Arc Raiders‘ next Expedition is coming on 28th April, and even though developer Embark Studios has already confirmed changes to how the progression reset will work this time around, we’ve now learned deeper reworks are coming to the entire skill system.
The info comes from Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins, who had a chat with host Adam Orth on Game Maker’s Notebook (hat tip to GamesRadar). As part of the lengthy conversation, Watkins expressed the studio’s dissatisfaction with skills in their current form: “It was a tough problem space for us and I don’t think by any means we nailed it. There are definitely skills in there that are under-serving their purpose.”
While Watkins felt it wasn’t the right time to reveal anything, he teased “significant changes” are coming while also saying that even if he personally doesn’t enjoy the criticised “small statistical changes”, they’re serving “a purpose”. Other parts of the skill trees allow raiders to do things they couldn’t before, which many players see as a way more meaningful type of progression.
It’s the sort of conversation that extends to other genres, such as action-adventure games with layers and layers of RPG elements (I think the recent God of War and Assassin’s Creed games are good examples). That can be done well, okay, or badly. Currently, Arc Raiders is a bit all over the place on that front.
Watkins admits it’s a tough balancing act, especially when you’re dealing with an online shooter with a very active player base: “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?”
If you ask me, there’s no easy answer that will please everyone when dealing with design and progression in online games, but I do agree that Arc Raiders is far from nailing its skill trees, so I’m curious to see what Embark is cooking beyond the new content hungry players demand.
