Outriders - Square Enix colonizes space

On the one hand, blight is such a powerful way to go that I find trying other builds less appealing; you have to dial down WT a lot to make them nearly as good. On the other hand, that makes more nerfs perhaps a good thing, because all of the builds should be cool. I just don’t want that process to create a situation where everything is brought down to a low level, rather than elevated so that other builds are competitive too. Working WT 12; while the tiers themselves are not very crucial, though they do supposedly increase legendary drop rates, you get some nice rewards for making each tier.

It is fun essentially going a whole fight with Blighted Rounds never running out.

Apart from the guaranteed drops for the last few tiers, the drops you’re going to get from WT during the campaign will be swamped by what you get from Expeditions.

Oh, no doubt. I ran one character up to Expeditions, then turned around to do another class. Not sure when I’ll dive into Expeditions, because I kind of want to try the other class abilities too.

ugh expeditions are cool but i got my class nerfed pyro, and then a few of my legendary weps… its so annoying, cuz with my shotgun build i spent alot of titanium upgrading skills built around that shotty… doing a shitton of dmg! but over weekend i knew they nerfed it… the crit rate seemd off and radius of damage was so small … thanks!

The game has a great foundation, the devs seem to know how loot should work … compared to Borderlands 3 this game is a like grad school and Borderlands junior high level when it comes to progression and satisfaction.

The gunplay is better IMO in Borderlands 3. The shooting and positioning here is sometimes just a bit off. Like, when you are trying to aim down sights it becomes very hard to track moving targets.

I agree with this. Also, invisible terrain is sometimes an issue, as well as bullet stopping bushes and huge corpses that also impede bullets. Also, let’s be honest, Borderlands has a vast array of interesting and unique ways to through lead at someone. That being said, I really like what Outriders is so far. It has some great potential. We’ll see about longevity after the balance patch that was recently mentioned.

Borderlands 3 does have better gunplay feel, but for gameplay… i think Outriders has more depth. Borderlads always shies away from making a REAL looter shooter imo… but its more arcade by design though.

I am hoping outriders can get enough fans and be something like Warframe…,the warframe model is good, but I get bored with the feel of guns in Warframe.

Yeah, I’d agree the metastructure of Borderlands kind of sucks.

They could always change their mind but they’ve been adamant in the past that this isn’t going to be a live service game. They might do some DLCs or something but it won’t be an ongoing game like Warframe is.

At the last story area on my Technomancer. Hit the level cap a while back, WT 13. With a legendary assault rifle I found and gear at level 40, the only things that are making me break a sweat are those uber-spongy area of effect bosses that toss around fire and lightning. Otherwise, I pop Blight and plink away starting at long range. Usually one headshot does it for swarm mobs, and the 40~ rounds in the rifle usually never run out as long as there is trash to kill to proc the ammo regen.

I am going to play around with re-specing to remove a couple sniper rifle nodes. Sniper rifles seem utterly redundant. On the PC, with M+K, a good AR is as effective at range and with higher magazine capacity is better suited to a Blight build right now.

One thing I like about this game is that you can make some very interesting builds.

Sadly, that evaporates as you get into the expedition side of things; bullet builds are the only things really viable at that point for a large number of reasons.

I’m solo gold running CT15 stuff now so there’s not really anything left for me to do short of levelling alts and I’ve never been that sorta fox. Kinda miffed that the design of the final expedition makes solo gold literally impossible. As if being baited into ragequitting over the endless stunlocks wasn’t bad enough.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with it, though, and am looking forward to future updates. Shame about the technical issues. If I’d had a poorer run of luck with it I’d have been more upset with it. The worst I can claim is that a couple of accolades have not unlocked for me thus I will forevermore be sitting at 99% completion.

Yep, that’s where I put the game on hold. All the cool/fun things drastically narrowed down to The One True Skill. I’ll just await a balance pass or three to bring all the underperforming abilities into line then play around more at the endgame. Don’t want to burn out / get frustrated with the current meta.

Quests bug out sometimes, too, I have had several times where I’ve cleared out an area as instructed but the game doesn’t register it, making the pick up of a history collectible for Madame Beauvoir non-interactable. because the game thinks I’m in combat. It seems sometimes that the game expects me to continue through on the story path, even if I’ve already done it, because you can replay missions and f you retrace your steps in a later game session baddies respawn and doors re lock.

I feel it’s a misstep that expeditions are rated by time to finish. That means dumping everything into maximum damage output, and all the systems for survivability kind of take a back seat. At least in terms of playing them solo. I would hope multiplayer expeditions allow a bit more wiggle room.

I’m embarrassed to admit I’m not sure what CT means. You’re soloing tier 15 expeditions and getting gold medals? Aren’t you then close to being able to do the final mission? Because one of the things I like about Outriders – at least in theory – is that it’s got a hard ending. It seems like once you can do the Eye of the Storm mission at the end of the expeditions, you’re done with that character, right? This isn’t just another open-ended action RPG you’re supposed to play forever and ever and ever.

-Tom

@tomchick The final mission, whiteout getting two spoilery, requires 3 players to be standing in zones at the same time in order to complete within the time limit. It is impossible to currently beat it solo and get a gold.

I think CT stands for Challenge Tier? Anyways, its the expedition equivalent of world tier. I’ve got golds in most everything else but the last mission. At this point I think I’m done for a bit. I’ve tried several builds, and I can’t get traction on any of them but blighted bullets, which IMHO is not really a special ability, so much as it is the same mechanics only with stronger bullets. So I’m going to put this one on the bench until a balance patch or two I think.

I agree, total misstep and one that kind of surprised me, honestly. It would be one thing if some expeditions were timed but putting all endgame content behind a timer? It had very immediate and predictable results, including toxicity in the community if you joined a random game and weren’t the “right” build or class (poor Devastators).

Time trials are too one-dimensional. As a player I want to choose my loadout and my tactics. If you’re able to clear with max DPS that’s its own reward because you’re getting the rewards faster. Let me stealth my way through, snipe, or go heavy on the defense and tank my way through it!

Challenge Tier, as @Fozzle mentions. But yeah, the last mission sucks solo thanks to the 3 zone mechanism. No matter how well you play or how powerful you are, it goes to silver before you even get a chance to lay a finger on the boss. I managed bronze, could possibly eke out a silver but, meh, what’s the point.

If they wanted it to be a strict group activity thing I’d be fine with it but I do resent being set up to fail. At least I got the dumb accolade for soloing everything now. Was just hoping I’d be able to get the one for 100% gold without having to team up with John Rando.

If anything it’s the opposite; the enemies get so spongey with extra players everybody needs to roll a glass cannon build. My coop partner was the tank (trickster) in our duo throughout the campaign and we did well with that setup. Once you get past around CT11 it just isn’t viable, not least of all due to the fact that being able to do that effectively as a trickster relies on you being able to actually kill things to regen your shield etc. We’re still playing together, and it’s not like he’s constantly getting killed… but without the gear/dps to offset the HP he adds on to enemies I do much better solo, frankly.

Finally uninstalled after finishing the basic story questline (up to Expeditions) twice. When my level 30 Blight Technomancer had to drop WT down to WT3 to beat the final boss, I was pretty done with it. Expeditions being timed one-dimensional kill fests with zero variety or nuance just sort of put the nail in the coffin. If they change stuff up or add things maybe I’ll go back. Got my money’s worth but overall it’s a B movie.

I’ve been kind of playing the game twice, concurrently. I started a solo pyro from the demo, carried into the main game upon release. I’ve gotten up through the snowy mountain region and basically I had to dial down to WT3 to do so. I just get swarmed and can’t kill the tougher captains and such fast enough on higher tiers.

My second playthrough is with two friends - one plays pyro, the other a devastator and I am playing techno. We just reached the snowy mountain area and are cranking through on WT6 with very few problems. And I’m not really sure why that is. I’m guessing the combined arms attacks are more effective, plus there are 3 of us to surround and flank and all that. But it seems multiplayer is just much easier as best I can tell, like the game doesn’t really scale for number of players. Or am I crazy?