In an interview, the Design Director of ARC Raiders discusses that the abilities are not yet where the developers would like them to be.
What is the problem? In a podcast episode of “Game Maker’s Notebook“, Design Director Virgil Watkins talked about what makes the changes to the various abilities and the skill tree so difficult and what is important to the developers in the upcoming changes.
The trigger for the discussion was the challenge of designing the ability tree to offer exciting, gameplay innovations without slipping into boring value improvements. The main problem is finding a fair balance so that players focused on survival and loot do not have a completely hopeless situation against players with pure combat abilities.
This is now supposed to change more significantly. The upcoming change to expeditions, which states that the damage dealt will play a bigger role (not just hoarding coins) in earning possible ability points, is supposed to be another step in the right direction. However, many players had little enthusiasm for this decision, especially for the ongoing expedition.
“I believe we haven’t gotten it perfect at all”
How do the developers plan to proceed in the future? Since this balancing act hasn’t been successful so far, many abilities in the game currently feel useless. A fundamental overhaul is therefore necessary, as Watkins confirms: “It has been a difficult problem area for us, and I believe we haven’t gotten it perfect at all. There are definitely abilities that do not fully utilize their potential.”
He further states that where possible, they want to avoid minor statistical adjustments and instead make targeted, significant changes to the skill trees and existing abilities. Changes should feel important and bring noticeable shifts in the gameplay experience. According to Atkins, ideally every change should bring a sense of “Oh, I now have a completely new ability, or I can now do something I couldn’t do before.”
Moreover, it is especially difficult to maintain the balance between players who prefer PvE and those who favor PvP within the skill tree. Watkins raises the question of whether someone who invests points in a combat-focused skill tree should automatically win against someone who has invested more in survival or loot abilities in PvP.
This is just one of many questions that the development team is increasingly asking themselves, and hopefully, they will find answers in upcoming updates.
The topic of balancing between PvE and PvP enthusiasts in ARC Raiders also continuously occupies the community. The gap between them is not as wide as they think, and the community even creates an exciting phenomenon: “You don’t know what you’ve created” – Your behavior in ARC Raiders fascinates even criminologists
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