Red Dead Online will receive the updates and love from Rockstar, as it’s the money-making arm of Red Dead Redemption 2, for better or worse. Much like Grand Theft Auto 5 took a backseat once Rockstar found how much they could profit off of microtransactions by combining low mission pay-outs with astronomical prices, Red Dead Redemption 2 appears to be done with updates for the campaign. If you want new content, you have to go to Red Dead Online.

Unfortunately, much like GTAO, the online game mode is filled with griefers that have nothing better to do other than troll you until you’ll leave the server. Hence, many have been desperately looking at methods to allow them to experience the wonderful world of RDO, in a private lobby. All of the missions and enjoyment, with none of the spawn killing, getting hogtied and dragged across the map, cheaters causing you to explode when they’re nowhere near you, or other nefarious exploits that online players are still dealing with over a year after the initial release.

Play Red Dead Online between December 23rd – 25th to receive a special seasonal Gift Chest, packed to the brim with provisions and other goodies including the Krampus Double Barrel Shotgun Variant. Details: https://t.co/kfEWBZf2qR pic.twitter.com/bCZE53bjEd — Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) December 23, 2019

To be fair, it isn’t necessarily in Rockstar’s best interest to offer solo play in terms of microtransaction profit. When players are forced into a lobby with others, they can be pushed towards the microtransactions to get the equipment that they see others use. A sort of digital ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ where players will be pushed into purchasing gold bars to be able to defend themselves better, or at least not look like a crazy pan-handler.

Where players could get themselves a ‘solo public lobby’ on Grand Theft Auto Online using various NAT tricks, or PC users by suspending their network processes for ten seconds, nothing yet seems to reliably work for Red Dead Redemption 2 Online. Some report that interacting with a STRANGER on the map will bring you to a private-public lobby, at least until you’ve met all of the NPCs.

It doesn’t seem plausible that RDO has dedicated servers, as there is a surprisingly high amount of modders in the online game mode. That being said, the typical peer-to-peer connection tricks aren’t working in moving players to their own lobby.

Some argue against the idea of the ‘private-public’ servers, stating that it’s difficult for griefers to find those minding their own business due to a lack of global pings (until you’re trying to make gold bars, in which case you light up like a Christmas tree). However, animal spawns are directly linked to the number of entities in a server.

If the server is full, and player corpses litter the landscape like a re-enactment of the day after Jonestown, animal spawns plunge drastically. If you manage to get into a server by yourself, there’s a merry amount of hunting that takes place, with players not being able to walk five feet without some type of animal crossing their path.

Much like Grand Theft Auto Online, where griefers were known as ‘Shark Card salesmen’, Red Dead Online has the exact same issue. Until someone figures out a reliable way to avoid it, many are seemingly content to sit in the campaign. Have you found a way to successfully enter a ‘public-private’ server reliably?