Embark Studios are making a big change to Arc Raiders Expeditions, the recurring event where players opt to reset most of their account data in return for some sweet, sweet skill points and buffs. It may seem like a small change – with you earning rewards for damage dealt within the event, instead of wealth accumulated – but it could turn the game that’s become known for its friendly, helpful community into a bit of a bloodbath.
Expeditions are Embark Studios way of resetting powerful players back to zero so they avoid creating a massive yawning gap between the haves and the have nots. Every few months the studio announce a new exhibition which only high level players can volunteer for and to take part they must donate a massive amount of resources and valuable gear. These donations are to build a caravan that takes your character away from the city of Speranza never to be seen again. After the Expedition, you create a new character but you start this fresh life with the items, skill points, and buffs rewarded for your sacrifice.
How much you are rewarded for sacrificing your character is determined by how well you perform during the Expedition window itself. In the past, participating players would earn skill points for every 600,000 credits-worth of gear they had in their stash when the Expedition ended. Though, this created a problem as no one was taking their valuable loot into battle. During the week of the Expedition, participating players would lean on free loadouts because it wasn’t worth wasting high-value gear. It made for a much less lively game, too, as high level players were also just looking to escape the game and start a new run as soon as they had filled their knapsack with loot.
To address this in the upcoming Expedition, which starts on April 28th, you won’t earn skill points for the value of your stash when the event ends on May 4th, but how much damage you dished out during the week.
“We know that grinding for monetary value isn’t the most exciting experience,” Embark Studios wrote in the post announcing this change. “By introducing damage-based objectives and trials instead of stash value, we’re providing more freedom and variety in how you can complete the Expedition, encouraging the use of loot rather than hoarding it throughout the 5-day window. Above all, we want expeditions to be fun and not an endless grind. We believe these changes create a fair and engaging challenge that keeps everyone active across the full 5 days.”
Naturally, though, it means all those players who were cautiously holding back their best weapons in the last event will, instead, be bringing every gun to the party and looking for all the ways they can deal damage during the event. April 28th – May 4th may be a time to keep your head down if you’re just looking for a nice hike in a robot apocalypse.
Back in January design director Virgil Watkins did say he wanted more people to get involved with Expeditions, so perhaps this free-for-all is exactly what he had in mind.
It’s interesting to see the Arc Raiders team make adjustments now that they can see how their earlier design decisions have influenced player behaviour. By picking stash value, they encouraged cautious play that for the period of the event made their game a little less exciting for everyone.
I was listening to an interview with Watkins last week where he talks about potential changes to the skill tree because it currently doesn’t fit the way players are playing the game. “It was a tough problem space for us and I don’t think by any means we nailed it,” he told AIAS’s Game Makers Notebook. “There are definitely skills in there that are under-serving their purpose.”
The problem Embark faced when they were designing it was making a skill tree that fit both sides of the Arc Raiders, the PvE and the PvP. While Watkins says he doesn’t like skills that only deliver “small statistical changes”, if they locked whole abilities within the skill tree, then it could make one player significantly more capable than another. “Do we really want someone who invests in this wing of the skill tree [to be] obviously more capable in PvP? Because they chose those [skills] they’re going to win over someone who invested in the red tree instead?”
Watkins says they’re currently “evaluating some pretty significant changes” to the skill trees to make it a more meaningful set of decisions. At the moment skills have little impact on how you play, and Watkins wants it to help you determine a playstyle. “Do I want to be the sneaky looter, or the guy who wants to be super agile and maneuver around and things like that?” he said. “I think we moved toward that ambition pretty well, but there’s more to do.”
What this could mean in the future, though, if the skill tree does get a big overhaul, is that players who take part in the Expedition could experiment with drastically different playstyles after each account wipe. And, depending on how violent they are in the event itself, they can net themselves a tidy packet of skill points to invest into their new character build as soon as they start.
