People Can Fly has backtracked on its stance about the legendary loot farming in the Outriders demo.
Players have been farming the Gauss bossfight in order to hoard legendary loot in the demo. Due to the fact that the demo progress carries over to the main launch, players who’ve farmed legendaries will be overpowered during the first few chapters of the game.
Once the developer was aware of these exploits, it decided to change things up via the next patch. “While we do not want to prevent farming runs (We get it!), the lootcave discovered via the triple chest-run, as well as the store exploit, do not feel to be within the spirit of the game.” said the patch notes. “To that end, we are redirecting farming efforts to mechanics in the game that may be more enjoyable for players to play through and repeat. Epic items will no longer appear in shops and vendors (within the demo). Chests will no longer drop legendary items.”
However, it seems that the community was not happy with this decision, and made it known to the developer. While some of the methods being used were exploits, other players were putting in the grind to farm Gauss for legendaries.
In response, People Can Fly conceded that boss runs should be rewarded, and decided to allow the Gauss boss chest to continue dropping legendaries. “Having listened to very reasonable community feedback, we have enabled the Gauss boss chest to drop Legendaries again as we should indeed be rewarding boss runs. Other chests still cannot drop Legendaries,” said the developer via its official Twitter handle.
The Outriders demo has been a massive success, with over two million downloads in its first week across all platforms. “Thank you to every one of you for helping us reach 2 Million downloads within a single week! But Enoch isn't done with you yet Outrider,” tweeted out the developer in appreciation for reaching the milestone.
The success of the demo can be attributed to a number of factors, besides it being a good game, of course. The fact that your progress carries over during the main launch removes the risk of it being a waste of time. Furthermore, it’s also a good way to research which class you want to finally play as once the game is launched. Outriders helps players make a decision by skipping the lengthy intro sequence on subsequent playthroughs. Perhaps more games should learn from this demo model.