TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 1,997
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
"There's still interesting gameplay to have with them," so never say never.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
I don't think anyone had it on their bingo cards that Arc Raiders' machine design and AI would be so good that people would fervently demand a PvE mode in an extraction shooter. If you did, then good for you, I guess. But it wasn't always that way, not least because the team was flip-flopping between genres practically every day: One moment the Arc would be Souls-inspired difficulty, and then the next, the players would be the powerhouse.
After Arc Raiders' production director, Caio Braga, mentioned in his GDC talk that their in-house data team were behind several key overhauls, like PvP, we asked him for a history lesson on the Arc machines in a post-talk interview.
Braga recalled a moment during testing where the Arc machines overall received negative feedback, and the team's initial reaction was that it was simply an issue with content, that there wasn't enough variety and they needed to make more. The data team realised that, no, players loved the Arc as a concept, just not all of the individual types.
Braga explained that this largely came down to players' understanding of how to fight them, and some admittedly unfair balancing. So, which Arc were the least favourite during development?
"Of course, making new enemies is much more fun than fixing the ones you have that aren't performing," Braga said, but it was nonetheless a necessary step, reinforced by more nuanced conclusions from the playtest data. So, fix a handful of the Arc they did, and the player sentiment flipped positive.
Naturally, we asked Braga if feedback on any of the current Arcs indicates that they require similar tweaking, to which he replied, "Not really." That's more or less because learning this lesson during development paved the way forward. Of course, minor changes to existing Arcs do happen—it wasn't long ago that the dreaded Rocketeer was 'fixed' to make it more aggressive, if that's even possible.
"We're always evolving their technology and behaviour trees. We wanted to go quite deep on the tech, and we've had a few breakthroughs there."
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
As for Arcs that were cut during production, these are largely the big machines built for the original vision of the game, where you were competing t...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
I don't think anyone had it on their bingo cards that Arc Raiders' machine design and AI would be so good that people would fervently demand a PvE mode in an extraction shooter. If you did, then good for you, I guess. But it wasn't always that way, not least because the team was flip-flopping between genres practically every day: One moment the Arc would be Souls-inspired difficulty, and then the next, the players would be the powerhouse.
After Arc Raiders' production director, Caio Braga, mentioned in his GDC talk that their in-house data team were behind several key overhauls, like PvP, we asked him for a history lesson on the Arc machines in a post-talk interview.
Braga recalled a moment during testing where the Arc machines overall received negative feedback, and the team's initial reaction was that it was simply an issue with content, that there wasn't enough variety and they needed to make more. The data team realised that, no, players loved the Arc as a concept, just not all of the individual types.
Braga explained that this largely came down to players' understanding of how to fight them, and some admittedly unfair balancing. So, which Arc were the least favourite during development?
"Of course, making new enemies is much more fun than fixing the ones you have that aren't performing," Braga said, but it was nonetheless a necessary step, reinforced by more nuanced conclusions from the playtest data. So, fix a handful of the Arc they did, and the player sentiment flipped positive.
Naturally, we asked Braga if feedback on any of the current Arcs indicates that they require similar tweaking, to which he replied, "Not really." That's more or less because learning this lesson during development paved the way forward. Of course, minor changes to existing Arcs do happen—it wasn't long ago that the dreaded Rocketeer was 'fixed' to make it more aggressive, if that's even possible.
"We're always evolving their technology and behaviour trees. We wanted to go quite deep on the tech, and we've had a few breakthroughs there."
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
As for Arcs that were cut during production, these are largely the big machines built for the original vision of the game, where you were competing t...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?