After 100 hours in ARC Raiders, it's time to do something about grenades

After 100 hours with Arc RaidersI can safely say that I am a fan. There is a special kind of excitement that keeps players like me coming back to the game. It's not just the adrenaline of a clean extraction or the thrill of raiding another team; that's how every moment feels uncertain. That excitement is undeniable, and here's why ARC Raiders stands out among the growing extraction shooter genre. But something in its combat loop has become too pervasive and destabilizing: the prominence of grenades.

ARC Raiders was released on October 30, and in the months since launch, players have seen a steady stream of patches, fixes, and balance adjustments across 11 updates. Embark Studios has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to adapt the game in response to community feedback – just take the recent map event rate increase after ARC Raiders player backlash—but even with these efforts, how grenades define combat remains a sore point. And it delves more into fundamental design rather than just rebalancing the numbers.

Family

ARC Raiders players believe that Embark just made a big change to the game's matchmaking

Some ARC Raiders players believe that developer Embark Studios may have just quietly made a huge change to the game's matchmaking system.

Board the Nerfed Trigger 'Nades this January

In community spaces leading up to ARC Raiders Update 1.11.0, grenades weren't just a nuisance – they were a defining feature of the meta. Steam Community threads and subreddit discussions were full of complaints about how Trigger 'Nades could turn any choke point into a kill zone, or how their use at extraction points skewed encounter results. The January 13th update openly acknowledged grenades' disproportionate influence on the meta, stating that Trigger 'Nade currently dominates PvP encounters and was picked far more often than any other throwable option.

In response, developers made specific changes to Trigger 'Nade's mechanics to curb its effectiveness.

The detonation delay between arming and detonation more than doubled, from 0.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds, giving opponents more time to react.
Along with this, damage was reworked so that explosions concentrated their impact closer to the center, leading to less damage at the outer edges of blast zones.
These tweaks were intended to make the air trigger tactic less reliable while preserving the overall utility of the grenades.

This patch represents the clearest evidence that it's not just a perception problem. Embark admitted that players prefer Trigger 'Nades because the tool can solve any problem a Raider might encounter. Grenades obviously offer controlled, direct firepower, but with a bit of improvisation they can also: flush players out of cover, catch players while hiding, scout without repercussions, and quickly reset most engagements. They are great against players and they can do anything against ARC as well. Sure, this is true for Trigger 'Nades and the remote detonation opens up some unique strategies, but the same goes for all the best grenades in ARC Raiders.

The problem is bigger than Trigger 'Nades

The issues that arise from this dominance are systemic. Grenades have begun to overwrite the core dynamics that ARC Raiders PvP combat otherwise encourages. Combat is meant to be driven by positioning, careful attention to audio cues, and incremental (sometimes magical) decision-making. Excelling with guns requires target discipline, ammunition awareness, and a basic understanding of how that tool will behave when fired, all while risking exposure. The same cannot be said for grenades.

The unintended consequence is an explode-first, ask-questions-later rhythm that eats away at the tactical core of ARC Raiders. Instead of clever flanks, silent infiltrations or impromptu deception, the thrill is often about spotting a player and planting explosives until something explodes. It's a decidedly less dynamic gameplay loop, and it doesn't match the heart-wrenching action that initially drew me in.

The change made in Update 1.11.0 was necessary, but it does not fully address the root of the problem. Increasing the fuse time and concentrating the damage only mitigates the worst abuses of Trigger 'Nades. It doesn't address grenades in general in a way that supports the game's intended flow. The objects still fulfill too many functions at the same time. They remain a source of lethal damage, position pressure and free information. The crux of the problem isn't just that grenades are strong; it is that they are too universally effective for too little investment.

ARC Raiders is at its best when opponents are forced into asymmetric encounters, when engagement depends on intuition and environmental reading, or deal brokering, rather than anticipation of incoming explosions and recurring feats that allow ARC Raiders duplication of meta-objects. In games built around fast, near chaos, like Call of Duty or Battlefieldthere is an established context for power such as grenades. They're just one of the many reliably powerful tools at players' disposal, along with an arsenal of weapons, potential vehicles, melee weapons, or other support items. ARC Raiders advertise something else. It promises tactical extraction, emerging conflict, and meaningful trade-offs between aggression and caution. When an item type begins to short-circuit these trade-offs, it weakens the broader system.

How can grenades evolve with ARC Raiders

Since update 1.11.0 some changes have been noticed. Raiders may not be hoarding Trigger 'Nades like they once did, but that didn't do much to deter players from using grenades more than their guns. Even as late as ARC Raiders' new Bird City event, explosives remain a one-size-fits-all solution, in part because the rest of the sandbox has less to offer in comparison. Options like mines and support objects like barricades and zip lines exist, but they will do little to deter an attacker with a backpack full of Light Impact or Blaze Grenades.

Grenades should have a more defined risk, one that better offsets their high potential. This could mean limiting the number of grenades a player can load with, increasing the resources needed to craft them, or potentially even something more drastic with specialization in the skill tree. While some ARC Raiders players don't want to Marathon-With their limitations, I fear that unless addressed, grenades will continue to undermine the game's own strategic architecture.

The actual resolution comes not from small detonation delays or isolated fall-off adjustments, but from changing how explosives fit into the world. Until then, every encounter will carry a persistent reminder that certain tools in this game dominate not because they're well-designed, but because they circumvent the very dynamics that make ARC Raiders worth playing. I am hopeful that as the game continues to evolve, Embark Studios will re-evaluate and re-balance throwables. If not for me, then for every Raider who's fallen into oblivion when opening some filing cabinets.