Running on a 7800/5080 and being force fed UE5 games lately, this thing takes immersion from a graphical level to a new level for me. Or really, I should say just brought it back to normal. 4k120 DLSS quality no frame gen everything max runs and looks fantastic. Lighting is great here too for a variety of reasons. The main one being going against your view point on sound and graphics.
Directional audio and the audio in general is some of the best I have heard since Wartapes in BF1. Been running a Nova Pro Wireless headset now that I have switched over to PC only gaming again and decided to mess around with Sonar. I watched a guy on Youtube explain some of the audio settings and set up my sonar profile and since then the headset itself has been flawless but with this game it is extraordinary. In game I can easily hear directions of where all audio cue's are coming from. The last game of the night was with Sludig and a pubbie that turned out to be a good enough guy. We went to Space Port with a free loadout so we didn't lose any of our good shit, and as we were traversing and looting and exploring the map, we came up to the extraction point. Sludig heard the alarms of the upcoming elevator so we knew a team was there either waiting to ambush someone an exit point or were going to head out I heard them a bit more faintly because I was further away keeping my eye on the gun shots echoing out by a close mountain area. I tagged an ARC Snitch (With very good automatic military voice recognition and identification of the target that played automatically for the party - so let's give them some credit here because that's cool). Now, I am not going to pin the exact location of these fuckers down with an audio queue of gun shots echoing off a mountain more than 1k yards away, however that same ARC I tagged, I saw a red targeted beam and then I knew pretty much the exact area where they were as that ARC attacked them, and with that, if they were also approaching that elevator. So we waited until they were done and left, I guarded the other side to make sure they didn't come in from that area down the slope, and we got out with our loots. I leave open mic for party and PTT for proximity chat (which works PERFECTLY based on distance of the other player talking as it gets louder and softer depending on distance, as it should).Object sounds and the mystery/atmosphere of the map is fucking sweet so I am not sure if you have a shit sound system or what - but Cinge and I were hearing hums of large machines that were destroyed but still humming with power. Little did we know when Sludig joined us you could climb on top of it, open it up, get the fuck out of the way because it explodes (and makes a shit town of noise unfortunately letting others know where you are) and go up and loot it once the explosions stop.
The emergent gameplay coming out of this game is bar none some of the best. Now I freely admit, this is my very first extraction shooter. But so far so good.
I agree on the mats and until Sludig told me different I was recycling the blue items that said they could be recycled for mats. I recycled an orange for seeds when I should have held onto it because I can upgrade my chicken. But you know what? I learned pretty fucking quick not to do that. I don't want my hand held. Learning the hard way is some of the fun.
All this doesn't work if it doesn't have fantastic audio placement and sound and the audio for me is fucking awesome.
If I have any complains at this point it is that it takes 5 cloth to make one bandage. But I can head in solo and go to some apartments and stock up on little shit like that easily in two runs. Can gather seeds and cloth just about anywhere. Between the chicken and automatic mats you get, and the vendor who takes 1 seed for cloth, plastic, metal, it isn't hard to do a stock run.
The other is they need to tune some of the upgrades. You need 8 fireball's along with some other things which aren't the easiest to get to move to level two with a crafting station. I think it is all a bit overtuned.
Of course all the guns are the same at this point. We are level fucking 8 at Max all being stupid and leveling up Stichers and Rattlers. That's going to be a hell of a bit different when we are leveraging epic/legendary named weapons at level 50. Google some of the unique guns out there. Also we have a lot of throwables. Stun ARC's and Raiders, fire bombs, poison clouds, you using any of those yet? They are pretty effective.
Environmental noises being false flags is bullshit. You just don't know where the hell or why the hell the noise happens. I heard clicking and wondered what the fuck it was, turns out I couldn't find an Arc Courier which is lootable and makes that noise and it was in the weeds. Or the large tank looking thing emitting a low hum and bass sound, only to find out 5 hours later you can climb the thing and loot it (Get out of the way it blows up and alerts the whole damn map) or a large pulsing sound that is actually coming from an ARC survey thing that is also lootable. And what leads you to understanding this?
Quests. Half the time I didn't know what the fuck I was hearing until around level 4-5, started getting quests that wanted me to go find these things. Why the hell is this thing on the ground to carry? Oh wait I can bring this to a delivery station and once delivered Death Stranding style I get loot.
I think the problem is people have been so pussified in the last 10 years they don't know how to play a game organically unless Asmongold comes over to their house and shoves a controller up their ass.
So I find this interesting. Couple things real quick to help clarify. You talk about picking out loud noises like the elevators, caches, and tagging things for your team, as well as PTT prox chat.
First the Prox chat and tagging. Both of these have existed for a long time. Tagging has been in military games for decades at this point and is in no way unique or innovative. It is useful, though I wish this game had a higher priority of tagging the ARC I have under my cross hair and not the faint wispings of a bush that are in the way. But still, tagging does work.
Prox voice chat works and well enough to the point I don't need to comment on it. Again, nothing revolutionary here.
Now, to audio 'cues' or perhaps better on my end to say 'tells' in order to clarify. First off, your example of the elevator alarm isn't really a good example. They are loud as fuck and are rather obvious where they are from as they are drawn on the map. Same with the down probes. Very loud, large in size and obvious to pick out. Raider caches, lootables, all that is not what I am talking about. Those are fairly loud and obvious and indicate static lootables, though I do find it curious you said it took you awhile to find the one in the weeds.
Now, what I am talking about are mostly other players and ARCs. Players especially. I notice you said this is your first extraction shooter so I will share my experience with this vs other extraction shooters and imo directional audio for player movements is poor. I have a very similar setup. Good Steel Series headset with Sonar set for positional audio, just went through and made certain it was all tweaked properly and did another run. For comparison, I will use my experience with The Cycle: Frontier, which admittedly failed but had exceptional positional audio cues. In The Cycle, when I stopped moving and sat still, I could hear other players and creatures movements. I could hear them moving through brush, their footsteps and the volume of it would give me a distance clue and most importantly, the positional audio would give very good directional information. I could tell if it was one clump of bushes vs another 25% or so off in heading. I could tell clearly if they were above me, below me. How far and at what angle. Running let everyone in proximity know precisely where you were. Now, with ARC Raiders having sortied with 3 man teams I have found the positional audio very 'muddied'. I have found that when I am sitting still and they are running around I could not pick out a definitive distance nor direction via audio. If they are behind me, they are 'somewhere behind me.' To the left, its 'somewhere to the left'. No good indication of close or far and I couldn't pick out a 'clock heading' based off sound. It was very general and often I had to use the in game 'ally' marker to determine specifics. I don't own BF6, but watching a friend of mine stream it I was able to get more positional audio cues from their stream than what I currently get in ARC Raiders.
I will 100% admit this is a huge thing for me and perhaps less important to other people and if you aren't as into this experience as I am it might not even be noticeable to the average player, but sitting silent and listening to get info is important to me. When my friends wake up we'll go in and work on more specific testing and report back.
Now, as to weapons. I have unlocked the 3rd map (not gone yet, everyone else needs to get there first) and am using green weapons, though I haven't found the Anvil's BP yet. (Actively hunting for it.) I have the burletta, arpeggio, and Il Toro. According to the wiki, there is only 1 gun in game with a scope. You can not add scopes to any other weapon via mods. As far as mods adding 'effects' onto the weapons the only ones I've seen are the Splitter mod for the Anvil (makes it shoot multiples rounds per shot) and the Kinetic mod which adds to rate of fire. Everything else is flavors of recoil control, noise suppression and magazine increases. To my knowledge there is only 1 gun that has an effect on it, and that's the Hullcracker which is a grenade launcher. Again, not used it cause its an Epic but from the wiki... that's it. References:
arc-raiders.fandom.com
There are no scopes for CQB, mid range, or extended range engagements. The differences between the SMGs and ARs feel very insignificant. Their recoil is different, but not significantly so to cause one to have a range advantage over the other. There is no actual Marksmen/DMR in game other than the Osprey. Its not the Ferro which has same effective range as the Rattler and Arpeggio and just big one shot damage which isn't enough to kill someone with basic green shields without multiple shots. A common meta about controlling engagement ranges doesn't seem to exist here in a meaningful way atm. The meta seems to be limited to ARC Armor pen and TTK for pvp. PVP guns have fast TTK but no ARC pen (Stitcher for example). PvE have big ARC pen (Ferro) but shit TTK. Your ARs are middle of the road with slower TTK and lower ARC Pen which I guess you carry when you want to save on weight? The only one unique atm to me is the Shotgun, and it feels bad cause I haven't done meaningful damage to something unless I am near melee range.
So let me be more specific. They are different, but the difference doesn't really feel meaningful in a way as per other games, where you pick how you want to play. Do you want to be a long range fighter? Close in CQB? Balance of both? I don't think there is the 'paper rock scissors' style of choice in weapon selection you get in other games and that a meta will develop rather quickly of what is 'best' for pvp and what is 'best' for pve and that will be it.
I will do more testing and report back.
