We're just one week out from launching Outriders fully on April 1st, 2021. 7 Days to go!
We've got a lot of things to cover today, so lets jump right into it.
Note that your progress and characters should be waiting for you in the main game. You do not need to manually transfer them.
Here’s an index that will help you focus on the things that interest you the most.
<*> Preloading & Launch Timings <*> What's Changed between Demo and Launch? <*> Patches & Post-Launch support <*> Item Restoration For Players Who lost their Legendaries <*> Our Policy on Cheating and Hacking <*> Hells Rangers Info
Preloading & Launch Timings
Pre-loading:
Steam – We are still determining our preload options here and hope to share news about the possibility of pre-loading next week.
Launch Times:
Unified single global time for PC:
Outriders will release on April 1st at 17:00 BST / 09:00am PDT on Steam
Here is a countdown that will help you understand how long to go in your specific region.
Steam can only release at a single time globally (this is due to how the store is set up)
This time is the standard PC release time for Square Enix and has been carefully chosen to ensure that the maximum amount of support and partner staff are on hand to deal with any launch day issues.
What has changed between the latest Demo build and the launch day build of Outriders?
Below is only a condensed overview. In truth, the launch day build contains a multitude of additional general improvements, balancing, bug fixes and crash resolutions.
Highlights include:
Lots of demo content bug fixes, including for example, mods on some Legendary weapons not triggering properly.
Balancing changes for various items, mods, enemy stats and loot drops.
Balancing is an ongoing process and we have learnt much from internal playtests, the Insiders preview and the demo over the previous months. However, we’re sure that we will continue to learn more from the launch of the main game and the feedback provided by you, our community. So, keep it coming!
Crossplay will no longer be in Beta and will be on by default.
PC players will be able to add cross-platform players that they have previously played with to their friends lists in game.
Please note that if you turn Crossplay off manually, you will not be able to automatically matchmake with people who still have it turned on, even if you are all on the same platform. Direct inviting should still work though.
DirectX 12 will be the default.
Added a "Quick Mark" functionality to your inventory.
This will allow you to mass-mark all items based on their rarity in one or two button presses, rather than needing to mark items individually (which is still possible if preferred).
Improvements to the Cover System
Improvement to Travel Voting system used when in a group
Added information about internal cooldown mechanics for Mods to their descriptions
But wait! There's more! Find out about our patch intentions below.
As you progress through the main game you will also have full access to the crafting system, character levels, all World Tiers and more. No more Grinding for Legendaries at WT5! We recommend playing through the story and enjoying the experience first. Legendaries will drop naturally over time as you push your WT higher and get into Expeditions content.
Patches & Post-Launch support
We currently have a few patches undergoing testing and submission.
Below are our pre-planned patches. However, as with the demo, we will be carefully monitoring the launch and it is our full intention to on short notice hotfix any issues that we are able to reproduce and resolve on our side and that are deemed severe enough.
Issues of lesser severity that we are able to reproduce and resolve will likely be bundled into the bigger “Post-Launch Follow up Patch” for the sake of efficiency.
Day 1 Patch
This is a patch we're hoping to have ready and integrated into pre-loading even before launch. If everything goes to plan you won’t even have to download this on Day, but there is a possibility that this patch will release on April 1st (day one) and will therefore require an additional download.
Many bug fixes and improvements, with a particular focus on the latter sections of the game.
Performance improvements for pacing/stuttering that was observed during the demo
Camera Smoothing improvements for cutscenes and dialogues. This should reduce the camera shake that some players are struggling with
Cutscenes/dialogues frame rate improvements
PC cutscenes will have the option to choose from 30, 60, 90 and 120fps
Post-Launch Follow up Patch & Upcoming Optimizations
This is a pre-planned patch that is intended to address any recently-reported issues or bugs coming out of the demo that the run to launch didn't allow us enough time to implement beforehand. The resolutions for any non-urgent bugs that are discovered during launch may well be rolled into this patch.
At this point in time we do not yet have a set release time for this patch as its release will depend on the amount of content we want to roll into it. We are expecting this to roll out at least a few weeks after launch. Newly discovered severe issues will be hot-fixed earlier and separately from this patch of course.
Below are our intentions for this patch.
Controller adjustment options such as deadzone adjustment, acceleration settings and legacy layouts.
Loading Time Improvements for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles
Further Performance Improvements for Co-op games
Bug fixes including, for example:
Lore collectibles bugging out on second characters
This list will continue to be built out as we progress through launch
Item Restoration For Players Who lost their Legendaries:
As mentioned in our previous dev update, we intend to restore Legendaries to players who lost them as a result of a specific bug.
This restoration is taking place right now, as part of today's maintenance (Thursday, March 25).
Restoration:
Is a one-off event for the global player population
Restoration will take place on March 25th and will restore any Legendaries lost before March 22nd
Only Legendary Weapons that were lost can be restored
Please check whether your lost Legendary Weapons have been restored once the Maintenance has ended.
Since we implemented our fix for this bug, we have observed a smaller number of continued reports regarding lost Legendaries. We believe most of these to be down to the regularity of the game autosaving rather than a specific bug. Put simply, if you found a Legendary but the game was terminated before an autosave could occur, that Legendary (or any other item) would never have made it into your server inventory/our logs.
Instances of this occurring include:
Players using specific farming methods that are so fast that they prevent the game from triggering an autosave cycle before the farming run is reset. In extreme cases, some players may go for long periods of time without autosaving.
Players crashing out of the game just before/after they pick up a Legendary.
We are continuing to investigate such use cases and we are looking into how we can mitigate against them in future.
While we hope that we managed to restore as many Legendaries as possible, we expect there to be niche cases of players not having a Legendary restored because it never arrived on our logs (as per the use cases above).
If this is the case, please reply to the Steam forums gather thread so that we can track and be aware of how many cases were missed. We will try to provide news around further steps when we know more.
Our Policy on Cheating and Hacking:
Since demo launch this has been a hotly debated topic, so we wanted to provide some perspective on it as well as outline our policy regarding cheating and hacking going forward.
For context:
At the time when we reached around 2 million players, we identified 200 players who had clearly cheated. In percentage terms, that’s 0.01%.
We can see you all. Yes, even the person who gave themself 600 Legendary Weapons.
We trust that this percentage will not grow by much as we move through and beyond launch, but below are the steps we will take to ensure that legit players will not have their fun spoiled as a result of cheaters.
Repercussions of being identified as having used cheats:
Repercussions are account wide, not character specific
You will not be able to matchmake with legit players
Matchmaking will likely take significantly longer
You will still be able to play solo
In future, your HUD will have a discreet but visible watermark placed on it so that gameplay footage created on this account can be readily identified as coming from a flagged account.
All accounts will be checked for evidence of cheat use on launch day - April 1st, and then at regular intervals thereafter.
Any account logs found to have evidence of cheating on them on or after launch day will be permanently branded.
If you cheated during the demo "just to try it out" but wish to go into the main game unbranded, you must DELETE ALL CHARACTERS AND ITEMS ON YOUR ENTIRE ACCOUNT in order to wipe the slate clean. You should not carry over any progress between demo and main game if you previously cheated but do not plan to do so in the main game.
What is considered cheating?
Intentionally running the game on PC without Easy Anti Cheat (EAC)
Modifying game files to enhance a character: levels, skills, inventory, etc.
Externally modifying game time to reduce time dependent features such as vendors and challenges
Using a trainer program or similar to gain advantages within the game
Using gameplay altering programs such as aimbots or wallhacks
Individual players who are found to be being regularly kicked by multiplayer hosts shortly after joining may also be manually reviewed as an additional anti-cheat/anti-grief safeguard.
Using performance tweaking software (such as RivaTuner for example) to improve a personal game experience is not considered cheating.
Farming is not considered cheating. Even though the amount of battering that that captain underwent could be considered unethical. RIPThatCaptain.
We reserve the right to update and change this policy in future.
Hells Ranger's Info
The Hell's Ranger Content will become available via your stash for anyone who owns it. This means that even if you progress through the story without it, you will not miss out on acquiring it in game.
Please note that this gear is level-locked to level 10, so you will need to meet its requirements (achieving level 10 or playing on certain level boosting World Tiers) before you are able to use it.
Outriders has been updated - 19.03.2021
We believe we have identified and now prevented the Inventory Wipe/Items Disappearing issue from occurring in the Outriders Demo.
We actually published the fix for this issue on Monday, but have been using the days since then to verify whether our resolution has been successful in order to not make any false promises. Today’s patch has added an extra safeguard against this issue occurring in future based on our findings.
To that end, we would please ask any players who have had their inventory wiped on any of the following days to please let us know via the Steam forums:
Tuesday, March 16th
Wednesday, March 17th
Thursday, March 18th
Today or any day after today (Friday, March 19th)
We hope that no inventory wipes should have occurred during these days, but we want to ensure that this issue has been resolved, so please do let us know!
Restoration:
Now that we believe that the issue has been prevented going forward, we can focus a bit more on how we plan to compensate affected players.
We fully understand the disappointment of feeling like you have lost significant progress, items or time, and we would like to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to make things right. While we are still working on the exact technicalities, below are our intentions for item restorations:
Restoration should take place on a specific day and should be a one-time event
The exact date is TBC but we’re hoping for this to occur prior to the launch of Outriders on April 1
We will update you when we have confirmation of date and timings
We will only be able to restore Legendary items that have been lost as a result of this bug
We will not be able to restore items of a rarity below Legendary
At this time you do not need to get in touch with us to report inventory disappearances that occurred prior to Monday March 15th.
Please note that these are our intentions that we are providing here for transparency. While we will try our hardest to make things right, we unfortunately cannot make guarantees for the specifics of the above or the timeline of this, as we may run into technical difficulties that delay our work.
Accolades:
This appears to be a separate issue and we do still need to uncover the full extent of it in order to better tailor our resolution for it.
To that end, could anyone who has had their accolades wiped, please let us know in the Steam forums.
Understanding the numbers of players affected by this will help us greatly as we continue to investigate this issue.
Other things that we are investigating with a hope for improvements before launch:
Further optimizations to multiplayer connections
The main game will also include a host of improvements and bug fixes that weren’t possible to be integrated into the demo at the time of demo release due to when we had to split the development builds. So even if there are things that we may not have directly addressed during these updates so far, there is a good chance that they will be resolved with the launch build.
Outriders has been updated
Added a Motion Blur Toggle
Made minor tweaks to frame rate output for certain items in cutscenes. A more comprehensive fix is being worked on for the future
Made Improvements to cut down on the time it takes to Matchmake
Fixed a crash that repeatedly occurred when opening the menu or inventory
Fixed a bug that deletes player gear if their connection drops out during a transition
Improved subtitle display and synchronization during the “Bad Day” quest
Fixed a bug that caused a corrupted lobby to appears for a brief moment when joining a Host lobby
Other minor improvements and fixes
Outriders Demo - One Week Later Dev Update
Hello everyone,
It's hard to believe that a week has already flown by since we released the Outriders demo to the world… from the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much to everyone who has already taken their first steps into the world of Outriders!
Since demo launch we've closely watched over 2 million players download and battle their way through the war-torn hellscape of Enoch, and we're very excited to welcome many more as we advance to launch day on April 1st and beyond.
To that end, we wanted to share some bundled information about the demo launch week and our plans for the future.
Please use the BOLD FONT to find the issues that interest you the most.
Demo Launch Week - The story so far...
As you will remember, we launched the demo last Thursday.
For a few short hours there were some connectivity issues that impacted players trying to access the game. To cut a long story short, while our planned-for infrastructure was ready for the raw number of total expected players, the speed with which those players were joining the demo during those first few hours surpassed even our expectations. So, while our backend systems scaled automatically and according to player population demand, they were unable to scale fast enough at the time.
Since then we have made changes to the backend and we should not experience a repeat of this particular issue when the game fully launches.
We kept everyone updated on the situation via our Twitter handle, but in future we will additionally rely more heavily on our Status Page to reflect the current situation.
Since launch we have also been tracking issues and providing temporary workarounds for those that we are able to recreate on our side. These workarounds can be found in the Demo Help & Tracking Thread, but our actual goal is of course to ensure that these issues won't affect players to begin with.
Which brings us to what’s next...
What's next? What are our plans for the demo and for launch?
As mentioned previously, any patches and changes for the demo need to be carefully balanced with our work towards launching the full game. Nevertheless, here are our plans for the future of the demo:
Patching the Demo
We currently have a patch in the pipeline and are intending to release it as soon as it has passed testing (likely early next week). Here is what it will address on PC specifically:
Added a Motion Blur Toggle
Made minor tweaks to frame rate output for certain items in cutscenes, however, we are working on a more comprehensive fix for the future
Fixed a crash that repeatedly occurred when opening the menu or inventory
Made improvements to cut down on the time it takes to Matchmake
Fixed a bug that deletes player gear if their connection drops out during a transition
Improved subtitle display and synchronization during the “Bad Day” quest
Made other minor improvements and fixes
Changes to the Demo
A backend update to the demo will be done during a 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 a 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.
Side quest 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 we feel these are balanced quite well for the average player experience. RIP that captain.
Note that running this backend update now is also a way for us to pre-emptively ensure that such backend balancing can be a straightforward, low impact method of also rectifying any excessive balance issues in the main game.
Other Notes and Things We're addressing:
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 third party software to alter the game files and save data in their favour.
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.
Finally, while we are continuing to work hard on polishing the main game, ready for launch on April 1st, we are continuing to track player feedback and bugs coming out of the demo.
We would like to close out this update by once again thanking everyone for playing the Outriders demo and sharing your feelings about it with us here. We can't wait for you to experience the full journey!
The Outriders Demo is Out Now!
[previewyoutube="4W_YAzW_-eE;full"]
Full Prologue & Opening to the game
Play Solo or Co-op
Choose from all four classes
Transfer progress to the full game
Outriders is a 1-3 player co-op RPG shooter set in an original, dark and desperate sci-fi universe. As mankind bleeds out in the trenches of Enoch, you’ll create your own Outrider and embark on a journey across the hostile planet.
Outriders Broadcast #5: Into The Fray
The fifth Outriders #Broadcast: “Into The Fray" will air on Wednesday February 24th and is dedicated to unveiling the game's demo, which releases on February 25th. We will also recap what makes Outriders on PC shine and will of course dive into our regular Community Q&A.
Join us this Wednesday and prepare yourself for the Outriders Demo.
Everything you Need to Know about the Outriders Demo
With just one week from the launch of the demo, we wanted to share more details about it with you as promised.
Without further ado, here we go:
This will be a Demo, NOT a Beta.
It is entirely free. No purchase or pre-order required.
The Demo will release at the following SINGLE GLOBAL RELEASE times:
The demo will be available on the following PC Platforms: Steam & streaming with NVIDIA GeForce NOW
The download size for the demo will be: Minimum 24GB (possibly more after decompression)
Pre-loading is not currently planned to be available
Crossplay will be available in the demo, but it will be in beta form and will need to be manually enabled via your settings.
Our Discord (Discord.gg/Outriders) has been set up with plenty of Looking-For-Group voice channels in case you’re looking to party up with any other players in particular.
There is no time limit, either for playing or for accessing it prior to launch. The demo is also planned to remain live beyond launch.
The demo includes the game’s prologue & opening chapter. This means that gear & enemies that you come across will be the early game variants. The further you get in the full Outriders story, the more twisted, exotic and powerful both gear & enemies will become
The demo runs up until the showdown with Gauss, the first rival Altered who may be even more dangerous than you. - Some side missions unlock after defeating Gauss so you will be able to go back and explore the world.
The demo includes all 4 classes and 6 character slots. - This means you can try out every class without needing to delete any characters.
Your Character levels are capped to Level 7 - This will allow you to earn your classes 4th ability and be able to to mix and match your active skills in the demo. - This will also allow you to earn 2 skill points that you can apply to your skill tree.
You can progress up to World Tier 5. - World Tiers are our dynamic difficulty system. At level 5, your chance for higher rarity gear is increased, but the drop chance for Legendary Gear is still extremely low.
Resources will be capped at a certain (generous) amount in order to safeguard balancing for when you go into the main game. - Resources are mainly used within our extensive crafting system but can also be traded for better gear from the armorers in the game. The crafting system unlocks in the full game once you’re at a point beyond the demo content, but you can save your resources for use with that system.
You will be able to transfer your progress if you play the main game on the same platform account (Platforms are PlayStation / Xbox / Steam). Progress will not transfer between the Demo on Steam and the Full Game on the Epic Store.
The demo will not include any achievements, but your in-game accolades will transfer along with your regular progress.
You are free to stream any part of the the Demo. No restrictions. - Please note that there is a trailer that plays at the end of the demo. As this trailer contains licensed music, we would recommend caution when streaming this section.
Outriders will be available on NVIDIA GeForce NOW
Today we're excited to officially confirm that Outriders will be available on NVIDIA GeForce NOW starting February 25th (Demo) and April 1st (Launch), meaning you can jump into Enoch on any device, with GeForce power streamed from the cloud!
PC Information & Specs - Revealed!
Hello everyone,
We know many of you have been waiting to find out what the system requirements are for Outriders, and now that we're approaching the end of the development cycle and really digging into the polishing and optimization, we’re finally able to share the official system requirements on PC.
In true Outriders fashion, however, rather than dripfeed you information, we've bundled together absolutely everything you will want to know about Outriders on PC, packaged together in a spotlight video that you can watch right here: [previewyoutube="4tLNuze_73k;full"] And if you're on an Ultrawide monitor, make sure to feast your eyes on this Ultrawide showcase! [previewyoutube="GNbWqmLRtJA;full"] If you don't have the time to watch the video in full, here are the headlines you should know about:
<*>System Requirements
The People Can Fly team has worked hard to ensure a consistent frame rate experience, no matter what your PC capabilities are, and you may notice that our Hardware requirements are geared towards ensuring you'll always be playing in buttery smooth 60fps.
We’re still working on identifying and optimizing the CPU and GPU requirements for Ultra settings and will publish these when we have more information.
Outriders will at launch additionally support:
Key remapping & advanced graphics options as standard
Cross Save will be supported within an eco-system, but not between different platforms.
Ultrawide screen support: 3440 x 1440
Adjustable Field of View (FOV), which allows you to see more or less of the game at the edges of your monitor.
Dynamic Resolution Scaling (DRS) - This system will adjust your resolution on the fly in order to increase performance and prevent system slowdowns or bottlenecks. Theoretically, you shouldn't even notice it's happening, but it will result in significant performance improvements across all systems.
NVIDIA DLSS – DLSS utilizes the power of AI to boost performance for NVIDIA GeForce RTX gamers so you can enjoy higher fidelity gameplay at higher frame rates.
NVIDIA Ansel - Enables NVIDIA GeForce gamers to capture unique screenshots from custom angles, with filters and other tweaks applied. Simply take a snap, upload to ShotWithGeForce, and share with just a few clicks.
Razer Chroma RBG
Finally, at the bottom of this post are just a few of the Steam Backgrounds you can look forward to unlocking with the Steam Trading Cards from Outriders!
That's it for now. We hope you've enjoyed learning more about the PC version of Outriders, but be sure to let us know if you have any more questions about it in the discussion boards!
Outriders Partners With NVIDIA To Add DLSS
Today, we’re announcing the addition of NVIDIA DLSS to Outriders, and a technical partnership that’ll ensure PC gamers and GeForce RTX users get the best possible experience.
NVIDIA DLSS uses dedicated Tensor Core AI processors on GeForce RTX GPUs to boost frame rates while generating beautiful, sharp images. Check out our brand new game reveal trailer below: [previewyoutube="u0SPPzITahk;full"] Be sure to keep your eyes peeled this week for more details about our partnership with Nvidia and information about Outriders on PC!
