Arc Raiders could get map conditions that alter the friction, for truly Tribes-esque sliding

I called out sliding as one of my favourite aspects of Arc Raiders in a launch-day write-up. It lends the looter shooter a gambolling giddiness you might not expect from its heavily laden packmule characters. In more practical terms, it makes you harder to hit and allows you to flank or retreat while regenerating stamina, the catch being that you might slide into somewhere you’d rather not be, like directly beneath a bunch of Hornets.

After a few hours spent doing migrant penguin impressions in Buried City and Blue Gate, a thought occurred: hang on, this is almost like the hypermobile ski shooting in Tribes: Ascend. I mean, not really, but perhaps if they made friction a setting on custom servers, this crouch-walking pillage ’em up could be a bona fide movement shooter.

You think that’s a horrible, silly idea? Damn, I wish you’d been around to interrupt while I was interviewing Embark’s executive producer Aleksander Grøndal last month, shortly before launch. Having picked his brains about the game’s item economy and usage of generative AI tech, I asked him whether the game’s sliding had been tricky to implement. I was ghoulishly hoping for a tale of terror akin to the wrangle at BioWare and EA over letting players fly in Anthem, but according to Grøndal, sliding has been a straightforward part of the game “since its original inception”, though it used to be a lot, er, slidier.

“The only thing we’ve done since that time is rebalance it, more or less,” he said. “The game [used to be] a bit more hectic, and people were moving around a lot faster than they’re doing today. So it has been toned down quite a lot, right now. It’s also relegated partly to the ability tree, where you can upgrade your sliding, and that could make it a bit faster and you can go a bit further with that slide, depending on what type of terrain you’re in, and your velocity relative to when you start the slide itself.”

It was at this point that I broached the Tribes comparison. Would Embark ever consider giving players the ability to turn off the friction and enable low key anti-gravity, in certain circumstances? Grøndal chuckled at the idea, but he also didn’t wholly shut me down.

“Certainly, that’s something we could play around with,” he said. “We do have different conditions that could change the way that the players are moving around on the map. And one could easily see that if it becomes whiter and colder, friction might change. And maybe there’s things that change for the player in the different environment. So, yeah, why not?”

All of this will, of course, come a firm second to ensuring that Arc Raiders stacks up as a (so-far worthwhile) game of hiding, seeking, sneaking and shooting. “I think as long it doesn’t get wild and the game starts losing its core tenet around trying to create consequence to your actions,” Grøndal added. “Every action should feel deliberate and sort of mean something – you might reveal where you are, or you might spend some stamina, you know. There’s always some choice for you to make.”

Casting my eye across the internet as speedily as a greased penguin reconnoitring a hillside ruin, I detect a mixture of opinions on sliding. Back in October, one playtester threw caution to the winds and called it OP in public, though I’m including that post mostly for the response suggesting that Embark introduce “a second health bar specifically for your ass” to keep sliding in check. Still, there doesn’t appear to be any omnimovement-esque controversy among Arc players about the game’s handling. So why not furtively add a friction setting in the course of your seasonal updating, Embark? Give the Hornet’s nest a kick.