Update: The first major Outriders patch wasn't expected to be out until next week but ended up rolling out today, April 9, well ahead of schedule. Patch notes are below.
The launch of People Can Fly's loot-shooter Outriders was rather like the game itself: Not a complete goat rodeo by any means, but not as smooth as it could (and should) have been, either. Now that it's been out for a week, publisher Square Enix has unveiled plans for the game's near future, including the first big patch, a fix for the inventory wipe bug, and a "community appreciation package" to thank players for their patience during server outages.
All players who logged in between March 31 and April 11 will be given the thank-you bundle, which will include a level-appropriate Legendary weapon, some Titanium, and the "Frustration" emote, which is not actually obtainable through other means right now. ("The irony here was not intentional but is fitting," Square Enix said.) Details, including when and exactly how the package will be distributed, are still being nailed down.
The bigger deal is a fix for the bug that, as we noted earlier this week, has been wiping out player inventories. It doesn't sound like the matter is 100 percent resolved, as Square Enix said the incidence of the bug "should be greatly reduced" by the upcoming patch, but the good news is that after the fix is in place, there will also be a "mass restoration" event that should bring back most of what was lost.
"Note that restoration will not be possible for items that were acquired but where the game connection was terminated before an autosave could complete as those items would never have made it into your server inventory/our logs. Such suspended autosaving is noticeable when the yellow autosave icon stays active for a longer period of time," Square Enix cautioned. "For any individual restorations that were missed, or that occur in future, we plan to equip our teams to help on an ad hoc basis."
Developers are also working on multiplayer connection and stability issues, and are making some balance changes that will dial back loot drops and nerf the Trickster and Technomancer classes, which currently benefit a little too much from their bullet abilities. Square Enix said the best builds should have an “overpowered feel,” but wants to ensure “build diversity in the top performing builds.”
"It's uncertain as to whether these changes will prove too strong or too weak, so please do consider this to be only the first step, as we will continue monitoring and adjusting them in the future,” it said. “Just like you, we hope to see more inspiring and crazy combinations of abilities and mods!"
A fix for a bug that was preventing GPUs from being fully utilized, resulting in the DX11/12 performance issues we reported last week, is also in the works.
The patch notes as they stand so far are below, and for more on how to make Outriders a smoother ride be sure to check out our handy list of small tweaks.
Outriders patch notes
PC & Console Platforms:
- Once platforms have been updated to the same patch version, cross-play across platforms will become viable again
- Overall stability improvements for the matchmaking service
- Crash Fixes
- Will fix a multiplayer crash that could result in client players having their inventory wiped
- Will fix the crash when completing the "A Bad Day" side quest.
- Will fix the crash that occurs in No Man's Land when your language is set to Spanish (Yes, we know. Video game code is a magical thing).
- Will fix crash on launch issues
- Will include many more "random" crash fixes
- We are confident that these fixes will address the majority of crashes reported, as there are only a handful of root causes but the crashes they generate appear in a number of places.
- Will fix the HUD disappearing in certain cases
- Will fix bugs that interfere with players re-spawning in multiplayer Expeditions
- Will fix bugs with players getting stuck on geometry (including when using Gravity Leap) or falling out of the world.
- Will change the default matchmaking setting from "Open" to "Closed".
- You will still be able to manually change this setting to "Open" through your game settings
- This change will prevent players from joining games where the host didn't intend to play in multiplayer. It will also cut down on AFK lobbies
- This will also help improve matchmaking times, as the queues will be less likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of constant matchmaking requests generated by "open" games.
- Many other minor fixes and improvements
PC Specific:
- Will fix a performance issue where GPU is not being fully utilized. This should help with stuttering and DX11/12 issues
