The RPG Shooter Outriders aims to impress players with cooperative gameplay and loot. MeinMMO presents 9 important things you might not know about the game.
What is Outriders, anyway? Outriders is an upcoming new RPG shooter set in a sci-fi environment developed by People Can Fly. The gameplay shown so far resembles a mix of Diablo and Anthem. Players can slay monsters and collect loot either solo or in co-op with friends.
Gameplay takes place in closed rounds; there is no open world. The focus is on PvE. Players can choose from four classes, which are:
- Devastator
- Pyromancer
- Trickster
- Technomancer
Skills, classes, and equipment are designed to offer many different combinations, allowing you to slash through the campaign and endgame content.
What we know about the release: After a delay, Outriders is set to launch on April 1, 2021, for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, PS4, PS5, and Google Stadia. A demo is expected to be released on February 25.
What’s included in the demo? The demo includes the first hours of the story where you can try out the game, both solo and with friends. All four classes will be playable. Progress should even carry over to the full game.
However, aside from the demo, there are some other noteworthy things about the game that not every interested player might be aware of. To give you a better idea of Outriders, we have summarized them here for you:
1. Outriders is not a live service game
What does that mean? At first glance, Outriders resembles well-known live service games like Destiny, The Division, or Anthem, which also revolve around collecting gear and focusing on shooter elements.
However, Outriders aims to be released as a “finished” game and wants to offer the full scope at launch. According to the developers, there will be a campaign with up to 40 hours of gameplay waiting for you, plus endgame content on top.
What we know about the endgame: After the campaign, players will undertake what are called Expeditions. These resemble the Greater Rifts from Diablo 3 in many ways. In various difficulty levels (up to 15 “World Tiers”) you must battle through missions as quickly as possible to obtain better gear.
Whether there will be additional endgame content beyond this is still unknown.
Will there be DLCs in the future? Currently, there are no known plans for this.
2. Outriders has no microtransactions
Here’s the situation regarding purchasable content: Since Outriders is not a live service game, there will also be no microtransactions in the form of an in-game shop or purchasable cosmetic content. This has been confirmed by developer People Can Fly in a Q&A video (via Gamespot.com)
Also, season passes and other similar features are not expected to be included in the game.
3. Outriders offers no PvP
While The Division and Destiny offer extensive PvP modes, Outriders focuses solely on PvE. You cannot compete against other players or measure yourself against them in combat.
The focus is on the story, cooperative gameplay, and loot collection, as seen in Diablo or Anthem.
4. Outriders lets you craft
This is how the crafting system works: In Outriders, even outdated equipment has a use. For example, if you have an old shotgun with a modification, you can disassemble the weapon and place the modification on another weapon. This way, the effect can continue to be used.
Keep in mind that you can only obtain mods from weapons of a certain rarity (blue) by disassembling them. The same applies to armor pieces.
With this system, you can constantly adapt and change your gear, provided that you collect the necessary resources in the game world.
These resources can also be used to upgrade the loot you find. In theory, you can upgrade a standard weapon to the epic tier.
5. Modifications influence your playstyle
Modifications have a significant impact on how you create your builds in Outriders. While weapon mods primarily change active combat (damage type, ammunition type), armor modifications (skill mods) have a more passive influence on your build.
This is how weapon mods work: Modifications for weapons can provide a wide variety of bonuses. For example, you might find a light machine gun whose ammo explodes when you kill an enemy. There are many different variants that can also enable electricity damage or even influence gravity.
Overall, there are three “mod tiers,” meaning levels for modifications.
- Tier 1 is obtained from rare (blue) weapons,
- Tier 2 from epic (purple) weapons
- and Tier 3 can only be found on legendary (gold) equipment.
The higher the mod tier, the stronger the bonuses and attributes.
This is how skill mods work: These armor modifications are obtained the same way as weapon mods, by disassembling loot starting from the rare tier. These are also divided into 3 tiers. However, the effects are more geared toward passive bonuses and talents. This way, you can sometimes obtain bonuses from other classes that you are not even playing at the time.
The video by LaserBolt shows in detail how it all works:
6. Legendary loot is not limited to one slot
Here’s how it’s known from similar games: Anyone who has played The Division or Destiny will be familiar with exotic equipment. These are typically the strongest gear pieces you can find. In addition, “Exotics” usually have very specific attributes and a unique appearance.
In the mentioned games, you can wear only one exotic armor piece and one exotic weapon to prevent players from becoming too strong.
Here’s how it is in Outriders: A developer from People Can Fly has (via reddit) confirmed that Outriders also offers such equipment. Here, however, it is called “Legendary Loot”, meaning legendary equipment. This provides unique attributes and visually distinguishes itself from other gear. However, you can equip this legendary gear in any available equipment slot.
There are no limitations for players, and you can freely combine the strongest weapons and armors.
7. You can reset your skills and talents anytime
What does that mean? Each character class has a talent tree with active and passive skills, as is common in many other RPGs. In Outriders, you can reset and reselect your chosen talents at any time, even while on missions or even in the middle of a fight.
This allows you to try out new variants and interesting combinations if you find yourself stuck at a certain point.
8. Outriders will offer extensive PC features
If you’re worried about the support of the PC version, you can relax. On January 14, developer People Can Fly released a video about the PC features. It emphasizes that they place great importance on this version.
Some examples of the PC features:
- A customizable UI (User Interface)
- Ultra-wide screen support
- Customizable field of view (FOV)
- Dynamic resolution scaling
- NVIDIA DLSS support
- NVIDIA Ansel support
- Razer Chroma-RGB support
You can watch the details in the video:
If you are a fan of shooters, you might also find this interesting:
9. Crossplay makes platform choice irrelevant
What does crossplay mean? Crossplay allows for online play across different platforms.
On which platforms can you play Outriders together? Crossplay is available between all platforms where Outriders is released. These include PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, PS4, PS5, and Google Stadia. There will also be crossplay between the Steam version and the Epic Games Store version on PC.
What about cross-save? The crossplay feature unfortunately does not mean that you can transfer your save game to any platform. As of now, there will be no cross-save feature. This means: If you start on PlayStation 5, you cannot simply continue on PC with the same save game.
Did you already know all these things about Outriders? What do you think of the game so far? Will you take a look at the demo or are you perhaps already determined to get it right at release?
To find out what interesting games are also coming out, check out our summary: New Games 2021 MMOs and Multiplayer Overview
