On Thursday, June 17, a new Devs-News update on Reddit from Outriders developers mentioned that there would be a 100% increase to the legendary loot drop rate across the board. Although the updates include other issues and implementations in the upcoming patch, which does not have a release date outside of early in the week of June 21, the legendary drop rate buff is by far the most exciting update listed. The drop rate of legendary items has been a huge issue of contention since the demo of the game released.
Outriders is a looter-shooter game, developed by People Can Fly, that echoes the Borderlands and Destiny franchises in terms of setting, graphics, overall loot variety and the search for the best gear. The third-person shooter takes place on an alien planet called Enoch, the only chance for humanity to get a fresh start after destroying the Earth. Outriders are the top-tier military-like personnel meant to ensure the safety and set-up of a new home, but nothing ever goes as expected. The game was released in early April 2021 and broke Steam records for publisher Square Enix.
The Dev-News update included five key points: changes to the legendary drop rates, sign-in issues, patch news, appreciation package news and a list of known issues (via Outriders Community Manager thearcan/Reddit). Other than the legendary drop rates getting a 100% buff, there are four changes coming to the system. The legendary bracket that restricted when legendary items could drop is being removed; an anti-duplication system is being implemented to provide a second roll at avoiding a duplicate legendary; scripted boss loot will now include non-class-specific legendary helmets; and the luck system is being improved to ensure players will not go a long period of time without a legendary drop during the endgame. These changes should hopefully prevent extreme loot competitiveness between match-made players during co-op expedition and endgame runs.
In the list of known issues, developers give a glimpse at some fixes that are coming in the patch, like all items in the backpack being marked as new when entering a new gameplay session and class-specific problems, as well as issues that are being investigated, like the scrap grenade mod not working after cutscenes and class-specific issues. Another issue being correcting concerns the Appreciation Package that was sent out, which gave some players a gun they already had. The developers are planning to reissue the package to players who already claimed it and received a duplicate. Developers at Player Can Fly are currently testing the patch to ensure there are no issues with the implementation and are hopeful that it will release this week.
Outriders set high expectations after the release of the demo in March 2021. It was hugely successful and received a ton of replay even though it was just 12 hours long. The replay came from either players starting new characters in one of the four classes, getting a favorite player to the highest available world-tier or farming and grinding for legendaries. Though the game suffered from server issues, bugs, glitches and design flaws at the beginning of the official release, overall, many would agree that the game is worth the playthrough. Now that a key issue that affected players' enjoyment of the game is being addressed in a new patch, along with other issues, players may go back to the game and stay around.