On this note, it may be worth sharing something I wrote months ago but wasn't able to post at the time (this was going to be part of our response to the balancing decisions we made in April).
...Let’s talk about our original vision for how difficulty would work in Outriders. As you know, we have World Tiers and Challenge Tiers, both of which provide an increasingly difficult challenge as you progress through them.
Not all players will (want to) reach the hardest tiers or levels in the game. Some folks prefer to play games at their own pace and difficulty. The game will automatically find a difficulty rating that is suited to these players and they will feel challenged but not utterly overwhelmed. And for anyone who wants to, there should never be any shame in going down a Tier to make the game easier – that’s okay and it’s the reason we have such a spread in difficulty settings.
On the other hand, we have players who want to reach the highest echelons of difficulty. For these players, the difficulty design will take on a different form.
Climbing the higher Tiers should involve surmounting a steep difficulty curve. At some point you should hit a point where your existing build may no longer cut it. A point where you are faced with a challenge that will make you question your entire class setup.
This is intentional.
Only the most dedicated players should be able to make it to the highest tiers. Reaching these tiers is not something anyone should take for granted.
To even progress through the highest Tiers you should need to change things about your setup, you should need to learn how to optimally time, synchronize and synergize your skills. You should have to grind, find and mod gear that kicks your build into overdrive. You may even need to spend several days practising or trying to figure out what to do just to progress a single Tier. And eventually… something will click. You will farm that required god-roll or find a combination that just works.
And then you will conquer the tier you’ve been struggling with.
This loop should start already at Challenge Tier 8-9, not just at Challenge Tier 15.
When you consider the above, which was the launch vision for Outriders endgame, it may be easier to also understand just how broken Bullet Builds were at launch. We had designed people to reach Challenge Tier 15 after a lot of work and experimentation - at the very least it should have taken a few days for great players to reach CT15. Instead, at launch, bullet builds let players just walk into CT15 within a few hours.
That unfortunately set the tone and over time it was impossible to return to the intended form of that format. How much of it applies in the current state of Outriders is a question I think everyone will have a different answer for.
Whether that vision was well executed is also a different matter of course, and legendary loot drop rates and timers and balancing all play a big role in such a question, but I think that is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether.
Nevertheless, elements of that vision still remain and are echo'd in precisely what you're saying here /u/ZoulsGaming (and also /u/Godlike013) - Part of the endgame is to work your way through the Challenge Tiers so that when you reach CT15, you are a master of all of the game mechanics.
Ignoring the road to CT15 and just running CT15 for loot on repeat is not the full endgame. Mastering the game, your build and even just reaching CT15 is a huge part of the endgame and should be an accomplishment in itself.
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