It’s flexible for a reason
The time has finally come for Outriders‘ launch, and all of us can stop farming gear in the demo and jump into the real thing.
It’s been…interesting so far! While some of the core loop has the potential to get stale, it’s fun jumping into games with random people and seeing how class synergy works. The moment to moment gunplay is fun, and I’m actually experimenting with different builds without feeling overwhelmed. Oh, and the lack of live service nonsense or loot boxes helps. It has a baked-in season pass type system to ramp up and unlock cosmetics, but it is not monetized. Praise be.
One big thing I’ve been messing with during my playthrough is the world tier system, and I think a lot of people are going to like it. In short, it’s a sliding difficulty scale that also dictates the quality of your loot. Now, this isn’t new. Even the term is old hat. But typically, a lot of games ask you to set your world tier before you do a mission, or in certain zones. Outriders lets you do it whenever.
Remember that! You can pause the game whenever you want, solo, and set your tier. The game even clearly and cleverly labels their difficulty, starting with “story,” then ramping to “easy, normal, hard, expert, master, legend…” and so on.
The thing is, the penalties for ramping down aren’t that massive early on (the difference between loot rarity is only 10 percentage points in the first three levels), and you can dynamically swap as needed. Having trouble with a boss? Roll down and best them. You won’t get as good of a loot table, but hey, you won’t be banging your head against the wall for an hour straight.
Likewise, do you have an area down and want to reap the rewards? Roll it up. It’s flexible like that and should accommodate a wide variety of players, from casual fans who just want to stroll through the story to veteran loot-heads who want all of the legendary drops possible. It’s there. Use it! No matter what side of the fence you’re on.
