If I could change one thing in Arc Raiders this year, I'd abolish late spawns

Spawning late into a match in Arc Raiders never used to bother me that much—in fact, I kind of liked some aspects of it. You've got to admit, it's interesting to observe the aftermath of a round, finding corpses, dead Arcs, and just generally picking the bones. It can be surprisingly lucrative on occasion, but it's a real pain if you have any definite plans for a round or need to find specific items, which the game increasingly requires us to do with Expeditions, quests, and events.

Having to get Ion Sputters and Frequency Modulation Boxes, resources unique to Stella Montis, for the new Expedition this time around has really brought home just how annoying late spawns are—if the Snap and Salvage quest hadn't already made the point. After all, even if you're just a few minutes late to Stella Montis, your chances of getting what you need are incredibly small, and that's not even taking into account the RNG of where you spawn.

The only way I was ever able to get the items (which generally show up at Medical or Assembly) was when the stars aligned and I happened to spawn both at the start of a match and right next to where I needed to be. Any other time, I'd have next to no chance. Even if I were to turn to PvP, those I killed probably wouldn't have what I was looking for either, and because of aggression-based matchmaking, I'd end up in a more PvP-focused version of Stella Montis, making it even harder to get the resources.

The more I searched around to see if anyone had any particular strategies for getting Stella Montis items, the more I'd read about people entering rounds naked and just giving up as soon as they spawned in the wrong spot or late. This surely can't be how Embark intended people to play the game. Having finally found the resources I need, I'm also sick and tired of playing Stella Montis, which is another unfortunate side effect.

The reason late spawns are such a problem now is that pretty much everyone knows where the best loot is—that's partly an issue with how loot works in the game in general. Sure, you can have a fairly lucrative run just exploring and opening containers, and RNG might bless you with a blueprint or two, but certain areas and containers are much more valuable than others, so most people flock towards them. This creates a competition for loot, which is good and central to the game, but if you spawn late, you're already at a big disadvantage.

If that happens, your main option seems kind of obvious; you kill other players who presumably spawned earlier and take what they have. That said, I think this is an unintentional side effect of late spawns versus Embark trying to incentivise PvP—after all, Embark's CEO expressed that 'The game isn't about shooting other players' and we know it's open to different playstyles and not trying to force people to play a certain way. So then what's the point of late spawns?

One likely reason is to prevent 'dead matches', ie those where you're the only player left because everyone else had died, extracted, or whatever else, but, personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with a little alone time. Surely, having free rein of the map is your reward for outlasting or beating all other players in the match? That's how it works in most extraction shooters, and I think it's a pretty good system.

From my perspective, all late spawns do is wreck your plans for a round and grant an unfair advantage through RNG. Say you decide that you want to loot a specific locked room: you stow the epic key in your pack, take a Raider Hatch Key for a speedy exit, but then you spawn in 15 minutes after the round starts and said room has already been looted. You can still make out okay and grab whatever's left, but it's ultimately dead time for the player.

The same goes for grabbing specific items for quests, Expeditions, or events. More often than not, there are a few spots where you can get them, and people will flock to those locations. Again, that's fine if we're all spawning at the same time, ergo creating a battle/PvP for resources, but if you spawn late you never even got to be a part of that competition in the first place.

You instead spend your time picking through ghost buildings filled with half-looted containers. If Embark is going to keep pushing us towards finding specific resources, I really hope it changes the late spawn mechanic to be in line with most other extraction shooters.