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Hot take of the day: Red Dead Online is actually really good

Bartski

Gold Member
TL: DR - the 5 years in, "post-mortem" Red Dead Online is a mighty fine game, partner.

Short preface - Being a fan of RDR2, I played RDO just for a few hours at launch and I absolutely hated it. As if everyone thought it's a great idea to turn it into a griefing contest - every encounter with another player was an instant firefight, people camping and sniping everywhere, squads all about roaming around killing everyone in sight - just impossible to explore unless you're into playing RDR as an open world shooter and a bad one at that.

Long story short, how I got back eventually, reinstalled RDR2, and went fishing. Stil blown away by the game and decided to give RD:O another shot.

Sure, it's been years and many tweaks and iterations along the way, but as a NEW player starting from scratch in 2023 - the game is pretty amazing, and I can't stop playing it.

There goes the first popular point of concern: The game is dead. No it isn't.
Almost no downtime for matchmaking on missions and packed world events. Constantly meeting players in the world.

Best of all - everyone seems to just wave and go minding their own fucking business! I had been grifed a handful of times in couple of days but overall my experience interacting with people has been totally positive. Without even resorting to the new anti-grift defense mode.

Another common point of concern - no new content. For a new player, there is an overwhelming amount of content.

While Rockstar might be done with major future updates - too bad as the story ends in a way they were certainly planning to - available missions are almost RDR2 campaign quality. So many types of missions: team story missions, solo telegram missions, blood money missions, stranger missions, random encounters and so on. Let alone all the PvP group world events some which are pretty cool.

And then there are the roles.

I've unlocked 3 so far, but defintely plan to work my way up to the remaining 2. Collector kind of sucks but it's great for XP cheating with the online map, while Trader and Moonshiner feel a bit like playing the Sims, in a good way. Just perfect to have a posse team up and make tons of money together. Especially the latter is just great, comes with it's own story set of missions and it's such a damn shame we won't be seeing more of those.

On that note - economy is painful, but way less than you hear it does on reddit and other places. Shop items are super expensive but at my level, if I wanna buy something I can easily make 200+ $ an hour playing solo. While you can earn gold in game, just excruciatingly slow which is how the game incentivizes buying it for real money. Still there. Slimy. I fully understand how that can riun it for many people but thst's a dead horse I don't plan to beat.

I'm sure I'll keep going and if anyone here wants to jump back, hit me up so I can help ease you into my relaxed, peer pressure free posse.
 
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Bloobs

Al Pachinko, Konami President
tumbleweed GIF
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
For real, though, I haven't given this a chance in the past and I honestly thought that this was completely abandoned by Rockstar years ago. So it's nice to see that they at least tried at some point and there's something to do in that game. From your description it sounds like a more chill and scaled back experience than whatever the hell is going on with GTA Online, which I'm totally fine with. GTA looks like a fucking zoomer nightmare these days and I remember enjoying it way more when it still resembled a GTA game.
 
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Bartski

Gold Member
For real, though, I haven't given this a chance in the past and I honestly thought that this was completely abandoned by Rockstar years ago. So it's nice to see that they at least tried at some point and there's something to do in that game. From your description it sounds like a more chill and scaled back experience than whatever the hell is going on with GTA Online, which I'm totally fine with. GTA looks like a fucking zoomer nightmare these days and I remember enjoying it way more when it still resembled a GTA game.
I never played GTA online but from what I saw that sounds about right. Too bad it didn’t work out at the scale it needed as the managed to fix most of what made it so bad at launch
 

Winter John

Member
RDR2 these days is a horrible, endless grind for new players compared to how it used to be. I know this cos I been playing it since day 1. My main has a stupid amount of gold/cash that I actually can't spend. I've literally maxxed out and bought everything in the shop. I started a new character a few months back just to see what it was like. Jesus, it was a miserable experience. Rockstar really went out of their way to fuck over anyone starting these days. I feel sorry for them because they have no idea how pointless their grind is. Once they do I wouldn't be surprised if they never bought another Rockstar game again.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
RDR2 these days is a horrible, endless grind for new players compared to how it used to be. I know this cos I been playing it since day 1. My main has a stupid amount of gold/cash that I actually can't spend. I've literally maxxed out and bought everything in the shop. I started a new character a few months back just to see what it was like. Jesus, it was a miserable experience. Rockstar really went out of their way to fuck over anyone starting these days. I feel sorry for them because they have no idea how pointless their grind is. Once they do I wouldn't be surprised if they never bought another Rockstar game again.

My only quest, can you rob a bank or rob a train with a posse of friends?

If not, its failed.
 

Kerotan

Member
Rdr2 online needed a next Gen version to have any hope of running properly but it didn't. Losing hope for it now.
 

Rossco EZ

Member
don’t own this on pc so thought i’d take a look and steam reviews say that there is a lot of hackers in online
 

Bartski

Gold Member
don’t own this on pc so thought i’d take a look and steam reviews say that there is a lot of hackers in online
I've had one pvp session that got closed with a message of "violating user agreement" or something. Wasn't me. I guess save file editing is still a thing
 

SSfox

Member
I've 2000h on it, level 675, but didn't play it since 3 years

Yeah it's amazing. Specially before it got abondoned by trashstar.

Here's a pic of my character:

J9NwKQX.jpg
 
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Bartski

Gold Member
Last few times I tried it was endless harassment from other players, screw RDR2.
that's the thing, to me it feels like it's pretty much gone for the most part. I think it's a combination of both mechanics that discourage it and just giving players more stuff to do that isn't about shooting each other
 

Kilau

Member
that's the thing, to me it feels like it's pretty much gone for the most part. I think it's a combination of both mechanics that discourage it and just giving players more stuff to do that isn't about shooting each other
They didn’t care about the discouragement mechanics and I didn’t care to keep them entertained.
 

wvnative

Member
not a hot take imo. It's my favorite online live service game of all time, and two of my closest friends felt the same way. it's abandonment actually brought tears to my eye. it's very similar to GTA online but every aspect was so vastly improved. Rockstar just never gave it a fair shot. they had a wonderful foundation to build off of.
 

Spyxos

Member
TL: DR - the 5 years in, "post-mortem" Red Dead Online is a mighty fine game, partner.

Short preface - Being a fan of RDR2, I played RDO just for a few hours at launch and I absolutely hated it. As if everyone thought it's a great idea to turn it into a griefing contest - every encounter with another player was an instant firefight, people camping and sniping everywhere, squads all about roaming around killing everyone in sight - just impossible to explore unless you're into playing RDR as an open world shooter and a bad one at that.

Long story short, how I got back eventually, reinstalled RDR2, and went fishing. Stil blown away by the game and decided to give RD:O another shot.

Sure, it's been years and many tweaks and iterations along the way, but as a NEW player starting from scratch in 2023 - the game is pretty amazing, and I can't stop playing it.

There goes the first popular point of concern: The game is dead. No it isn't.
Almost no downtime for matchmaking on missions and packed world events. Constantly meeting players in the world.

Best of all - everyone seems to just wave and go minding their own fucking business! I had been grifed a handful of times in couple of days but overall my experience interacting with people has been totally positive. Without even resorting to the new anti-grift defense mode.

Another common point of concern - no new content. For a new player, there is an overwhelming amount of content.

While Rockstar might be done with major future updates - too bad as the story ends in a way they were certainly planning to - available missions are almost RDR2 campaign quality. So many types of missions: team story missions, solo telegram missions, blood money missions, stranger missions, random encounters and so on. Let alone all the PvP group world events some which are pretty cool.

And then there are the roles.

I've unlocked 3 so far, but defintely plan to work my way up to the remaining 2. Collector kind of sucks but it's great for XP cheating with the online map, while Trader and Moonshiner feel a bit like playing the Sims, in a good way. Just perfect to have a posse team up and make tons of money together. Especially the latter is just great, comes with it's own story set of missions and it's such a damn shame we won't be seeing more of those.

On that note - economy is painful, but way less than you hear it does on reddit and other places. Shop items are super expensive but at my level, if I wanna buy something I can easily make 200+ $ an hour playing solo. While you can earn gold in game, just excruciatingly slow which is how the game incentivizes buying it for real money. Still there. Slimy. I fully understand how that can riun it for many people but thst's a dead horse I don't plan to beat.

I'm sure I'll keep going and if anyone here wants to jump back, hit me up so I can help ease you into my relaxed, peer pressure free posse.
I haven't played RDO for over 1 year now. As far as I have seen, there was no new content in that time. Ps4 lvl 90, Pc lvl 150-170. On the Pc the game has been unplayable, because on almost every server cheaters were there and going absolutly crazy.

The worst was in Pvp matches. Since the cheaters with the immortality have completely ruined the matches and at some point almost no one played pvp. This game is dead...



 
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Winter John

Member
My only quest, can you rob a bank or rob a train with a posse of friends?

If not, its failed.
Nope. No robberies. The game is fun when you're at the op's level - doing the missions, chasing after that gear, riding around the map with some pals, but once you got a decent character the "overwhelming" pve content becomes totally pointless. I can tell the op is absolutely 100% in the honeymoon phase because he's out there making wild as shit claims about the pve missions being on the same level as the story. That is straight up nonsense. The main story is a rewarding, exciting, well crafted experience. The online is repetitive and shallow as fuck. It is designed for one thing and one thing only - to get players to spend money. Atr least in the old days you could go through the game, earn a fair amount of gold, get everything you wanted, have some fun, the store updated pretty regularly, and Rockstar were actually adding content even if it wasn't great. Now? Good luck with that.
 

Jakk

Member
I have been playing it since launch and I enjoyed it. There's just nothing else for me to do. I wish they still supported it properly.
 

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
It was overwrought with money requirements for basic job and activities. When I first tried it I found it off putting. I liked that it had some story, but I never got far. RDR2 was about the single player experience.
 

wvnative

Member
My only quest, can you rob a bank or rob a train with a posse of friends?

If not, its failed.
not like GTA online heists but there's two missions where you can do these things. bank robbery is the final dishonorable story mission, train robbery is a blood money mission which was like a proto heist.
 
don’t own this on pc so thought i’d take a look and steam reviews say that there is a lot of hackers in online
Yep I was gonna say, console, you're fine. I booted up on PC and immediately met a hacker that ended being a cute sounding girl lmao. She spawned chests of like 50 gold each. I could not thank her enough hahaha. She also spawned a giant owl and we flew out of the map. The whole thing was wild. But all in all I'd rather just play moonshiner and trader.
 
First of all, like I said in another comment. If you play this on PC in anything other than a roleplay server with active admins you're going to be fucked by hackers.

Now if you can get over the 30fps on console you're good to go.

The best parts about RDO currently are the character customization, the clothing options and surprisingly the economy.

You can create characters that nearly match the NPC quality from story mode. Here is mine below.

rPhuCED.jpg


The clothing is also A LOT better than the main campaign and it pisses me off they never brought any of the additional clothing items to single player.

The economy, while being somewhat of a grind is not too bad after leveling up the trader and moonshine roles.

You can cook a batch of moonshine while going to drop off a load of trader supplies and by the time you're done the delivery your moonshine batch will be ready for drop off.

You can easily make $200 - $300 if I remember correctly (it's been awhile) and if you log in every day and play for at least 30 minutes or so you will get a gold bonus multiplier so any gold you earn will be multiplied x 0.25 and so on until you reach the max limit of logging in for a month straight I think. I forget what the multiplier tops out at though but after a month it resets.

I think the biggest difference between myself and a lot of other players is that I play this game to be immersed in 1899. My main goal is to dress my character as close to authentically as possible, hangout in town, go to the saloon and go on adventures into the wilderness that mainly have to do with camping, hunting and fishing. That's what I do in single player and that's where I always end up in RDO.

I don't play this game for the shooting other than wanting to see some ragdoll animations or building a sick colt peace maker with custom engravings.

The only real difference is that RDO feels like I'm going camping and you can bring friends if you have some, where as in the campaign it's Artur who is camping.

For example, the last time I played my main goal was to unlock the trapdoor Springfield and become a Buffalo hunter. After I did that I saved enough money to dress like a Lighthouse Wicki and hung out around Vam Horn for a while.

Making your own in game goals is usually a lot more fun than what Rockstar can come up with.

Edit: And I forgot to mention that in regards to the economy, the money that you make matches the prices of the items your buying a lot better than the story mode. In single player you an make so much money (hundreds of dollars) and things are only a dollar or so. You can essentially become rich in under an hour. The RDO economy feels much more authentic to 1899's real economy even though the RDO prices are much high than single player. Everything is just balanced more price wise.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Hey now, I used to do the solo lobby poker table trick, or that same trick with a buddy or two, and the online world still felt more alive than most games.

This is the only reason I want 60fps on the consoles, so I can return to RDO and immerse myself in the laid back non-hacking world. Then again, I might be glad there is no 60fps patch, since the online world sucked up most of my gaming time where other games started collecting dust.

Catch 22. A blessing and a curse at the same time.
 
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Shut0wen

Banned
Honestly GTA5 and red dead 2 online is probably some of the worst online games ive ever played, crazy since red dead and gta4 online was actually decent
 

The Stig

Member
Honestly GTA5 and red dead 2 online is probably some of the worst online games ive ever played, crazy since red dead and gta4 online was actually decent
eh, both games can be fun with friends. especially GTA. doing heists with a group of friends is pretty damn fun
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
eh, both games can be fun with friends. especially GTA. doing heists with a group of friends is pretty damn fun
Agreed, and I take RDR2's online living world over the first game any day. But to each their own.

Compare it to gta4 and 5 is bland af
I can't stand GTAV online. No matter how many times my buddy tried getting me into it. Especially with a server full of constant rocket launching ADHD tards outside the casino, etc..

Which is why we would do the solo lobby MTU trick, but the world felt less "alive" or "immersive" than RDR2.

I prefer the more laid back, getting lost in the beautiful world of RDR2.
 
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lefty1117

Gold Member
I liked it a lot. Seems like a lot of wasted potential, they could have had ranch ownership and stuff like that - farming and whatnot. I guess because of the time period they couldn't keep creating new cars and weapons and spaceships to blow your money on and ultimately they felt it was a dead-end for their revenue possibilities. It had a great atmosphere. Oh well :(
 
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