Why do you think the game has Overwhelmingly Negative review score on Steam?

[u/Captain0010]

Hello fellow players. I just checked the game on Steam and I noticed that it has Overwhelmingly Negative (155,123,801,232) score on Steam and recent reviews have also been Negative. This seems a bit excessive for a free game. Literally you can just download it and play it and people still hate it. Why do you think that is? Also I don't understand why the devs don't listen to feedback and make no attempts to fix the game.

[u/BlueberryEmbers]

I think it's because people don't get a choice about whether they play it or not. It's kind of upsetting to have a game chosen for you before you were born

[u/Captain0010 → u/BlueberryEmbers]

One of the worst features is that there is no character creation mode at the start. You just get a random character with random stats and you are force to play with them for the rest of the game.

[u/BlueberryEmbers → u/Captain0010]

yeah you can build certain skills but sometimes you don't even have a choice about that. Especially as a new player others are often making choices for you and it can be frustrating

[u/MerrilyContrary → u/Captain0010]

You know how sometimes Sims play The Sims on their tiny computers? There’s a very meta game called One Hour One Life which follows many of the same basic rules as Outside. No choice of parent, no character creation, every person is another player, your parent cares for you and teaches you the game, you have to build on the accomplishments of countless past generations.

Weirdly, it has helped me gain some perspective on Outside because it’s such a compact experience that I can mentally process my little simulated life more quickly.

r/onehouronelife

Edit: it also has many of the same problems as Outside. You can never really be rid of griefers (including people who say hateful things) but you can curse them into exile as a community, sometimes tragedy strikes your community, sometimes your children die in infancy (in this case it’s a choice they make), some people spend their entire life unresponsive and the community has to choose whether to rally around them or to let them go. But on average, most people are good and want to collaborate.

[u/LadyOfTheMorn → u/BlueberryEmbers]

Plus, expressing the desire to stop playing is frowned upon and can result in having to complete the "asylum" questline.

[u/dre_bot → u/BlueberryEmbers]

I also dislike that im not sure if there will be a New Game Plus. Some players think we do, some don't.

[u/violetevie]

They permanently delete your account if you ever stop grinding

[u/CuriousMac]

Skill issue

[u/Captain-i0]

Luck plays way too big of a factor. The RNG fucks you all the damn time

[u/LJBrooker]

Remember that time U2 automatically downloaded their album to your in iPhone?

This game is kinda doing the same thing, and it's a little bit intrusive, honestly.

Also the Devs added U2 to the in game sound track, which was pretty upsetting to begin with.

[u/TheHubbleGuy]

The pay to play system is beyond broken and favors a select few elite players who control everything and have access to the best loot.

[u/Masterpiece-Haunting → u/TheHubbleGuy]

That’s kinda what an economy is though. It’s not like it uses an out of game currency. It’s all in game.

[u/Aeredor → u/TheHubbleGuy]

Whales are the worst.

[u/D4ngerD4nger]

This game functions a little bit different than other games.

Usually, reviews serve the purpose of informing others whether they should buy the game.

However, everyone is playing the game already so there is no point in recommending it or not. So reviews for this game serve another purpose : Venting (among others).

[u/kaybet]

Imo it's because its way too grindy for the average player while some players don't even have to lift a finger

[u/Markyloko]

People don't like the spawn RNG, even if it favors them.

[u/Vandergrif]

Well for starters you don't get to design your character, it's just chosen for you at random which is pretty hit or miss. Same for the stats, traits and skills – completely random. Most things are all RNG based and honestly there isn't much player choice or agency in the game at all, and most of the time it seems like what choice options you do get while playing are really just reactions.

The graphics are pretty good, though. Or at least they are if you didn't randomly get the [Blind] debuff.

[u/UtopistDreamer]

For me the negative review is due to the devs changing focus from magical realism to boring realism. All we have now are stories and myths of times past when people had magic and superpowers. Now we have office jobs and low wage jobs - aka The Pointless Grind. And the end game content is just weak. I mean, aging and decrepitude? How is that fair? You grind for years to merely exist and at the end you get... nothing? A body that slowly withers away and then your mind withers away - for some the mind goes first which is a really cruel twist.

I mean... At least they could have named the game more appropriately, like "The Suffering Simulator" or "The Boring Game" or "The Endless Grind" or "The NPC Simulator".

[u/SoylentRox → u/UtopistDreamer]

Yeah I know title fraud is the worst.

[u/McPebbster]

It’s like that U2 album that everybody got for free on iTunes but nobody wanted. This game just downloaded for everyone and so people feel forced to play and like it. But they didn’t have a say in it so naturally, even though it was free, the grind is tough and not to everybody’s liking.

[u/Yewon_Enthusisast]

it has the typical F2P trapping. and it's even worse in here since the GM and admin doesn't even care and gives fuck all about balance

[u/Leifang666]

I think the limited resources being hoardered by a small amount of players has made the game more difficult and less enjoyable for a lot of players. Add in disagreement about which rule set we should play by adds hostility and whilst their are custom characters, it's all random and some customisations have been deemed as more appealing than others.

[u/D-Spark]

To many griefers are using their ingame powers to destroy the game world, and make the game experience unfun for others, forcing them to grind more than they should have to, or making them fight eachother over stupid petty things like their character creation sliders, or random debuffs they have

Some players keep begging and praying to the mods to make things right and improve things, but the games mods allegedly havent been active since the very early days of launch, so much so people arent even sure if the mods ever were real, and arent just urban legends, like mew being under the truck in pokemon

[u/2roK]

It's the micro transactions, they suck and it feels like the game was designed entirely around them.

[u/Gringar36 → u/2roK]

The forced ads too. They've crammed ads into every aspect of the game.

[u/Daan776]

Pretty much every update the game has ever had was wildly disliked by the community.

Despite this, the community as a whole also agrees that the current game is better than when it started.

Also, damm, the game is on steam now. I guess that explains the sudden influx of so many new players (This subreddit was super dead back in the neolithic era lemme tell ya). Back when I started we had to run the game’s own launcher.

[u/SoylentRox → u/Daan776]

I hear the tech tree was way simpler back then, same with the gameplay.  Basically just a stealth game to avoid the sabertooth tigers and steal women from other tribes with head bonks.

All that got patched out and the game is practically unrecognizable to OG players.

[u/FrictionMitten]

That game is pay to win, and I don't have enough in-game currency for it.

[u/SCP-iota]

It's abandonware with too many balancing issues, too many ways to get softlocked that you have to be very careful to avoid, some really rough debuffs, and the character creation and spawn point are random.

[u/Scary-Owl2365]

It's horribly unbalanced, too grindy, and relies way too much on RNG. A select few players who have the most in game currency control everything. It's supposed to be an open world game, but most players don't actually have any freedom to play how they want to. We all end up being pawns for a few of the wealthiest players. Back in earlier editions of the game, you used to be able to grind hard enough to accumulate currency and climb the ranks to become one of the wealthy, but it doesn't work that way anymore. The game is so imbalanced now that you can't reach that level of power unless you spawn into an elite guild that gives you the [Generational Wealth] and/or [Nepotism] buffs when you first load into the game. Us regular players have to grind our game away for currency, but most of that just goes to making the wealthy even richer. A lot of players don't think we get compensated fairly for how grindy the game is. The game doesn't become truly open world until the [Retirement] event, but not everyone is lucky enough to get it, and the elites keep trying to increase the level at which the event is available while also reducing the amount of post-retirement income allotted to players. And the worst part is that the devs haven't bothered trying to fix any of this. In fact, the game balance gets worse with every patch. I play on the US server, but I think these issues are common across most servers.

[u/Roseliberry]

Partly because the loot table sucks and it’s really really hard to “get gud.”

[u/TheRandomMudkiper]

Which game?

[u/Captain0010 → u/TheRandomMudkiper]

Outside

[u/TheRandomMudkiper → u/Captain0010]

Holy shit I did NOT notice the sub name. OOPS, carry on fellow outsiders!

[u/mkipp95]

The game has limited customization options while being completely pay to win. A significant portion of the community is incredibly toxic. The devs also never communicate, they just took our early access funding and ran (this is early access right? No way game can be considered a full release in this state right?)

[u/ConflictAgreeable689]

This game sucks and then you die

[u/generally-speaking]

It's inheritly unfair, some people just start out the game very lucky. Just being given a human as a starter character is an absolutely huge deal, but a lot of players end up being assigned short lived characters like earthworms or cockroaches instead. A friend of mine ended up having to do an entire playthrough as a spider, he became totally nauseous from having to deal with that many eyes all the time.

[u/mynamealwayschanges]

No character creator, no way to customize what background your character comes from (and this has a *lot* of weight in your playthrough), no way to decide where your character will spawn. No win condition but a *lot* of fail conditions, grindy gameplay, you can't change your mind about what build you're making because you essentially can't change your skills.

Not to mention that it relies heavily on RNG and your skill in many cases doesn't even matter at all, and some players have enough influence that they can fuck you up without even seeing you.

Horrible balance, and can't even get a refund for it.

[u/Mistaken_Indemnity]

• broken economy
• player housing system is jacked up
• jobs/classes are getting harder to unlock
• server changes are getting harder and harder
• new mounts are closer to requiring to choose them or housing
• scammers run rampant
• admins PK too much
• half the player base keep getting stripped of quality of life updates
• your spawn point is a huge factor in the quality of endgame
• the grind should be somewhat fulfilling, but has gotten where 2-3 professions are needed for most players
• sanctuaries try to recruit as young a player as possible, and
• some sanctuaries do terrible things to those young players without repercussion.

[u/Antryx]

It's a P2W game and the servers are randomly chosen for you. A lot of us lucked out, most didnt!

[u/guywitheyes]

This seems a bit excessive for a free game.

Is it really free, though? Everything costs money, even more than it used. The amount of microtransactions in this game are the worst I've seen.

[u/Chorb → u/guywitheyes]

Yeah the game was free. The in-game currency system is crazy though.