How do you determine skill in an extraction shooter like Arc Raiders? Your first reaction might be to judge someone by their skill in PvP, but who wins an encounter in PvP can depend on a wide spread of variables. Oftentimes, the measure of a player’s aptitude in an extraction shooter is murky at best.

Yes, whoever can aim better has an advantage, as they should. But the skills they’ve unlocked can have a massive impact, as can the weapons and gadgets they have. Maybe the better player has just been jumped by a gaggle of goons, it happens all the time. When so much aside from a player’s ability to aim and shoot can determine who is best in a one-on-one fight, how do you rank players? How on earth can you decide whether Billy or Timmy is better when Billy’s decked out in full purple gear?

Arc Raiders seems to have figured this out in a way I love. Rather than some kill-focused ranked playlist, Arc Raiders provides five weekly trails for players to complete. These trials change every reset, and so far have ranged from dealing damage to powerful PvE Arc enemies, to looting specific things out in the open world, or even gathering plants!

The way the ranking works is that you’re given points depending on how much of one of these tasks you do in a single run. If you die before extracting, your progress is lost. Not only that, but if you enter a match during a major map condition(like a night raid), you get double points. That means if you want to accrue the most points, you need to head up into the most dangerous maps with likeminded players all out for blood.

Here’s why this is brilliant. See, if you pull back from a gunfight, there’s a lot of skill expression present in extraction games. A lot of it is knowledge, knowing where things are. In the first week, I had to track down plants. There are obvious places to look. Take Dam Battlegrounds. There’s a nature hotspot right in the middle of the swamp. But that’ll only get you so far. It benefits you to know where other plants are growing around the map.

A long-toothed player will know about the islands in the middle of the red lake, about the plants that dot the water runoff pipes, and mushrooms along dead trees. Knowing where all these are allow a player to rack up points otherwise tricky to nail down.

Then there’s good ol’ fashioned combat trials. There’s been no explicit PvP trial yet, but that doesn’t mean the risk of gunfights aren’t there. While taking down Hornets, one makes a lot of noise. During a night raid, when visibility is low and the hunger for violence is high, it’s more likely than not that you’ll attract unwanted attention.

The way the ranking system works itself is ingenious. You’re placed in a bracket with 100 people. The top 30 players in terms of points at the end of the week gain two ranks, the next 30 gain one, while the remaining slurry of unambitious so-and-sos are left where they started. During week one, I didn’t struggle to get rank one in my batch. Now, in week two, there’s this fella called Oom who is somehow sitting on 40,000+. That, I must emphasize, is a ridiculous number.

But, even if you aren’t too interested in climbing the ranks, achieving at least a three star rating for each trail (which requires some 4,000 points at least per trial) will reward you with epic-tier loot. This means even casual players will want to push for this milestone. As such, there may be no such thing as a free ride through the ranks.

But better yet, having flew up two ranks after week one, I’ve been placed in the same bracket as likeminded no-lifers and guide-reading outcasts. I see another player cracking open husks in the dead of night and think, you go for it champ, get those stars. I then feel the echo of his agony when a third player ravages his shields with a Ferro shot to the dome.

The consequences of this type of ranked system is more important than you may at first assume. It’ll mean the best players aren’t just whizz kids with a rifle. In fact, with trials, you could arguably become high rank without winning many honourable duels against your fellow raiders.

It means the best players will be experienced in all aspects of the game, combative and otherwise. A system in which the stealthy loot gremlin can stand alongside the 14-year-old reaction deity at his keyboard. That, I believe, is the right way to find some semblance of ranked balance in an inherently unbalanced genre. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some husks to bust open.