ARC Raiders is moving quickly to hang on to its huge playerbase, which has assembled this month after a stellar launch. Complaints are addressed quickly, issues are fixed, new things are added. Today, there are a few new changes to go through based on popular fan feedback. Here’s what Embark said today about what’s coming to or changing in ARC Raiders:
Duo Matchmaking
ARC Raiders will now have Duo prioritized matchmaking. Solos and Squads will play separately as the first layer, but after that, the game will prioritize Duos to play with other Duos and Trios to play with Trios. There are no guarantees that this will work every time, but it’s at least the goal of the new system. This is already live as of this week, as they were “silently testing” it until now.
Store Cosmetic Prices
It is not terribly unusual for players to complain that microtransactions are too expensive in games, but it is unusual for developers to actually change that. Here, Embark says that they will “lower prices where applicable” which will begin tomorrow on Thursday, November 13 at 10:30 CET. We do not know which cosmetics will be affected by this, nor how much prices will be reduced, and we’ll figure that out tomorrow. The fact that it’s happening at all, and this early into game launch, is significant, however.
Raider Decks
Right now, there’s a free Raider Deck for ARC Raiders players, but Embark says there will be a paid premium one in the future. Before everyone freaks out, Embark wants to make it clear that gameplay items are only in the free deck. The premium decks feature no gameplay or “pay to win” items and will only be cosmetics and “convenience” (hmm).
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ARC Raiders found itself in the middle of a controversy this week, bound to a review by Eurogamer that gave the game its lowest score of the review cycle, a 4/10, almost entirely due to its use of AI voicework. The voices were generated with actors giving the rights to remix them for the game, but there is an “all AI is bad AI” conversation here, and the debate was whether or not Eurogamer was right or wrong to make that the major contributor to the score. In any case, Embark has used similar genAI in past games like The Finals, and is a representative of the industry shifting toward the tech in small ways, which could eventually be big ways.
Anyway, all this is live now, or goes live tomorrow.
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