Arc Raiders devs say weak raider skills will get buffs

Design lead Virgil Watkins told GamesRadar buffs are "100% on our radar" and said Expedition skill point rewards currently give up to five extra points but will be capped later.

Embark Studios design lead Virgil Watkins told GamesRadar the team is aware that several skills in the Arc Raiders raider tree are underpowered and that buffing them is “100% on our radar.”

“I think even internally, we know,” Watkins said. “There’s certain skills I don’t choose. So yeah, 100%. I’m not going to pretend there aren’t some on there that need some work. That’ll be something that changes again. I won’t say when or in what nature, but we’re not deaf to the state of it.”

Watkins explained one reason the studio must be careful about rebalancing skills is how Expeditions interact with the skill system. Completing an Expedition and soft-wiping your character currently awards up to five extra skill points you can spend in future cycles. Those extra points compound over time and can become an advantage for repeated Expedition runners. Embark plans to cap that point reward later so it does not grow without limit.

Watkins said Embark does not want this progression to let high level players completely overpower newcomers. He noted that core stats such as max health and gun damage are intended to stay constant, and that skill rewards should provide mostly quality of life or modest benefits instead of creating a pay-off that breaks matchmaking balance.

When asked which skills the team is watching, Watkins pointed to melee-focused options and other skills that have little impact when fully upgraded. He said the melee skills were more practical during early skill-tree development but fell out of relevance once player engagement patterns and combat distances became clearer.

“Speaking for myself, maybe someone out there will disagree, but the ones that are centered around melee hits on certain things, like taking [Arc] out in one shot and stuff like that,” Watkins said. “If I recall, back when we were starting to build a skill tree, the way the melee system was then and the way certain things would play out, that was a little more practical. But then once you see how people are actually engaging with the game, and the distances at which they prefer to take on stuff, those kind of fell by the wayside a little bit.”

He added that there are other skills that even at five points feel insignificant in moment-to-moment play and that the team will look at adjustments for those as well. “Yeah, we can see about what we do with those,” Watkins said.

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