If you move the existing Fortress into either the Class Tree or the Armour slots then you just shift the problem to a different area of the game rather than address it.

If its in the class trees then that node becomes a must have, locking out other nodes or potential paths.

If you shift it into the Armour slots you again block a mod slot.

The changes we're planning for other mods and Legendary Sets will make other mods and their effects more interesting and, for some builds, more viable than Fortress because of their increased damage output.

Is the new Fortress viable for every single current build in the game? The reaction to the Fortress rework indicates that many players feel like Fortress will no longer be the 100% guaranteed powerhouse it currently is.

Which is precisely what the intention was. If it is to become an optional part of a build, it can't maintain it's current 100% consistent-always-on 43% damage output when compared to othe...

You've made some excellent points here, and I know the team have already picked up on your post (as well as many other peoples' constructive criticism).

Whether pausing stacks during a reload is the answer to the problem you're describing is still worth researching and discussing on our end, as it could introduce something else that could be a bit funky.

Off the top of my head, I'd wonder whether pausing the stack decay on reload would allow players to build 4 stacks before a proper fight and then keep the stack decay in permanent limbo by cycling through weapon reloads until the opportune moment to trigger the fifth stack. Almost like pre-arming a nuke in a way. Very reminiscent of the Moaning Winds shuffle...

An alternative could be to reduce either the number of stacks required for the max effect to proc or to tweak cooldown timings, meaning that the mod could be more viable for rifles and shotguns too.

There are also other tweaks worth conside...

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another Dev News Thursday.

https://preview.redd.it/j3oyj7oi4vn71.png?width=2058&format=png&auto=webp&s=b6d277db97321e2013027cf6af93041e0dbe47f8

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 Fortres...

The Earthborn gear provides a set of higher Tier mods that would normally only be unlocked further down the story campaign. To enable these DLC items to grant the mods upon dismantling them could very well unbalance the early story campaign for players who have purchased this DLC. That is why the mods they provide do not get added to the library.

Yes.

Quite often obvious solutions have been indeed considered.

Your suggestion is a good one, but if we tied a MW resolution to "on-reload animation completion", that would still mean that shuffling MW could be done with a timeframe that is still smaller than the intended cooldown.

So, it does sound obvious, but it's not a perfect alternative either. And we'd rather fix something properly, rather than just band-aid it.

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another Dev News Thursday.

https://preview.redd.it/5knc75l3thm71.png?width=2058&format=png&auto=webp&s=0bbc210e8c7c881bb3a6562177b5cf7295cd1d96

Index:

• General News
• Topic for Discussion: A Deep-dive into Moaning Winds
• Patch News
• Ongoing list of currently tracked issues

General News

We are unfortunately in a similar position to last week, whereby our latest patch-content is pretty much complete, but is still being held up by a submissions process.

I would like to take the opportunity that this delay presents to talk a bit more about Outriders in general.

Quite often we see pl...

Hello everyone,

Welcome to another Dev News Thursday.

Processing img gd5rpy8tqgm71...

Index:

• General News
• Topic for Discussion: A Deep-dive into Moaning Winds
• Patch News
• Ongoing list of currently tracked issues:

General News

We are unfortunately in a similar position to last week, whereby our latest patch-content is pretty much complete, but is still being held up by a submissions process.

I would like to take the opportunity that this delay presents to talk a bit more about Outriders in general.

Quite often we see players asking "what's the point?" and "why are you running Outriders in such a live service way?" (also usually in combination with a really spicy hot take along the lines of "dead gaem").

When each patch or change is viewed at in isolation, it is somewhat understandable where these feelings come from.

However, everything we have been...

It's only good for those who realize it exists and try to actively exploit it. For everyone else, it leads to quite inconsistent and confused gameplay following a crafting session as certain mod effects continue to be present even after they've been removed.

And given that this bug would always resolve itself upon returning to a lobby, it makes the associated gameplay even more confusing and inconsistent: "Why am I doing different damage between gameplay sessions"?

Mods affected by this bug include Brain Eater, Clip of Amalthea, Perpetuum Mobile, Vampiric Mag, Toxic Lead, Reforging Bullets.

Finally, we're not fixing this bug instead of other things, so I don't believe that's a particularly helpful way to look at the situation.

Funnily enough, I believe that exactly this glitch will be resolved in the next patch.

It's a seperate modifier, but is used in the same step as the Armor / Resistance calculation.

It's an Incoming Damage Modifier and is better than Armor / Resistance as it's not affected by damage category.

It's also immune to increase in Armor Penetration that some enemies have.

A few relevant answers from our Deepdive into these kind of mechanics.

SHIELD

• What does Shield protect from?
  • Both types of damage are blocked by the Shield. If the damage is Anomaly based, the damage the shield takes will be based on the Resistance stat calculation explained above. If the damage is Physical based, it will use the Armour value.
• How does Shield work?
  • The best way to describe how Shield works would be to treat it as an additional health bar, which absorbs all damage first, until it deple...

The history of Fortress is a bit checkered - at Launch it didn't appear to be that much of an issue. It only really became the issue it is today when we re-balanced the Armour which greatly increased the Armour Values on Gear, which in turn made it far easier to proc the max Fortress effect.

There may also be some funky stuff going on with Fortress in backend calculations with regards to how quickly it can achieve its max potential. Those miscalculations only made their way in post-launch.

Us fixing that broken calculation would be seen as a "huge nerf". Just as changes we made to the Bullet Skills were a nerf, even though the Bullet Skills were only performing the way they were because of a fundamentally broken calculation that were never intended to be in the game.

From what I've understood from the team, Fortress being a stat stick overall wasn't seen a huge issue during our initial balancing passes pre-launch, because at the time it didn't appear to b...

You're right - the percentages were wrong. When transcribing the notes I conflated the "new damage %" with "% increase in damage". I've fixed that now by knocking 100% off each one. This is also why I ensure to have the base number changes in there as well, so that it's a bit clearer.

I'm on PS5 and the ultimate storm whips damage is still the same as it's tier 2 version. Wtf?

The T3 mod has a shorter cooldown, so it effectively does 100% more damage in a specific time frame.

The percentages were wrong - I conflated the "new damage %" with "% increase in damage". I've fixed that now!

Thursdays or Tuesdays normally. I chatted a bit about it on the link below.

Patch Release Days Explained - Why previously on Fridays? (May)

What was developed/intended to be the best options originally?

Generally speaking, I don't believe there were any plans for single "best options" overall. The plan was to have all classes be equally viable and with different skill combinations per class as well. For the most part, I believe we've managed this, especially during the story gameplay, where class selection breakdowns are very similar (there is no single over-picked or under-picked class).

Equally, I think that those players who choose to play outside the meta have also found that there are plenty of viable alternatives that can still post gold times in Expeditions. You dont NEED Fortress, MW or Bullet Builds to complete all the game content at the highest levels, but they certainly make things a lot easier and faster. And them being seen as the meta will naturally mean many players gravitate towards them without wanting to experiment with other alternatives.

Without me...

I see what you mean - I've made the edit to make that clearer.

Thank you for the kind message :) The Pillars concept was the best way I could find to describe what is essentially a very complicated and connected mesh of issues - Glad to hear it makes sense!