Index:

General News
Topic for Discussion: Fortress
Patch News
Ongoing list of currently tracked issues:

General News:

Our latest patch is still working through some issues raised during the submission process, but the team is continuing to work hard on this patch and Outriders in general.

Without a patch releasing this week, we wanted to take the opportunity for a focused-deepdive on something we've previously only touched upon: the Fortress mod...and what we plan to do about it.

Do bear in mind that this discussion, much like the Moaning Winds discussion from last week, is just a small glimpse into our plans for Outriders further down the line.

Topic for Discussion: Fortress

As part of today's news, and to continue the previous weeks discussions around the Weapon Mod Meta (Moaning Winds deepdive), we wanted to spend a bit of time taking a closer look at the Fortress mod and sharing our plans for it with you.

As a reminder, the Fortress mod is one of three core pillars of the current weapons Mod Meta. The shape of this current meta generally has lead to a stagnation of build diversity, an over-reliance on a very small amount specific mods as well as an under-reliance on the vast majority of other mods.

As mentioned previously, this meta is partially driven by a DPS-timer oriented endgame, where players feel like they are consciously or subconsciously “forced” into using either Fortress or Moaning Winds (or both) if they want to play and farm in the most efficient manner. A number of players have found alternatives to these mods and have been able to clear gold-times in Expeditions with such builds, but these players unfortunately remain as the exception to the rule.

However, if Fortress and Moaning Winds remain untouched in their current form, no amount of changes to endgame format, skills or other mods in Outriders will dislodge them from their current “essential”, mod-slot blocking status.

As a reminder, the way Fortress currently works is that it usually provides a passive and consistent 43% damage increase to all damage that the player inflicts. In essence, take your normal damage and apply the calculation of x 1.43 to it. That’s it – that’s the mod. No gameplay loop, kill or damage event or special situation required.

Let’s dissect this.

A current key issue with Fortress is that players can receive the maximum buff value (43%) for very small amounts of Armor, without having to invest into the Armor stat through class nodes or movable progression layers such as Armor mods.

From a historical point of view, the intentions behind Fortress were that it should provide a damage buff for players who committed to endurance builds with Armor stacking and who would therefore likely need to give up on offensive nodes from other branches.

Problematically, Fortress is currently providing incredible value for very little investment. This issue became most pronounced when we rebalanced Armor a few months ago so that all gear would provide more Armor overall. An “easy” fix here would be to correct the now broken “armor to buff value” calculation and require players to invest more into armor. However, this is an overly simplistic and imperfect solution and it would very likely be seen as a heavy nerf even though we would be returning the mod to its originally intended Tank or Bruiser class niche use. It would also not be a significant enough change to properly disrupt the meta – we expect that a new meta would simply form around Tank/Bruiser classes, with any non-Tank/Bruisers being kicked out of groups (the way Devastators were before their potential was discovered).

We also do not want to simply make Fortress unviable for all but a niche class of builds, especially as we’re aware that many players have committed huge amount of hours into grinding in order to obtain this mod.

Another problem is that Fortress provides an omni-damage buff (omni meaning it buffs all output layers across the board). This means that, regardless of your build direction (Firepower or Anomaly Power), Fortress feels like a must have.

Generally speaking, it might not have been a big offender, as other mods could bring a comparable combat value, but the issue lies in that it provides a percentage % based, rather than a flat numbers based, buff. This leads to extreme hyperscaling of damage.

Players will naturally always choose a reliable, ever-present mod buff that is active regardless of combat style or play pattern, especially when this mod increases total damage output by nearly a half (43%). That is what Fortress currently is.

Fortress is a best-in-slot mod, meaning that no weapon mod combo can really exist without Fortress as long as Fortress is in its current state. Replacing Fortress with another mod in your build can even mean that the replacement mod performs weaker than its true potential, since it could always benefit from the 43% damage increase Fortress would provide.

This is key: No matter how much we buff any other mod within the realms of reasonable balance, they will never be able to provide the same overall value that Fortress does, making those buffs inherently unable to displace Fortress.

We are most interested in giving players a choice of using the greatest possible amount of different mods in combination with one another, which in turn will lead to much more compelling gameplay loops.

For example, we feel it would be healthier for players (and a lot more fun) to be able to have 6 different mods on 3 weapons, rather than the same 2 mods on all 3 weapons. However, Fortress currently blocks 3 weapon mod slots.

Finally, Fortress current form makes it a fundamentally “unfun”, maybe even “boring” mod. It requires no great thought, no gameplay loop and no real skill before it provides its maximum bonus. Such un-interactive mods can be useful and necessary when creating specific builds, but if such a mod dominates the build meta across the entire spectrum as it currently does, it is fundamentally flawed.

The above exposition on Fortress current form is long, but it is essential reading for anyone who wonders why Fortress even “needs” to be changed.

So what do we have planned for the future of Fortress?

Before we begin, a small reminder:

We do not plan to address the issues of either Fortress or Moaning Winds before we have resolved the challenges that drove the creation of this meta and that continue to require it's viability.
You therefore do not need to worry about overly disruptive changes to the current power balance as long as the overall end-to-end endgame experience exists in its current form.

Fortress current design and logic is being fully reworked and is being replaced with fresh logic.

It’s new effect will be as follows (pending further balancing):
- Shots increase your current Armor and Resistance by 3%, stacking up to 5 times. At maximum stacks, the buff is doubled and additionally grants 30% damage increase for 10 seconds.

Sidenote: Players will need to perform 5 successful shots over 5 seconds to enter the full buff window. Stacks have a 1 second internal cooldown in order to streamline uptimes across all weapon types.

This rework will address the issues described as follows:
- The mod will no longer rely on a broken Armor stats calculation in order to provide its maximum buff.
- Players who already possess Fortress and want to continue to play with it, should not feel complete night and day drop in power between the old and new Fortress.
- While the damage buff will be an omni-buff, the gameplay loop of needing to generate stacks through shots means that players may become more circumspect with regards to which builds can make the most of the new Fortress.
- Additionally, stacking Armor and Resistance buffs will reward players who have opted into additional Armor and Resistance from nodes or mods by making them even more tanky. The buff is multiplicative of the CURRENT value. This means that if a player has 0% Resistance, the mod will not provide a baseline value on its own.
- The multi-layered nature of the Fortress means that, if need be, it can be surgically balanced in a variety of ways.

Finally, the mod’s new logic will introduce a gameplay loop that will require players to employ some measure of observation, thinking and skill when using it in combat.

Put differently, during Phase 1 of the mod, players will need to work to build the buff stacks, which can be observed through the mod’s new visual effects. Phase 2 begins when the defensive and offensive stacks are at their maximum. At this point, players will have a window of time during which they will be “the most tanky and most powerful” they can be.

This is the moment when diving deeper into combat will make the most sense as you will survive longer and dish out more damage – a key moment to unload your skills and other mods and effects.

As the buff wanes, players will find it prudent to pull back a bit and rebuild their stacks.

This will lead to a natural ebb and flow of combat, while still enabling players to use Fortress to deal increased damage (+30%) during key moments of the battle.

Played well, the new Fortress can reach a 93% uptime for Defensive buffs and 75% uptime for the offensive buff. This means that when a player fights enemies for a full minute, 45 seconds of that time could be spent in the increased damage window.

You may have noticed that the new Fortress will provide a max 30% damage buff. Equally, some of you may feel that the new Fortress doesn’t sound viable within your preferred playstyle. If you feel that this is a “nerf” when compared to the previous Fortress’ constant 43%, fear not.

As part of our upcoming wider rebalance, we will be buffing many other mods, some Legendary Gear sets and, if possible, certain aspects of the class skill trees.

All these changes are intended to keep players as powerful as possible, while making Fortress an optional, rather than an essential mod. This will reduce the reliance on “must-have” mods while also unlocking a much greater and more fun build diversity as other mods and playstyles become much more viable.

We are hoping to create a snippet of gameplay using the new Fortress so that you can see it in action before it is implemented. We’ll share this in future.

For now, however, thank you so much for reading and participating in this discussion, and we look forward to hearing what you think about the planned changes!

Patch News:

Our latest patch is currently undergoing the usual test-cycle, but we wanted to share some highlights of the upcoming fixes and changes with you already today.

Please do bear in mind that our current testing is still validating the below fixes so some of them may not be 100% guaranteed for this patch. Also note that this is not an exhaustive list and is still subject to change as we pass through the testing phase. The final patch will include more fixes and improvements.

Further improved the visibility of the Brood Mothers Surge AOE skill limits.
Fixed a bug that was preventing players from reviving themselves and other players after using the Trickster's Borrowed Time skill.
Resolved an issue that could cause the game to stutter when engaging Crawlers in battle during Expeditions.
Resolved an issue that could cause players to stutter when entering the drained lake during the third enemy encounter in the Scorched Lands expedition.
Resolved an issue that prevented secondary characters from picking up Journal Entries if they had already been collected on a different character.
Resolved an issue that would force matchmaking privacy setting to default to "Open". The privacy setting should now remain "Closed" when set. This should help further reduce AFK matchmaking.
Added an AFK status for players on friends lists.
Changed the behaviour of the Devastator's Impale, so that the game will detect impaled enemies as dead even before they disappear.
The Devastator's "Reflect Bullets" skill will now protect from Sciathan projectile attacks.
Fixed a bug that could prevent Devastators from being able to consistently dodge if they had the Auto Reflect mod active.
Fixed a bug that could cause client shots to sometimes deal no actual damage to enemies.
Fixed a bug that could cause the Technomancer's Plague Sower set bonus to not proc consistently.
Fixed a bug that could cause the Plague Sower and the Cannonball Legendary Sets to not retain their set bonus after a transition.
Fixed a bug that could cause certain mods like "Grand Opening" to not proc if the player was on their last magazine.
Fixed a bug that could cause certain ammo related mods to retain their effects, even after having been replaced. This issue would previously resolve itself when returning to the lobby. Affected mods included Brain Eater, Clip of Amalthea, Perpetuum Mobile, Vampiric Mag, Toxic Lead, Reforging Bullets.
Crash Fixes
Other minor bug Fixes

Ongoing list of currently tracked issues:

Note 1: This is not an exhaustive list of things being worked upon. This is also not a list of patch notes for the next patch. Upcoming patches will address issues that may not be listed here.

Note 2: “Investigated” means that we have been able to successfully reproduce an issue on our dev environment and are currently looking at the root causes of said issue. If we have not yet been able to reproduce a specific issue, it may not be listed here, but that doesn’t mean we’re unaware of it.

State of Stadia
- Today's General News update also covers Stadia as a platform we are continuing to work on.
- Stadia still needs to be brought in line with other platforms with regards to fixes, bug resolutions and crossplay support.
- We are continuing to do this work on aligning all platforms, but do not yet have a definite date for when this will be possible.
- We appreciate that this work is taking longer than expected and do apologize for this.
Xbox problems related to signing in
- A previous patch significantly increased Xbox sign in times for the vast majority of players. However, a small number of players appear to be affected by a secondary issue, which can cause them to do "alternative account sign in" workarounds.
- We are investigating this matter and are in touch with a few affected users to investigate their accounts in order to identify the issue
Mods and Resources may be lost
- This issue appears to be quite rare, making it very hard for us to reproduce it and identify it's cause.
- For anyone affected by this, we recommend getting in touch with our Square Enix Support Team (sqex.to/support), who now have appropriate tools to be able to grant you specific mods and resources that you may have lost. Our support team will also be able to gather the appropriate information to aid us in our investigation.
The Moaning Winds Mod does inconsistent damage when a Player is either a Host or a Client
- Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch. The resolution should ensure that Moaning Winds does the same damage as it would in a solo player session.
Enemies within the Endless Mass skill have an inconsistent Hitbox
- Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
Sprinting with your Sprint option set to Hold (instead of Toggle) may cause the player character to drift to the side
- Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
Certain enemies, especially Alphas, may break out of Frozen CC as soon as they are damaged
- Issue being investigated and will be resolved in a future patch
Certain Mods not working (properly or consistently), in particular when you’re the client during multiplayer sessions
- Issue under review following multiplayer improvements
Using the Tier 3 Armor Mod "Pain Transfer" with either the Tier 2 or the Tier 3 "Damage Link" mod drastically reduces framerate.
- Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
Technomancer Turrets may fall through the ground
- Issue being investigated
- There are a few different causes for this, including map specific areas (Mountain Outpost) as well as circumstance specific (such as aiming too closely at your own feet).
“Damage Blocked” Stat on Expeditions results screen occasionally appears inconsistently or abnormally low
- Issue being investigated and aimed to be resolved in a future patch
A cutscene during the "The Mentor" Questline may not trigger, meaning players cannot progress past this point
- Issue currently being investigated
- Temporary Workaround: In your lobby, change your story checkpoint to an earlier one, then re-attempt this quest.

Recent Informative Dev Reddit Comments & Threads:

Topic for Discussion: Moaning Winds (September)
Topic for Discussion: The Pillars of the Weapon Mod Meta (September)
General Note about the future of Outriders (August)
A Note about new content (July)
Damage Control - How damage reduction mechanics work in Outriders (June)
Discussion around Communications (May)
The Testing Process Explained (May)
Patch Release Days Explained - Why previously on Fridays? (May)

Index:

General News
Topic for Discussion: Fortress
Patch News
Ongoing list of currently tracked issues: