Ahead of the balance patch currently scheduled for Tuesday, January 13th, Virgil Watkins, design lead for Arch Raiders and developer Embark, provided a preview of the changes coming to two balance outliers: Kettle Rifle and Triggernades.
Speaking with GamesRadar+ as part of an upcoming wide-ranging interview, Watkins talks about the balance of power and value between Ark Raider’s gear tiers. The Kettle, a common semi-auto rifle that can melt players when used with fast fingers (or good old macro), and the Triggernades, the deadliest of the standard-use grenades, have thrown the power balance out of whack as is and received well-deserved nerfs.
“I might say it now,” Watkins began. “In Tuesday’s update, we’re also looking at a kind of shuffling while mitigating the kettle issue, addressing trigger nades, and, of course, continuing to make balance adjustments.”
I asked him how the kettle has changed. As expected, Embark has reduced rate of fire cap. This gun technically has a cap at this point, but that cap is so high that approaching it will instantly kill the player in a way that feels like an error.
“I’ve seen videos of people doing it manually, and it’s really fast,” Watkins said. “But yeah, it actually just lowered the maximum rate of fire.”
I was worried that Trigger Nades would be taken to a farm upstate for a crime. Watkins reassured me that Embark wants to maintain the precise, well-timed, powerful explosions that are the hallmark of this little monster, while curbing the all-purpose power that sometimes turns PvP into a very dangerous game of dodgeball.
“The objective now is that the damage decay curve is changing,” he explains. “You have to be more accurate to get maximum damage. Their intent is to land on the target and do maximum damage there. And with the trigger time adjustment, you can’t have it explode right out of your hand. You need a little more lead time.”
A kettle that still works but can’t be abused, and a triggernades that hurts up close (and crucially hurts the arc) but requires much greater precision and care? Of course, I haven’t played with the new balance patches myself, but these sound like elegant changes. It’s a reassuring response to an early problem with the game’s meta.
“Then we take a broader look at that band and think about where it falls on the rarity spectrum,” Watkins added. “Using these things, what are their effective outputs and shuffling them around a little bit, how much does it cost to use and maintain them? That’s not in the next update, but that’s what we’re looking at in our broader plans.”
Embark has responded harshly to Ark Raiders’ cheating, warning players that they are “making significant changes to our ruleset and introducing new detection mechanisms.”
