Rockstar Outlines How It Plans To Fix Some Of Red Dead Online’s Problems

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.