ARC Raiders

This was a good and fun game to play with friends when I first got it (around 4/5months after launch). Loads of fun exploring, collecting, crafting and meeting other friendly players which you team up with and then take down the bigger and tougher ARC to then get better loot to craft better weapons etc and then repeat. HOWEVER this game is now a bigger fumble than Ubisoft's downfall! The entire premise of the game WHICH IS THE INTRO SCENE EVERYTIME YOU LOAD INTO THE GAME is ''The ARC wiped out just about everything on the earths surface, including humans. The ones that survived went underground, built a thriving city together and go above ground to raid the old world TOGETHER and take down the ARC that are controlling the surface to then upgrade your weapons and equipment so that you can WORK TOGETHER to take down the tougher ARC with a team of three friends or other teams you meet on the surface''. How do the RATS on this game not get this? This isn't Call of Duty or battlefield or any of the battle royal shooter games. It was designed as a team game, which for the most part when you ACTUALLY GET PUT into a PvE server with other like minded players, there is loads of fun to be had and loot to shared BUT sadly this is very few and far between. What makes it worse is the fact that if you play solo it seems to be more friendly than not (well it used to be) but forget just wanting to jump into a lobby with friends after a long day in a duo or trio and just want to play with like minded players because the game then automatically thinks all you want to do is shoot and kill other players so you get put in matches where you get RATTED within minutes or even seconds of loading into the game. I've honestly never played a game with such a huge lack in matchmaking ability. I mean we're in 2026, there have been countless games before this that have had balanced lobbies and you get put into games based on your level, kill to death ratio and so on BUT this game seems to not have any of this at all and it just seems to be completely random as to which server you're going to be put in, even when you continuously give countless feed back after each match (which the Devs claim should help but doesn't) and to make matters worse, 9/10 times at the time of writing this, its with RATS. To further this frustration, if you want to play ANY OTHER MAP outside of Dam or Buried City, then forget it because the RATS seem to rule every other map and game mode with cheats and hacked software, which the Devs still refuse to do anything about and the players have been saying this to them for months! Don't believe me? Then just go onto any of their social media pages and read the comments. Everyone is saying the same thing, yet the Devs do nothing to fix the issues. The things that I can't get my head around the most however are as follows - 1. The Devs have said, time and again, that they've done small fixes here and there (but the big update is coming soon) to fix the matchmaking (along with other issues) and that it's more suited now to your play style, kills etc BUT how can I, a player that never shoots anyone, revives down players and has under 100 hours in the game keep being put in matches with people that have over 900+ hours in the game and do nothing but kill everyone they see continuously? 2. The base, epic and legendary weapon titles mean nothing. I mean what is the point of grinding to get the top weapons, with the best attachments, when you can't even take a shield off of a RAT that is attacking you but yet they can take you down in less than two seconds with a base kettle at 50m away? Even when you've equipped a medium or heavy shield and have Legendary weapon equipped? 3. Some of the higher/rarer loot such as the queen and matriarch reactors are some of the harder cells to come by yet when you go into the trader section and onto the new nomad trader, the prices make no sense. For example and bastion drops LOADS of cells and can spawn a few times in a match (such as in Buried City) so you can easily get 12 in a round but on a queen you're lucky to get 3. Yet if you want to trade the cells for a trader item, the price difference between a bastion and queen cell is only a couple of thousand, which is ridiculous. 4. The fact that the game/Devs seems to cater to streamers and what they want, compared to what the average player wants. We don't want endless skins that cost stupid amounts of REAL money or look like they came from Warzone. We don't want to play with RATS who cheat and use software to manipulate the game. JUST GIVE US A PvE SERVER SO WE CAN ENJOY AND PLAY THE GAME AS IT IS INTENDED! All in all, the game has a lot of potential and it WAS fun to play but the CHEATERS and RATS have completely ruined this game to the point of it being completely unplayable. You've seen all the clips and stories. You just simply can't play a game where RATS are using cheats to see exactly where everyone is on the map, what weapons and loot you're carrying, snap aim assist and the list goes on. Think about it. This game has everything that everyone loves in a video game. Shooting, crafting, looting, exploration and teaming up with people from around the world, all having a laugh with one another. At it's peak the total number of players was just under 500k and IN LESS THAN A YEAR the player count has dropped to around 20k now! This alone should really say everything you need to know about the game and the Devs themselves because if this dramatic droop in player count didn't wake the Devs up and have alarm bells ringing and making them think ''♥♥♥♥! We've got to sort this and fast!'' then nothing will. Like most of the people who still play this game from time to time, who aren't Rats/cheaters, I'm waiting for this big update to come out to see if it will make the game remotely playable again, which a small part of me hopes that it does but I'm certainly not going to be holding my breath. P.s. Just for reference, to whomever it may concern, Helldivers 2 had to completely rewrite the code for their game after it broke over a year ago and it messed the whole game up. The community and the reviews reflected this on steam and other places. The Devs took note and resolved the issue within six weeks, whilst continually being in contact with the community and giving updates, even though they are an incredibly small studio AND gave in game stuff FOR FREE as an apology. Embark could learn from this. Embark should learn from this. And most importantly, Embark should listen to their community.