Outriders a free market bug6/13/2023 The tanky Devastator heals by dealing close-range damage, the roguish Trickster heals using temporal abilities, the self-explanatory Pyromancer heals by setting enemies on fire, and the Technomancer - the closest thing to a support character in this game - has abilities dedicated to healing themselves and the team. Each of the four playable classes has its own way of healing. ![]() This is usually done by tying healing to player aggression, which stops players from turtling and encourages them to get into the fight as often as they can. As the name suggests, this kind of combat is designed to encourage players to constantly push forward and be aggressive. People Can Fly have employed what’s come to be known as push-forward combat, originally popularised by Bloodborne and subsequently named so and canonized by id Software with 2016’s DOOM. Beneath the dude shooter veneer, Outriders is a very different beast. And while the game does resemble Gears in a quaint sort of way with the grey-brown colour palette in the early stages and the combat arenas shamelessly littered with waist-high walls, the resemblance is only skin-deep. Leading up to launch and through early impressions from the demos, Outriders was garnering some rather unfair comparisons to Gears of War (a series that People Can Fly have previously worked on). And I wanted to get all of the caveats out of the way before telling you why Outriders is easily the best game I’ve played in 2020 so far. I’m trying a different approach here because through all the server shutdowns, technical issues, and inventory wipes, I still enjoyed the living hell out of it. If you’ve read my reviews before, you know I tend to start with the good stuff and leave the bad stuff for the end. Now, a little over two weeks from launch, the servers are rock solid, the inventory wipe bug has reportedly been rectified, and multiple patches have improved technical performance across all platforms, but I still can’t progress beyond that one mission on PS4. Stuttering issues on PC, a hilarious bug on consoles that made a button prompt fail to appear in a main quest, completely barring any story progress beyond that point (that one happened to me). The much touted and anticipated cross-play feature simply did not work for a long time, people on PS5 were falling through the floor, other people’s entire loadouts were disappearing, rendering 40+ hours of grinding completely void. The server issues were virtually non-existent within a week of launch, only to then give way to potentially more damning technical issues. But if you’re worried why a narrative focused single-player game that’s not a live-service needs always-online servers, I’m wondering the same thing. ![]() The thing that kept me patient and waiting was the “we got this” attitude demonstrated by the developers and community managers at People Can Fly (seriously, shout-out to community managers, they have one of the toughest jobs in gamedev). Near-constant server issues made it impossible to get into the game, and if you did, it wouldn’t be long before you were kicked out. Yet as the report mentions, "there can be no assurance" about profitability in future.For the first three days or so after launch, Outriders was essentially unplayable. Indeed, an Outriders endgame overhaul is coming with the Worldslayer DLC which launches in June. ![]() People Can Fly initially hinted that Outriders hadn't yet been profitable back in August of last year, and added that it was hopeful of royalties being paid later since additional work was still to be done on the game. This was confirmed by the royalty statement for the fourth quarter of 2021, received by the group from the publisher." The report goes on to add, "There can be no assurance that net proceeds from the sale of Outriders in future periods will be sufficient for the publisher to recover the costs incurred and to pay royalties to the group." The group received no royalties from the publisher for the period to December 31st 2021, which means that as at the reporting date net proceeds from the sale of Outriders were insufficient to recover the costs and expenses incurred by the publisher to develop, distribute and promote the title. "The level of royalties depends on the amount of specific proceeds from the game’s sales. "Since the game was completed and placed on the market (which happened on April 1st 2021), the company has been entitled to royalties payable if specific proceeds (as defined in the agreement) from its sales ensure that the publisher recovers a predetermined level of costs incurred in connection with the development, promotion and distribution of the game," the report reads.
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