, allowing you to bring those in to future matches, at the risk of losing everything you brought if you are killed.
It’s a game based around starting a round that loads you into a map, completing X objectives on that map, and then leaving the map alive to make progress, all while being swarmed by enemies. It’s a bit rouge-like in that way.
Not a big surprise. The genre is a niche, the hype has been building for years, and Arc Raiders looks like it scratches that itch many players want right now. Especially disillusioned Tarkov and Hunt Showdown players have high hopes for it. Anyone who‘s into multiplayer FPS knows The Finals is the freshest game in it‘s genre in over a decade so the devs have already proven they can make things at least interesting and fresh.
But again, the genre is a total niche with not much competition as of now. I think that‘s mostly why.
And yet the article says Extraction Shooter over and over without mentioning what an Extraction Shooter is. Is this shit intentional, or do most game journalists just start some time after grade school?
Yeah I had some fun with Day-Z and Player Unknown’s Battle Royale, but the repetitive rounds in those sorts of mods got boring to me pretty quickly. Especially the scavenging for gear each time, I just wanted to battle but it feels like work.
I have the same sort of issue with RTS games where you are in a race to build your base and units, I don’t enjoy speed harvesting and building.
The developer behind this game (Embark Studios) is trying to push the genre forward with new gamemodes and approaches to combat design.
Like the Finals has it’s own unique gamemode (Cashout) that doesn’t really exist anywhere else, and is a ton of fun with the amount of unique encounters you can have throughout the game (with the fully destructible environments with physics allowing you to completely up-end the map layout). There’s no “one answer” to solve a problem, and while mechanical aim and good listening for the enemy players will obviously help you, you’ll need to change your mindset from the shooter status quo because the objectives and combat can flow quite differently.
Arc Raiders is still in testing, but it’s designed to be an entirely 3rd person extraction shooter with an emphasis on sound design and careful maneuvering and movement (make too much noise, you attract a robot or a human’s attention. Move too slowly, you may be leaving loot behind or losing out on a good position like the high ground). It even features Uncharted style mantling and climbing, which I absolutely adore.
There is a lot of shooter slop these days, I agree. But these guys are definitely trying to change that.
You should check out Embark Studios' (ARC Raiders dev) other game, The Finals. Literally the most innovative FPS I've ever played, it completely reinvents the competitive shooter genre.
You can’t even talk about different games while playing certain ones, like what bullshit is that? I really feel like corporations are policing people’s lives nowadays, what with Nintendo being shitty to everyone, CoD not letting you talk about certain other games in-game, YouTube and other social media companies censoring any goddamn word that has even the slightest negative connotations (kill, suicide, pedophile, etc.}
Like the world just feels so infantilized and people can’t actually be people anymore, like we all need to be told what to do.
And in the end, I think it could all be explained with the rise of fascism literally everywhere right now. This world and existence fuckin sucks.
Those are a few different incentive systems in place. YouTube does what it does to be friendly to advertisers. Call of Duty does what it does because they’re too stupid to realize that censoring mention of your competitors actually draws more attention to them. But you’re here on Lemmy right now, presumably, because you were fed up with something on reddit and decided to move, and you can do the same with which video games you play.
But then we have the indie devs that constantly praise each other, include in-game references to their inspirations or blog about what blast they’re having while playing a competitors game.
I doubt they have a huge marketing budget. Perhaps they‘re using it in a clever way but I doubt Nexon bets everything on 0 here when The Finals only did ok. Extraction shooters is a niche that‘s starving for content. Somehow it gained a reputation for being everywhere when in reality there don‘t even exist 5 of them with a decent player size. The shooter genre is huge and people want something that isn‘t just a battle royale for once.
It may be that some games are dropping the ball and so players are looking to flock somewhere else.
For example, Helldivers 2 has some loud complainers who advertised both Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders as potential alternates.
Word of mouth can do a lot of damage if the mouth is loud and persistent enough.
You’re right. But it doesn’t change the fact that this article was written with AI, imo. For example: “ARC Raiders has been pieced together by Embark Studios, of The Finals fame.”
“Pieced together” is a really bizarre way to say that they created a brand new game from scratch.
I sure as heck hope they allow Linux (basically, no ACE or anything of the sort). If they do, and the game’s free, I’ll check this sucker out to spite the Tarkov devs.
My only other concern is with the publisher, B-site (as it’s called in China, though I’m not from there). Otherwise, it doesn’t look that bad, despite being a top-down shooter instead of an FPS like Tarkov is.
Honestly nothing makes me feel more disconnected with the general gaming populace than the sheer popularity of extraction shooters. Every single one of them looks and sounds unfun. Also they tend to look incredibly generic.
They are inherently a sweat fest by their very nature and they appeal to a crowd that enjoys high risk high reward gameplay. Theres nothing wrong with you for not being into it. Not everybody’s dream job is being a fireman and running into burning buildings before lunch either.
But it’s one of those niche genres that scratch an itch that more casual games don’t.
As a guy with over 2.5k hours in Hunt, I think it really comes down to people just enjoying different things. I can no longer play standard match based shooters, anymore, as I find the lack of consequence leads me to not caring about the outcome of games.
Incidentally I’ve also returned to playing Eve, because losing a level 50 hunter you spent a few hours leveling up? That’s nothing compared to losing a ship you spent half a year working towards.
Basically I’m addicted to lossy progression in games. Not claiming it’s an end-all-be-all mechanic, but damn if it hasn’t made me love games again.
Yeah hunt is great, love the atmosphere, the tools, the learning curve and the stupid interactions. Hunt loss is pretty minor though, takes maybe a few alright rounds to get the fun perks and then you can just buy whatever gear.
Yep, which is precisely why it’s my favorite. I think it’s a really well balanced game. Now if it wasn’t for the crappy main menu UI (which, granted, they’ve really improved as of late) and the bizarre bugs (which they haven’t) it would be almost perfect.
Gonna wait for a few influencers I like to check it out, but looks good? Seen a lot of forum peoples who took the plunge compare it very favorably to Zero Sievert.
But also kinda wary because apparently this was published (and developed by a team acquired by) Billibilli which is Chinese Youtube. And a LOT of those copies are believed to be Chinese region purchases. Doesn’t make it bad by any means but very much does paint a picture of “another meme game selling well”.
While game may looks meme, its mechanically sound and thought out. Hell, quest descriptions are good enough(yet to find any problems myself) to finish them without looking them up.
insider-gaming.com
Aktywne