Withdrawing on video games is a difficult thing to get right. Among the many RPGs based on loot, action games and snipers that vie for players’ time, few manage to do so. I invested thousands of hours in games that manage to distribute good withdrawals (Destiny 2, Diablo 3, the original Borderlands) and countered many who didn’t (Hymn, Marvel Avengers) Many games do not find their rhythm of withdrawal until you have invested many hours in them.
Outriders it flew very far from the radar, since it is an original property and more of a third-person looter sniper. But where I spent a lot of time waiting to find interesting items in other games, Outriders‘demonstration hooked me in two hours. And it’s all because of how the game handles your serve.
The armor changes everything
In the first few minutes of Outriders, my withdrawal is quite predictable and unsightly. I will get ordinary quality items with no advantage, most of the time, and occasionally I’ll get some unusual armor (this is what Outriders called “unusual” or green withdrawal) which can give me some bonus or damage stats. After about two hours, I started to find rare quality drops.
Rare items are the first that really make a difference in Outriders. Rare weapons come with advantages that can shock enemies when I reload or wrap them in ashes after shooting them. Rare armor advantages are even more interesting, overcoming aspects of my character’s abilities. It only takes one piece to slightly change the way my character plays, and five rare pieces help me feel a lot more powerful.
In my Devastator, the main tank class in the game, I have a skill called Gravity Leap, where I jump into the sky and fall on an enemy of my choice, moving effectively across the battlefield in an instant. This is usually a great skill for engaging groups of enemies.
Equipping two pieces of rare equipment turns my Gravitational Leap into a more powerful tool. Life Absorption, a privilege that restores me 100% of my damage dealt with Gravity Leap as a health, turns Gravity Leap into a defensive tool. Along with what would normally be a boring privilege like Human Comet (which increases my Gravity Leap damage), my primary mobility spell is now my best healing spell as well. This changes the way I use the skill.
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Image: People Can Fly / Square Enix
No matter how good my starting game is Diablo 3 the loot is that it’s not really changing the way I play until I have my character fully maximized and start cultivating Legendaries. Destiny 2 it also has armor effects that alter the gameplay of its exotic items, but even those come slowly at first, and non-exotic armor pieces hardly change the way I play. This is usually how loot games work. In the first twelve hours, the withdrawal is predictable and dry. You are getting stronger and stronger, but you are also getting used to the way the game works, so you can’t change your skills much.
But in Outriders, my two-hour Trickster class is already finding some useful items. The Trickster’s whole trick is his ability to teleport to enemies instantly with the Hunt The Prey ability. No advantage, this ability is just a great way to get behind enemies and eliminate them quickly. But a rare piece of armor I found had an advantage that interrupts the target and makes it weak, drastically changing the way I use the teleportation ability. I can now save my ability to a powerful enemy or use it to interrupt a boss when he is casting a spell.
These pieces of armor have already started to change the way I play Outriders. It is one thing to give me a new privilege that increases the damage, but benefits that offer different effects, such as healing or stunning, require me to think differently in combat. These skill changes will change with my armor. As soon as I get a better loot, I will have a different advantage to think about, which will subsequently change my style of play. As I progress through the game, I receive legendary pieces of equipment that give me even more advantages and options.
In any drawing game, players need to find a way to make the game look different after their 50th, 100th or 1,000th hour. But most games require you to play dozens of hours before your equipment starts to make a tangible difference. Outriders it’s already changing the way I play, making me reevaluate fights that I’ve done a dozen times before, after just two or three hours.