- 20 minutes ago
PC Gamer interviews Virgil Watkins, the Design Director for Arc Raiders, to get the inside scoop on the game's unique matchmaking, the philosophy behind player choice, and upcoming changes in the Shrouded Sky update.
Category
🎈
FunTranscript
00:00The whole lobby had descended on him and dispensed like street justice.
00:04It certainly encourages us to lean more forward into
00:07giving opportunities to have friendly and fun interactions. I think it's an easy idea to reach
00:12for. I can put it that way. After four months and 14 million copies sold,
00:18sci-fi extraction shooter Ark Raiders continues to draw in almost six million players a week
00:23across all platforms. Success that's even surprised its own developers, Embark Studios.
00:28Ahead of the Shrouded Sky update dropping on February 24th, we sat down with design director
00:33Virgil Watkins to discuss the game's unique aggression-based matchmaking,
00:38how Embark balances patches with new content, and what the future holds for the game.
00:43Let me jump in with one of the hot topics at the moment, aggression-based matchmaking,
00:46which has been a hot topic amongst the community. In hindsight, do you guys regret kind of acknowledging
00:52the existence of the system? We have been preparing comms around it,
00:56but there's no such thing as a friendly lobby or an aggressive lobby. The system is still
01:00mixing everybody and everything's down to human motivation just because you're tending toward
01:05the most more peaceful and doesn't remove the autonomy from other people making a choice about
01:10wanting your stuff. So I think people do feel as though it's incredibly binary and even shooting
01:15one Raider one time just automatically puts you into an aggressive lobby, but that's not at all how it
01:19works. It waits like your engagement with PvP is part of the situation and it's not as though
01:25one action does it, it's a series of rounds together and things like that. I've seen people saying,
01:30well, if you're shot at, you should never even shoot back if you want to get into the
01:35safer end of the spectrum, but I feel like that's not the case. Yeah, it's not nearly that cut.
01:41You know, we never really wanted to apply this mentality of it being a hard split of like,
01:45yeah, you either play this way or you do not play this way. The game needs that element of tension
01:50and risk from other players to like be good. And of course we acknowledge that people are having a
01:55lot of fun with these like safer lobbies, but it's not prescriptive. Like we're never going to say like,
02:01oh, because you play this way, you're only going to experience these types of people.
02:05Do you see this as something you're going to continue tweaking and tuning, but you broadly think that
02:10it's been a success? The game, you know, being with the game mode of extraction,
02:16carries a lot of like inherent elements and expectations with it. And even as we've seen
02:21it in live, it is not at all how it was working in our tests, either for ourselves or the
02:25previous
02:26test. It was hyper, hyper aggressive in those tests. People never worked together. So I think this kind
02:31of surprised us in exactly how many people do latch onto and are having fun with these elements of the
02:37game. So it certainly encourages us to lean more forward into giving opportunities to have friendly and
02:44fun interactions. But yeah, of course we still need to cater to the PvP audience and make sure that
02:48they have like a fun and engaging time as well. And how do you do that then? Because you've done
02:53like obviously the shared event at the moment, which kind of like encourages some of that PvE stuff.
02:58How do you keep that PvP very vocal audience who just want to get in there and, you know,
03:04they get their kicks maybe somehow from taking your stuff, right?
03:07We just have to primarily make sure that the PvP side of the game is as fair as we can
03:12make it. And like,
03:12obviously, there's still things we need to work out with balance on some factors. We still have the
03:17mantra and this is even regardless of the formation of this PvE heavy audience. The mantra is that the
03:22game never asks you to fight other players. That's entirely your own decision. You're always going to
03:28have people have the motivation to fight because there are people who just like PvP and do those things. So
03:32I
03:33think we need to keep making sure we're providing them with like tools and means to do that in an
03:36engaging way. But you're absolutely correct. Like we have this this cohort of players who want to play
03:41more peacefully or like roleplay even in ensuring that like we don't harm their experience either.
03:48So it is a it is a precarious position. This is a real example. We're all just running around
03:54chatting and a guy, one guy did, like you say, did the heel turn and killed someone. And within seconds,
04:00the whole lobby had descended on him and dispensed like street justice. How do you feel about that
04:05kind of emergent gameplay? Well, I mean, for me, that's that's actually kind of the hope with all
04:10of it is is like letting players lead with their own motivations and create all those stories for
04:14each other. And that's not something we can ever like author or force to happen. And I'm glad that we
04:20don't try. I far prefer that we give players the means and context and the opportunity to do these
04:27things. And then they do what they want to do. And I've even seen videos where people cause that kind
04:31of chaos on purpose. Like they'll have a silenced weapon and watch two people being friendly and
04:35they'll shoot at just the right moment. The guy turns like, why'd you do that? And then they get
04:39in a fight and then a third guy shows up and it punishes the first guy. And then no one
04:43knows what's
04:43going on anymore. And yeah, I think those are some of the better moments you can you can hope to
04:48see.
04:49How much do those post match surveys play in terms of determining zero factor? Really? I thought I
04:56assumed they would do something. Those are just to help us gauge how players felt about the round.
05:01They have no like mechanical change on what happens to you. It is solely based on your actions in the
05:06round. We're now into kind of midway through the second big expedition. I know you've talked in the past
05:13about it being something you wanted to kind of tweak and adapt and you change the stash value that was
05:17required for the full number of points. But in the longer term, how long do you see that loop of
05:24kind of resetting, re-earning blueprints, remaining kind of interesting? It is a bit of an experiment.
05:30And because we didn't want to force resets on everyone, then now we're on this road of like,
05:35how do we make it interesting enough for the largest amount of people to participate in this?
05:39The currency system we have today was just what we had time to develop. And we reduced it,
05:45of course, for Expedition 2, just because even though at the time we calibrated the 5 million
05:50around what the average player's economy looked like, it's still, I think, overshot in how much
05:55people felt like they had to engage with it or how much they felt compelled to chase that,
05:59which is why we brought it down. But because of the other things that were actively in development,
06:02we didn't have time to shift the system to what we intended to do next. And we want to tie
06:07in
06:07essentially more game loops into it and not just make it about the currency value. So,
06:13ideally, we'll be able to talk about that fairly soon. I wouldn't say there's going to be major
06:17changes in one giant drop, but definitely we're going to try to adjust and shave off pain points and
06:23make sure that the incentives we are providing are catching what people find compelling. So skill
06:30points probably won't hold forever, of course. We don't want people to be able to max out the entire
06:34skill tree. That's not the way it's designed. And then, of course, at some point we're very likely going
06:37to revamp parts of the skill tree. So we have to keep a forward on that. So then what other
06:42elements
06:42do we make part of the expedition system to keep it enticing? Would you consider allowing people to
06:48bring like one or three blueprints across almost like as a safe pocket of like, you can just bring
06:53these ones? Yeah. I mean, that was an idea we even had before launch about that. And the blueprints
07:00in particular are such like a power elevation. Like now you have the autonomy to craft this thing very
07:05deliberately. And does that fit in? And then as well, like if we ever make, and as you saw,
07:10we have made adjustments to the blueprint drop rates and things like that. So, but I certainly
07:16don't think it's off the table. Of course, it's a very rational thing for players to want to do is
07:19like, I work really hard for these and please let me have a few of them. So, um, yeah, I
07:23wouldn't say
07:24like no to any idea along those lines. It's mostly about how do you balance what, what is kind of
07:31part of
07:31the core run up through progression and blueprints are a significant part of that, of actually getting
07:36them. You know, you spent years developing Arc Raiders and it's now the case where you're kind
07:40of building up the muscle of running this sort of live service game. What have been the biggest
07:44kind of lessons that you've learned so far beyond, beyond, you know, the need for patch notes to be
07:49comprehensive, but what's kind of surprised you that you're like, Oh, I didn't expect that.
07:53I mean, I think one thing is the amount of times you have to drop what you're doing and respond
07:58to an
07:58active issue. So really crazy bug is found or you get suddenly massive DDoS attacks for eight hours
08:05straight or a lot of our team like wasn't ready to like drop what they were doing and respond to
08:08that.
08:09So then you're like, well, I'm working on this new feature and working on this thing. And now I have
08:13to respond to this. And that takes up like two days of my time, um, to, to deal with that.
08:17So I think
08:18that's been a bit of the, the growing pain, especially at the scale we have now, like nobody
08:24whatsoever thought we'd have this many players. You know, the most popular streamer of the game,
08:27the VTuber burnt peanut was, was kind of doing this stuff live on stream, tossing nades around
08:32by his own kind of suggestion. He was only doing it against people who are doing it to him. And
08:36he
08:36wanted to bring it to you guys attention so that it would be fixed quickly. And I've seen the
08:40community completely split between, well, it's good because they fixed it the next day. And maybe
08:44they wouldn't have, if he hadn't have highlighted it and other people going, well, you can't have a
08:48two lane justice system. He, he should be banned with everyone else. Like, where are you on kind of how
08:54you handle that sort of thing? All I can say with this issue in particular was more coincidence.
08:57We already had a fix ready to go for it when it kind of exploded. But of course, like, you
09:02know,
09:02you'll, you'll have things come to your attention in a very loud way through some channels. And then
09:06it becomes hard to gauge, you know, the level at which it's being used. So I, I don't feel as
09:11though
09:11there's a two lane thing. Like we respond to stuff the moment we know about it. It just takes time
09:16to
09:16patch certain issues compared to others. Obviously in this same like service game space,
09:20some very high profile failures as well. Like we saw Concord kind of flame out and then
09:25High Guard, obviously making layoffs. Do you kind of like imagine a world in which,
09:28you know, if you had had one bad trailer, like, or one trailer that was received badly,
09:33like as the kind of final moment, the game was that that could have been your future. Do you
09:36consider like that's the kind of tightrope that these kinds of games are on at the moment?
09:39I think we were fortunate and then we'd been building the game for Slung and like
09:43it was already fun for us. And we were just hoping that translated. And I think it's some of these
09:49situations where you, you might see a piece of media and then it's hard for you to gauge what
09:54actually having your hands on it is like puts you in a bit of a position. Like, and then we,
09:59we, because we've been doing tests and like tech tests too, for us was obviously a pivotal moment
10:03where we really got huge amounts of player response. So I think that helped us calibrate
10:08where we went with a lot of like real public data to an extent, but certainly I think it is,
10:17it's hard when you can't manage expectations. We've even seen that like even around tech test
10:22too. We had the whole countdown to a countdown thing. No one really intended for that. We're
10:26just like, Ooh, everyone's excited. So are we let's, let's count down to something. And of course
10:31the narrative around shadow drop popped up and we didn't jump on that quickly enough.
10:35And then obviously everyone's very disappointed that they couldn't play the game right there. And then
10:39I don't, I don't envy those positions for sure.
10:42Do you think ARK being a paid game actually probably did it a service because players then
10:48you kind of had to commit to it, right? It wasn't like they just played two rounds and went, no,
10:51it's not for me and kind of dipped out. They were kind of like on board with it because they'd,
10:55they'd spent the 40 bucks maybe. Yeah, I have to imagine. So, I mean,
10:58just using my own gamer brain, that's how I tend to feel about stuff. You know, I do a bit
11:03more research
11:04into it. I'll watch content creators or reviews that I, I feel like I aligned with like how they feel
11:09about
11:09stuff. And then when I make the purchase, I feel like I'm generally more informed than as opposed
11:13to like free to play games where I'll just give it a go because, oh, it's kind of interesting,
11:16but yeah, you, you lack that sort of personal investment. So I think that definitely did us
11:20some favors and it's part of the reason why we changed back then from free to play to paid,
11:25because then we felt like we could build a product that was more appropriate for that.
11:32Going back to art's kind of PvE side about the matriarch and the queen boss fights. I love
11:37them. I think they're spectacular. They're like almost nothing else I've done in, in gaming. They're
11:42closest almost to like raid bosses in, in something like Destiny. But I've seen a lot of frustration
11:46from players about how the kind of like loot is portioned out. And I know you changed the drop rate
11:51of the cores in the legs. But having, having so much of the loot in that central orb, it often
12:00feels like the
12:00boss dies and almost no one gets anything. Have you, are there kind of changes maybe coming to those
12:05encounters? I mean, yeah, we, we keep evaluating how it's going, but those things, even though they're
12:12huge and deadly, they're not intended for like the full server to go up against and be equally
12:17rewarded. It is meant to be like, you know, a couple of dedicated squads maybe working together
12:21while also dealing with other players as a factor that they have to, to manage. That's not how they're
12:26being played though. I don't think. Well, no, I mean, it is pretty mixed. Then you get the, the,
12:31the players who do end up in the slightly fringier lobbies. You do get like everybody working together.
12:35And then it, then there's that moment like, okay, does everyone just fight it out now over what loot
12:39there is? Or, uh, it's the whole thing of PV people about the whole time. So it's pretty spread, um,
12:45for how people are actually engaging with it. With those enormous arc on the horizon in, in Blue Gate and
12:52a few other
12:52maps, I had this idea because you can't just keep making bigger encounter models that when we finally
13:00meet those, one of those will be in a map itself. One to 10, how close am I? It's a,
13:06I think it's a
13:07easy idea to reach for. I can put it that way. We've got the roadmap now for the rest of
13:11the year and
13:12there's kind of talk of, you know, new maps and new arc in there. Can you talk to me a
13:15bit about how you see
13:17new weapons and items, uh, being rolled out? I think we're striving to always try to have
13:22a little bit of something with each drop. And what we're doing right now is trying to make it
13:26as cohesive as possible with whatever that drop is. So there's some interrelation between the other
13:31things coming in those updates and like, whether that's how you obtain the item or the items are
13:35useful in that situation or things like that. So, um, that would be the intent, I suppose, with,
13:42with how we drop those things. So we shouldn't expect just like two new SMGs and a new scope rifle
13:47and
13:48that's not going to be the case. I mean, it could be, it's just not necessarily what I'm gonna like
13:53state we're doing. It's more needs-based right now. Back in 2021, Tom Solberg from Embark, I believe,
13:59published an explanation of how you guys were using machine learning, um, to teach the arc how to move
14:04and animate. I've seen since the game came out, people like, and I'm sure it's their imaginations,
14:10but attributing the idea that some of the arc are learning, like the leapers are finding their way into
14:14tighter spaces or the, you know, the ticks, the ticks are banding together. But are you using anything
14:21kind of AI related to kind of like- No, none whatsoever. That's just our AI designers and
14:27our AI engineers. And to be specific, I mean, like AI in the game sense, it's like our, the ones
14:32who
14:32author our enemies. That's their work. We don't use, um, the machine learning is literally only for
14:40teaching them to walk and navigate the environment. It doesn't do any of their behaviors or their
14:44attacks or, or anything like that. That's just us in the way we author them. Well, I guess that's
14:49the highest compliment that can be paid then. It is funny to see. And yeah, it's, it's interesting.
14:55Um, none of the existing arcs are kind of humanoid in nature. They're either like, you know, weaponized,
15:01scaled up drones, or I feel like they take their inspiration from animals like spiders and crabs and
15:05kind of beetles and stuff. Do you have an internal design rule of like no terminator style robot dudes
15:12walking around? Yeah, at present, because I, I really think the distinction between that silhouette
15:19being a player is pretty important. Um, and as well, once you have something that's humanoid in shape,
15:24you start being way more critical of how it moves and behaves and acts near you. Um, and then you,
15:30you run into situations where like, you know, it just kind of falls apart aesthetically
15:34or in behavior once it's a humanoid. And also it's kind of been done to death. So I don't know,
15:39I don't know what our ambition is there, but we get a lot more interesting gameplay and freedom with,
15:44with making a platform that's purpose built. We also got to speak to Benz Pajor,
15:49audio director at Embark Studios, on how he and his team craft the futuristic yet tactile soundscape of
15:55Ark Raiders.
16:01The weapons in Ark Raiders are essentially like repurposed junk. It's scrap metal,
16:06homemade bullets. Is it strange for you to kind of like having, having to make the audio for a gun
16:11that's supposed to be kind of made of crap? It's, it's quite inspiring. I think we discussed this with
16:17the people designing them. And when we figure out the visual design, we talk about how it's made
16:25and what the inner parts could be. And then I try to just make something out of that.
16:30How was the process for, for capturing gun sounds changed over time? I remember like back in my early
16:35days of the industry, we would always be told, you know, the audio guys were going out to gun ranges
16:39and shooting a bazillion guns and kind of getting live stuff. Is it, do you still do that? Or is
16:44it
16:44more kind of, you know, you're in, you're in tools and creating just sounds from scratch? No, we record them.
16:50That's the, that's the best way of getting something that sounds believable. So we, we still do the
16:57massive gun recordings. They don't have to be massive, but you want to, once you go out,
17:02you want to record as much as possible. For the, for the arc themselves, it sounds like their kind
17:12of audio cues take a lot of inspiration from, from animals. I would say at least it sounds
17:16like to me, there's kind of sort of almost like elephantine kind of like noises and stuff. Can you
17:22talk to me a bit about kind of like what your inspiration was there and how, how you tackled
17:26making them, each of them feel very individual so you could hear, you, you, you know, for instance,
17:31when it's a hornet behind you versus when it's a leaper? Well, it's, it's kind of the same thing
17:35there. We look at the shape of the thing and try to figure out like if, if this would communicate,
17:41how would, how would it sound? We've tried to stay away from them being too much like animals
17:47because they're not, they're giant robots. So we try to keep it very mechanical, but at the same time,
17:54you want, you want some expression to it. You want it to, to express something. So it's easy to go
17:59down the,
18:00the biological route because that has a lot of expression. We try to combine that with a lot
18:06of mechanical noises. We do weird recordings for that as well. And then in some cases we've,
18:12we've mixed that with the heavily processed animal noises as well.
18:17Arc Raiders is like one of the only games I can't play while like having a TV show on or
18:22like listening
18:22to a podcast because I need to be so concentrated on the soundscape to try and work out like what's
18:28approaching me. What the, what the little kind of tricks you use to create tension in the soundscape
18:32where it's like not necessarily a player there or a robot, but you kind of, you're trying to
18:38ratchet up that feeling of like, you really need to be listening to what's going on around you.
18:45I have an idea that, that if you, if you try to, to capture ordinary things like mundane daily sounds
18:55that you hear every day when you move about and, and try to get them in to create some kind
19:01of familiarity
19:02to, to what you hear. It's easier to understand what's going on around you then. And then hearing the,
19:10the slightly more concerning sounds, the contrast there creates, creates quite a lot of tension as well.
19:18And just as the game, as the game plays, there's a lot of downtime that creates pauses in, in the
19:27excitement.
19:27And I think those are super important for the tension because you, you sort of, you know that, that there
19:34can be a very dangerous situation at any moment and, but you're not hearing it yet. So it kind of
19:43raises the
19:44tension and you keep listening for, for dangers and trying to understand like, is there, is there danger somewhere?
19:49I think the contrast between, between boring, ordinary, mundane sounds, and then you're listening
19:56for the dangerous ones, creates a lot of tension. It's not doing my cortisol level any good. I'm stressed
20:02the whole time. Yeah. For the latest on Shrouded Sky and all things Arc Raiders, head over to
20:09pcgamer.com. And for more in-depth developer interviews like this, subscribe to PC Gamer.
Comments