It seems like the following is indeed interesting, yet I’ve never ever experienced Arc Raiders myself! Have you? ^^
But often, players are just talking. A YouTube video called The Humans of Arc Raiders, inspired by the photographer who interviews strangers in New York City, includes conversations with randomly encountered players. They talk about family struggles, work lives, depression, autism and, in one case, a lung collapse. In one conversation, a heavily armed player in green armour named Poopy candidly asks another raider: "What’s it like having kids, dude?”
When I first jumped into Arc Raiders, I found a dichotomy on the topside, where birds sing and plants thrive among the carcasses of downed machines. The more I wandered around this 1970s-style retro-future setting, the more I bumped into other humans, many of whom offered help, such as medical supplies. Mostly we snuck around and battled robots together. It was tense at times, sometimes scary, but often relaxing.
In one session, I encountered another player with a British accent who was also new to the game. "Have you been killed by another person yet?” he asked me, as we explored a burst concrete dam complex. "Because every person I’ve met has been friendly,” he added. “No one kills each other.”
Source [web-archive]
I certainly hope blocking people in the game does not stop you from matching into each other’s lobbies and only prevents voice/chat with each other.
Xbox tried the “blocking people prevents matchmaking into their games” way in the early days of the Xbox 360 when accounts had a reputation system and all that. Know what the end result was? All the best players and pro players at games were waiting in 10+ hour queues to find a match. Because people were blocking everyone that beat them. So Xbox ditched that, and that was absolutely the correct call.
Blocking should absolutely never prevent matchmaking from doing its job and getting everyone into games. And listen, I hate Extraction Shooters. I played the Arc Raiders closed and open betas, and the server slam, so its not like I have no experience with the game. I lament that another fun PvE Coop Shooter was stolen from everyone to be added to the Scum Sponge genre. But I still think the game’s matchmaking should function correctly.
Looks like Arc has learned something since then, and it reduces your odds of matching with them but doesn’t completely remove the possibility. I think I’ll keep blocking people I don’t want to play with. Frankly, it’s not surprising that game developers have learned from the mistakes made before, and there are certainly more nuanced options than forcing people to play with people they don’t want to or having to wait hours to match.