Another Thursday means another weekly update from People Can Fly, the developers of the looter-shooter Outriders. For the past several weeks these updates have included little else besides a few targeted patches and bug fixes, but today's patch is different. PCF has finally released the much-anticipated community appreciation packages, which aim to reward players for sticking with the game throughout its rocky launch in April.
However, Outriders' struggles did not end with the close of April. The multiplayer matchmaking issues and inventory wipe bug in Outriders that were first encountered during the game's launch week continued on throughout the month, along with other issues such as frozen sign-in screens and bugs on certain mod perks. PCF has been making slow progress on fixing these various problems, but many players feel the developer is taking too long to make meaningful changes. If anything, today's community appreciation packages will be a welcome sight after a long wait.
As promised by PCF, the community appreciation packages for Outriders players will contain one Legendary weapon, the Frustration emote, and a Titanium resource drop based on the level of the specific character receiving the package. The biggest of these rewards is obviously the Legendary weapon, which will have "god-roll" stats and will be a weapon that each player has not already obtained on their account.
This is a smart move, as it means every Outriders player that has played the game until now will be getting a weapon with maximum or close to maximum stats to match those given out during last month's inventory restoration process. The emote will be available across all characters in a player's account, but the Titanium will be granted to the account character with the most experience. The Legendary weapon will also go to the character with the most experience, but it can be moved across accounts through stash management.
On top of the community appreciation package, PCF is experimenting with some armor rebalancing and buffing certain "underused skills." This includes an increase to the Health additions on armor pieces and buffs to a few skills from every class. These updates and the community appreciation package are all server side and will not require a download. PCF also hints at upcoming additional balance changes which will look to address Legendary drop rates.
The community appreciation packages have been in the development pipeline for a while, so hopefully today's update will be a smooth one with no side effects. The May 24 patch addressing damage mitigation issues in Outriders was the last one to address a big issue in the game, but many players felt it didn't quite do the job. PCF needs this update to go well so that it can continue to try and bring back players who are skeptical of Outriders' future as an engaging looter-shooter.
Outriders is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.