Red Dead Online didn’t have a great launch. The multiplayer mode of Red Dead Redemption 2 was made available to players last year in late November via a staggered release window. Once players had access to RDO, they found overpriced guns, a broken economy, and a lack of content. Some player also encountered griefers and trolls every time they jumped online.
Soon after launch, the community began asking for changes to be made. Rockstar quickly improved the economy, lowering prices and raising payouts. But other issues like griefing still exist. Now Rockstar is sharing its plans to fix RDO’s biggest problems.
Improving Anti-Griefing Features
In a Newswire post, Rockstar explains that it has plans to lessen how many trolls are running around the online Old West. Players on Reddit, Twitter, and other sites have been sharing stories of random players using the lasso to tie them up and drag them around.
Other players have been killed over and over again while just trying to fish.
Currently, Red Dead Online has a parlay system that is supposed to help with abusive or aggressive players. If a player kills you a few times in a short amount of time, you can parlay with them.
This makes it impossible for that troll to hurt you or for you to attack the troll. But the parlay system can be avoided and doesn’t always activate. Rockstar is going to make it easier to activate parlay and will make it easier to start feuds with rivals, allowing for revenge in a more structured competition.
Changing How Players’ Blips Work
Currently, player blips in RDO are always on the map. Even if a player is halfway across the world fishing or hunting, their blip is visible. This has made it easy for trolls to track down players and kill them repeatedly. Fans have been wanting this changed since the first days of RDO’s launch and Rockstar has revealed their plans to fix the blips.
A future update will add proximity-based blips. These blips will only show up on the map when you get close to a player. Rockstar hopes this will make it harder for trolls and griefers to track players across long distances. Rockstar also has future plans to make player blips display how dangerous a person might be.
If an RDO player has killed a bunch of folks and committed crimes, their blip will be darker in colour and easier to spot from a distance. This will hopefully make it easier to avoid aggressive players. GTA Online uses a similar player blip system, with deadlier players having blips that are a bright red.
A New Bounty Hunter System
In Red Dead Online players can commit crimes and eventually get chased down by the local law. Outside of towns, the law is mostly absent. This means players who want to kill or grief others have little punishment waiting for them. This will change in a future update. In the blog post, Rockstar explains that it will be adding a bounty system. If players commit crimes, they will get a bounty on their head and will have to pay it off.
If they don’t pay, bounty hunters will track them down and kill them. It wasn’t made clear in the blog post if these bounty hunters will be players or computer-controlled characters or both, but this bounty system will hopefully make players think twice before randomly shooting someone.
More Content, Like New Missions and Events
Red Dead Online only has a handful of co-op story missions, some repetitive side missions, and a few PVP modes like racing or deathmatch. There isn’t a lot of reason for players to keep coming back every day, because it hasn’t changed much nor added anything new for players to see. Rockstar is planning on giving more content to players.
Rockstar confirmed that new story missions will be added in a future update. The current storyline in RDO just abruptly stops after a few missions. These future missions will add new characters and continue your character’s story. Rockstar also announced that daily challenges are coming to Red Dead Online, along with new events, new weapons and clothing, and new PVP modes. Today Rockstar added the first of these new PVP modes, Gun Rush.
Rockstar hinted at more new content beyond these new missions and weapons, but said it doesn’t feel ready to announce what that stuff is just yet.
Red Dead Online is currently a bit of a barren world, and I’ve found myself returning less and less to it with each passing week. These changes and additions sound great and hopefully will give myself and other players more things to do in Red Dead Online, and lessen how often players are killed by trolls.
While these updates sound nice on paper, we will have to wait and see how long it takes for these changes to happen and how well they are implemented. Red Dead Online might become a much better experience in 2019.
Comments
10 responses to “Rockstar Outlines How It Plans To Fix Some Of Red Dead Online’s Problems”
I went online the other night with a mate of mine. Same old missions, and so forth. Sometimes you might find yourself amongst a few like-minded players just wanting to keep to themselves… but that’s rare for me.
That night we got attacked by a posse intent upon shooting us off our horses, tying us up, waiting for us to escape, then doing it again – over and over – before finally putting a bullet in our heads. It felt really icky.
What the fuck are those people even getting out of that? I just want to level up enough to go fishing…
Lack of meaningful activities breeds bordom, bordom leads to harassing, harrassing leads to the griefing side.
Most of the folk I’ve talked to about RDO were expecting that bounty system right out of the gate. Glad to see it’s finally coming.
Passive mode, or PvE servers. It’s really fucking simple, I had a guy continually shot me while I was AFK fine I though didn’t care but when I jumped back on he kept doing it until I fought back by hogtying and then stabbing him repeatedly he got the shits and loged off
Yeah, this is a list of changes which might as well be paraphrased to me: “Nope. Your problems will not be solved. Fuck off, this isn’t for you.”
Single played was amazing. The atmosphere, the story, the missions were all incredible.
The online is so fucking shit, it’s basically a different game.
Yeah, aside from being able to play with friends, there’s nothing the online does better than single player. Looks worse, plays worse, the world is barren and empty, etc etc. Going back to single player is night and day.
Yeah and the addition of timed challenges are so anti what was great about the single player. Oh and no crafting WTF?
I really hope they add more to single player. The treasure hunting was the most fun, and I want more things to do after the games ends like that. The entire RDR1 map is available but has nothing in it to make me just explore the world they created.
For me, RDO feels like the base for a multiplayer game, and not much more. It’ll probably just take time to build on it — time I’m sure went into making the singleplayer game.
Y’all know RDO is still beta.. You can’t get expect new content while it’s beta. I agree more content is needed, but they need to make full release first.
Just add crew only sessions like GTAV had. It’s that easy.
someones suggestion i read somewhere was for player dots to only show when someone starts killing others. so only the trolls show on the map.