Index:
- General News
- Weapon Mods Buffed
- Topic for Discussion: The Weapon Mod-Meta
- Patch News
General News:
Our upcoming patch is unfortunately not ready for release – however, we have managed to bring forward and release a small number of buffs that were planned to be implemented later on as part of a wider rebalance. We have been able to make these changes today because they involve on backend balancing, rather than changes to game-code.
The below buffs have been implemented as part of today’s maintenance event. No download is necessary for them to take effect.
Weapon Mods Buffed
- Winter Blast has had its AOE range increased to 5m (Previously: 4m)
- Ultimate Anomaly Surge has had its damage increased by 37% (From base 25 to 34.25)
- Claymore Torrent has had its explosion damage increased by 10% (From base 30.6 to 64.26)
- Ultimate Storm Whip has had its damage increased by 40% (From base 23 to 32.2)
- Strings of Gauss has had its damage increased by 62% (From base 24.5 to 64)
Topic for Discussion – The Weapon Mod Meta:
You may notice that a few of the above mods falls within a very particular category of mods:
Most of them are “single-target” or “cleave” mods, meaning that their damage potential is limited to a single enemy or a small group of linked enemies. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll refer to these mods as ST Mods. This contrasts with “uncapped AOE” mods (such as Moaning Winds), which deal damage to an unlimited number of enemies in their respective (and usually larger) AOE radius.
The current mod-meta in Outriders currently centres around 3 “Pillars”.
- A) General AOE damage mods
- B) Moaning Winds and the Quick-Cycling meta
- C) Fortress
Today’s buffs are only our first steps towards addressing those aspects of the above mod-meta which we deem to be unhealthy for the development of fun and varied builds in Outriders. We will be making changes in future that will be aimed at disrupting the meta, but doing so in a way that opens up many more fun options and alternatives for players.
Below is an overview of how we see the current situation.
Pillar A: General AOE damage mods
- According to our player data and community observations, there is currently an over-reliance on AOE damage mods, which is most likely the result of the way most enemy encounters in Expeditions are structured. Players usually face hordes of enemies against whom such AOE mods are the most efficient method of playing.
- One vs one or smaller mob group encounters are rare enough for the AOE mods to still do enough DPS to overcome these encounters, even though ST Mods would likely be more effective here.
- This means that there is a strong under-reliance on ST Mods, which is further exacerbated by some of these ST mods generally under-performing.
- Storm Whip is an excellent example here, as its previous damage potential strongly under-performed, meaning few players chose this mod over other, better alternatives.
- While originally developing the OG Outriders mod experience, we had envisioned that players would ensure that both of their weapons have fundamentally different mods. These would allow them to deal with and tackle different scenarios and encounters using a variety of weapons and methods.
This brings us to the next two Pillars, B and C. We believe (and think that you’ll agree) that the current meta that involves B and C has fundamentally stifled the need to run anything else. There is little incentive to experiment with other mods when these will always be more powerful.
Pillar B: Moaning Winds and the Quick-Cycling meta
- Moaning Winds is one of the most dominant “active” mods currently in use.
- For anyone unaware, one of the most potent mod set-ups in the game right now is to stack the Moaning Winds mod on multiple weapons and empty your magazines. Then run into a clump of enemies and cycle through your weapons, triggering this “on-reload” mod and its substantial damage multiple times in a very short space of time. Some players are able to trigger Moaning Winds three times in the space of a 2 second window.
- This combo is especially effective in single player, where enemies cluster around a single, rather than two or three players.
- Note: The above is over-simplified, but the intent is to mainly explain the concept.
Pillar C: Fortress
- The third and by far most problematic pillar is C: the Fortress mod.
- The way Fortress currently works usually provides a passive and consistent 43% damage increase to damage the player inflicts.
- In essence, take your normal damage and apply the calculation of x 1.43 to it. That’s it – that’s the mod. No gameplay loop, kill or damage event or special situation required.
- In the current DPS oriented endgame, all players will naturally be trying to maximise the damage they are able to output, so the existence of Fortress in its current form essentially blocks a mod-slot.
- By not combining Fortress with your chosen primary mod, you may well be sacrificing DPS, which is a philosophical question we’re not comfortable with you needing to face. We want you to have a free choice of multiple different combinations, without feeling that you’re missing out because you didn’t choose Fortress.
We also continue to be very aware that a timer based Endgame is part of the problem in that it forces a DPS oriented build, rather than a survival or just pure “fun” build.
These are the current challenges that we believe the Outriders weapon mod-meta is facing today. Today’s Buffs are only the first steps to remedying the situation and we are starting with a partial look at Pillar A. We will discuss Pillars B and C and the best ways to tackle them in future.
Note that we are also working on changes to certain under-utilized Legendary Armour Sets. However, as these changes will also required code-work, we'll talk more about them closer to their release.
Patch News:
Our latest patch is currently undergoing the usual test-cycle, but we wanted to share some highlights of the upcoming fixes and changes with you already today.
Please do bear in mind that our current testing is still validating the below fixes so some of them may not be 100% guaranteed for this patch. Also note that this is not an exhaustive list and is still subject to change as we pass through the testing phase. The final patch will include more fixes and improvements.
- Further improved the visibility of the Brood Mothers Surge AOE skill limits.
- Fixed a bug that was preventing players from reviving themselves and other players after using the Trickster's Borrowed Time skill.
- Resolved an issue that could cause the game to stutter when engaging Crawlers in battle during Expeditions.
- Resolved an issue that could cause players to stutter when entering the drained lake during the third enemy encounter in the Scorched Lands expedition.
- Resolved an issue that prevented secondary characters from picking up Journal Entries if they had already been collected on a different character.
- Resolved an issue that would force matchmaking privacy setting to default to "Open". The privacy setting should now remain "Closed" when set. This should help further reduce AFK matchmaking.
- Added an AFK status for players on friends lists.
- Changed the behaviour of the Devastator's Impale, so that the game will detect impaled enemies as dead even before they disappear.
- The Devastator's "Reflect Bullets" skill will now protect from Sciathan projectile attacks.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent Devastators from being able to consistently dodge if they had the Auto Reflect mod active.
- Fixed a bug that could cause client shots to sometimes deal no actual damage to enemies.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Technomancer's Plague Sower set bonus to not proc consistently.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Plague Sower and the Cannonball Legendary Sets to not retain their set bonus after a transition.
- Fixed a bug that could cause certain mods like "Grand Opening" to not proc if the player was on their last magazine.
- Crash Fixes
- Other minor bug Fixes