As Arc Raiders enters a peaceful era of jolly cooperation, I'm begging Embark Studios to make the robots terrifying again

Arc Raiders cold snap — (Image credit: Embark)

I liked Arc Raiders well enough, icky associations with AI notwithstanding. I mainly play it for work purposes, but occasionally dip in of my own accord when I have a chance, shooting at robots with friends and filling my pockets with damp trash.

The problem is, recently Arc's been a bit too… pliant. Toothless. Five games in a row yesterday, and not a single real peril encountered, barely a bullet fired. The robots are oblivious, and the humans tip their hats in casual greeting as I pass them by in the street. I doubt this is the intended experience, and clearly, something needs to change – and a reboot to the robot forces seems like the obvious place to begin.

Arc, the periled rangers sing!

Arc Raiders Bastions — (Image credit: Embark Studios)

A little kick

Arc Raiders Shared Watch event update. — (Image credit: Embark Studios)

PvP is the reason Arc Raiders works – love it or hate it, even Embark's design lead says it "adds the spice"

At time of writing, Arc Raiders has gone through three distinct eras. First you had the Age of Chaos, those first weeks where everybody was still learning the rules, and it was all thrillingly unpredictable. Nobody really understood the nuances, plus we were all mostly low level and still aspiring to better things, so all the loot had real value. Then came the Age of War – players worked out how to handle the robots, and so the only interesting thing left was hunting players. This coincided in part with the Stella Montis map, and Arc went through its PvP era for a while. It was… rough, to say the least.

But now we're in the Age of Peace. When even hunting players has lost its spice, now the player base is largely just focused on mission completion and efficiency. There's very little point hunting other humans – you've probably got plenty of all the standard loot they're carrying, and the one unique blueprint or Wolfpack Grenade that would be worth fighting them for is in their Safe Pocket where you can't get it, so what's even the point? I used to be terrified of other players in Arc, but now I barely register their presence. Getting killed by one feels like weird behaviour now, something that barely inconveniences me and doesn't help them. Oh no, I lost my broken bicycle pump. Say it ain't so.

Arc Raiders best weapons — (Image credit: Embark Studios)

Arc Raiders is a good game, but it's clearly reached a bit of a plateau as the game struggles to outpace the community's skill level

Some of this is just the inevitable result of playing a game into the endgame – but then again, stagnation is not really supposed to happen in these theoretically endless live service games. And the playerbase seems to have firmly decided that this is a PvE game, so Arc Raiders needs to embrace that, and that means making all the robots an actual challenge again.

We're apparently getting a new robot enemy with the Arc Raiders Shrouded Sky update, but I doubt that'll be enough to fix the issue. It's interesting, sure, but if Arc Raiders is a PvE game in which the P is proudly pissing on the E from a great height, then a general enhancement for the robotic forces seems in order. Personally, I'd do it by increasing their numbers – going back to Helldivers 2 recently taught me that holding off huge swathes of enemies until you're overrun continues to be a great time, and even stealthing around Arc's forces would be much more tense if they're far more omnipresent.

Arc Raiders is a good game, but it's clearly reached a bit of a plateau as the game struggles to outpace the community's skill level and provide a constant drip feed of new content to pit them against. Giving all their robots a much-needed kick up the exhaust port feels like the next natural step. It's time to fear the bots again.

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