Arc Raiders Is Finally Getting More Endgame Content
Overview & Key Takeaways
Aleksander Grøndal, an executive producer on Arc Raiders, has revealed that there will be more endgame content coming soon.
Arc Raiders, despite having a concurrent player population of 25,000 on a daily basis according to SteamDB, has significantly dwindled in popularity over the last year. Once upon a time, it boasted more than 480,000 concurrent players on Steam alone. There are many reasons for the dip in popularity, but one of the less polarizing explanations is simply that there isn't much for players to do in the endgame.
Sure, players can take repeatedly down the Queen and the Matriarch — two colossal enemies that require some of the game's strongest and rarest weaponry, not to mention a coordinated team, because they're practically impossible to defeat solo. Once they've figured out the strategy and have a squad that can achieve that without much struggle, however, they're naturally going to look at other games.
Alternatively, players can pick fights with other raiders for a more dynamic challenge, but since that will cause their lobbies to no longer be full of friendly players thanks to the aggression-based matchmaking, it's less appealing. (Not to mention the rampant reports of cheaters in PvP lobbies). The Arc Raiders endgame has certainly stagnated this year.
Ahead of the Arc Raiders Frozen Trail update, the game's first major update in six months, I asked Aleksander Grøndal, executive producer at Embark Studios, if the team is aware of the complaints around the lack of endgame content, and furthermore, if there are any plans to address them.
"Frozen Trail will bring some new things to do, repeatable activities that they can do and challenge themselves in completely new ways," Grøndal told me. "I think this is more of a longer term initiative for us to try to capture. So what we see is that different players have different needs in this regard. Some players are perfectly happy to do what we have today with trials and expeditions, and they will continue doing that."
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On the other hand, Grøndal explained, the team wants to offer more incentives for players to fight other raiders. "They don't really feel like there are enough rewards for them to play PvP outside of just doing the PvP itself. So our goal going forward is to address that more specifically. Based on different player needs, we need to have different solutions in place. A catch-all solution is probably not the right approach here."
Frozen Trail isn't going to be the definitive answer to this problem, but he explained that it "will take a step in that direction," and that the team has "more longer term plans to deal with." But he clarified that he's not referring to the next big update, which will occur roughly six months after Frozen Trail, as smaller updates will also introduce solutions to this issue.
Arc Raiders' Frozen Trail update is scheduled to release on Thursday, Oct. 8.
