This week, developer People Can Fly gave gamers their first look at Outriders, the studio's ambitions co-op shooter. In addition to the next-gen trailer reveal, People Can Fly also invited the media to go hands-on with the game and see just how it plays.
While there is a lot to cover when talking about Outriders, one of the elements that stood out was the game's approach to World Tiers. With 15 World Tiers in total, Outriders will give players plenty of room to challenge themselves while seeking out high quality loot. Each World Tier has a few different elements to it, like how strong the enemies are compared to the player's level, the percentage chance for better loot, and the amount of XP that is earned per kill.
But, where many games like Outriders use World Tiers as a type of gating mechanism, People Can Fly has chosen to make World Tiers function as a skill unlock. While talking to Game ZXC, the People Can Fly dev team revealed that World Tiers unlock based on how long a player can survive without dying. If the player finds themselves rarely challenged by the game, a bar will fill that starts to progress towards the next World Tier. Should the player die, that progress will reset, but if they continue along with little issue a new World Tier will unlock. In essence, the better the player performs the higher difficulty levels they will unlock.
On its face, Outriders' World Tier concept sounds like a smart idea. In our hands-on time, we found the game to be challenging enough but it was fairly easy to jump up to World Tier 6 by the end of the 3-hour preview. Better quality loot did drop and the enemies became significantly more challenging – a clear sign that the World Tiers were doing their job.
People Can Fly did clarify that there is no punitive element to World Tiers, so players won't have to worry about losing access. Once they unlock a World Tier it is unlocked, and players can skip between any of them they want. In essence, this dictates the challenge players want or the loot they want to chase.
For co-op in Outriders, the host player also sets the World Tier and their two teammates join their world. People Can Fly said that they tried to look at balancing mechanics to help make it even for all parties, but in the end, it hindered the experience one way or another. Now, a player can join a friend's group at a high World Tier and level up without being able to do much. Or conversely, a high-level player can join a low-level friend and breeze through the content.
Outriders is targeting a holiday 2020 release on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
