People are farming the Outriders demo so hard the developers are stepping in
UPDATE: PCF steps in again.
UPDATE 6TH MARCH 2021: People Can Fly has stepped in again to change the Outriders demo in response to complaints over a previous change designed to tackle heavy farming.
The developer issued a server-side update to enable the Gauss boss chest to drop legendaries after yesterday preventing all chests from dropping legendary items.
"Having listened to very reasonable community feedback, we have enabled the Gauss boss chest to drop legendaries again as we should indeed be rewarding boss runs," People Can Fly said in a tweet.
However, other chests still cannot drop legendaries. This means the popular no combat triple-chest run previously available remains unavailable to those farming for legendaries ahead of the launch of Outriders on 1st April.
ORIGINAL STORY 5TH MARCH 2021: The Outriders demo has been popular - over two million people have downloaded it - but it also has a few issues the developers are keen to address.
Chief among them is heavy farming for powerful items, which players are doing in anticipation of the release of the game proper on 1st April 2021.
Progress in the Outriders demo carries forward into the main game, and you're able to repeat much of the content in the demo, over and over again, in the hope of snagging a super powerful item from a chest or enemy.
So, players are farming the demo to fill their mod library and acquire multiple legendaries (I managed to snap a legendary myself while playing).
In a reddit post, developer People Can Fly said this "front-loading" of progression within the demo may impact the balance of the progression system in the main game.
"Of course, it's every player's decision how to play the game for themselves and we do not want to prevent people from farming the demo for gear if they enjoy it," People Can Fly said.
"However, we would like to ensure that this process is not overly simplistic, easy or prone to exploitation."
It didn't take long for Outriders demo players to discover a "lootcave" via a triple chest-run, as well as a vendor exploit, and use them for heavy farming.
Here's how it works (soon, worked): get to world tier level five (this gives you the best chance of a legendary drop available in the demo), select "confront the altered at the tower" story point from the lobby, load into the game and then run around opening the three chests nearby. No combat needed. Once you've opened all three chests, head back into the lobby and repeat.
In response, People Can Fly will issue a backend update to the demo at 3pm UK time today, 5th March, that redirects farming to mechanics in the game "that may be more enjoyable for players to play through and repeat".
To that end, epic items will no longer appear in shops and vendors within the demo, and chests will no longer drop legendary items. Instead, side quest rewards (on repeat runs) will now have a chance to drop legendary items. The upshot of this is those who want to farm for legendaries in the demo will now have to actually play the side quests.
Of note: drop rates for enemies are not being changed. So, go ahead and kill that captain. Again and again and again.
There's more changing in the demo. People Can Fly said a patch, set to go live early next week, adds a motion blur toggle for all platforms, cuts down the matchmaking time, and tackles crashing on PC.
Moving towards the launch of the game, People Can Fly said it's looking into the annoying camera shake during cutscenes, will improve the cover system, and is looking into a way to help players restore items that have mysteriously disappeared.
Meanwhile, People Can Fly said it has noticed cheating in the Outriders demo (that didn't take long!), with some players using third-party software to alter the game files and save data in their favour. For an online co-op game, that's obviously an issue.
People Can Fly said it can identify cheaters "with relative ease" via its backend system and promised "their actions should not affect your regular playing or your co-op experience". Fingers crossed.
Solid stuff all round. Check out our Outriders demo impressions to see what we think of the game.