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If you have spent any time dropping Topside recently, you have probably noticed that the tension in the air feels a bit different. One match you are trading items with a friendly squad near an extraction point, and the next you are getting pinned down by endgame squads hunting for sports. The community has been arguing for months about how the game handles who you drop with, prompting Embark Studios to lift the curtain on their backend systems.
It turns out that ARC Raiders does not use traditional gear-based or purely skill-based metrics to build lobbies. Instead, the game relies on a dynamic Aggression-Based Matchmaking (ABMM) system. Rather than splitting the community into strict, binary PvE or PvP servers, ABMM tracks your real-time behavior over a series of rounds and weights your matchmaking pool accordingly.
However, the initial version of ABMM created unexpected issues, punishing peaceful players who merely tried to stay alive. To solve this, Embark deployed a massive calibration update to fix how player behavior is tracked. Here is exactly what changed and how it impacts your drops.
The Core Calibration: What Changed?
The latest update focuses on refining how the algorithm interprets player intent. Previously, the system used a simplified formula: if you dealt damage to another Raider, your aggression rating went up. This left a lot of casual players stuck in highly hostile lobbies simply because they refused to die without a fight. The new system introduces several critical adjustments:
Matchmaking Metric Old System Behavior New System Behavior
Self-Defense Tracking Treats retaliatory damage as hostile; shoots your rating into PvP brackets. Differentiates instigator from defender. Self-defense preserves your peaceful rating.
Low-Activity Rounds Quick spawns or immediate surrenders heavily skewed your matchmaking history. Rounds with minimal topside interaction carry significantly less weight.
Squad Compositions Lobby difficulty and aggression brackets were heavily weighted by the squad leader. Lobbies are calculated using the squad's combined, average playstyle profile.
Loadouts & Gear Unused metric, leading to community myths about weapon-based brackets. Explicitly confirmed that weapons, items, and gear choices have zero impact.
1. Defending Yourself vs. Starting Fights
The most important fix addresses the "retaliation trap." In the past, if a hostile player opened fire on you and you shot back to defend yourself, the backend logged that player-to-player damage and flagged you as a PvP participant. The game didn't care who started it. Under the new update, the system analyzes timestamps and initial engagement data to distinguish between the aggressor and the defender. Defending your life no longer ruins your peaceful matchmaking rating, keeping you in mixed or cooperative pools.
2. Low-Activity Rounds Count Less
A major flaw in the early ABMM logic allowed players to manipulate or accidentally break their bracket history through short matches. For instance, if you dropped into a match and immediately surrendered or got wiped by a stray drone within seconds, the system struggled to read your intent. Now, low-activity rounds count for very little. If you don't engage in meaningful Topside interaction, the round is mostly ignored, preventing your matchmaking profile from drastically shifting brackets based on outliers.
Note on Queue Times: Because the system attempts to group similar playstyles together on a continuous scale, the matchmaking pool becomes fragmented. Peaceful brackets naturally have fewer hyper-aggressive players, which can cause queue times to take noticeably longer than the crowded, fast-paced PvP brackets.
Real Cases: The Impact on Topside Tactics
To understand how this plays out in-game, let's look at two specific case studies from the current community meta.
Case Study A: The Peaceful Blueprint Run
Consider a solo player whose main objective is to gather materials and buy arc raiders blueprints to unlock endgame equipment. Before the patch, if this player ran into a "shoot-on-sight" squad at an extraction zone, fired a few desperate shots with an assault rifle, and died, the system pushed them closer to PvP brackets. Over the next few games, their lobbies became increasingly brutal, making objective runs nearly impossible.
Post-patch, this player can aggressively return fire during an ambush. Because the system recognizes they did not initiate the conflict, their matchmaking profile remains intact. They stay in the "mixed/cooperative" tier, allowing them to continue focusing on PvE progression and blueprint farming without being permanently exiled to hardcore PvP lobbies.
Case Study B: The Third-Party Vendor Abuse
Before the update, a shady meta-economy started forming around third-party item platforms like U4N, where players trade high-tier loot and gear packages. Some players would deliberately "cheese" the matchmaking system by launching low-activity rounds—spawning into a match with no gear, immediately dying or surrendering—to artificially depress their aggression rating. Once they successfully manipulated the system into placing them in peaceful, low-aggression lobbies, they could easily farm rare valuables or safely complete high-tier item deliveries without any threat from other players.
With low-activity rounds now carrying almost no weight in your history, this exploit has been effectively shut down. A player can no longer wipe their aggressive history by simply throwing a few matches in a row; the system requires a consistent pattern of genuine, active PvE choices over time to shift brackets.
Player Feedback: A Divided Community
The feedback surrounding these changes remains highly mixed, highlighting the fundamental tension of the extraction shooter genre:
The Cooperative Camp: Many PvE-focused players are thrilled that they can finally fight back against extract campers without being penalized by the system. However, some complain that if a squad mate accidentally triggers a fight, the combined "Squad Aggression" calculation can still drag the whole team into hostile territory, making it difficult to escape PvP brackets once stuck.
The Hardcore Camp: Pure PvP players enjoy the higher intensity of fighting other combat-ready squads. However, they express frustration over the longer queue times associated with high-aggression pools and argue that a certain level of unpredictable betrayal is what makes the genre exciting.
Embark Studios has stated that matchmaking is an ongoing science, and they will continue to monitor data to keep Topside unpredictable, tense, but fundamentally fair.
It turns out that ARC Raiders does not use traditional gear-based or purely skill-based metrics to build lobbies. Instead, the game relies on a dynamic Aggression-Based Matchmaking (ABMM) system. Rather than splitting the community into strict, binary PvE or PvP servers, ABMM tracks your real-time behavior over a series of rounds and weights your matchmaking pool accordingly.
However, the initial version of ABMM created unexpected issues, punishing peaceful players who merely tried to stay alive. To solve this, Embark deployed a massive calibration update to fix how player behavior is tracked. Here is exactly what changed and how it impacts your drops.
The Core Calibration: What Changed?
The latest update focuses on refining how the algorithm interprets player intent. Previously, the system used a simplified formula: if you dealt damage to another Raider, your aggression rating went up. This left a lot of casual players stuck in highly hostile lobbies simply because they refused to die without a fight. The new system introduces several critical adjustments:
Matchmaking Metric Old System Behavior New System Behavior
Self-Defense Tracking Treats retaliatory damage as hostile; shoots your rating into PvP brackets. Differentiates instigator from defender. Self-defense preserves your peaceful rating.
Low-Activity Rounds Quick spawns or immediate surrenders heavily skewed your matchmaking history. Rounds with minimal topside interaction carry significantly less weight.
Squad Compositions Lobby difficulty and aggression brackets were heavily weighted by the squad leader. Lobbies are calculated using the squad's combined, average playstyle profile.
Loadouts & Gear Unused metric, leading to community myths about weapon-based brackets. Explicitly confirmed that weapons, items, and gear choices have zero impact.
1. Defending Yourself vs. Starting Fights
The most important fix addresses the "retaliation trap." In the past, if a hostile player opened fire on you and you shot back to defend yourself, the backend logged that player-to-player damage and flagged you as a PvP participant. The game didn't care who started it. Under the new update, the system analyzes timestamps and initial engagement data to distinguish between the aggressor and the defender. Defending your life no longer ruins your peaceful matchmaking rating, keeping you in mixed or cooperative pools.
2. Low-Activity Rounds Count Less
A major flaw in the early ABMM logic allowed players to manipulate or accidentally break their bracket history through short matches. For instance, if you dropped into a match and immediately surrendered or got wiped by a stray drone within seconds, the system struggled to read your intent. Now, low-activity rounds count for very little. If you don't engage in meaningful Topside interaction, the round is mostly ignored, preventing your matchmaking profile from drastically shifting brackets based on outliers.
Note on Queue Times: Because the system attempts to group similar playstyles together on a continuous scale, the matchmaking pool becomes fragmented. Peaceful brackets naturally have fewer hyper-aggressive players, which can cause queue times to take noticeably longer than the crowded, fast-paced PvP brackets.
Real Cases: The Impact on Topside Tactics
To understand how this plays out in-game, let's look at two specific case studies from the current community meta.
Case Study A: The Peaceful Blueprint Run
Consider a solo player whose main objective is to gather materials and buy arc raiders blueprints to unlock endgame equipment. Before the patch, if this player ran into a "shoot-on-sight" squad at an extraction zone, fired a few desperate shots with an assault rifle, and died, the system pushed them closer to PvP brackets. Over the next few games, their lobbies became increasingly brutal, making objective runs nearly impossible.
Post-patch, this player can aggressively return fire during an ambush. Because the system recognizes they did not initiate the conflict, their matchmaking profile remains intact. They stay in the "mixed/cooperative" tier, allowing them to continue focusing on PvE progression and blueprint farming without being permanently exiled to hardcore PvP lobbies.
Case Study B: The Third-Party Vendor Abuse
Before the update, a shady meta-economy started forming around third-party item platforms like U4N, where players trade high-tier loot and gear packages. Some players would deliberately "cheese" the matchmaking system by launching low-activity rounds—spawning into a match with no gear, immediately dying or surrendering—to artificially depress their aggression rating. Once they successfully manipulated the system into placing them in peaceful, low-aggression lobbies, they could easily farm rare valuables or safely complete high-tier item deliveries without any threat from other players.
With low-activity rounds now carrying almost no weight in your history, this exploit has been effectively shut down. A player can no longer wipe their aggressive history by simply throwing a few matches in a row; the system requires a consistent pattern of genuine, active PvE choices over time to shift brackets.
Player Feedback: A Divided Community
The feedback surrounding these changes remains highly mixed, highlighting the fundamental tension of the extraction shooter genre:
The Cooperative Camp: Many PvE-focused players are thrilled that they can finally fight back against extract campers without being penalized by the system. However, some complain that if a squad mate accidentally triggers a fight, the combined "Squad Aggression" calculation can still drag the whole team into hostile territory, making it difficult to escape PvP brackets once stuck.
The Hardcore Camp: Pure PvP players enjoy the higher intensity of fighting other combat-ready squads. However, they express frustration over the longer queue times associated with high-aggression pools and argue that a certain level of unpredictable betrayal is what makes the genre exciting.
Embark Studios has stated that matchmaking is an ongoing science, and they will continue to monitor data to keep Topside unpredictable, tense, but fundamentally fair.