Outriders: Big update is live, activated crossplay

Outriders

Crossplay was switched off when the loot shooter Outriders was released. Players on different platforms could not play together, although that should be one of the special features of the title. But now the function has been activated with a new update.

A comprehensive update for Outriders

So do you want to experience adventures with your friends even though they are on a different platform than you, then it is possible now. The update brings even more with it, including performance optimizations, crash fixes and more. An exploit that gave players too many legendary items has also been fixed.

Here you can read the lease notes:

Will Fix a performance issue where GPU is not being fully utilized. This should help with stuttering and DX11 / 12 issues Once platforms have been updated to the same patch version, cross-play across platforms will become viable again Overall stability improvements for the matchmaking service Crash Fixes Will Fix a multiplayer crash that could result in client players having their inventory wiped Will fix the crash when completing the "A Bad Day" side quest. Will fix the crash that occurs in No Man's Land when your language is set to Spanish (Yes, we know. Video game code is a magical thing). Will fix crash on launch issues Will include many more "random" crash fixes We are confident that these fixes will address the majority of crashes reported, as there are only a handful of root causes but the crashes they generate appear in a number of places. Will fix the HUD disappearing in certain cases Will fix bugs that interfere with players re-spawning in multiplayer expeditions Will fix bugs with players getting stuck on geometry (including when using Gravity Leap) or falling out of the world. Will change the default matchmaking setting from "Open" to "Closed". You will still be able to manually change this setting to "Open" through your game settings This change will prevent players from joining games where the host didn't intend to play in multiplayer. It will also cut down on AFK lobbies This will also help improve matchmaking times, as the queues will be less likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of constant matchmaking requests generated by "open" games. Many other minor fixes and improvements, however, players now report that their inventory has been emptying more often since the update. The developers are aware of the problem and are working on it.

Source: Twitter

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The One Buff ‘Outriders’ Needs Is Pretty Clear At This Point

Outriders

People Can Fly

Outriders has just finished releasing its first major patch across all platforms, which has fixed a lot of major crashes, but ahead of that also bundled in a bunch of nerfs to various classes and skills.

Even though yes, some builds were emerging as very strong at the outset of the game, it seems rather quick to hop in with a ton of nerfs, which not only affect endgame players, but also those still just making their way through the campaign. Surprise! Your time slow bullets now take nine seconds longer to return. Sorry, Tricksters.

Past that, however, I can already see a rift emerging in Outriders between two main types of builds where the game is heavily imbalanced toward one over the other.

I’m talking Firepower versus Anomaly builds.

Outriders

People Can Fly

Firepower is anything you do with guns and shooting, Anomaly damage is based on your cooldown abilities. And Firepower is just wildly more popular and better for most classes, short of perhaps certain Devastator Anomaly builds, though that remains the weakest class in general.

The problem seems pretty clear. Gun damage has essentially unlimited uptime, and is directly impacted by tons of branches on the Firepower tree, along with the recently nerfed bullet skills for 3 of the 4 classes (Devastator has no bullet-boosting abilities).

For instance, because of the way mods work in Outriders, you can give any gun two perks like Claymore or Lightning Whip for huge damage spikes once per second, then spec into the Firearms tree for increased damage after skills or to burning/frozen/poisoned/slowed enemies and then on top of that, add one of the three bullet skills. It’s a crazy amount of damage at all times.

Outriders

Paradoxzyx

But contrast that with an Anomaly build, where cooldowns can get low, but not “activate lightning strike every single second” low, so your damage uptime is just not there. Some Anomaly skills can do big DPS if you invest enough into them, but they are generally going to be outclassed by the constant uptime of gunfire and the boosts that come from that tree. And that’s what we’re seeing across most classes and most endgame builds. Firepower even wins defensively with 100% uptime on Weapon Leech for non-stop healing over Skill Leech on longer cooldowns.

In short, I think the answer here is buffs to Anomaly power in many instances. That could be the flat damage of skills, scaling better at higher Challenge Tiers in particular, or it could be lower cooldowns for the ability to use skills more often, and giving them more damage/more leeching ability when used.

Probably the most fun I’ve had in the game so far has been my Devastator Anomaly build just because it felt so different than the other three classes which seemed like they had to be focused on Firepower, or else you just weren’t doing much of anything. I think the other three classes need better Anomaly options and Devastator needs better Firepower options. And none of this requires further nerfs to existing Firepower stuff. We’ll have to see if People Can Fly agrees.

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