Outriders is a game whose demo did not impress me that much, but that I decided to play because it came out on Gamepass and there's not much releasing right now, especially not for free*. It's an okay diversion kind of game, not the kind that's worth full price but, hey, I've played much worse.

Since I was switching platforms from PlayStation to Xbox I had to start the game over from the beginning, which did not feel great because the opening to Outriders is slow and dialog heavy and the dialog is terrible. I booted it up this morning, sat through about a minute to log in to the servers, which are sagging under the weight of the GamePass players, got through about 15 minutes, and then wanted to do something else for a little bit. The game can't pause or be suspended because it's always online, so I quit out, thinking it would preserve my progress and drop me right back where I was in the game, at the end of the first prologue area about to go track down the probe.

Nope.

It turns out that the game saves who you talk to and the conversations you have but not your progress through part of the story, at least until certain checkpoints. That means that not only can you not pause the game, but unless you quit out only after hitting one of the checkpoints, and it's not very clear what they are, you're going to lose progress. So I had to go back through the first part of the prologue again when I logged back in.

This is not a game design that makes sense with how people actually live their lives. Games get interrupted all the time, by phone calls, bio breaks, kids, partners, work, whatever, and the ability to pause and later resume, suspend via the console's features, or save and come back later, is pretty critical. Compromising those features is something developers should not take lightly.

Some games have to be always online. Destiny and The Division feature shared social spaces and can't be played purely single player. I understand and accept that. There's a reason you can't pause World of Warcraft and that reason is other players.

Outriders can be played solo. You never run into randoms in the game, only people you're grouped with, and only up to two other players. It's not doing anything that Gears of War Judgement didn't do 8 years ago, and you could totally pause that game whenever you wanted, and can easily suspend it if you're running it on an Xbone or a Series console. Saving was also limited to checkpoints (I believe), but that was much more common back then.

In addition, the always online component compromises important features of the new consoles. PlayStation's activity cards will still work but you have to hit the login server, turning it from lightning fast get in and play to a much slower "get in and wait" design. Xbox's Quick Resume won't work at all with the game. It screws with these features for no reason. As far as I can tell there isn't even PVP in the game, so if the claim is that they need to keep characters on the servers in order to prevent hacking...who cares? Let people hack if they want. It's a single player game. Or try to keep them from doing it the way every other single player game tries to keep them from doing it. Apparently there's already an infinite guns exploit already, so they've accomplished nothing.

In addition, after the servers go down the game will be unplayable. So they've guaranteed I won't buy a copy after I've played it because if I want to go back 10 years from now I probably can't. Heck, if the game bombs you might not be able to go back a year from now (though that seems unlikely.) Disintegration's Multiplayer mode got pulled after 7 months. The more stuff that relies on servers the less preservation you have. We're all more aware of that than ever thanks to Sony.

It feels like we're going backwards in some key user features for a lot of games, even as the consoles and PCs get more and more user friendly and accommodating of how people play games. Meanwhile games continue to insist on hitting login servers and putting more and more online even for single player experiences. It's not necessary unless you're a persistent online world. Otherwise it's just a way for software makers to add failure points to their games and disrupt basic functionality.

Oh, and the reason I'm writing this rant? I decided to play a little bit after lunch (couldn't play while eating like I sometimes do because there's no pause) and as I completed a quest the servers went down and booted me off. Great. Just what everybody wants from their single player experience. The joys of random disconnects.

There's no reason for this. It's bad, and whoever decided to build it this way at the publisher or developer should feel bad. It's possible this was intended as a Destiny type game and that's why it is the way it is, but when they pulled those features they should have implemented true offline play. This trend sucks.

*I will get to Narita Boy soon, but I want to take my time with that so it's probably a weekend thing.

Thanks for the write-up.

I have GP, but I think I am going to take a hard pass on this game.

Part that comes from not being impressed by the demo, part of it comes from not being able to pause the game.

Recently played through Journey to the Savage Planet, and you cant pause that game either. A single player game. What the hell. For no reason. I'm still mad!

Yep. This is the thing that fucking get me about these games. I know that it's being updated in real time: the new item that I picked up ten seconds before I disconnected is in my inventory when I log back in. Why the fuck isn't quest progress saved, too? I would run into this with Diablo 3 frequently. You get a bonus for completing a set of objectives in a certain area. Get disconnected just before you finish the last objective? Too bad, it saves none of your progress. It makes no sense.

Outriders isn't a live-service game. The devs have made a point of that. So why does it suffer from the worst parts of live service games?

I agree that this sort of game design harms the player experience without seeming to give us much in return. I'd love to know more about how these decisions get made during development. I assume cheating, piracy, and ease of data collection are considered, but I wonder how often it's practically accidental.

Watch Dogs: Legion was technically playable offline but had all sorts of issues with auto-saving early on. To support cross-saves, the game syncs the local save file with a copy on Ubisoft's servers. That sync process was broken at launch, so the game... just... wouldn't save hours of progress for some players. Obviously bugs happen, but Ubisoft's design allowed a server connection issue to impact the local save file for a (largely) singleplayer game.

When I see things like that or the insufficient story checkpoints you mention in Outriders, I have to believe these decisions are made without consideration for the user. I assume the games are play-tested under ideal condition by people paid to stare at the screen, who are passionate about the product and aren't necessarily thinking about the real world.

All that said, I'm comfortable letting the market decide. If games like Outriders are successful (measured by direct sales or new GamePass subscribers) in spite of those design choices, then good for them. Meanwhile, I'll continue to support games that respect my time.

I just decided to give Remnant: From The Ashes a spin, and maaan that feels like every bit the game Outriders wants to be. It's a looter shooter that feels good to play, looks fairly good for what it is, and doesn't bug out like crazy.

There's going to be that crazy minority who will swear up and down that Outriders is a hidden gem but, yeah that demo did nothing for me.

I was having a pretty fun time with it, playing the Trickster class, until I got booted off the servers in a single player game. A lot of talk going around about the risk of digital ownership, what with Sony shutting off their stores, but this thing will probably be unplayable, even with a physical copy, when they shut the servers off in, what, 5 years?

Is it just me or does Outriders feel like a game that was intended for the Xbox 360, never came out, and then was sort of grabbed off a shelf, ported over into Unreal to look all shiny and good, then just kind of released. Everything about it, including some of the more boneheaded design issues with it, just screams a game from a certain not-long-ago era. And the save/checkpoint system is just awful.

As someone playing solo, I hate it too. I have actually gotten some decent use out Quick Resume (Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, RDR2 were much easier jumping in and out of with it) so it sucks that that functionality is broken for needless online connectivity.

Who wants video games that you can play whenever you want when instead you can have video games that you can't play unless the servers are working? Not this guy.

I've been booted off the servers about half a dozen times since I got the game, though I could usually get right back on. Lost a little progress each time.

Do you know how many times I was booted off the servers for single player Gears of War?

@bigsocrates: This has been my experience. I've put in a few hours between last night and today. I've had probably a dozen server disconnects in this short time. Each time, I reconnect at the beginning of the area/combat arena and have to replay the whole encounter. Considering the fact that some of these encounters are difficult and have multiple distinct phases or waves of enemies, this is extremely annoying.

Yeah, I don't like when games do this. I mean, I generally don't have much trouble staying in the game unless the actual servers need maintenance, but it's still not great. I love The Division games, but I hate that they're always online. A bit off-topic, but still on-topic for this game and games like it, but I absolutely hate when games make me sign up for their stuff, like Bethesda.net, 2k, and what have you.

I didn't actually play the beta because it was asking me to sign in with my email. I don't want to have to remember emails and passwords for all these things that I'm likely rarely to use, and don't want to use, so I wish they'd stop making us do those things.

As for this game though, it's... fine. The shooting feels good enough, and the gameplay is basically Gears of War but a bit faster and you have abilities similar to Destiny or something, but it's not something that's grabbing me. Maybe I'll play more at some point.

@bigsocrates: another a3nGerS🤣🤣🤣, lear nothing from that master piece??

@serryl: 100% Agreed, if the issue is it that big, why launch?. Some people got 2 copyes of this thig, can play, and when they manage to log , no inventory was there