User Interface, World Tiers, & Lore
Outriders Broadcast
Because Outriders is a shooter-RPG, there’s important information in the UI that relates to, well, both shooter and RPG gameplay elements.
The broadcast spent time showing off the ways that you can customize the UI to your liking. It can be made to be loaded with any information that you want including damage numbers, health, abilities cooldown etc., or it can be minimalistic and clean if you don’t need any of that or are playing on an easy enough World Tier where it doesn’t matter and you just want to take in the sights.
I have wondered for a while now why more games don’t employ dynamic difficulty settings seen in games like MLB The Show, or more apples to apples in the case of Outriders, Diablo III.
As you get better at the game, the game will scale you up to a better challenge. Outrider’s World Tiers will do this too, and the broadcast today detailed that a bit more.
It’s pretty simple, as you play Outriders without dying you’ll unlock higher World Tiers that will ramp up the difficulty but offer better rewards. Again, seemingly very reminiscent of how Torment levels worked in Diablo III.
If you die a lot, the game will bring you back down a notch. At any point though you can manually change the difficulty to whatever World Tier that you’ve unlocked.
The maximum is 15, and I asked about what that experience is like. Would be it be possible to play it solo? Or is it designed for perfectly constructed teams?
“It depends on how proficient that player will be,” said People Can Fly adding that “it’s definitely not multiplayer restricted.”
According to the developers, players that want to survive on the highest world tiers (15 is the highest) will need to really work on their build, ensuring that they have a logical combination of skills as you can only have three equipped at any time out of eight. Class points, in general, need to be spent effectively, and of course, your equipment will need to be on point. They also mentioned that the difficulty will scale up with the numbers of players.
So while a single-players will technically have an easier time in that regard, there is of course no margin for error when you don’t have a teammate around to help you out. So in essence it sounds like, according to People Can Fly, you can play even the hardest content solo if you can handle it, but you just really need to be on your game.
What’s interesting is that at higher World Tiers in Outriders you’ll get gear that drops above your current level but can be equipped anyway if you stay in the harder World Tiers, but becomes unable to be equipped until you’re the appropriate level if you go back down in World Tier.
Lorehounds appear to have a lot to sink their teeth into as well. There is unlockable lore all throughout the game that can be accessed in-game whenever you want. The UI for it looked very similar to Horizon Zero Dawn if you’re familiar with that. You can go into the menu and re-read anything you find whenever you want.
People Can Fly understands that while some players are going to be there for the shooter-RPG gameplay, a lot of people just want to play for the complete story experience. Outriders reiterated during the broadcast that it is not a games as a service title. It is designed to be a complete and finished product at launch.
They confirmed that if players want, they can stay on World Tier 1 and just play as casually as possible through the story and experience everything the game has to offer from a story perspective.
