It hasn't been a week since the release of Outriders, the new sci-fi looter-shooter from People Can Fly, but already players are reaching its endgame content. Like many looter-shooter titles, Outriders will be heavily judged on its ability to keep players interested past the main story.
Another recent game that also had to deal with this is Marvel's Avengers, which received some criticism for its repetitive endgame content. Both of these titles were published by Square Enix, and are relative newcomers to the looter subgenre. They also both focus heavily on their story campaigns, which is a fairly unusual approach in the genre. However, despite these similarities, the two titles approach endgame content very differently. The question is, which one does a better job of keeping players engaged? Obviously, this comes with the caveat of Outriders not being out as long, so some of this information is entirely speculative based on offerings.
Outriders Expeditions
After players complete the main story of Outriders, they have a couple of options for endgame content. The first is to repeat side missions on a higher World Tier. This will give a slightly increased challenge, but there's a limit to how high-level the loot can get. The alternative is the Expeditions mode, which is the core of Outriders' endgame content.
Expeditions is a much more challenging game mode spanning 15 unique missions, with the last one being unlocked through special means. These missions are unaffected by the World Tier system, and instead have their own Challenge Tiers. As players complete Outriders' Expeditions, they unlock more of them as well as higher Challenge Tiers. Each Challenge Tier increases the level of both the enemies and the available loot. Through Expeditions players can gain loot up to level 50, whereas the cap under the World Tier system is only 31.
Unlike Outriders' main story, players don't earn loot from enemies during Expeditions missions. Instead, they get a large amount of loot at the end of each mission, as well as the special resource required to unlock the final Expedition. Players can improve the loot they get by both raising the Challenge Tier and completing the mission quickly. Overall, Expeditions offer a greatly increased challenge over the main campaign, forcing players to perfect their best Outriders' builds.
Marvel's Avengers Endgame
Unlike the more straightforward options in Outriders, Marvel's Avengers offers a diverse range of endgame content. Firstly, players can simply repeat the same kind of side missions they did in Marvel's Avengers' campaign. These include War Zone, Drop Zone, Vault, and Harm Room missions. This is the most repetitive part of Marvel's Avengers' endgame content, and players will need to grind these missions to earn decent gear.
Next there are the Iconic Missions, which actually begin appearing before the end of the campaign. These are multi-step mission chains centered around a specific character. Although many of the steps in Avenger's Iconic Missions are actual levels, some are challenges that require players to deal a certain amount of kills or use a specific skill a set number of times. Iconic Missions are vital to players who have a favorite character and want to focus on maxing them out.
The final elements of Marvel's Avengers' endgame content are the Villain Sector, Secret Lab, and Elite Hive missions. Villain Sector missions are unlocked quickly, can be taken once per faction per day, and are all about taking on bosses. On the other hand, Elite Hive missions are probably one of the last things that players will unlock in Marvel's Avengers, followed by the Secret Lab. Elite Hive missions reward players with some of the best loot, but are only available after players have completed almost everything else in the Avengers Initiative. The Secret Lab mini-raid mission is even harder to unlock, requiring players to reach the highest power level before they can enter.
How They Compare
The easiest way to compare the endgame content of Outriders and Marvel's Avengers is to say that Avengers is wide, and Outriders is deep. Marvel's Avengers has a pile of different activities for players to dive into, and nine distinct heroes to play them with. However, none of the content is very unique, and the game drew a lot of criticism for repeatedly re-using assets and environments. It's also the more grind-heavy of the two titles, which was made even worse by a recent update that lowered drop-rates.
On the other hand, while the only substantial activity in Outriders' endgame is Expeditions, it's a lot more of a hand-crafted experience. Each of the fifteen Expeditions is a unique, static map, with no content reused from the main campaign. This helps the endgame content feel more like an extension of the story, and less like a time-sink sandbox mode. Players looking to farm loot in procedurally-generated levels should go for Marvel's Avengers, while players who are more interested in a challenging continuation of the game's story may prefer Outriders.
Outriders is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.