Seasonal wipes are always a dicey proposition in an extraction shooter. On the one hand, it offers a level playing field for everyone; on the other, seeing all that hard-earned progress effectively whittled away can be demoralizing. For ARC Raiders, Embark Studios put the power in players’ hands, allowing them to voluntarily wipe their progress and begin from zero…with a few bonuses and rewards.
Known as Expeditions, the first began last month when Cold Snap dropped, and it saw a “little over a million players,” according to design director Virgil Watkins. However, the team doesn’t consider the current iteration perfect by any means.
“One of the bigger topics [of feedback] was the requirements for the final stage to get the skill points, and probably going out a bit too late with that information, because we wanted to hold off until we could calibrate it around the actual economy of the player base, rather than trying to guess really early on,” he told PCGamesN. “So then, when we chose the number, which was the five million credits for the full thing, [we set] that as an aspirational goal that some players might achieve. But then I think a lot of players took that as like, ‘Well, now I have to do that to get it.'”
Aside from the above-noted figure, Watkins says that “something close to about 35% or 40% of those players did get the full skill points,” which is also impressive. However, Embark wants to incentivize players to use their hard-earned weapons instead of simply scrounging for spare change when the Expedition deadline approaches.
“We completely acknowledge that it isn’t the most engaging thing to just go for money, [and it has] the potential outcome of disincentivizing using your gear, which is kind of what people look forward to towards the end of a reset cycle. So yeah, we’re looking at revisions on that.”
It also wants to offer “a little more variety” and “incentivize” players, especially for those who haven’t quite reached the requirements (either due to time or other reasons). That’s on top of looking at how those who undertook an Expedition are “reacting to the rewards they got.”
There’s still plenty of time until the next Expedition, so we may see some changes in the coming weeks. While Embark hasn’t outlined the next major update for ARC Raiders, it has discussed plans to better detect and combat cheaters, especially following an uptick in the same over the past few weeks. You can also expect balance adjustments for the Trigger Nade, Stitcher, Kettle, and more, so stay tuned for updates.
