Involuntary pvp is the long term death sentence for a game. It punishes new players by making them easy prey for veteran players. Player numbers will fall hard and fast, like every other involuntary pvp game does.
Many live service games that are punishing for new players are still thriving like LoL and DOTA2. Much that punish-factor can be resolved by good matchmaking, putting new players mostly with each other.
It's OK for a game to exclude entire demographics of players. A PvP first game shouldn't try to force itself to appeal to PvE only players.
But I'm just an interested outsider, waiting for the crashing player numbers for the devs to come to their senses.
That’s the core draw - and it’s not necessarily for everyone.
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.
Everything doesn't have to be for everyone.