Four Ways ARC Raiders Could Level Up: My Wishlist After the Tech Test

 

 As my last post indicates, I’m excited for ARC Raiders after having a fabulous time in the recent tech test. And as often happens when I get excited about games I wasn’t previously following, my head fills with ideas about how the game could improve even further. And when that happens—my blogging activity picks up pace!

Idea 1: Add a Gadget Slot

 ARC Raiders includes gadget-like items such as binoculars, which have useful but relatively low-value functions. However, since they take up a full inventory slot, they're often among the first things discarded—or not even considered in the first place.

 If the game added a dedicated gadget slot for items like binoculars, it would increase their value and usability. These items would no longer compete for valuable loot slots, allowing players to enjoy their benefits without sacrifice. Ideally, this slot would remain limited to simple gadgets like binoculars, and not include rare or powerful gear.

Idea 2: Let Us Upgrade Our Crowbar

 One of the signature items every Raider carries is their crowbar. Doors, probes, fallen ARC robots, lockers, chests, electrical cabinets—you name it, and Raiders are busting it open with their crowbar (other Raiders' skulls included). The crowbar is so important that you always have it on you by default, without needing to equip it. You also don’t lose it when you die—a rare design decision in an extraction shooter.

 There are even skills in the trees that affect how fast you can loot and break into things. It feels like a missed opportunity that these effects weren’t moved into an upgrade system for the crowbar instead. If crowbars could be upgraded, and those upgrades dropped on death like other gear, it would add an extra layer of risk and reward.

Idea 3: Let Us Bring Scrappy With Us

 I love the concept of Scrappy—the lovable, loot-gathering chicken who’s become the de facto mascot of ARC Raiders. He passively collects materials and lets players retrieve them through the workshop menu. This system ensures players always have a cache of basic materials (and rarer ones as Scrappy levels up).

 But wouldn’t it be awesome if you could switch Scrappy to an active mode where he follows you around on raids and gathers items at a faster rate? Imagine walking into a room and seeing another raider’s Scrappy picking through scraps. Upon spotting you, he squawks a loud BAWK and scrambles off, alerting you to where his owner might be but also having alerted everyone else to your arrival.

 Once he’s loaded up, you could send Scrappy off to extract, even as you continue exploring. But if another Raider catches him before extraction, they could pop him like a loot pinata. Or maybe that Scrappy is just bait. Part alarm system, part loot chicken, and maybe even a clever trap—it’s honestly a brilliant concept.

Idea 4: A Shared Social Hub

 Currently, everything in Speranza—the underground home of the Raiders—is accessed through menus. Visiting your workshop? Menu. Visiting traders? Menu. Forming a group? Menu. Meanwhile, in the background of the main menu, there's a beautiful, animated scene of a bar or shop with characters walking around, announcements playing, and life happening. It hints at a real depth of character in Speranza.

 So why not let us explore it? Turn Speranza into a shared social hub and housing area!

 I get that some players just want to jump from one raid to the next, and might get bored walking from one crafting station to another. But for those of us who enjoy social connections and showing off our accomplishments, a shared space would be fantastic.

 In fact, I’d argue that adding housing or a social hub could take ARC Raiders to the next level—which would be impressive, considering the buzz it's already generating. Plus, this is an extraction game. What’s better than extracting with an amazing reward you can permanently display to other players?

 And seriously—who looks at the stunning background of the main menu and doesn’t want to walk into that world and interact with the characters? Who watches the pre-raid “walking” loading screen and doesn’t wish they could walk there themselves?

 Maybe it’s just the MMORPG player in me wanting more from the game than just the raids—but I truly believe ARC Raiders would be even more awesome if Speranza were a place we could explore.

 

Note: this post was edited with the help of AI (ChatGPT). The thoughts are my own.  The grammatical correctness is the AI. Curious what edits were made? See ChatGPT's explanation below.

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Explanation of Edits from ChatGPT

Here are the main types of edits I made:

1. Punctuation and Sentence Structure

   • Replaced semicolons and misplaced commas with proper punctuation to clarify sentence flow.

   • Broke up run-on sentences for easier readability.

   • Used em dashes (—) to emphasize interruptions or thoughts for a conversational tone.

2. Grammar and Word Choice

   • Corrected small grammatical errors, such as subject-verb agreement and verb tense.

   • Refined wordiness in places (e.g., “the higher level you upgrade Scrappy” → “as Scrappy levels up”).

3. Clarity and Consistency

   • Clarified ambiguous phrasing like “they are getting the benefits from them” to something cleaner like “allowing players to enjoy their benefits.”

   • Made style consistent (e.g., italicizing game titles like ARC Raiders).

4. Tone Preservation

   • Maintained your enthusiastic, personal voice. You use rhetorical questions and humor effectively, so I left those intact while improving grammar around them.

 

 

ARC Raiders is something different

 I recently participated in the Tech Test 2 for ARC Raiders, and I walked away wanting more. I haven’t had a game ignite a desire to keep playing like this since I picked up New World years ago. ARC Raiders is something different!

 ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter where you play as a raider entering a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by ARC—robots hellbent on killing you—with the goal of scavenging items and returning (i.e., extracting) to your underground home. Of course, ARC robots aren’t your only concern; other players are also hunting for loot, and what better source than your dead body? If you die, you lose your stuff—both equipped gear and any loot. Thus goes the loop of an extraction shooter: loot and extract, or die.

 ARC Raiders makes some changes to the formula to soften the sting of death. In standard play, you have a number of safe pockets in your pack. Anything stored in those safe pockets will be retained, regardless of whether you extract successfully. This ensures you can walk away with something, even if the run goes sideways.

 Secondly, ARC Raiders offers the concept of “free loadouts.” When you opt for a freebie, you load into the world with a random set of basic gear: a gun, some bullets, and a few consumables like bandages. This lets you jump in and play even if you’re out of resources—or if you just want a quick run without risking valuable gear. I found this mode especially helpful after a bad string of deaths. It let me rebuild my supplies so I could gear back up for more serious raids. It’s also a great option if you only have a few minutes to play and want a shot at some loot. Worst case, you lose a little time—but at zero resource cost.

 The resources you extract from a raid can be used in crafting stations or traded with vendors. Items can also be recycled into other materials or sold for coin. Crafting stations are upgradeable, which of course requires increasingly better materials at each level. Vendors sell a variety of items for coin. Whether you craft your way there or trade your way there, resources let you gear up for your next raid. Sadly, there is no player-to-player trading.

 You might think other players are your biggest concern, but the ARC robots are no joke. Every ARC enemy needs to be approached thoughtfully. For example, the Snitch may seem harmless—until you miss your shot and it has time to call in backup. Now you’re fighting multiple ARCs. Ignored that skittering noise in the next room? Now you’ve got a face-hugging Tick to deal with!

 The ARC robots also get big. The Queen was the ultimate boss of the tech test—a giant, spider-like machine that required coordination and often multiple groups of raiders to bring down (that is, assuming players could resist killing each other long enough to cooperate). There are even rumors of a bigger threat—the King—awaiting players in the launch version. If you paid attention on the Buried City map, you could see massive walker ARCs off in the distance just outside the map's boundary.

 As should be obvious, care must be taken every step of the way during a raid. Make too much noise, and you’ll attract ARCs—or worse, alert other players. Got a quest to collect parts from a fallen ARC? You’ll need a plan for how to take one down and loot the components safely. Then you’ll need an extraction plan.

 Extracting in ARC Raiders is a tense sequence of events. First, you press a button to call an elevator or train. Next comes an excruciating wait for it to arrive. Then you have to board and activate it. To ratchet up the intensity, alarms and announcements blare across the area, alerting other players and ARCs to the extraction attempt. Escaping by the skin of your teeth is an amazing feeling! Just watch this video where my teammate escapes with 0:00 left on the clock among a very chaotic extraction point! It was in that moment I knew ARC Raiders was a game worth waiting for.

 Fortunately, just like the free loadouts and safe pockets, there’s another mechanic that reduces some of the pressure typical in extraction phase: raider hatches. These are scattered across the map and can be accessed if you have a raider hatch key. Since they’re less frequented and require a key, there’s a better chance of using one without attracting attention. Only once did I run into another player trying to use the same raider hatch as my team—while nearly every normal extraction via elevator or train was contested.

 Extractions aren’t the only source of tension during a raid. Every sound is a clue. Cracking open a locker? The metallic crunch will echo down the hallway. Jump on a zipline? That ziiiipppp will travel far. If it’s raining, footsteps are muffled and harder to hear. The scream of a probe crash-landing will get your attention—and that of nearby players. Most ARCs announce their presence with distinctive sounds. There’s no mistaking when certain ARCs are nearby. The brrrrtttt of the Bastion’s chain guns is as unforgettable as it is terrifying.

 Visuals add to the tension, too. Flocks of birds will scatter when you walk by, revealing your location. Puffs of dust rise from the sand near corners. When a raider goes down, a flare shoots skyward—or ricochets around indoors. ARC robots often wear armor that visually flies off as you damage them, exposing weak points. Shoot one of the Wasp’s four rotors and it will careen wildly, trying to regain balance on the remaining three.

 Visuals also serve as escape tools. You can literally vanish into brush or shadows. The game looks amazing at every step, and every visual plays a role in the immersion. The look and feel of this game are stunning.  To go with that performance was buttery smooth for me the entire test (consistent 100+ FPS with no issues).

 Amazing visuals and sound design set the table, and the combat and gunplay serve the main course. The game is a third-person, over-the-shoulder shooter similar to Battlefront 2 or Once Human. I personally prefer this to first-person shooters. This perspective lets you peek around corners and spot threats like those annoying Tick ARCs sneaking up on you. When you loot something, you aren’t locked into staring at a wall—you can stay aware of your surroundings. All of this helps soften the sting of ARC Raiders being an extraction shooter where you could lose everything at any moment.

 A lot of attention to detail has gone into ARC Raiders, and it all comes together in an incredible experience. For a tech test, I was blown away. It felt more like a complete, functional game—one I’d argue is ready for release. I’d play the heck out of it with just the maps, modes, and gear available in the test.

 

Note: this post was edited with the help of AI (ChatGPT). The thoughts are my own.  The grammatical correctness is the AI.

We need to talk about Camelot Unchained

Folks, we need to talk about Camelot Unchained.  Many moons ago I was a Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC) fanboy. Mythic Entertainment (later gobbled up by EA) could do no wrong.  Mark Jacobs leading Mythic Entertainment at the time was the voice of reason in MMO developers at the time.  Micro transitions? No.  Free to play? No. Real money trading? He hunted it down.  Mark could do no wrong in a younger heartlessgamer's eyes 

Then Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) happened.  I donned the fanboy suit again.  I battled in the online trenches for WAR.  For Mark.  But it went sideways when EA gobbled up Mythic and WAR struggled to find an audience.  Mark Jacobs exited and in 2011 showed up on Kickstarter with the spiritual successor to DAoC called Camelot Unchained.  He collected my money and I waited. And waited.  I am still waiting.

In that time waiting a lot of things happened.  I am not here to dredge them all up but needless to say Mark Jacobs lost a lot of trust with the community.  He lost me.  I stopped caring about the game I had funded.  Then there are refund controversies, misleading updates, and the debacle with the studio launching an entirely different game while we are all still waiting on the game we funded over ten years ago!   But through all of the turbulence Unchained Entertainment pressed on with Camelot Unchained.

And finally we have a video with some of the results. The closest we've gotten to a real look at the game that has been in development for over a decade!  Watch it below. 

What do you think?  Looks dated for a game in 2025 right? Not only do visuals look dated but animations seem stiff.  Combat seems pretty static.  Nothing in the video screams "new video game in the year 2025".

Yet I can't help but admit a tiny thread of optimism in seeing an actual game.  I never expected Camelot Unchained to be a World of Warcraft killer.  I knew it was never destined to be a AAA game.  It was going to be a boutique experience; just as Stars Reach is Raph Koster's spiritual successor to Star Wars Galaxies so was Camelot Unchained going to be Mark Jacobs successor to DAoC.  Give me decent combat, an open world, and Realm vs Realm and I'll have some fun.

I'm glad we're at the stage where its realistic to think there is a release coming for Camelot Unchained.  It may be too little too late and Mark may have buried the hatchet too deep in the communities backs, but hey at least I may get a chance to say I gave the game a try. 

Note: I've given up paying close attention to the game so if there is other info about release or testing; feel free to drop the info in the comments.

50 word /r/fantasywriters challenge: Honey and Lies

 Something I've gotten into recently is completing some writing prompts.  On the /r/fantasywriters subreddit there is an ongoing weekly challenge to write a 50 word (or less) blurb featuring a specific word.  I just chimed in on the "honey" thread with this entry:

The man before Fritz was gaunt; hungry. Fritz worked through his pockets and pulled out a small honey fruit. He held his hand out to the stranger. "Take it."

Timid, the stranger reached out.

Fritz's motion was quick. The strike painless as the stranger collapsed in front of him.

 Another prompt I participated in was "Lie"; my entry:

Lie? Lie! I didn't lie. You lied.

Anger swelled as I fell to my knees before the ghastly visage. A dust cloud rose as my hands braced against the sandy cave floor. Cold air pressed against my skin, and the dampness of the cave settled.

The voice echoed:

"Liar..."

 If this interests you feel free to drop by and leave your own.  New prompts drop on Fridays.

Waiting for ARC Raiders

 I have more thoughts I want to share on my experience in the recent ARC Raiders tech test, but now that the test is over it has me waiting... waiting bad.  I am going to love the heck out of this game at it's launch.