The loot shooter Outriders (PC: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Stadia) has lost 11 out of 12 players since its release in April on Steam. Now the team is taking drastic measures: In an update, the loot system for legendary items will be redesigned to make players happy. The drop rate will be increased by 100 %. The patch is expected to arrive in the coming days.
This is the situation:
- The third-person shooter Outriders was released on April 1 during a period when few new games were coming out and was quite a success for Square Enix. The people liked the atmosphere and the story campaign of Outriders.
- However, it quickly became clear that Outriders revealed some problems in the gameplay mechanics. A nasty loot bug affected the good mood. Moreover, the game was not designed for long-term play. The mood turned hostile towards the developers.
- Now the developers announce that they will radically change the loot system: They will double the amount of legendary items and make the system much friendlier for the players.
New shooter loses almost all players in 3 months
Here’s how the player numbers of Outriders looked: We know the player numbers of Outriders through Steam. It can be assumed that the numbers on PlayStation and Xbox have developed similarly:
- At launch, in April 2021, Outriders had an average of 46,290 players and at its absolute peak even 125,000 simultaneous players.
- By May, 80 % of the players were gone: Now only an average of 9,000 were playing.
- In the last 30 days, this number has halved again: About 3,850 people are now playing Outriders on Steam on average.
In short: From the 12 people who played the new shooter Outriders in April 2021, only one is left as of June 2021.
5 changes to legendary loot in Outriders
This is now the radical step: In a post on reddit, the developers announced radical changes to the “legendary items” in Outriders, which will come with the next patch (via reddit):
- The drop rate of legendary items will be increased by 100 %.
- The “level bracket” system will be removed – all legendary items can now drop at any level.
- An “anti-duplication” system will be introduced. If players would receive a legendary item they already have, it will be re-rolled. This gives players a “second roll.” However, it will only be re-rolled once, not until the item is completely new. The system reduces the chances of “duplicate items” but does not completely rule them out.
- The “scripted boss loot” (Chrysaloid, Yagak) will have the potential to drop all legendary items that are not class-specific.
- The “luck system” will be revamped. Players should no longer experience very long dry spells in the endgame.
When is the patch coming? The update is scheduled for “early next week,” so it should arrive in the coming days.
This is how the reactions are: Overall, reactions to this drop rate are positive. People say it’s a “super move.” However, there are also some skeptics who point out that doubling a 0.01 % chance is 0.02 %.
One will have to wait and see how the system performs in practice and whether it can lift the player numbers of Outriders again.
The poor “legendary drop rate” was indeed a major problem for Outriders. This is a typical problem many loot shooters face: Players hate it when there is too little loot and then find ways to cope:
Players in Outriders start cheating because the legendary drop rate is so bad.
