People Can Fly posted an update on the Outriders Launch times for each platform as well as information on what you will find in the Day 1 patch. In addition the studio also revealed their plans for the post-release updates coming to Outriders in the following weeks after April 1st!
Outriders is exactly one week away from its full and official launch. The demo for the game has been out for about a month and it offers a healthy amount of content for everyone to try for free and determine if they would be interested in the game.
Outriders releases on April 1st, but its launch will not be exactly simultaneous in the whole world and for all platforms. The game will be available on PC, on Google Stadia and, of course, on Playstation and Xbox.
Not long ago we even learned that from the very beginning the game will be included in the monthly subscription GamePass for all Xbox players, who prefer to play their games without purchasing them directly, but instead have access to them as long as they are subscribed to Microsoft’s service.
Outriders Pre-Load and Launch Times
Here are the official preload and launch times for Outriders per region and per gaming platform:
Pre-loading:
- Xbox – Pre-loading is available today!
- PlayStation Platforms – Pre-loading will begin 48 hours in advance of release time
- Steam – Still determining pre-load options here and hope to share news about the possibility of it next week.
- Epic Game Store: Preloading is not currently possible.
Launch Times:
- Rolling Midnight Unlock for Consoles:
- Consoles (Xbox and PlayStation) will unlock at midnight on April 1st for your specific country.
- For the USA, this means midnight EDT April 1st, which is 21:00 PDT on March 31st
- Unified single global time for PC & Stadia:
- The platforms will release on April 1st at 17:00 BST / 09:00am PDT
- These platforms can only release at a single time globally (this is due to how their stores are set up)
Have you noticed? Steam and PC in general players will be hours behind on the launch day. Console players will have a nice head-start in Enoch.
Square Enix rushed to announce before we (including me and Ruby, we both play the game on PC) all rise our voices in complains. This is a standard practice for the company. They like this time frame, because this way they can “ensure that the maximum amount of support and partner staff are on hand to deal with any launch day issues”.
Speaking of issues… let’s find out what will the Day 1 patch have in store for you!
What changes were made between Demo launch and Full release
People Can Fly revealed a list of changes that only contains the highlights, in their own words, not all of the changes that you will see in the full release of the game, compared to the demo or any early build you might have seen or played yourself somewhere prior to launch:
- Lots of demo content bug fixes, including for example, mods on some Legendary weapons not triggering properly.
- Balancing changes for various items, mods, enemy stats and loot drops.
- Balancing is an ongoing process and we have learnt much from internal playtests, the Insiders preview and the demo over the previous months. However, we’re sure that we will continue to learn more from the launch of the main game and the feedback provided by you, our community. So, keep it coming!
- Crossplay will no longer be in Beta and will be on by default.
- PC players will be able to add cross-platform players that they have previously played with to their friends lists. Consoles will receive this functionality through a future patch.
- Please note that if you turn Crossplay off manually, you will not be able to automatically matchmake with people who still have it turned on, even if you are all on the same platform. Direct inviting should still work though.
- DirectX 12 will be the default on PC.
- Added a “Quick Mark” functionality to your inventory. This will allow you to mass-mark all items based on their rarity in one or two button presses, rather than needing to mark items individually (which is still possible if preferred).
- Improvements to the Cover System
- Improvement to Travel Voting system used when in a group
- Added information about internal cooldown mechanics for Mods to their descriptions
What’s in the Outriders Day 1 Patch
The Day 1 Patch is a standard behavior for pretty much all game developers these days. It is a collection of fixes, improvements and some times even new features added to the game between the time it became “Gold” and the time it releases.
In the case of Outriders, you will notice a few key changes that were heavily requested by all of us based on the demo’s performance. Here are the main bulletpoints:
- Many bug fixes and improvements, with a particular focus on the latter sections of the game.
- Performance improvements for pacing/stuttering that was observed during the demo
- Camera Smoothing improvements for cutscenes and dialogues. This should reduce the camera shake that some players are struggling with
- Cutscenes/dialogues frame rate improvements
- PC cutscenes will have the option to choose from 30, 60, 90 and 120fps
- Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 cutscenes will be locked to 60fps
- Xbox One and PlayStation 4 cutscenes will remain locked to 30fps
The improved camera shake and the unlocked (kind of) framerate during cutscenes were among the biggest improvements in my book and I was very happy to read about them being worked on during the demo period and now officially done and ready for the full release of the game, not added post-launch.
The camera shake was increasingly annoying and given the fact that in the demo we only got to play the prolog of the story and a few missions from the first map, we have not seen much. It’s good that this issue was resolved before it actually became a problem, because far more players will be playing the full game compared to more than two million that, reportedly, tried out the demo.
The Day 1 patch should be included with the pre-load download. However, People Can Fly left a small door opened for them in case they discover new things that need immediate patching or something else goes wrong. In the end you may still end up having to download a Day 1 patch on April 1st, even if you have pre-loaded the game.
Because so many people farmed the hell out of the demo for Legendaries, the developers felt like they should once again remind us all that the full game will feature a complete story and all World Tiers that you can progress through:
As you progress through the main game you will also have full access to the crafting system, character levels, all World Tiers and more. No more Grinding for Legendaries at WT5! We recommend playing through the story and enjoying the experience first. Legendaries will drop naturally over time as you push your WT higher and get into Expeditions content.”
Outriders Post Launch Updates schedule
The first big patch containing a number of fixes and improvements is currently scheduled to be released a few weeks after the official launch on April 1st.
This update will contain a large number of non-game-breaking bug fixes and other tweaks that are not urgent and can wait a bit to be bundled up and delivered together with others in one global update.
If and when major bugs or glitches are discovered, the developers promise to address them with swift hotfixes. CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most recent examples of how emergency hotfixes get rolled out and other smaller tweaks or time-consuming changes are left behind for a later cumulative patch.
“At this point in time we do not yet have a set release time for this patch as its release will depend on the amount of content we want to roll into it. We are expecting this to roll out at least a few weeks after launch. Newly discovered severe issues will be hot-fixed earlier and separately from this patch of course.”
Here is a list of some of the things you will see in the first big post-launch patch:
- Controller adjustment options such as deadzone adjustment, acceleration settings and legacy layouts.
- Loading Time Improvements for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles
- Further Performance Improvements for Co-op games
- Crossplay friends list and invite system across all platforms. This will require you to be using a Square Enix Members account.
- Bug fixes including, for example: Lore collectibles bugging out on second characters
- This list will continue to be built out as we progress through launch
How will cheating be dealt with
It’s one of the hotter topics since the release of the Outriders Demo. People Can Fly admitted that by the time the demo reached two million players, they had caught about two hundred confirmed cheaters. Someone “gave themself 600 Legendary Weapons”, devs stated in their announcement. Shocking, eh!
If you are caught cheating in Outriders, you can expect the following to happen to you and your account:
- Repercussions are account wide, not character specific
- You will not be able to matchmake with legit players
- Matchmaking will likely take significantly longer
- You will still be able to play solo
- In future, your HUD will have a discreet but visible watermark placed on it so that gameplay footage created on this account can be readily identified as coming from a flagged account.
That last one… ouch! The dev team is determined to hunt down cheaters and prevent them from ruining the experience of the rest of the community. All accounts will be checked for evidence of cheat use on launch day – April 1st, and then at regular intervals thereafter.
Have you ever cheated in a game? Perhaps unintentionally? Unintentional cheating is still cheating. Here is a basic list of what you should avoid doing in Outriders:
- Intentionally running the game on PC without Easy Anti Cheat (EAC)
- Modifying game files to enhance a character: levels, skills, inventory, etc.
- Externally modifying game time to reduce time dependent features such as vendors and challenges
- Using a trainer program or similar to gain advantages within the game
- Using gameplay altering programs such as aimbots or wallhacks
- Individual players who are found to be being regularly kicked by multiplayer hosts shortly after joining may also be manually reviewed as an additional anti-cheat/anti-grief safeguard.
And here are a few actions you might consider cheating, but they aren’t:
- Using performance tweaking software (such as RivaTuner for example) to improve a personal game experience is not considered cheating.
- Farming is not considered cheating. Even though the amount of battering that that captain underwent could be considered unethical. RIPThatCaptain.
The information in this article is taken only from official sources – the developers and publisher of the game.
You will see a lot of Outriders guides on Day 1 here on VULKK.com. RubyRose has been hard at work to provide the best possible Class Guides, but not only. We have also a Gearing Guide, a UI and HUD Guide and more!
Ruby’s Outriders Classes and Roles Guide is already out and it will help you determine what each class can do and which role is your best fit according to your personal playstyle and preferences!
Let me remind you one last time before we all jump into this brand new world, created by People Can Fly and Square Enix. Enjoy your time on Enoch and don’t waste it on farming Legendary items early on. Focus on the story and the narrative.
There’s plenty of EndGame waiting for you (and backed up with detailed helpful Guides from us) where you will have many opportunities to farm your awesome gear and where this gear would actually matter for your performance and results!
