The Average Gamer community has collectively logged hundreds of hours of Outriders in the first week since release, with several members already reaching the end game. I covered a bunch of announcements in TAG Roundups, and the looter shooter has largely lived up to the lofty expectations.

With heavy influences from Gears of War and Destiny, Outriders seeks to combine some of our favorite online shooter elements. We polled the squad to find out, the good, the bad, and the future of the game!

What we love about Outriders

Class Abilities

Character classes aren’t a new game mechanic, but it’s awesome that Outriders gives you the flexibility to mix and match class-specific skills to match your playstyle and opponent. You start with one skills at the beginning of the game and eventually gain access to 8 skills as you level up.

Players can equip three skills at a time to help you on the battlefield. Each has unique effects and animations which can be combined for deadly attacks!

At times, your Outrider will feel overpowered, and this is ok. You’re meant to be a superhuman and decimate the hoards of foes that the game throws at you. Even so, the difficulty of the game can scale quickly to match your power if you’re willing to increase your World Level.

There’s just something so satisfying about using your class skills in addition to an array of weapons to murder anything in your path!

Multiplayer Synergies

If you’ve got friends to squad up with, Outriders is even more enjoyable. If you don’t have any friends to play with, come join our Discord!

Each member of your team can bring different class abilities and buffs depending on their respective builds. Outriders lets players re-do their skill tree and select new abilities for free, so you are encouraged to try out various build types to maximize your team’s output.

If that wasn’t enough, having a buddy on your team means instead of dying when your player’s health is depleted, you can be revived. With one self-revive and a decent amount of “bleed out” time, your chances of clearing an area go way up playing with other people.

Weapon Upgrade System

We’re big fans of the way you can mix and match mods in Outriders. Weapons can have unique effects depending on the mod attached to them (up to 3 each). Interestingly, once you’ve found a mod, you can equip it to any future weapon as long as you’ve got an open slot!

Additionally, you can upgrade individual weapons in Outriders. I recommend not doing this in the early game though since you’ll frequently find better equipment through the first half of the game. 

With so many areas to customize, the permutations of character builds is absurd when you consider skills, class points, and weapon mods!

Technomancer

Technomancer it’s a ton of fun and a great addition to any squad. With the ability to heal teammates and deal crazy damage from range, this Outrider is the ultimate support class.

This class has awesome gadgets to deal damage to in between sniping heads off. Technomancer has a turret, proximity mine, and all kinds of other explosives that remind me of a combination of Junkrat and Pharah.

While this isn’t the most beginner-friendly class, and is best used in teams, Technomancer is definitely an early fan favorite.

Things that aren’t so great

Inventory Management

Navigating the inventory screen could definitely be a better experience. It’s pretty easy to see all your available weapons at once, but reviewing your armor choices is clunky.

You can’t actually see all of your armor pieces at once in Outriders. Instead, players must click on an equipped item and then scroll through the available items in that category.

The game allows you to sort by things like rarity, which makes things a little better, but it’d still be nice to be able to see all of your gear on one screen.

Solo Play Difficulty

You remember when we said multiplayer is awesome? Well solo play can be ridiculously punishing, especially in boss battles.

Outriders seems to have the same number of enemies regardless of how many people are in your party. This means if you are playing solo, all the enemy fire is directed towards you, vs being distributed among 2+ people. The incoming damage forces you to play more passively and take cover more frequently than if you were in a squad.

Ideally, the devs would scale the power and/or number of enemies based on the number of people in your party. Dauntless does really well and makes things a bit more fair if you want to be a solo player.

Outrider’s Map

Whose idea was it to create a map that doesn’t allow you to zoom and scroll? We’re in 2021 people!

Outriders has a very basic map that shows general travel points and a few points of interests. Unfortunately, it’s dark UI and static nature make it a rather forgettable part of the game.

I don’t expect the high level of detail and beauty that you’ll see in Breath of the Wild, but this map could use a major upgrade in the near future.

Harvesting Iron

Do we really need to watch a drilling animation every time there’s iron to be collected? It’s fine the first few times, but you end up doing this hundreds of times through the course of the game!

Please give us the option to harvest iron by pressing an interact button just once…

What we want added to Outriders in the future

PvP Mode

You should know by now that I like battle royale games. I’ve even recently started getting back into Apex Legends! 

Imagine a BR mode in Outriders, complete with customizable weapons, vehicles and objectives around the map. The devs could even go the PvPvE route a la Scavengers to take advantage of the monsters that are already in the campaign.

The BR space is pretty crowded (and still dominated by Fortnite and Warzone), but it’d be cool to see Outriders’ take on the popular genre.

Additional Customization

Yea yea, I know…we just got done talking about how great the customization is in Outriders. However, there can always be MORE customization!

Specifically, we see an opportunity to let players customize the look of their gear with dyes to create unique color palettes.

Ideally, two players could be wearing the same gear but still look very different from each other. This also opens the door for a battle pass of sorts that grants cosmetic rewards for dedicated players.

Ping System

Apex spoiled us all. Having a ping system should be the norm, period.

Improve Cross-chat

Very few games have nailed cross-platform party chat and Outriders isn’t one of them. The game isn’t as tactical as Rainbow Six Siege, but it’d still be nice to know that you can communicate with team members regardless of their platform.

Outriders Looks Promising

Even with the initial server issues, Outriders has still managed to maintain a crazy amount of momentum. Viewership on Twitch continues to rival the wildly popular Rocket League category and the developers are already releasing updates to fix early bugs.

The combat is fun, there are plenty of ways to approach each battle, and the end game is solid. Overall, Outriders is off to a good start towards becoming the next big looter shooter.

Let me know what you most love about Outriders and the things you want to see improved in the comments section, below!