Outriders
According to recent reports, it appears that Outriders players are preventing squad company from obtaining loot (or loot, if you prefer) within an endgame mission. And it seems that the only reason this is happening is sheer badness.A number of players have reported this. One example is FancyTangerine3312, who explained through the game's sub-reddit that he joined at the beginning of an expedition and helped another player found with matchmaking to make it to the end of the mission. Shortly before he could get the loot, however, his teammate kicked him out of the game. Below you can see a video that shows this from the point of view of the kicked player.
You should know that, once the final stage of Expedition is complete, there is a brief moment during which the player has to move towards the loot. It takes several moments to reach your reward and in the meantime you are kicked out of the game. The real problem is that this strategy has no purpose. The party leader, in fact, cannot access the loot of the Outriders player who has been turned away and cannot allow another player to enter the game to "steal" that loot. So it seems that everything happens out of pure nastiness.
The Outriders community is debating to find a way to prevent this from continuing to happen. Some, for example, propose eliminating the possibility of hunting a teammate after the last Expedition. For the moment there are no comments from the developers, People Can Fly.
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‘Outriders’ Has Probably Run Its Course For Now, Barring Changes Or Additions
Outriders
People Can FlyWhat happens when you design your looter as a non-live service game? It has an ending. And for better or worse, that’s what we’re approaching in Outriders, at least at the moment.
If you mained one character in Outriders, chances are you probably have reached the endgame and have farmed yourself up to high tiers with a pretty solid build. And once you do that, there’s little else to do but start more characters.
If you’re like me, running four characters since the start, you may be a little further behind, but unsure of how much grinding you want to put in across all four, given that there may be future balance changes coming to buff builds and weapons and mods, to nerf the most annoying enemies and Expedition timers, and increase drop rates.
So, short of big new balance patches that encourage a lot more grinding, or an actual new infusion of content (which seems unlikely because Outriders has said it will only have “true” expansions, which would be far off), the limit appears to be in sight, if you haven’t already hit it. And judging by the fact that on Steam, the game is now bottoming out at 15,000 concurrent players compared to its launch high of 125,000, that’s already happened for many.
To be clear, I am not declaring this “bad” necessarily. Any game you extract 20-100 hours from is probably worth the $60 asking price, even more so if you’re on Xbox and snagged this for “free” on Game Pass. But it is unusual in this genre, as so many of these games don’t have a real ending.
Outriders
People Can FlyIf this was Destiny, I would drop some article complaining about there being nothing to do, but Outriders was very up front about how this was never going to be a game with fresh week to week, month to month, season to season content. That was all baked in at launch.
Granted, I would argue that with the issues the game has, it is not fully baked, but I mean, the endgame is in better shape than most looters at launch, I’ll admit.
What would keep me playing Outriders? Again, some significant changes to balance which didn’t make high CT tiers feel so tedious. And then whatever new content drop they come up with, though we cannot expect that for a while yet. I am all in favor of the “true” expansion model of games, which is how we get things like Reaper of Souls or The Taken King. But unlike Diablo 3 or Destiny 1, I don’t think Outriders needs to be “saved.” I think it had a perfectly fine campaign and a perfectly solid stab at an endgame. It’s just that it has some pretty clear limits on how much you can wring out of it. And it has that on purpose.
In theory, sure, I would love for Outriders to be more live service-y and introduce new guns to chase every season and raise the level cap for more skill points and introduce new endgame activities besides timed expeditions. But I also can’t fault it for not being something it very clearly told us it would not be.
Outriders
People Can FlyThat said, things change. Outriders is a hit. It sold well. Diablo 3 certainly didn’t launch with all its endgame mechanics in place, or anything like the seasons it eventually got. And I don’t think anyone was calling that a “live service,” as that was before the term even existed. I can see Outriders following a similar path with future content updates. No, it doesn’t need battle passes and microtransactions, but it’s clear this could be a good base for something larger. And I hope they build that.
For now, I will probably be easing back a bit, other than the occasional critique about what I hope they change. But I am not expecting anything huge from the game for a while, so it’s mostly back to the looters dropping new things every other week. And that’s fine!
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