30 November 2025

ARC Raiders Devs Confirm the Game’s Best PvP Map

By newsgame

The maps of ARC Raiders look very different in the final release compared to their original designs, according to the development team at Embark. Since ARC Raiders was initially planned to be a PvE-only title before it was reworked into a PvPvE extraction shooter, the game’s maps had to be redesigned to accommodate the introduction of PvP gameplay. However, the devs confirm that one map was designed for PvP from the ground up.

Despite its massive popularity, the ARC Raiders community is still split on whether the game should have a PvE-only mode. The game shifted its identity from a PvE-centric game to one with PvP elements after the ARC Raiders devs determined PvE-only wouldn’t work for sustaining the game long term. Now, with the revelation that entire maps had to be reworked to function for both PvP and PvE, the introduction of a post-launch PvE-only mode may be out of reach.

ARC Raiders’ Maps Were Originally Designed for PvE, With One Exception

In the latest episode of an ongoing docuseries on the official ARC Raiders YouTube channel that goes behind the scenes of the extraction shooter’s development, the team at Embark dives into how the world of ARC Raiders came together from a design standpoint. Since ARC Raiders was originally planned to be a co-op PvE game where players group up to hunt down massive ARC machines, the game started development under the assumption that maps would be far larger than in the final version and much more open, with fewer enclosed locations like buildings and tunnels. When the game shifted gears to include PvP as a major gameplay staple, these maps had to be altered to include features that would make PvP challenging and fun while players traversed them.

To this end, ARC Raiders Design Director Virgil Watkins notes that when the team created maps like Spaceport and Dam Battlegrounds, “PvP, especially, was never a consideration for those. So suddenly, things like sight lines and approach angles and dead ends and everything became much more critical to worry about” as development moved toward a PvPvE gameplay loop. With larger-than-life machines no longer the primary threat of ARC Raiders, the gameplay flow that comes with battling other players meant that maps had to reflect those types of encounters accordingly. As a result, ARC Raiders had to maintain a careful balance of map terrain and environments that could facilitate both PvE and PvP combat.

How Embark Designed ARC Raiders Maps with a Specific Flow in Mind

The transition from PvE to PvP naturally meant players would approach map traversal differently, and the maps had to be designed accordingly. When looking at a map like ARC Raiders‘ Dam Battleground, the devs viewed it as a great example of how an environment could facilitate two types of combat encounters. As Watkins describes, “it has a lot of easier affordances for a new player. It’s got drastic height differences between the two halves of the map. It’s got a good mix of interior and exterior.” These map features allow players to experience different forms of combat, such as the tight PvP-centric combat that the corridors of an enclosed space create, compared to the open fields with scattered cover or vantage points on top of the dam that work well for PvE in picking off flying ARC drones.

Buried City Was Designed with PvP in Mind

To date, ARC Raiders has 5 multiplayer maps for players to explore:

Dam Battlegrounds
Buried City
Blue Gate
Spaceport
Stella Montis

However, it is Buried City that is effectively the definitive PvP map for ARC Raiders. Buried City was the final map developed for ARC Raiders, coming after the addition of PvP, which allowed it to be designed with that type of gameplay first and foremost. ARC Raiders Production Director Caio Braga notes that “it’s a more PvP-prone map since it’s the one we did with PvP in mind. The other two (Spaceport and Dam Battlegrounds) we adapted for it.”

ARC Raiders - The North Line Stella Montis location

With a far greater emphasis on verticality and enclosed spaces, PvP fans will want to spend most of their time on Buried City, since the team at Embark clearly wants it to be a playground for this type of combat. The maps designed later in the game’s development, Blue Gate and Stella Montis, take opposite approaches to each other, but are still in line with the developers’ established PvPvE philosophy. Blue Gate is very similar to a map like Spaceport in that it features wide open spaces for PvE to occur alongside enclosed spaces for PvP encounters. Stella Montis, on the other hand, is much more like Buried City in the sense that it is almost entirely indoors with numerous hallways and corridors for PvP players to enjoy.