The Outriders Community is Getting the Trial by Fire Treatment

Since Outriders first launched, it's been quite popular. Some of that popularity has come in spite of problems that have plagued the game. That's a good sign for developer People Can Fly. However, the patience of Outriders players isn't going to last forever. They've been put through a kind of "trial by fire" because of the different bugs and glitches they've had to play through. There are plenty of games that have had the same kind of rocky launch as Outriders. There are also plenty of games with those rocky launches where the player base dried up rather quickly, but it hasn't been the same for Outriders.

One game that immediately comes to mind when talking about a bad launch followed by the players leaving in droves is Anthem. Of course, one of the reasons people left that game is because it didn't take long for EA to promise changes and not deliver. Users seemingly decided to just wait out that revamp, which never came. Players staying away and awaiting that overhaul may have led to the eventual cancellation of Anthem 2.0 earlier this year. Outriders definitely doesn't need an overhaul, by any means, but there are still some prevalent issues. That could still lead to players leaving if they come face-to-face with many more big glitches.

The biggest issue, and the one that seems to continue to plague the game is the inventory bug. At first, it seemed like it was a relatively simple issue: Not that it's ever good to have players losing all their weapons and gear, but it's something that's been seen before. How People Can Fly has dealt with that bug, however, has not been great. It's clear they had the best intentions in mind, but the phased fixing of the Outriders inventory bug has left some feeling like there's an unfair approach being taken.

That approach, however well-intentioned, has had exactly the kind of effect developers should be worried about. Some players are reportedly willing to sit out the game until they know that the Outriders inventory bug fix has been patched completely. The danger, of course, is that those same people might decide it's not worth coming back at all.

The inventory issue is just one of the problems that have popped up since the game's launch. Something known as the Golem Bug recently popped up and People Can Fly apparently thought it had the issue fixed with a patch. Unfortunately, Outriders players are claiming the patch actually made things worse. Players have felt as though something was off with the damage scaling for a while now. While the patch seemed to fix the Golem Bug, it continued other scaling issues. Some have also reported connection issues and other various bugs with the new patch as well.

The long and short of it is, the game has managed to keep its popularity thanks to a gameplay loop that's still quite entertaining to play. It's also possible that Outriders being available on Game Pass right out of the gate has kept it afloat. The game is good enough that it has a chance to power through the problems that have popped up since launch. However, continuing to put its players through this trial by fire for much longer is going to have some serious negative ramifications.