The developers of Arc Raiders take into account the "level of aggression" when selecting players for a raid. When the community found out about this, the theory of a binary system was strengthened - supposedly there are only "friendly" (PvE) and "hostile" (PvP) lobbies.
Based on this theory, a whole myth has been built that the system will "punish" the user for a single shot at another player and begin to throw him into a hardcore PvP lobby, even if this shot was fired in response to aggression. However, Arc Raiders does not actually work the way many thought.
Recently, in a conversation with PC Gamer, Embark Studios design director Virgil Watkins stated:
I think people really get the impression that everything is extremely binary: you only have to shoot a raider once and you immediately get thrown into an aggressive lobby. But that's not really the case.
He said that the Arc Raiders developers themselves do not use the terminology "aggression-based matchmaking":
Everything is not as clear as people think, there is no such thing as a friendly or aggressive lobby, the system still mixes players.
Virgil noted that Arc Raiders requires "an element of tension and risk from other players to be a good game", but at the same time he acknowledges that there are players who enjoy playing "in safer lobbies".