Developer Embark Studios has reviewed some of the player complaints regarding the new Arc Raiders Shrouded Sky update, and it has seemingly found them wanting. A new post from community admin Ossen outlines the thinking behind some divisive new changes, but makes it clear that nothing about them is changing right now.
Arc Raiders players were served two spoonfuls of medicine in the recent Shrouded Sky update, with the machine-deleting Wolfpack and Deadline explosives eating nerfs in the form of new crafting requirements that include rarer Arc materials – respectively, Rocketeer drives and the guts of the new Comet bot. Some folks (and, I imagine, the Arc) were in favor of the change, but fury from players used to crafting dozens of these things with relative ease came thick and fast.
On Discord (server link), Ossen, after acknowledging the more pressing issue of new crashes, which now have solutions in the works, wades into Wolfpack discourse.
"We understand your frustrations with the new crafting recipes," she writes. "We adjusted the Wolfpack recipe by adding a Rocketeer Driver and removing two Explosive Compounds to bring the ratio of cost vs effectiveness more in line with the trend of other items.
"Wolfpacks offered a lot for their cost (fast deployment, auto-tracking, and very high damage), so rather than diminish the capability of the Wolfpack itself, we opted to adjust the crafting components to better reflect its power."
In other words, you can keep your Arc delete button, but you're going to have to work for it a little more.
I do think there's room for improvement with this change. Rocketeers are notoriously, inexplicably stingy with drives, often dropping just one or two, where less dangerous Arc reliably dish out six or more. And crafting a Wolfpack only for its tracking to go haywire and waste your resources feels extra terrible now. But as a Wolfpack fan myself, I do think they were too good and needed some kind of nerf, and I also feel that Arc Raiders is more fun when you want more resources and interact with more Arc. (Deadlines are completely fine, by the way; I've gotten tons of Comet cores without even trying so I barely notice the new crafting recipe, plus you can buy one Deadline a day from a vendor.)
Ossen also examines "feedback about the weapon balancing" shipped in Shrouded Sky, which included more nerfs to the Venator and some hits to the Stitcher and Kettle. Players were shocked that the Il Toro shotgun, a cheap two-shotting machine that gains disgusting range when equipped with a level 3 choke, escaped the patch unscathed.
Turns out Embark is way ahead of those players: "work is currently underway" to balance the effectiveness of the Il Toro. What shape that takes remains to be seen. Personally, I do think the choke benefits are the real problem, so hopefully the gun itself weathers the storm alright.
"Balancing weapons is an ongoing priority for the team," Ossen adds. "We regularly analyze telemetry and read community discussions to ensure changes are informed and measured."
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