The first ARC Raiders Expedition has officially launched as part of a new update, but it comes with one pretty unfortunate catch: many players are discovering their unlocked Workshops have completely disappeared.
It's worth noting before we dive into this: live-service games will periodically wipe progress all the time. That's largely how developers are able to keep the experience balanced, and ensure new players can actually come in months or years down the line and still have a good time. Despite this, ARC Raiders players aren't happy about this latest development.
ARC Raiders New Update Leaves Players Baffled
We can see why
ARC Raiders is attempting a pretty novel approach to these periodic wipes via Expeditions. The thinking behind Expeditions is that players who aren't ready to lose all their progress and start again can choose not to opt in. Those that do get involved with Expeditions are, of course, offered incentives. You can get access to extra skill points and exclusive cosmetics, for instance. Here's the crucial part: Embark Studios appeared to state that certain items, like unlocked Workshop Stations, would be kept after an Expedition.
December 22 saw the first ARC Raiders Expedition kick off, but any excitement quickly turned to confusion and anger when players discovered their Workshop Stations were gone. The game's subreddit was quick to point out that a list of in-game items that would and wouldn't be removed or reset was actually amended in the lead-up to the first Expedition. "Unlocked Workshop Stations" had previously appeared on the list called "This Will Be Kept", but was quietly removed. Obviously, there are a fair few players who were not aware of this change.
Players Aren't Exactly Thrilled
A major miscommunication
Other players have pointed out that "Workshop" and not "Unlocked Workshop Stations" was always on the list of things to be reset, which does seem pretty confusing and rife for miscommunication.
Regardless of how this happened, there are now lots of ARC Raiders players who signed up for the new Expedition who have found none of their crafting stations beyond the starting Workbench are available.
"They seriously changed this last moment?" writes one fan.
Another reasons: "I think they removed the line because of the confusion. They always said 'they will be unlocked, but you will still have to build them', they were always supposed to reset."
"I don't know why people would wipe if all it did was empty your inventory," a third player agreed. "Wiping includes resetting your benches and quests, that's how it works in other extraction games as well, and is kinda the point."
