Arc Raiders

The Game Room
21

So they built expeditions into the game which is basically a character reset every 8 weeks that you can voluntarily do. You get reset - all your gear is gone, you’re back to level 1, you don’t have any workbenches, all your blueprints are unlearned. The idea is that a lot of people will want to feel like they’re progressing again and by having everyone do it at the same time you’ll get a period where a lot of people are starting over again together.

They seem to really want people to do this reset, but the rewards… are not good. It’s a pretty big deal to reset all your progress and especially all your blueprint knowledge which are random and hard to get again. And to do it, they’re giving a cosmetic (no one has seen), 12 stash slots (so… 280 to 292), and up to 5 extra skill points going forward. Those are pretty meager rewards for resetting everything.

They did seem to say early on that the bonuses would be temporary, only until the next expedition, but now they seem to be saying they’re permanent, they’ll keep stacking. So if you keep playing the game, you can keep getting +12 stash slots, 5 extra skill points, etc.

Still, I’m somewhat interested in starting the whole thing over again with a bunch of people, but those rewards are so meager that I’m not sure I’m going to bother.

And worse, you don’t just get 5 extra skill points for resetting. It’s based on the value of your stash, items and cash combined. You get 1 skill point per 1 million dollars worth of stash you have. Which is really stupid. For one, they didn’t tell us this until a week or two before the expedition starts. If they were going to require us to save a shitload of money to get the full benefit, they should’ve told us that at the start, not when we don’t have time to grind out that cash. For two, their design philosophy is that they don’t want people to hoard their stuff. They want people to use the stuff they’ve looted and crafted and won. But if your incentive for wiping requires people to save up, you’re basically dictating that people run around with cheap minimal loadouts and save all of their valuable gear to meet the skill point threshold. It runs contrary to their design philosophy.

I think they’ve mismanaged this whole expedition thing and while they expect probably the majority of the player base to do it, I suspect unless they change the rewards they’re probably looking at half or less than they expect.

22

I decided to do a few totally passive runs. In part to avoid starting any trials. You get put on a trials leaderboard as soon as you extract with any trial points, and if you get on the trials leaderboards on Monday you’re more likely to get paired with people who play all the time (and thus are more likely to get high trial scores). Waiting a couple of days after the reset on Monday gets you easier trials leaderboards.

I think the nature’s bounty event is probably the best way to make money – the plant products you find around the map during those actually sell for quite a bit of money and since you’re usually skirting around the edge of the map in theory you’re probably staying further from other players but I suppose if everyone is there to do the same thing you’ll have a higher portion of the people on the map running around the edges with you. I did about 2 hours of runs, didn’t fire a single shot, and made around 300,000 dollars.

I guess I’m saving up for the expedition even though I don’t even really know why I’m doing it. I guess maybe it’s a little bit of FOMO (if I keep playing the game and do the expedition a few times the meager bonuses start to add up) and a little bit that it’ll probably be fun to do all the progression things again. I resent having to grind out a bunch of money to get the skill points, but I do enjoy the fundamental gameplay loop of just sneaking around and looting stuff.

23

I had an odd experience today. Stella Montis is by far the most hostile of all the maps. People treat it basically as a deathmatch map and you often see piles of 10+ corpses in a room when huge fights attract more people who then kill other people, etc.

I played about an hour and a half of stella montis yesterday afternoon. 6 or 7 runs. Almost everyone was peaceful. Maybe 10% of the people were shooting others. I thought maybe the fact that everyone is trying to stockpile cash for the expedition changed the way everyone plays – they’re too busy earning money to risk PVP. It was very unusual.

And then I played Stella Montis again overnight. Same server, PC only, same conditions other than the time of day. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON I came across shot at me. Not a single peaceful person. It was the complete opposite of the previous experience I’d had 12 hours earlier.

I’m having trouble coming up with an explanation for the difference. Does late at night create a much more hostile crowd? Is there some sort of hidden matchmaking that puts friendly people together and unfriendly people together, and did I get my matchmaking changed because I killed a few people in self defense? I’m not sure. I don’t think it was a random fluke, there was definitely a massive difference in culture among the groups I faced.

24

I’ve read some speculation that time of day is a big factor in the hostility levels, depending on when kids are playing the game vs. adults, and the like.

I have noticed that there are a lot fewer griefers lately, though. I haven’t been killed in several days, and most of the people I run across are actually friendly, and helpful. I mentioned to one guy that I was looking for a particular item for a quest, and about 30 second later, he tells me he just found one in a container I hadn’t checked yet, and dropped it for me.

I’ve had others hold the elevator for me as I was sprinting to extract, and several times where we’ve spontaneously joined forces to kill some ARCs.

25

One of the minor devs mentioned that there were “behavioral factors” in matchmaking and people are starting to think that means you get matched up with people with similar levels of aggression and I think that’s probably true. It seems like it counts the last 5 or 10 games you’ve been in more heavily. If I get in a few fights, even in self defense, I sometimes switch over to much more hostile lobbies and I have to place very passively to get back to the more peaceful lobbies. It doesn’t seem gradual either, it seems like a flip you switch and go back and forth.

I’m not sure if I’m a fan of the system or not. Probably. I mean, I like the idea of hostile people only meeting other hostile people. But the peaceful lobbies may be a tiny bit too peaceful. I don’t want the full blown deathmatch of the hostile lobbies but having no risk in the peaceful lobbies might make the game get a bit stale.

26

Big content update with a winter event and winter versions of the maps. You get cold and lose health outdoors, the snow builds up on your character in a really cool way, you leave footprints, and there’s an event with cosmetic unlocks.

Expedition starts in 4 days. I ended up making 5m to get full benefits from it. I feel kinda dumb because it turned the game into a job. I don’t think I’m going to do that next season. I think they’ll probably come up with a less unfun way of getting expedition bonuses

27

The pacing of that is driving me nuts. I won’t lose anything for a while, and then suddenly, I look and I’m at half-health. I went looking for berries specifically, and ended up damn near dying because I started to freeze just when a damn robot showed up. Trying to find a warm spot while also fighting or dodging is a losing prospect. I might run some free loadout runs just to collect berries, so I don’t lose any more good items.