One million ARC Raiders players wiped their accounts with Expeditions, but what’s the point of doing so?

As an extraction shooter, it’s only natural that ARC Raiders would have a wipe mechanic. Most of the games in the genre do, and while it does it differently, Embark’s game very much follows suit. But despite the fact that over a million people participated and wiped their accounts, I still struggle to figure out why you’d even do such a thing.

In other games like ARC Raiders, server wipes are global. A time comes when every player on a given server is Thanos-snapped into oblivion, forced to start from scratch. This resets the game’s overall economy and progress, allowing everyone to catch their breath and begin anew. It’s an interesting concept, since it removes the massive advantage power users had, putting the entire server on a relatively even playing field.

The Expeditions are way too tedious to perform, and the trade-off is not good enough. Image via Embark

But ARC Raiders doesn’t do that. It asks you to spend a tremendous amount of time gathering resources to be able to wipe, providing you few noteworthy rewards for doing so. Still, over a million people wiped (thanks PC Games N), despite the fact that they’re making their overall experience less fun (the quests reset and have to be repeated, most valuable items are lost, etc.).

A lot is lost and not much gained, leaving those who participated at an abject disadvantage compared to everyone else who retained all their skills (now easily reset and redistributed), items, and everything in between.

At least in games like Hunt: Showdown, where the game’s money system provides enough incentive to willingly wipe while others do not, there are proper reasons for wiping and “prestiging.” That doesn’t really exist in ARC Raiders, but Embark has acknowledged this and will introduce more benefits for Expeditions in the future.

I just hope they’re tremendous enough that the majority of players will find them interesting, and that they’ll start off by not including quest resets. If they do, at least make them different, more rewarding, or cooler for Expedition participants. The repetition ruins the fun.

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