The 250 hours I’ve logged in extraction shooter Arc Raiders tell you I’m hooked, but last week I read a comment on the game’s subreddit that perfectly encapsulated one of its few flaws.
“If the game is about getting good loot, but the good loot is actually bad, what are we doing?”
When you’re searching a container, a rare augment – the devices at the heart of your loadout — or epic gun reveals itself in a burst of purple, a catchy jingle, and a big boost to the value of your stash, the place where you hoard and organise your items. But actually using these weapons and augments is far less satisfying.
The rarest guns in Arc Raiders should feel like a glorious reward for all that time you spent hunting blueprints, or for that risky fight you picked with a fellow raider. But the epic weapons are barely better than common ones – and in certain situations, they’re actually worse.
There’s very little to choose, for example, between the ultra-rare Vulcano shotgun and the Il Toro, which you can find all the time across Arc Raiders’ maps. Yes, the Vulcano kills quicker when you spam the trigger. But the Il Toro deals more damage per shot, so when you’re dancing on the edge of cover, peeking out and firing before slithering back again, it shines.
There are plenty more examples. The Bobcat, the epic SMG, shreds up close. But so does the Stitcher, which you can get as part of a no-risk free loadout or craft for next-to-nothing in your workshop. The Sticher’s “effective DPS”, taking into account reload time, is actually higher than the Bobcat’s, and against certain shields the Stitcher can kill in one magazine where the Bobcat can’t.
And don’t even get me started on the Bettina, a weapon endlessly memed the community. Yes, I get that it’s for killing Arc, but you need to take eight stacks of ammo for it to be worth equipping. Give me an Anvil or Trailblazer grenade instead.
In a recent interview with GamesRadar+, lead designer Virgil Watkins said that “any given weapon in capable hands should be capable of winning a fight if you’re playing smartly”. That makes sense. Newer or more casual players shouldn’t lose just because they’re carrying a worse gun. But this also isn’t a team-based shooter that requires perfect balance. When you find something rare, it’d better feel special to use.
It doesn’t help that maintaining these weapons is so expensive. Despite being the most polished guns in this apocalyptic world, their durability burns fastest, and repairing them munches through ultra-rare crafting parts. So rather than leveling the playing field, the current status quo actually does the opposite: the only players that can afford the risk of using and losing these weapons are people who, like me, have spent far too much time topside, have found the blueprints of these guns, and have a mountain stash of rare crafting parts ready to go.
In the same interview, Watkins did say “we’re definitely a bit off on some of the cost to benefit ratios.” It’s promising to see him recognise that, and I actually don’t think it needs a massive adjustment to fix. If these epic guns were 10% more lethal, 15% less expensive, and wore out 20% slower, they’d feel so much better.
The rarest augments pose a different problem, though. Before Tuesday’s Headwinds update arrived, only two out of the six epic augments were strong – the Looting Mk 3 survivor can stop you bleeding out so that you have the chance of crawling to an extraction point with your loot, and the Tactical Mk 3 defensive has a built-in shield recharger for PvP runs.
The other four aren’t worth the crafting components once you finally find their blueprints. I’ve equipped them when I’ve found them, but never felt compelled to actually make one. The so-called “aggressive” combat augment, for example, regenerates a mere two health every five seconds. On top of that, it pauses for 30 seconds when you take damage, rendering it virtually useless for its one purpose, aggressive combat.
Unlike the weapons, augments don’t need a rebalance. They need a total rethink. Top-tier augments should have a defining attribute that enables new playstyles, and Embark knows this: the studio added two new epic augments as part of the Headwinds update, including one that lets you stick a gun in your safe pocket. That’s a start, but I think the useless ones need to be culled and replaced by more imaginative ideas. I love the fact that the more common tactical augment deploys a smoke when your shield breaks, and that the level-two looting augment makes you immune to face-hugging ticks. More of that, please.
Clearly, I find Arc Raiders compelling despite this problem with rare loot (and despite its insistence on genAI voice acting). But there’s no doubt in my mind that late-game balance is a problem, one Embark needs to get a grip on as new players continue to join and as experienced players, like me, look for reasons to stick around beyond its first few months.
Samuel Horti is a journalist with bylines at the BBC, IGN, Insider Business, and Edge.
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