[2021] SE/PCF Outriders and Balancing

1500 hours in and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

I'm sure you know most of us, we are the hard core guys who have tested every aspect of the game so far. Streamers, whacky builders, speedrunners, helping others complete their expeditions and level up. People who play Outriders even now after a million runs and builds. We know this game inside and out. The smaller community we have now is strong, we love the game but we are at a point now that we really need some new meta or better balancing.

All of the above, including myself, have played this game to death, with all classes and despite the fact that we have more than 1 build for each class that is optimized to the max and after all this time, Techno is disproportionally so overpowered to every other class that it's at this point that I'm sure myself and others would love to see something change there.

I have made high damage Pyro for both Anomaly and Firepower, I have made Trickster that does a lot of damage in both Anomaly and Firepower builds, we have even made Devastator do decent enough damage on Anomaly and Firepower to get solid fast runs on CT15s in group play.

But, I'm sure that most of us really want a bit better balancing. I know patches take priority but the fun is starting to be a bit stale.

Let me explain. The Technomancer + Tac AR + Borealis with new buffs is hands down the most powerful class in the game. Not just most powerful, but like night and day compared to other classes. To the point where when I run Techno and play with two other people in CT15s, and I'm sure I'm not alone, it stops being fun for others when I can delete everything in 1 to 2 bursts with blighted. I mean people can't kill anything else. And while I do have fun, everyone else doesn't. It doesn't matter if it's a Tac AR as well. I can run with Absolute Zero now with Borealis patch and absolutely storm through trio CT15s like it's CT1.

Please for the sake of this game and fun for everyone, please consider what I/we are saying here with the PCF team.

And I"m not talking buffing slightly FASER on Pyro, I'm more refering to allow Dev, Trickster and Pyro to either do similar amount of damage across the board or nerf Techno. Nobody likes nerfs, but I personally think that this inability to match techno in one way or the other is hurting everyone playing the game.

I am not going to go into listing things what I think should be done (I think you guys have already plenty of info) because it would be a long list. I just want to raise attention to this as anyone who loves this game and has played it for a long time knows.

And when I say balance, I'm talking make Volcanic rounds hit as hard as Blighted, make Twisted hit as hard as blighted, make Technomancer Anomaly with gadgets and stuff do some serious damage and up it to the levels it should be at. I mean anybody who knows this game won't play with those skills once they see how powerful Techno is.

I'm talking a bit subjectively here, most people would probably agree, Anomaly Pyro is solid, it works well with Overheat and Ash Blast, it's also fun as triple eruptions and double thermals, double heatwaves and it's all thanks to Acari. You know this. But as I mentioned, none of these can compare to the effect Technomancer has with firepower.

Same with other classes, even though we can achieve runs just fine and do pretty decent damage and fast runs, there is a pretty big discrepancy between anomaly and firepower builds and classes.

In summary. Don't take this as a negative, I think we just want a bit more concrete juice so everyone can have fun in coop runs not just techno.

You guys have all the data, you have all the analytics you can see it too, I'm sure.

When I have 420 million damage at the end of the expedition and I play with 2 other players that are actually not bad, we have an issue because they really didn't have much fun to play.

I hope you read this and I hope you relay this to the whole team. The game is super fun, but for many, it stops being fun when they are playing on anything other than techno or Anomaly Pyro. I'ts not that they can't achieve golds and quick runs and a lot of damage, it's just a discrepancy in fun factor compared to the issues mentioned.

I hope you'll take this as good intentioned feedback.

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Just a quick note before I need to head off on annual leave (so I won't be able to reply further today), but I wanted to let you know that I did read your thread and did pass it on to the team.

For the time being, we want to see what effects the changes to the Legendary Sets that we're looking at will have in shifting the meta and making different skills and classes more viable.

I think buffing EVERYTHING else is risky mainly because, as a few people have pointed out, that can easily lead to power creep. For players who have put in the amount of hours you have, everything is viable and and something like the Borealis Set may be too "easy", but at the same time, you've grown into that position. It's not necessarily the experience of every player out there.

Equally, buffing everything else to be on the same level as Borealis may well lead to everyone being able to (as you say you're currently doing), "one-click-deleting" every enemy... that likely won't be very fun for very long either.

The other option, as you point out, is a nerf for Borealis.

We're extremely reluctant to be nerfing anything though.

I've touched on it in a few other threads, but the biggest contender for "something done to them" are Fortress and Moaning Winds. According to our data, those are far more in need of a rethink than the Borealis set. That sh*t gets where dirt can't.

However, even given the issue that Fortress and Moaning Winds are currently causing (being a forced staple of most builds and leading to under-utilization of the wider mod pool, and yes we're very aware that this is also down to a DPS-timer endgame), we are still considering the best ways to tackle them. As a very brief example, rather than nerfing the fairly un-interactive Fortress damage boost, we'd prefer (if possible) to rework it in a certain way that will allow players to be just as powerful, but that will create more of a more compelling gameplay cycle. That ideally would make Fortress become part of an optional build, rather than the go to meta build.

We're still determining what to do here, but it's an example of how we're considering things. Whether Borealis will be a fresh headache remains still to be determined...

PS: There have been some great discussions regarding these mods here.

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