Outriders demo saw over 2 million players, patch coming next week

News by Stephany Nunneley-Jackson Former News Editor

Published on March 4, 2021

People Can Fly has announced its plans going forward with Outriders, starting with an incoming patch for the demo, which has seen over 2 million players.

For starters, the Outriders team is working on the backend to ensure connectivity issues aren't a problem when the game launches, as was seen with the demo.

According to the developer, the connectivity issues stemmed from players joining too fast for the backend systems to scale in time with the sheer number of players. People Can Fly assures this shouldn't be the case when the game is fully released.

Patches and changes for the demo need to be "carefully balanced" with the ongoing work toward releasing the game, but with that in mind, the team is working on a patch for the demo, which should be released early next week.

Here's what to expect with the patch:

Resolutions that apply to All Platforms:

Added a Motion Blur Toggle [ALL PLATFORMS]
Made minor tweaks to frame rate output for certain items in cutscenes, however, we are working on a more comprehensive fix for the future [ALL PLATFORMS]
Made improvements to cut down on the time it takes to Matchmake [ALL PLATFORMS]
Made other minor improvements and fixes

Additional resolutions that apply only to PC:

Fixed a crash that repeatedly occurred when opening the menu or inventory [PC]
Fixed a bug that deletes player gear if their connection drops out during a transition [PC]
Improved subtitle display and synchronization during the “Bad Day” quest [PC]

Additional resolutions that apply only to Xbox Platforms:

Fixed menu prompts not displaying correctly in supported non-English languages [XBOX]

Additional resolutions that apply only to PlayStation Platforms:

Fixed store links on the “Buy Now” button in the Lobby [PS4/5]
- Note that while the in game button will be fixed with the patch, you can still search the PlayStation store for "Outriders" should you wish to already pre-order it.
Fixed bug that was causing an audio desynchronization in cutscenes [PS4/5]

Changes to the Demo

A backend update to the demo will be done during short maintenance on Friday, March 5th at 3pm GMT. This will affect all platforms.
This change should be quite seamless and will not require you to download a patch. We are pre-announcing it now in order to give your advance notice of the changes.
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 an 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.

What's changing

Changes to Captains
- The Captain mob ability "Healing Light" will have its effectiveness reduced.
- The Captain mob ability "From the Ashes" and "Phoenix Aura" will have their cooldowns increased.
  - Some players were finding it hard to fully kill Captains who would trigger these abilities, making for a frustrating rather than a challenging but fun encounter.
Changes to Gauss
- Gauss will have his health points increased for repeat playthroughs.
  - This is to ensure that he remains fun and challenging for players who are overpowered at this point in the story.
- Gauss healing from his ability "Steel Wall" will be increased.
Changes to loot drops
- While we do not want to prevent farming runs (We get it!), the lootcave discovered via the triple chest-run, as well as the store exploit, do not feel to be within the spirit of the game. To that end, we are redirecting farming efforts to mechanics in the game that may be more enjoyable for players to play through and repeat.
  - Epic items will no longer appear in shops and vendors (within the demo).
  - Chests will no longer drop legendary items.
  - Sidequest rewards (on repeat runs) will now have a chance to drop legendary items.

Drop rates for enemies are not being changed at this time as the team feels these are balanced quite well for the average player experience.

Other Notes and Things being addressed:

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 a third-party software to alter the game files and save data in their favor.
- 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.