I thought the core appeal was the loot that you get from the PvE.

But I'm just an interested outsider, waiting for the crashing player numbers for the devs to come to their senses.

The loot itself is - quite literally - mostly trash. Sometimes you may find a high end weapon (although usually that comes from PvP…) - but typically you’re just bringing stuff back to put in your scrap hoard. The PvP is really the highlight - which is not to say it’s all about fighting to the death (certainly you can do that) but instead making friends with morally ambiguous strangers to fight the biggest robots. They may be a friend, they may be a jerk, they may be YOUR jerk. Sometimes the entire map will come together to take down a gigantic robot - but after that robot dies? It may be every man for himself in a huge firefight - or it might be a big party.

That’s the core draw - and it’s not necessarily for everyone.

There are much better games for PvE looting, honestly. My recommendation is the STALKER: Anomaly modpacks like EFP and GAMMA, both of which are free downloads.

Trying to make ARC Raiders into a PvE shooter would require every map and enemy to get reworked for low-population gameplay. The game just isn't built for it, and their effort is better invested in catering to the preexisting playerbase.