ARC Raiders, The Expedition Project, & What 12 Million Players Want Next
Welcome to PlayerOps, a monthly newsletter exploring how players are responding to the latest game releases, announcements, and updates. This newsletter is brought to you by Accord.gg, the player feedback platform that turns player conversations into structured, actionable insights for game teams.
Keeping your community happy is one of the biggest challenges facing live service games. Players want regular updates, new content, and expect any gameplay issues or bugs to be ironed out before they become a problem. That’s a lot to handle for any game studio, but it’s particularly challenging for studios when a new release ends up becoming one of the most popular games in the world in less than three months.
That’s exactly what happened with ARC Raiders, Embark Studios’ extraction shooter, which has sold 12.4 million units since launching in October, 2025. ARC Raiders doesn’t seem to have any issues with player retention and is growing rapidly, with CCUs on Steam surpassing 400k in January.
When games are growing at such a rapid pace, Discord servers can be one of the most effective ways of gathering feedback from players to shape future updates and patches. With over 1 million members in the official ARC Raiders Discord server, that’s a lot of messages to stay on top of.
With that in mind, we’ve spent the last month analysing messages from hundreds of channels in the official Discord server to dive deeper into one of ARC Raiders’ most contested gameplay features: Expeditions.
The Expedition Project: A Fresh Approach to Progression Wipes
As an extraction shooter, the goal of ARC Raiders is to drop into maps, gather loot, complete quests/challenges and survive to make it out alive by cooperating with or taking down other players. Players can also upgrade their character by levelling up and unlocking new skills, crafting or upgrading new weapons and gear along the way.
Most extraction shooters implement periodic progression wipes to combat gear inflation and keep the game appealing for new players. As an example, Escape from Tarkov uses a mandatory progression wipe every six to eight months to essentially reset the game. ARC Raiders does things a little differently via its ‘Expedition Project’ system, a source of popular debate amongst the community.
Embark Studios announced how the Expedition Project would work in a pre-release October blog post, but in short, once a player reaches level 20, they can embark on ‘Expeditions,’ an optional progression wipe where players “lose anything inherent to their character’s progress,” in return for permanent account unlocks, unique cosmetics and account buffs. Ultimately, Embark Studios says this allows highly engaged players to experience the game fresh with benefits while enjoying plenty of bragging rights in the process.
Expedition Project Details Cause Concerns
In a blog post published on 6 December, Embark Studios revealed more information on the Expedition system, as well as some of the specific rewards and requirements tied to progression resets. The big focus was on how players could earn up to five new skill points tied to their stash value (the combined value of their items and in-game currency, coins). This is where the problems started.
Players were told they would need a stash value of five million to unlock all five skill points. To put that into perspective, even hardcore players would need to spend a minimum of ten hours farming in high-risk areas to build that amount of stash. But to make matters worse, players had less than two weeks to reach that five million value as the Expedition window closed on 22 December.
Players weren’t happy, as data from Accord shows.
From 1 December to 31 December, Accord tracked more than 50,000 messages specifically relating to the Expedition system.
20% of these messages focused on the timing and communication of the Expedition details. Accord automatically creates new sub-topics according to trending topics in Discord, and a new sub-topic for ‘Timing and Communication of Expedition Details’ was created with over 10,000 messages.
30% of messages were related to questions; nearly 25% of messages were related to complaints; 13% of messages were related to requests, and 10% of messages were related to issues.
Messages relating to the game’s Expedition system, with clear spikes on the clarifying blog post from 6th December and the Expedition window closing on 22nd December.
Player Pulse: How Players Felt About the First ARC Raiders Expedition
Analysis of ARC Raiders Discord messages sent 6–12 December shows us which sub-topics related to the Expedition were generating the highest volume of messages.
The Five Million Credit Controversy
400 unique players specifically cited the late timing of the announcement and five million stash requirement, arguing the threshold is too high for casual players and was announced too close to the departure window. Many argue that this requirement turns the game into a "second job" and rewards only "no-lifers" or streamers.
Reset Mechanics and Reward Clarity
Nearly 200 unique players sought clarification on what exactly is lost during the Expedition reset. Key points of confusion include whether workbench levels are reset to level 1 or removed entirely, whether quest progress is wiped, and if the bonus skill points raise the level cap from 75 to 80 or simply provide a head start at level 1.
Impact on Gameplay and the "Free Kit" Meta
Over 100 unique players noted a drastic shift in the game's atmosphere following the Expedition announcement. Players reported that lobbies were dominated by "free loadouts" and "rats" who avoid using high-tier gear to preserve their stash value for the 5 million goal. This has led to an increase in "kill on sight" (KOS) behavior and extract camping, as players scramble for any possible value. Many complain that the "magic" of cooperative play has been lost, as players are now incentivized to hoard resources rather than engage in high-stakes boss fights or help newer raiders.
Blueprint Retention and Muling Concerns
Nearly 100 unique players discussed the loss of blueprints during the Expedition reset. A significant portion of the conversation revolves around "muling"—transferring blueprints to friends or secondary accounts that are not resetting to retrieve them after the wipe. Some players are calling for a block on this behaviour to maintain the integrity of the reset, while others argue that blueprints should be permanent unlocks to avoid a tedious re-grind every season.
Community Feedback: How to Improve Future Expeditions
In an interview with GamesRadar, ARC Raiders design lead, Virgil Watkins, says roughly one million players finished the first Expedition – less than 10% of players. Watkins also said that “around 40 to 45%” of players earned the five million Stash value needed to unlock all five skill points, but admits “[Embark] probably came out a bit late with the five million coin requirement.”
ARC Raiders’ Expedition system isn’t going anywhere for the time being, but Watkins does say it will change and improve. "This system will change," he adds. "We're not precious about it. We'll keep adjusting to make sure it is properly incentivizing players.”
In the wake of major updates and game changes like this, listening to your community can be a great way of gathering feedback that can shape future system changes. Embark is listening as it’s already aware of the criticism around the five million stash value, but we used Accord to gather further suggestions on how future Expeditions could be improved.
Base rewards on total value extracted over the season rather than final stash value to prevent players from hoarding and playing with free loadouts.
Allow players to pick a small section of blueprints that they can keep, as the high value of some blueprints means players don’t want to embark on Expeditions. Alternatively, let players buy/earn blueprints back through level/quest/price-gating. This should be a priority, as many players are already using alternate ("mule") accounts or friends who aren't wiping to store their blueprints and high-value gear.
Ensure details of future Expeditions are communicated in greater detail and with more notice.
Dedicated servers for PvE and PvP bearing in mind the requirements around Expedition goals.
Consider dropping permanent skill points and stash space as permanent rewards, as accumulating gameplay advantages like this risk becoming unfair over time.
Some players are suggesting mandatory wipes rather than optional ones. Given the immense popularity of ARC Raiders, we don’t think this would work with the game’s playerbase.
Cosmetic rewards should have more colour options and come with supporting cinematics for ultimate bragging rights.
Some players suggested making certain loot craftable at work benches (Steel Springs - Oil - Simple Gun Parts - Wires) but this could create an unfair gameplay advantage.
Lastly, here’s a snapshot of the biggest wins and woes shaping player communities this month.
Community Wins
Call of Duty fans are happy after Treyarch announced the fan-favourite escort mode ‘Safeguard’ will return in the second season of Black Ops 7, following a seven-year hiatus from the series!
A new update for Guild Wars has introduced an ‘Ironman’ mode inspired by a community-driven challenge where players must earn all their skills and items without the relief of player trading or in-game traders. This follows the success of similar modes in World of Warcraft and, most recently, RuneScape.
Monster Hunter Wilds has been the subject of heavy criticism from PC players due to major platform-specific issues with the game, but it looks like the most serious issues have now been addressed in a recent patch.
Community Woes
Wildlight Entertainment's hero shooter Highguard has been having a rough time ever since it was revealed as the final game at The Game Awards, a slot typically reserved for major announcements. After debuting with nearly 100k players at launch, concurrent players have fallen by 90%.
A lack of notable improvements in the latest patch for Football Manager 2026 is making players suspect Sports Interactive has already moved its focus to the sequel.
Embark has rolled out a new ban system for cheaters in ARC Raiders, but some players feel it’s too lenient and doesn’t go far enough to punish those who are ruining the game for others.