- Embark admits Arc Raiders bosses are dying too quickly because players have abilities that are far stronger than the encounters were designed for.
- Design director Virgil Watkins says the Queen and Matriarch were meant for a few squads, not the entire server, and were tuned around mid-game gear.
- The studio plans to adjust mechanics rather than simply buff health, aiming to preserve the cooperative spirit of these large-scale encounters.
Boss fights are one of the key highlights of Arc Raiders and its core gameplay loop. But Embark admits Arc Raiders bosses are dying too fast. In a recent interview, Arc Raiders dev said that the largest Arc Raiders encounters, aka the boss fights, are not playing out as intended.
Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins explained that these ARC enemy fights were never meant for an entire server to swarm and delete in minutes. “Even though [Queens and Matriarchs are] huge and deadly, they’re not intended for the full server to go up against and get equally rewarded,” he said. “It is meant to be, you know, a couple of dedicated squads, maybe working together while also dealing with other players.“
Embark Admits Arc Raiders Bosses Are Dying Too Fast as Player Abilities Overwhelm Encounters
Anyone who has watched a Queen melt under a coordinated barrage knows the problem. On the clips, it is worth looking at. However, from a game design standpoint, the bosses feel bleak. Watkins admitted the studio misjudged player power. The encounters were tuned around what he calls “mid-game gear,” yet players are arriving with loadouts that shred through mechanical royalty in record time. He further said,
“That’s definitely on us to an extent … I think we gave players too effective abilities to take down these things too early.”
Watkins argued that simply inflating health bars will not fix the problem. Embark wants these encounters to actively support different roles in the fight. A few months ago, some players even one-shot Arc Raiders bosses.
During boss fights, some players swoop in for scraps. Others wait until the chaos peaks before making their move. A few steps up and rally strangers into a fragile alliance. The Arc Raiders dev team values the spirit of the event more than raw durability.
That same thinking also goes behind events like Locked Gate and Hidden Bunker, where players often camp at entrances instead of triggering objectives. “When we built them, we had an idealised way we hoped people would engage,” Watkins said. Now the team is revisiting those mechanics while preserving the original intent behind them.
Arc Raiders has become a live social experiment in motion. Players search for the shortest path to power and exploit it with ruthless efficiency. Do you think Arc Raiders bosses are dying too fast? Let us know in the comments.
