Embark Studios is adjusting what affects aggression-based matchmaking in ARC Raiders, and defending yourself against other players on the Rust Belt is no longer on the list.
With update 1.39.0 on July 28, ARC Raiders rolled out a test for the matchmaking system. During the test, fights started by enemy Raiders don’t affect your estimated playstyle. Only the fights that you start do. The fight starter is determined by the squad that deals damage first, and the entire attacked squad counts as the defender. This includes third-partying, in which the third party also counts as a fight starter.
Larger fights have a greater impact on aggression-based matchmaking, depending on the damage dealt and Raiders downed. Accidental damage still counts as starting a fight, but weighs a lot less. There’s no specific end date to the test, but Embark stated it will be monitoring metrics and gathering feedback over the coming weeks.
Before this change, self-defense counted towards aggression-based matchmaking, even though at a lower rate than starting the fight. This meant that if you wanted to stay in mainly PvE lobbies, you couldn’t risk shooting back. While one kill doesn’t immediately put you in PvP lobbies, it often still reflects in the next runs.
For the longest time, a common solution to entering PvE lobbies has been to load into the raid and die as quickly as possible. However, Embark has also addressed that by making low-activity raids carry less weight in determining your playstyle. With the new update, it should be easier for you to stay in your preferred environment instead of constantly worrying about what the next raid might bring.
Previous matchmaking changes remain live with update 1.39.0. This includes better match quality introduced in 1.38.0, which aims to find better matches at the cost of queue times, and individual behavior tracking for solo, duo, and trio queues introduced in 1.36.0.
This means that now you can safely be friendly in solos and defend yourself when needed without losing PvE lobbies, while also being able to go guns blazing in duos or trios.
