ARC Raiders’ biggest update since launch dropped this morning, and the return on player opinions is pretty mixed so far.
The Riven Tides update, on top of adding a new map and other content, featured several balancing changes to items and weapons in the game. But after a few hours of play, ARC Raiders gamers seem to have a number of complaints about what’s been changed.
A hefty nerf to the Photoelectric Cloak, which allows players to go un-seen to the AI ARC enemies, seems to be the biggest problem for the majority of angry players. In the update, its weight value tripled while its power usage rate quadrupled, leaving gamers upset.
“When are devs going to understand making the game tedious does not equal more fun or more engagement?” one player said. “This is beyond frustrating.”
“The Photoelectric Cloak has been quite aggressively over-performing, especially in regards to the length of time it can be activated,” Embark Studios explained. “This change is intended to add more intentionality between uses; it still has the same strength while activated, but now you might need to find cover sooner, or think more about how you approach areas heavily contested by ARC.”
Another massive change was to weapon durability, which heavily nerfed the length of viability for weapons depending on rarity, while buffing the durability for the rarest guns. For example, Common rarity guns got a 75 percent increase to durability loss per each shot. Yikes.
“Durability is such a dumb game mechanic that for some reason people think they need in their games,” another frustrated Raider complained. “It doesn’t actually add anything to the experience or the realism, it just makes you grind to keep things you already worked for.”
The new map, which seems to be going over well, is getting heavily overshadowed when it comes to overall discussion about Riven Tides. The patch notes have left a pretty negative impression on the community, despite a big bump in active players trying out the game on Steam.
