Outriders: Owners of an Nvidia graphics card can pause the game

Outriders

Outriders is the newest title that requires an active internet connection even in single player mode. This not only means that solo players also have to struggle with connectivity problems, but also that the title simply cannot be paused. However, a user on Reddit found a clever way to pause the game in single player anyway. At least if you have a graphics card from Nvidia.

Recommended editorial content At this point you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. Most people will be familiar with Nvidia Geforce Experience. The software not only downloads drivers and optimizes your downloaded titles if you wish, but also has its own photo mode called Ansel. In games that offer Ansel support, you can call up the photo mode with the key combination Alt-F2. In this you can move the camera freely, apply filters, and other things that a photo mode does. Outriders (buy now $ 59.99) is one of those titles with support for Nvidia Ansel. Here, however, the photo mode is not only helpful for taking a few nice pictures, it can also pause the looter shooter. If you are in a single player session, you can use Nvidia Ansel to go to the toilet or to the door, to cook, or simply to start a better game on the side without being surprised by any opponents. It is not yet known whether this trick will soon be declared as a bug and corrected, or whether the game will be given a proper function to pause at some point.

This Game-As-A-Service principle works with the required active Internet connection not only on our nerves, but also on many players worldwide. Coupled with the unstable servers, problems with crossplay, FPS drops, and so much more, players are currently not particularly enthusiastic about Outriders. In the Reddit article on Nvidia Ansel's pause function, for example, a player jokes that the title pauses every 20-30 minutes with the message "Internet connection problems". Unfortunately, the break never ends where it started.

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So How Is The ‘Outriders’ Endgame Looking?

Outriders

People Can Fly

Well, after a few days of solid play, I beat the Outriders campaign and all its side missions, and have been trying to get into the endgame amidst different server issues. But I have done a good amount of it, and killed enough enemies in Expeditions where I got an achievement only 0.4% of the Xbox player population has, so I guess you could say I’m further ahead than most.

As such, I wanted to talk a little bit about the endgame so far, though some aspects of this may change as time goes on, given the recent technical issues of the game, and the fact that I’m further ahead than most people so player population at my Challenge tiers is…rough.

Without getting into story spoilers, the endgame of Outriders is opened up by the grand finale, and you will get access to 14 Expeditions, with the 15th being one you have to “save up for” by running the other 14.

Expeditions are effectively longer, harder versions of the types of missions you’ve already done. They have dialogue at the beginning and end indicating a mild story component to them, but that’s not the main focus.

Outriders

People Can Fly

Once you hit Expeditions, World Tiers go away completely unless you head back to story content. They are replaced with Challenge Tiers, with different Challenge Tiers dropping different level gear and spawning different level enemies. The math is a little fuzzy on this but think higher level Challenge Tiers are the only way to get higher/max gear in the game, as World Tier 15 does not appear to drop 50 level loot, unless I’m missing something. I am honestly confused about the continued purpose of World Tiers in the main story, though you can go back and farm side missions for legendaries, and increasing World Tier will up those chances, even if the gear isn’t max level. And you may have to get WT up to equip higher end gear from Expeditions, but I haven’t reached that point yet if that does indeed happen.

Expeditions are…very hard, especially on higher Challenge Tiers. You can solo them, and I did solo my first few, but they spawn more enemies than any campaign mission you’ve ever run, including multiple bosses at a time, so taking on all that solo is pretty rough and ideally, you want a team. Your goal is to run through the mission as fast as you can hitting “gold” completion times instead of silver or bronze. This done as sort of a DPS check for your current Challenge Tier, and also making sure you don’t spend too much time dead. If your whole team wipes you will have to start over, but if you chose to continue you can get a box of “pity loot” back at the start, which can still be good. I got my first legendary set gear from one of those.

Ideally, however, you will complete the entire mission, and the faster you do so, the more rewards you’ll get from a drop pod at the end, what amounts to a giant chest. It’s a ton of loot and materials, trust me.

Outriders

People Can Fly

You collect drop pod resources that will be used to unlock the final 15th expedition. I know some crazy players have already gotten that far, but I haven’t looked up what’s different about that one as I’m guessing it contains story spoilers. But your drop pod resources can also be used to purchase legendaries from Tiago, which cost a ton of them, but it’s a way to somewhat focus farm for specific gear if the drops are not going your way. But I’m not sure how often his inventory changes, so by the time you save for one thing, it might be gone.

The endgame is not just about random drops and drops alone, however, it’s also about investing in your gear. In order to take on higher challenge tiers, you will probably be needing to upgrade your current gear to your max equippable level, and of course making builds that synergize with your guns and skills.

For instance, I use Grim Marrow for mob clearing due to its ash/explosive effects. But running level 40 content with it at 36, it was hampering me, so I spend a few hundred Titanium to get it up to level 40 and now things are much better. And you can also invest in specific stat increases on gear too, rather than overall level. It’s expensive, but you’re meant to actually hold on to your favorite gear and upgrade it over time. This is especially true for rare legendaries as you may just flat-out upgrade some of them all the way to 50 in the end, rather than expecting a new one to drop at fifty. In short, save all your legendaries for now unless they’re duplicates.

The main problem I am having with the Expeditions endgame right now is matchmaking. It’s an incredibly convoluted system, hampered by the game’s ongoing server problems, and the fact that I’m too far ahead of everyone. In maybe 10 Expeditions I have launched with a full team of three once. That one went great, but normally the game only gives me one other person, and then there’s a 50% chance that as we’re running a mission, it may give us a third person midway through. But obviously this affects our ability to clear quickly, since we’re on a clock.

Outriders

People Can Fly

I also wish matchmaking would just launch us straight into the activity, and instead there’s a lot of dead time waiting around camp as your party leader fiddles with their modifications instead of starting up the Expedition. It’s like trying to run the Destiny strike playlist only you’re sent to the Tower and you have to have one person manually select and launch each strike from there.

So far, I’ve seen a good amount of diversity in these. They have every enemy type in the game, and a few new ones, especially bosses, even if they are just bigger versions of old bosses (Brood Mother > Brood Empress). I enjoyed one Expedition where the final boss room was a bunch of bandits having a rave, complete with pulsing techno music that plays the whole time.

In short, I think these could be fun, but the system to launch them is clunky, and if you’re expecting something wildly different from the base campaign, it really isn’t that. Just more, harder enemies and occasional objectives like “stand on the plate,” but that’s about it. We’ll see how this goes over time. For now, until servers are fixed, I’m probably going to be switching to a Technomancer story playthrough.

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