Not only have I been having a blast putting dozens of hours into the two-hourOutridersdemo, I’ve continually been impressed by the Devs communication with the game’s growing community. All of the above continues with news ofa new update coming to the demothat addresses a number of issues raised by the player base.
People Can Fly, the team behindOutriders, was on it the day of release, communicating over social media about the demo’s steady but not quite smooth rollout. They’ve been keeping track of player activity over the last week or so and listening to feedback and criticism from some 2 million players. Now, with a new patch coming out tomorrow (Friday, March 5th at 3pm GMT) they’re addressing both internal game content and external issues to make the demo experience smoother for Outriders everywhere.
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You can check out the full patch notes at the link above, and be sure to follow along withOutriders’Twitter handleand theirStatus Pagefor the latest updates. Some of the more important highlights for the fixes and changes follow below:
Connectivity
For a few short hours there were some connectivity issues that impacted players trying to access the game. To cut a long story short, while our planned-for infrastructure was ready for the raw number of total expected players, the speed with which those players were joining the demo during those first few hours surpassed even our expectations. So, while our backend systems scaled automatically and according to player population demand, they were unable to scale fast enough at the time.
Since then we have made changes to the backend and we should not experience a repeat of this particular issue when the game fully launches.
The launch days also coincided with a temporary console services outage, the aftershocks of which may have impacted some players trying to get back into the game. We posted afix for this here.
Platform Patches
Be sure to check the patch notes for platform-specific changes. Fixes coming to all platforms follow below:
Changes to Loot Farming
Here come the big changes for loot farmers, though I’m happy to see that the folks at People Can Fly aren’t trying to nerf farmers but rather streamline and balance the experience ahead of the full release on April 1st:
Some of these changes, specifically those related to enemies, are in response to feedback we’ve seen coming in from players as well as what our own backend metrics are showing us.
Other changes are intended to only affect the demo, and may not be implemented in the full launch build.
We would like to issue a explanatory note of caution before getting into the changes: While we have balanced the main game with a certain progression system, this progression may be impacted by heavy farming of gear and/or mods in the demo. As some players are front-loading a lot of that progression (such as by trying to fill their mod library or acquire multiple Legendaries) within the demo content already, their experience of parts of the main game may well be impacted.
Of course, it’s every player’s decision how to play the game for themselves and we do not want to prevent people from farming the demo for gear if they enjoy it. However, we would like to ensure that this process is not overly simplistic, easy or prone to exploitation.
Changes to Captains
Changes to Gauss
Changes to loot drops
Drop rates for enemies are NOT being changed at this time as we feel these are balanced quite well for the average player experience. (RIP that captain.)
Note that running this backend update now is also a way for us to pre-emptively ensure that such backend balancing can be a straightforward, low impact method of also rectifying any excessive balance issues in the main game.
Miscellaneous
In addition to continued work on polishing the main game for release in just a few weeks, People Can Fly are addressing the following issues:
Camera Shake during Cut-scenes and Dialogues
This is not something that we will be able to address fully for the demo, but we are aware of the desire from players to see the shaking reduced. We believe that removing the 30fps restriction during these scenes will help reduce the impact of the camera movement, but we are continuing to investigate what can be done here.
Matchmaking
While the upcoming patch may help alleviate some issues here, we are keeping a close eye on the time it takes to matchmake and are continually investigating where such matchmaking is taking longer than it should.
The Cover System
Since the demo launch, we have been paying special attention to all player feedback and have been reading discussions about the cover system in Outriders.
While this is not something that we will be able to fix within the demo at this time, the main game will not only include a slew of bug fixes for many cover locations, but it will also address and fix a handful of systemic issues that are currently affecting the cover mechanic on a global level.
Items disappearing from player inventories.
This is an issue that we are treating very seriously and are doing our utmost to investigate. While our upcoming patch will address one bug causing this issue, we are continuing to track down other causes.
In the spirit of transparency, while we do not currently have a system in place that can automatically restore an affected player’s complete inventory, our teams are nevertheless working hard to see what may be possible in the near future.
Once we have identified and resolved the underlying causes for this issue, as well as further investigated the feasibility of a restoration system, we will provide the community with an update and try to get affected players back on their feet.
Please keep an eye on our social channels and community for further news about this.
Cheating and players using obvious exploits.
We are aware of a handful of players who are using third party software to alter the game files and save data in their favour.
While we cannot go into details (in order to not give such players an insight into our systems), we would like to assure all regular players that we are able to identify cheaters with relative ease via our backend system and that their actions should not affect your regular playing or your co-op experience.
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