Optional PvP and the Rise of Rats: Why Cooperation Beats Aggression in PvPvE

When PvP Isn’t Required, Aggression Becomes a Tell

How generous non-forced PvPvE systems expose rationality — and the rise of rats

Checkers, Choice, and Framing

Back in high school, a friend wanted to play checkers. I could have won, but I chose a different approach: I played so that neither of us could take the other’s pieces. Twice in a row. When a third party altered the board by removing some pieces, I adapted and maintained the same principle. The point wasn’t victory. It was that I didn’t have to accept the established framing of the game as purely adversarial. I had agency and choice, and I exercised it.

This anecdote is a perfect microcosm for optional-PvP in video games. Many players automatically assume that PvP means conflict is the intended mode. But just as in checkers, even when the system allows adversarial play, you can choose not to play that way. Cooperation is often available, rational, and sometimes optimal — even if some enthusiasts insist it’s “not intended.”

Optional PvP: The Concept

Not all PvP is created equal. We can categorize it broadly:

• Forced PvP: Someone must lose — e.g., MOBAs or arena shooters.
• Incentivized PvP: Rewards exist for killing or stealing, but it is not strictly required.
• Optional PvP: Aggression is possible, but the game allows cooperation, and violence is never mandated.

In generous PvPvE systems, aggression is optional. Choosing it often reveals risk tolerance, impatience, or misunderstanding rather than optimal strategy.

Rational Baselines and Social Theory

From a rational perspective, non-aggression often maximizes expected outcomes. Key concepts support this:

• Prisoner’s Dilemma: Cooperation is the rational choice in repeated interactions.
• Tragedy of the Commons: Selfish behavior can undermine collective gain.
• Abstention / Conditional Play: Sometimes the optimal strategy is to wait, observe, and exploit opportunities safely.

Even when a system allows PvP, the rational path often favors cooperation. Aggression increases variance without guaranteed benefit, while non-aggression stabilizes progress and reduces risk.

Research and Empirical Support

Multiple sources support these dynamics:

• Arc Raiders implements aggression-based matchmaking (AGMM), tracking player behavior and clustering like-minded players. Accidental shots or PvP actions can temporarily place players in more aggressive lobbies, but cooperation remains optimal. Source
• Studies of cooperative vs competitive goal structures show cooperative framing produces sustained trust, while competitive incentives increase short-term aggression. Source
• Optional participation in social dilemmas demonstrates that abstention or passive exploitation (ratting) can be rational, but only in mixed environments. Source
• Human behavior research shows conditional cooperation: players cooperate when it benefits them but may defect under risk or perceived betrayal. Source

Case Studies: Helldivers and Arc Raiders

Helldivers

Friendly fire is always on, but killing teammates offers no advantage. Extraction favors collective progress. Players quickly learn that aggression is a mistake, not a strategy, and coordination emerges naturally.

Arc Raiders

Multiple extraction points exist, and players can extract cooperatively. PvP is possible but optional. AGMM mitigates accidental shots and groups players by aggression level. While theoretically, players could try to block others or prioritize last-point extractions, cooperation usually dominates as the rational choice. Opportunistic or “rat” behavior emerges only when players feel unsafe or fear betrayal.

Beyond simply avoiding loss, cooperation creates net positive outcomes for all participants. When players coordinate extraction, share information about enemy positions, and support each other, they effectively increase total available loot, complete objectives faster, and reduce the risk of failure. This is similar to an industrial ecosystem: resources are generated, managed, and distributed efficiently, rather than left to the chaotic variance of individual greed or ratting. In short, coordination isn’t just safe — it produces more for everyone and is the rational strategy for maximizing long-term gains.

• PvP: Friendly fire is enabled to introduce risk, uncertainty, and the need for situational awareness in shared spaces.
• Looting players: Safeguarding the belongings of fallen players to be returned later, so they are not permanently lost if they fail to extract, particularly after contributing to difficult PvE encounters or being downed by accidental friendly fire.

Panic, Opportunistic Aggression, and Rats

Optional PvP gives rise to several behavioral patterns:

• Panic / opportunistic aggression: Fear-driven strikes or preemptive attacks, often short-term and non-optimal.
• Rats: The ultimate adaptation — players go solo, wait for others to produce resources, and exploit the environment. This strategy is low-effort, high-reward, but dependent on cooperative players. If everyone is ratting, the ecosystem collapses.
• Matchmaking reinforces this: aggression clusters aggressive players, while cooperative players cluster with each other, limiting rat opportunities.

The Meta-Irony of PvP

Aggressive PvP players often complain about rats, claiming they “ruin the game.” Ironically, their aggression creates the environment where ratting is the rational choice. Optional PvP, therefore, exposes a feedback loop: violence encourages self-preservation strategies, which frustrate the aggressors themselves.

Civilization vs Frontier: Infrastructure Wins

Optional PvP mirrors the tension between frontier chaos and civilization. Cooperation is infrastructure — predictable, accumulative, mutually beneficial. Aggression is frontier chaos — high-risk, high-variance, self-limiting. Ratting is an adaptation to frontier conditions: safe in mixed environments, destructive if universal. Just as in the checkers anecdote, players can reject the default framing and choose cooperation or abstention, stabilizing the system.

Conclusion

Optional PvP systems are less about raw skill or combat dominance and more about judgment, trust, and strategic patience. Players choose whether to cooperate, compete, or wait. Aggression becomes diagnostic: it tells you about risk tolerance, patience, and perception of others’ intentions. Ratting emerges as an adaptive response, but universal ratting collapses productivity. In PvPvE, the cleverest strategy isn’t always the fiercest — sometimes it’s simply knowing when not to play the way everyone expects.