Embark Studios has certainly pulled out all the stops to give ARC Raiders a fresh lease of life with the latest Flashpoint update. With a significant ARC presence and the game’s unique approach to encouraging its players to be as unpredictable as possible, the latest update has had us on the edge of our seats, the tension feeling almost tangible as a result.
We’re not alone in feeling this, we’re sure, and it seems like it’s a clever design choice that leverages how people approach the game, a facet that production director Caio Braga told Games Radar+ was always intended to make its players feel like there was always a threat waiting, even in places they might feel relatively safer. Commenting on “Care Bear” lobbies in which players agree to take a non-hostile approach to each other to secure a safe amount of loot for themselves, Braga was quick to point out that the game’s very design was bound to encourage the more enterprising ones among them to consider breaking the peace at the right moment.
“Even in those servers, I hope they don’t feel fully safe..We never promised that they would be in full friendly lobbies. And humans, right? They can sometimes surprise you, backstab you, or abuse your generosity. There’s all of that that we want to keep existing in this game. So finding a complete break where it’s only PvE is probably something we don’t want to explore at the moment, because we want you to not feel safe.”
Even with Flashpoint being as challenging as it is, a sense of safety is an unwelcome addition to a game that relies on its players looking for any advantage they can in an unforgiving landscape. Embark seems determined to keep things that way, even using its own players’ opinions to ensure the odds are constantly unfavorable to cooperative play.
“We see some trends of players who PvP and start to lose too much, that go more Care Bear. And the opposite: Care Bears start to get a lot of riches and go PvP. So there is all of that. I think that what we see a lot is the two poles being opinionated, which is very good for us, because we end up getting feedback.”
That’s an innovative approach to implementing feedback, and a great way to ensure that ARC Raiders keeps its players coming back for more.
