Outriders: Legendary loot cave being removed from the demo

It’s been over a week since the Outriders demo launched and it didn’t take long for players to discover the game’s first loot cave. And it also didn’t take long for developer People Can Fly to respond to it by removing it in the latest patch.

As we wrote about here, there was a pretty easy and efficient (albeit cheesy) way to farm legendary weapons in Outriders. It basically involved repeating a side quest while running the mission Terra Infirma which involved a constantly respawning boss and a three-chest run.

With progress in the demo carrying over into the full game, players jumped at the opportunity to farm some of the best weapons available for their level (which capped at level 7 in the demo). Naturally, People Can Fly has responded:

"While we do not want to prevent farming runs (We get it!), the lootcave discovered via the triple chest-run, as well as the store exploit, do not feel to be within the spirit of the game. To that end, we are redirecting farming efforts to mechanics in the game that may be more enjoyable for players to play through and repeat."

The next patch, which is expected to arrive in the coming week once it passes testing, will feature a number of changes that will impact farming in the Outriders demo:

Epic items will no longer appear in shops and vendors (within the demo).
Chests will no longer drop legendary items.
Side quest rewards (on repeat runs) will now have a chance to drop legendary items.

While it sounds like People Can Fly are just being a bunch of fun-suckers, there’s actually a good reason for the changes. If players are too overpowered as a result of farming the best legendary gear so easily, the overall experience when playing the main game “may well be impacted.”

The goal with these changes isn’t to prevent players from farming gear if that’s what they enjoy; however, they want to make sure farming isn’t “overly simplistic, easy or prone to exploitation.”

I don’t think People Can Fly necessarily have a problem with players repeating missions, they just don’t want you to exploit them, as was the case with the previous process of respawning and killing the Captain over and over again. That’s evident by People Can Fly’s updated response today, March 6.

"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.Other chests still cannot drop Legendaries."

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Outriders is hardly the only RPG-looter to experience loot caves or exploits. Both Destiny and Anthem (RIP) had loot caves exploited by players and the developers patched those out as well. The difference between Outriders and those games, however, is that Outriders is not a live service game. What you do in Outriders will not impact other players (unless you choose to play co-op), so why does it matter if you farm for the strongest loot in a cheap way? If that’s what brings you joy, then what’s the problem?

I suppose there’s a legitimate concern that having the best gear could result in the game becoming stale fast. But again, as it’s a complete game out of the box, what’s the problem with players blasting through content if that’s what brings them fun? Who cares how they play the game as long as it’s not creating an imbalance online.

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