Arc Raiders had a free playtest this weekend, and some players are arguing that the game needs a PvE-only mode. In the game players are tasked with scavenging resources from an open map infested with enemy robots alongside other players, with players not in your group effectively being another type of enemy. This, of course, has some players saying that fighting enemy robots is enough, that they don’t need the extra stress of having to fight off other players too. The pro-PvP players are, of course, saying that this is what the game is, and if you don’t like it you should go play something else.
It’s not like that’s never been done before. Sea of Thieves is another PvPvE game, and not too long ago it too got a PvE-only mode.
What do you say about this? Should a game that wants to be both PvE and PvP also offer exclusive modes?
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Absolutely they should. PvPvE is great but its way too intense and sweaty for a long session.
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
I will say I would have loved mmos to be online/offline. You should be able to enjoy your electronic asset purchases after the game is gone. Thats not really what you asked though but to add to my non sequitors I love when its all. Go play another game and then months later its. why does no one play this game whining.
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.
My experience with PvPvE games is they tend to be incredibly toxic, with some people just trying to get started, and others picking on them for fun.
I have several friends who vow not to play PvPvE games again after bad experiences in games like Last Oasis and Worlds Adrift, although they were interested in playing both of those games in a PvE format.
Personally I find the extra danger from considering other players “another type of enemy” to be interesting. But also those types of games tend to breed to most toxic communities.
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.
They don’t /have/ to, but I will say if they don’t it removes any chance of me ever buying it.
I was up and ready to buy Dune launch week, but then I noticed there was no full PVE mode and I had no way of creating a PVE environment by self hosting or by other means. This blew all interest I had in the game.
To me it makes logic sense that a studio that offers a PvPvE should offer a PvE experience as well. The framework is basically already there, and in some cases won’t even require more resources to do. In the case of Dune they could easily have made PvE use the same servers, but have players marked as PvE invisible to other players not in the party, or give them a ghost effect to people not in PvE mode so they know not to try and fight them.
Any studio in my eyes refusing to acknowledge the casual non-pvp group are just throwing money away. I have easily dumped 100$ into both Ark SE and minecraft with how many times i’ve purchased them for different platforms, and these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I would have never have bought either if they lacked the ability to go PvE only.
I would love to play a PVE game where players just jump in and out of fights or locations or something like that, but I refuse to buy PVP games. They always end up as a repetitious failing grind for me. A game where it is essentially a single player game that allows coop is my ideal game.
Honestly, Ark was so close with that aspect with the Obelisks. It would have been so cool to allow for char based PvP toggle (meaning when the char was made it had a setting if it was PvP or PvE), then allow for the Obelisks to teleport you to the designated PvE vs PvP zone. Have PvE invisible to PvP and if the structure is owned by a player in the other zone, it doesn’t exist. Have a designated spot on the map accessible like the boss arena system that allows PvE and PvP players to mix and mingle/fight if they wanted to.
This would allow for using the same map for both modes, so lower system resources, it’s just the structures itself only show for players in the same PvP mode. So a base could exist in the same location on both PvP and PvE and the two modes would be non the wiser.
As someone with about 120 hours in Dune, I will say that I got all the way there without once fighting another player. The main map is PvE except for a few spots. I only set foot in the end-game PvP-enabled area once for about 20 seconds, and I think that since then the devs implemented a PvE-only part of that area. And most of the problems people have with the game stem from the end-game content, which I haven’t touched yet.
Yea, that was what I had found during research, end game stuff locked behind a PvP gameplay with a small section that can technically be done in PvE but has a long cooldown and requires going into PvP areas to get to.
Right. But as I mentioned you can put 100 hours into the game without fighting another player. And all the end-game stuff is for is the final tier of gear, which mostly change stats and resource gathering rates.
Yea, but I’m still not interested in spending money on a game without PvE modes. If it requires me to enter a PvP area, I’m not interested regardless of the amount of time I can spend in PvE only areas.
Honestly, I liked how runescape did PvP areas, you didn’t have to enter them, you could obtain the material via other means like the grand exchange. This is a good way of doing a PvPvE without hindering your PvE audience. How dune did it was more of a slap to the face, since its a small area thats shared with everyone that wants PvE and PvP, requires entering PvP areas to get to and has a limited resource so on congested servers it’s a big nuisance. it felt like more of a “this can say we tried” than an actual implementation.
Well, Dune does have a player-run auction house. I haven’t checked myself, but I don’t doubt that you could get end-game mats on there.
That does sound promising and does raise it a little on my list. It’s defo better than nothing.
I think it would be a nice thing to include as not everyone wants to interact with other players if they don’t need to. But I don’t think it should be an obligation.
It sounds like a concept that I could enjoy, but I probably won’t play it if there isn’t a PvE mode. I play video games so I don’t have to interact with people. But I’m not going to buy it knowing there isn’t a PvE mode and then complain that there isn’t one.
No, games should be able to be designed around PvEvP being an integral element of the game.
That said, personally, I’m not going to play a game like Arc Raiders or Sea of Thieves if it doesn’t have a PvE only mode where I am capable of making all the same progress as the PvEvP mode, because I am not even remotely interested in PvEvP. Every game is not meant to be for me though. I love The Finals, but I can look at Arc Raiders and go “not for me” and ignore it.
Dont get me wrong, I love Embark and a fully fledged PvE only mode would immediately get me very interested in Arc Raiders, but I see no reason I should be personally catered to for every game release. I don’t even have enough time to play all the games that come out that do cater to my gaming interests.
No, a game should be what the devs decide to make. That said, it can cut off a part of the market. I’m another one of those folks who tends to avoid PvPvE games, without a dedicated PvE only side. This weekend’s Arc Raiders playtest was a good example. I read through the description on Steam and just decided, “na, I have better things to do with my time.” Unfortunately, those sorts of games tend to have a problem with griefers running about directly trying to ruin other peoples’ enjoyment. I’ll freely admit that I will never be as good as someone who is willing to put the hours into gear grinding, practice and map memorization in such a game. I just don’t enjoy that and that means I will always be at a severe disadvantage. So, why sped my time and money on such a game?
This can lead to problem for such games, unless they have a very large player base. The Dark Souls series was a good example, which has the in-built forced PvP system, though you can kinda avoid it for solo play. And it still has a large player base. But, I’d also point out some of the the controversy around the Seamless Co-op mod for Elden Ring. When it released, the PvP players were howling from the walls about how long it made invasion queues. Since Seamless Co-op meant that the players using it were removed from the official servers, the number of easy targets to invade went way, way down. It seemed like a lot of folks like to have co-op, without the risks of invasion.
As a longer answer to this, let me recommend two videos from Extra Credits:
These videos provide a way to think about players and how they interact with games and each other.
Depends on the game. If it’s a good fit, go ahead and add it, but if it’s not, it’s better for a game to focus on doing one thing well than two things poorly.
No. Games can offer whatever modes they want.
That said, I probably won’t play a game without a decent PvE mode, because I generally prefer playing solo. So if they want my money, they should offer it.
Not sure if they “should”. But: not every gamer can play PvP. Some people have deficits and illnesses that prevent them from even having a slide chance against human players.
You want that your game can be played by people, regardless of physical condition, or by the elderly (and in sense of games this means 30+ sometimes)?
Than yes , yous should provide such a node of you already have some vE in there. Of course , multiplayer games are multiplayer games.
But this is the same conversation like “should games have an easy mode”
I personally would love to play for example the eldenring series, but I can’t. I am physically not able to play the game with the required precision. And let me tell you, seeing arguments like “learn to play” are hurtful.
So, maybe consider this side in further arguments
At least with Elden Ring you can play offline and use mods to do things like reduce difficulty or something and you generally aren’t going to negatively effect other player’s experience with the game.
If there is a second mode, how do I influence other players negatively?
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.
They don’t have to, but having one would significantly increase the chances of the genre being successful.
All of the games in the genre that don’t have a PvE mode see high success for less than a year before player numbers fall below 10k average players. The only really exception is Tarkov, which is basically the Fornite of the genre, except it actually was the first of the genre unlike Fortnite.
ARC Raiders should have one in particular because it was originally supposed to be a coop PvE game, and was forced into its current genre by Nexon.
Definitely. It’s minimal effort and makes a game vastly wider in its appeal. PvP and PvE are very different experiences in any game. For one, I’ve never fought a bot in a PvE game which then felt the need to call me slurs for winning or losing. Also, I’ve never played a PvP game where I get the depth of strategy I can get against a real person.
I agree with the other comments. “Should” kind of frames this as a necessity. It’s not - no one gets to dictate what’s in the game except for the developers. But I will have a hard time without a clean PvE mode, especially if the game wants to be both PvE and PvP.
Why? Because in PvE you are dependent on the community of the game. And sometimes it’s great, but sometimes it can really suck the fun out of a game. Having the option to chill and not interact with anyone can be great of you don’t wanna gamble on the community, especially when you wanna play to decompress after a work day.
