ARC Raiders is another game that’s going to be coming our way fairly soon, wedged between FPS juggernauts Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty Black Ops 7. As a third-person extraction shooter, it occupies a somewhat different space, and now the team at Embark have shared some detail on a discussion topic that games like ARC Raiders often bump into – progression wipes. For Embark, they’re called ‘Expedition Projects’.
While Design Director Virgil notes the benefits a global wipe or reset provide, the team don’t intend to have mandatory wipes that reset players back to the starting line. “Previously, the question of how we will handle resets or wipes has come up. Until now, the answer has been that “currently we do not intend to do mandatory wipes.” These words were chosen carefully, as we don’t intend to have mandatory wipes. However, as some have guessed, we do have a voluntary reset mechanic. Just to make it clear, we absolutely see the benefits a global wipe provides. Veteran players can experience the game fresh, the economy is reset to the baseline, and all players have about the same level of capabilities. At least for a little while.“
Instead, Embark have opted to create a new method, one that they feel ‘best suits ARC Raiders and a larger majority of its players’. This is called ‘The Expedition Project’. The idea here is that when a player hits level 20, they’ll have access to this project, and once complete, it will make the option to reset the players character possible.
Per the blog, “The Expedition Project will operate on a repeating cycle of roughly 8 weeks. During the course of these 8 weeks, players can contribute toward and make progress on their Expedition Project, which will overall be a somewhat large time investment. At the start of the 8th week, the ability to finalize the project will become available and will remain available for that entire week. If a player has fulfilled all of the necessary stages of the project, they will be able to commit to completing the Expedition during this period. Should a player’s project not be ready during the window to complete the Expedition project, their progress will be kept, allowing them to continue working on the project until the next finalization window. Other projects may be added over time as part of updates, holidays, and other events. These will range in scale and reward structure.“
It’s a pretty interesting solution, providing more challenge for veteran players, and it keeps the game fresh. Players will lose levels, skills, items in their inventory, crafting capabilities and so on. They’ll keep any unlocked cosmetics, awards and rankings. There are other benefits planned, though these are still being finalised, though they’ve shared they will follow something akin to the list below.
- Permanent account unlocks for each completed Expedition
- Unique cosmetic rewards for each completed Expedition
- Account “buffs” that are applied for the duration of the following Expedition cycle
- And sequential completions of the Expedition Project increase the magnitude of these buffs, up to a limit.
Embark are keen to stress that they’re being deliberately careful about how these benefits will work, and that completing a character reset should never reward the player with a power or combat advantage above anyone else. If you’re interested in learning more, head here.
If you’re keen to play more ARC Raiders ahead of launch, the team are holding a ‘server slam’ event across all platforms to really get the game’s networking put through its paces. You can read more about that here.
Are you going to hoard all your gear in ARC Raiders, or brave a reset every now and then? Let us know in the XboxEra Forums or make some noise on our lively Community Discord Server.
