When jumping into a match in PvPvE extraction shooter ARC Raiders, you never quite know whether you’re going to end up in a fresh session or in one that has been going on for quite some time and with only 20 minutes left on the clock. While the latter might feel frustrating to some, since much of the loot would have already been grabbed by earlier players, design lead Virgil Watkins believes that the late joiners actually end up benefitting quite a bit. In an interview with GamesRadar, he spoke about this system, and how players that end up in an already-running session get to find things like remnants of battles and other loot, giving them an advantage.
“We 100% acknowledge the whole thing of, ‘Man, I came in to do that trial and now I clearly don’t have enough time to do that, and that sucks, so I’m just going to leave,’ or whatever. That aspect is definitely not great,” Watkins said.
“But similar to the perception of free kits versus what they do, the perception around late joining and what it affords you has been quite interesting. Players are like, ‘The loot’s all gone,’ or whatever else. But players who late join economically profit way more than people who aren’t. The session, when they are fresh, does eventually get quieter, and very often they come across the remnants of fights or can maybe take out bigger drones or hit high-ticket areas more readily than other players. So that’s been a very interesting thing to look at.”
Watkins went on to note that this was an intentional design decision, since it helps in making sure that sessions are never quite empty. He also confirmed that loot distribution in ARC Raiders‘ sessions ensures that “there should be plenty of stuff for players to do,” regardless of whether they join in early or late.
Watkins has also spoken about how the success of ARC Raiders has emboldened Embark Studios to have greater ambitions for the game. In the same interview, he spoke about how there is internal appetite at the studio to expand the hub town of Speranza, which currently is little more than a menu on top of some pretty pictures, into a more full-fledged home base that players can walk through.
“I mean, we’ve 100% discussed it,” he said. “I think it was like the first question asked when we started building the front end of the game, you know, ‘what would that experience be like?’ It always came down to time and scope for us […] We can build a menu, and the menu will do its job. And, you know, all the extra time involved in making a hub wasn’t worth it, really, or we traded other features for it.”
“For me, personally, I love the vibe and aesthetic of a walkable hub, but I would want to preserve the menuing so that you can do it quickly and efficiently, rather than [having to] run to Celeste and then run to my [raider’s room], and then ‘Oops, I forgot this thing at Shani.’ But there’s also, of course, an immersion factor to that. So yeah, it’s something we have discussed, and we’ll continue to discuss, and I think there’s definitely a good appetite on the team for it as well. It’s more about when the right moment to open that door is.”
ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review.
