Embark Studios reports that more than one million players voluntarily wiped their progress during Arc Raiders‘ first Expedition event. But the studio also admits the current reward structure has a problem.
Expeditions are Arc Raiders‘ take on prestige systems. Players opt in to reset their progress in exchange for permanent account bonuses. Think of it like prestiging in Call of Duty but for an extraction shooter.
The catch is what you give up versus what you get. Players who reset lose their gear, blueprints, workbench upgrades, and quest progress. In return they earn permanent skill points, expanded storage space, and cosmetic rewards.
The first Expedition asked players to complete staged objectives that eventually required massive amounts of in-game currency. The final reward tier offered up to five skill points at a cost of $1m credits each. That’s $5m credits total if you wanted to max out the rewards.
About 40% of players who participated reached that top tier according to Embark. The studio had set it as an aspirational goal and seems satisfied with the completion rate.
But there’s a design friction Embark now recognizes. The credit requirement counts against your current net worth. That creates a weird incentive where players stop using their best gear near the end of the cycle to preserve their cash value. They sell everything instead of playing with it.
This runs counter to how extraction shooters normally work. The genre thrives on risk versus reward tension. You take valuable gear into raids knowing you might lose it all. When the game tells you to hoard cash instead of spending it on loadouts, something breaks.
What’s changing and what’s not
Embark says the second Expedition follows a similar structure to the first. Changes are being explored for later events to make resets feel more engaging and less purely money-driven.
The studio wants to move away from “just go for money” as the primary late-cycle goal. Players have suggested alternatives like tracking lifetime extracted value instead of current stash value, or replacing credit targets with activity-based objectives like boss kills or elite enemy eliminations.
Arc Raiders differs from games like Escape from Tarkov or The Cycle by making wipes entirely optional. You can ignore Expeditions completely and keep your progression intact. This opt-in approach means the rewards need to feel worthwhile without becoming overpowered advantages that create unfair gaps.
Some players also noted timing issues with the first Expedition. The full requirements and rewards weren’t clearly communicated until late in the event window, which compressed prep time. The event also reportedly ran during an inconvenient period around holidays.
