Arc Raiders lead says "revisions are probably required" on uneven events like Locked Gate and Hidden Bunker, which have just become a camper's dream
649
Scott McCrae
2026-02-22
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Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins admits that some of the in-game events are a bit too beneficial to campers, and probably need a bit of balancing.
With any online game, no matter how much developers test anything, players will find the most effective way of working around it. Masahiro Sakurai never directed Super Smash Bros Melee with the intention of it being a competitive fighting game, but it spawned the possibly biggest fighting game sub-community of all time. So it's likely impossible to truly tell until it's in people's hands.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Watkins was asked about events like Locked Gate and Hidden Bunker which allow players to camp at entrances to reap the rewards instead of completing the tasks. He responded "So that one's a good use case for where revisions are probably required, right?" Watkins explains, "when we built that, we had an idealised way of how we hoped people would engage with it. And then, you know, as players always do, they find this sort of meta throughline."
Arc Raiders dev says "we do analyze behavior and match accordingly," so maybe start playing nice
Arc Raiders lead responds to complaints about late spawns, says late joiners are important and "profit way more"
While playing Arc Raiders, Embark leads clarify they only added true "aggression-based" matchmaking fairly recently
And while "we thought at the time would be an ok mitigation factor for Hidden Bunker is that we tried to stack pretty deadly enemies near the entrance," players are already good enough at the game that it isn't really a problem for them. Watkins explains, "Now that we have tons of live data, we can go look at those existing map conditions, because there's a few others that have similar issues." However, it's not as simple as changing it drastically, as he adds "it's about us trying to keep the spirit of those, but adjust the mechanics so you're not getting quite those moments."
Arc Raiders players tried to rig matchmaking by lying in post-match surveys, but Embark says those don't do a darn thing
brokenKeyboard
Feb 22, 10:02 PM
this is calming.
floppyFish
Feb 22, 09:02 PM
Generally okay. cold Autosaves are bad. I demolished it.
snackLord
Feb 22, 06:12 PM
this is clear. terrible soundtrack. 🌈 awesome does it matter?
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