How to play Outriders with friends who are at a lower level

Outriders is one of the newer kids on the role-playing third-person shooter video game block. Just like most online shooters, Outriders is best enjoyed with friends.

However, since it's a cooperative PvE multiplayer, players have been asking if they can play with their friends who are at a lower power level than them.

Outriders was released on 1st April 2021 and is available on PC (Epic and Steam), Playstation, Xbox, and Stadia.

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Can Outriders be played with friends at a lower level?

According to the unofficial Reddit thread for Outriders, after the prologue is over, players can match up with anyone they want to, irrespective of their power levels. During random match-making, the game mechanics do match players up with others at a similar power level, but this does not come into effect while joining a game with friends. Although this information is slightly old, the matchmaking mechanics haven't changed as of now.

The world levels and the enemy levels depends upon the host. Higher tier gears are legal at lower tiers. Despite the difference in levels, there isn't any gear scaling. And the weapon drops depends upon the levels of the enemies killed.

To play with friends, players can directly invite their friends from the main menu by clicking on the "Play With Friends" button. Alternatively, players need to pause their game and click on the "Play With Friends" button in the pause menu in Outriders.

Although Outriders supports crossplay, the feature is disabled for now. There's a bug which kicks one player from the party if there's a hybrid party, i.e., players playing on consoles and PC in the same party. Players need to enable crossplay from the gameplay tab before being able to play with people on a different platform.

There's a tab which allows players to generate a code. Players can send this code to their friends, who can then use it to join a lobby.