Embark didn't expect players to take down ARC Raiders' giant bosses with the whole lobby
Embark has openly acknowledged a balance problem with the key PvE encounters in ARC Raiders. Design director Virgil Watkins admitted that the Matriarch and Queen bosses are being killed far faster than intended.
"Even though [Queens and Matriarchs are] huge and deadly, they're not intended for the full server to go up against and get equally rewarded. It is meant to be, you know, a couple of dedicated squads, maybe working together while also dealing with other players."
Right now, situations arise where a Matriarch gets taken down within minutes – and some players who join 20 minutes before the end of a round find nothing but scraps.
"That's definitely on us to an extent … I think we gave players too effective abilities to take down these things too early. So they were tuned more for what I would call mid-game gear."
When a boss dies that quickly, nobody ends up fighting each other, and there simply isn't enough loot to go around.
Simply making the bosses tankier won't solve the problem, though. Embark's intent for these encounters is to support different playstyles: some players wait for the right moment to grab part of the loot and slip away unnoticed, others jump in at the final stage when everyone else is exhausted and out of ammo, and some try to rally everyone together for a fair fight. Then there are those who turn on other players and loot the best gear from their bodies.
A separate issue involves the Locked Gate and Hidden Bunker events. These paradoxically encourage players to skip the map objectives – finding keys and activating antennae – and instead camp the closed entrance until it opens on its own. There's no incentive to run around the map when you can just wait for someone else to do the work. It's a textbook example of what economists call the "free-rider problem."
Embark continues to monitor player feedback for ARC Raiders and plans future changes based on that data. The next boss may well be tougher and harder to take down.
