Redstaski

Foretelling the future most of the time is simply paying attention to the present. All games available on various online services are a commercial enterprise. Sure there are the hard core geeks that are passionate about the product on their payroll but ultimately its a money thing. No dollars, no product. Human history, let alone corporate history, is littered with the remains of people/companies who fly too close to the sun, pride before the fall kinda thing. Rockstar has a track record courtesy of GTA V online of being able to turn around a buggy, glitching game to make money. The question is, do they have the money and the will to solve the problems with the Beta online? In a previous post I mentioned that less than 10% on people playing the Online Beta have reached rank 50, that was a mistake. Less than 1% of people playing the online Beta have reached level 50 and less than 10% of players have reached level 10. Some players will delete their characters numerous times and start a new profile in an attempt to stockpile cash and clothes, you don't lose them if you start over. Beta or not a beta, those figures are what is happening in the present.

Several people here have pointed out that if R* wanted to fix software problems with the Beta online version, they could/can solve it if they so choose . Fair enough, assuming the glitches are fixable. Contributors here have also pointed out that the player base is shrinking, players who migrated to the online version seemed to be fading away. Numerous factors are cited as to why this is happening, griefing seems to be the biggest complaint. These aspects, to me, are similar to most online games, glitches and griefing are endemic to all online games. The player base shrinkage is real, take a look at your trophies (PS$) and you will see some interesting stats. The one that catches my eye is the trophy for reaching rank 50, very few players achieve that, less than 10% I think. So it looks like players start the online story and then abandon it shortly afterwords. You can cite various problems as the source but there are obtainable fixes for those things. The problem to my mind is the fact that the game has a value system that is confusing unlike GTA V where you know everybody is nasty/bad/criminal RDR tries to maintain a balance. It wants to reward the whitehats at the same time as the blackhats. This creates different expectations for players and in the end it makes the most sense to be a blackhat, screw the good guys. RDR 2 has been a long time in development and the launch was delayed for several months and R* even stated that the beta online was "to get it right" so don't expect a quick fix to any of the problems. RDR 2 online is a FPS with a really, really big map, that's all it is folks.

My problems with horses and stables didn't start until after the update and after I sold/dismissed a horse. For whatever reason, I am unable to assign any of my 4 horses to any role other than that of the default free roam horse. I can call up any of my horses, any time and switch them out, they all have their own saddles and equipment. For the most part this is not a huge problem but whenever I do an online honour mission I ALWAYS get the old nag. Has this happened to anybody else, does any body have a solution? All the horses are in perfect health and have insurance. I have informed Rockstar of the problem, they said thanks for the info but the stables work fine for everybody else but they would look into it. That was a couple of weeks ago, still got the problem. Hopefully, Rockstar will fix the problem before they release the final version,..... whenever that will be.

Great comments, they all seem to reinforce my belief that games are primarily driven by consumer market forces. Unless game developers find a way to monetize their product, there is no point. With RDR2 Online, I believe those forces will determine it's continued existence. I also believe that the online version has a shelf life of about one year, this time next year only the die hard fans will be playing it online. Take Two Interactive is a holding company that owns Rockstar Games, these types of organizations viewed their subsidiaries as revenue streams. Not meeting your projected earnings? Your product gets regulated to the abandonware dust heap. Take Two has done this before with other games. So there is pressure on Rockstar to produce and the metric Take Two will probably use is Grand Theft Auto. If RDR2 doesn't live up GTA V revenue stream then bug/glitches/griefing will get short shrift. More than likely, Rockstar will declare the online problems solved and move on to the next project whether or not the users agree. Going by the hints in the game menus, it looks like to me that there will be a large update at the end of the "BETA" phase and at that point only bugs and glitches will receive attention. The share price of Take Take Interactive is under pressure, some financial analyst predict lower profits because of stagnate product lines and what some are calling the "Fortnight Effect". The paradigm has shifted, free games, i.e. Fortnight, and games for your phone are where the money seems to be heading. Take Two doesn't want to be holding an empty bag, they will probably put pressure on Rockstar to wrap things up with RDR2. RDR2 has been in the pipeline for a number of years and I am not sure why, the original release, I think, was suppose to happen in 2017. That to me is a warning sign, any company that has delays getting product to the market has internal problems. The game design of RDR2 , to me, shows little difference from the design of GTA V. The PvP mini games are straight out of GTA V, there are barbershops just like GTA V, there are clothing stores just like GTA V, there are just different shades of lipstick on the cute little pig that is RDR2. All they have done, to my mind, is put Los Santos in a time machine and gone back to the nineteenth century. Porting GTA V back several generations to create RDR 2, is, in itself, not necessarily a bad thing. Why re-invent wheel, right? The problem with it, to me, is that in GTA V Online there are no good guys or white hats, everyone is a threat whereas in RDR 2 Online there are white hats or good guys, not everyone is a threat. RDR 2 rewards both types of behavior, your character is free to follow a path of their own choosing. Rewarding dishounourable acts is a sure recipe for griefers and trolls to flourish. Once, if ever, the "Beta" test is finished there will be the thorny issue of character progress. Players who spend several months developing the online persona will not take kindly to having their account wiped to accommodate the official launch. So, far Rockstar has said they won't do this, but why would a new player, after the official launch, want to take on a horde online of advanced players armed to the teeth with money and guns? Lastly, yeah, I still play online RDR2 online and will probably do so till the bitter end.

Finally, it has come to this. Its time to come out of the closet. This is difficult to admit, but bare with me, for this will probably happen to you as well. There are lots of you in the same situation right now, you, me, we are all blessed with a curse. My blessing is I am a retired adult in good health, my curse, and hopefully yours as well, is unscheduled time. I am a retired adult who plays RDR2 Online. There I said it, it feels much better now that is out in the open. Whew. My family has known that I play the game but the neighbours and the folks at the Legion, at church have only heard rumours spread in the parking lot or the check out counter at Costco. (“Did you hear? He plays RDR2 Online and he's retired!! It's shocking and no good can come of it!”) One of the signs of addiction is the tolerance to higher levels of substance abuse that produce a lower high in return. Its an endless cycle, you need to smoke two rocks to give you the same high one rock gave you last week. It's vicious, it's hell, it's never ends. Which brings us to RDR2 “Beta” Online and current state of online gaming. My online gaming habit started in the last century, in the early nineties. I have played all the standards, Battlefield, COD, Medal of Honour, Close Combat, Day of Defeat, Counter-strike, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon all on the PC or PSN. They all have the same problem, griefers, campers, tk's who intentionally disrupt the session you are in simply because they can. No online game is without them. No online game has ever been able to eliminate such behavior. We all have horror stories of favorite games ruined and abandoned to the griefers. The online games that survive find a balance, the average player can manage their contact with griefers and still enjoy the game. Very few games manage to do that. RDR2 Online, the Beta, has not reached that balance yet and based on my past gaming experience, it probably won't. The award and bonus system in RDR2 rewards griefers. Hogtie and drag your enemy 100ft you get rewarded, shoot them in the head with a arrow you get rewarded, screw up their mission, you get rewarded, no I think RDR2 is fatally flawed because of this. So here are my predictions for RDR2 Online: The Beta phase will continue for another couple of months. There will continue to be updates and attempts to rectify the griefer's behavior. There will be free stuff from Rockstar in order to hold non-griefers brand loyalty Rockstar will NOT achieve the required revenue streams for this product that large corporations demand Rockstar will eventually call it quits and abandon the project to the trolls because they are working on RDR3 VR for the PS5. ;))

Yeah, that's a good point, I've been in the same situation. Rockstar's coloured dot solution doesn't seem to work as they want it to, seems to penalize self defense. If I shoot someone in self defense, I really don't want to deal with them any longer than I have to and the quickest things is to disconnect and simply start over.

There are issues, to say the least, with military uniforms and First Nations outfits. I don't want to get into the pro's and cons's of using such devices but I do believe there is a role for those groups. When a player gets a extremely large bounty, the NPC's that are chasing them should be a company of mounted cavalry, authentic right? Another option could be the creation of posse/regulators whose sole purpose would be to track down major criminals online , they could be attired in period appropriate uniforms. When it comes to "tribal outfits",... a random mission that pops up when you desecrate a First Nations burial site or if you over hunt the game in a particular area that would result in NPC's attired in generic First Nations clothing attacking the player.

Okay, we have all had low life's whack us online for unfathomable reasons. Most, if not all, require the aggressor ( the tryhard) to surprise the defender ( all of us) and create a situation whereby the defender is powerless to respond. Sometimes that defender's powerlessness is compounded by the fact the aggressor logs off denying the defender the satisfaction of revenge. That ain't gonna change, blue dots riding up to you will always be able to frag you, its a matter of trust. Console manufacturer's have built in autosave functions to deal with network lag, game developer's can't get around that function. You might not be able to restore your character's progress at the same point if you disconnect, but you will be able to save the basic info in order to start again. My online strategy is play with the sound on so I can hear gunfire or a fast approaching rider as well I keep my distance from everybody until I am certain they are not aggressive, oh, and I always ride with a loaded shotgun. So here is my question, if you see a player with a red dot like Rudolph's nose on the map, meaning they are a very bad person is it poetic justice if you frag them and then YOU log off? Or are you just as bad as a tryharder?

For whatever reason, when I play online I have the most success with the Rolling Block rifle, the pump action shotgun and the varmint rifle. I use a bow for stealth take downs in story mission. Frankly, I don't think you need to have anything else, those weapons can handle most situations. But as it has already been said, it depends on your playing style, my style is hunter gatherer with a side dish of boy scout. lololl

Running or galloping directly at me online and are within 10m, then boom, out go the lights. Following me? I circle around and if you are still following me I ambush you.

Simple. I want to be able to have a campsite that doesn't move around at random. I want to be able to choose the area of my campsite sapwns.

Thanks to all the posse members, I have enjoyed my time here but its time for me to move on. Till we meet again online, adios :))

Did an little research, apparently the cabin is part of a side mission in the story. The thing is I don't recall that cabin being accessible in story mode perhaps that is just because I haven't finished (80%). From what I have read, the drawings area tie in to the Episolon Cult in GTA V. Speaking of mysteries, the landscape of RDR2 is fairly organic in that it changes with the passage of time. The lumber camp fell all the trees and is abandoned, Wapiti vanishes after you start the Epilogue, gallows get erected in various towns, have people noticed similar things in online play?

Came across this in a cabin outside of Strawberry when I was playing online and I have no idea what it is all about. Is this an Easter Egg, a clue to a treasure or just some random noise in the graphic picture? Has anybody else seen this? If you want the exact location of the cabin, check out my photos on Rockstar Social Club, there is a map attached to the screen grab.

This off topic, but does anybody know what the drawings on this wall are all about? Came across a cabin outside of Strawberry and these were on the wall

Heh, Jackthestriper, did you bake that on a clay pan in the oven? When I use metal pans the bottom burns and the top doesn't melt, after I switched to clay I didn't have that problem. There is a big difference between pizzas created in Italy and those in North American (especially the US), the mozzarella cheese Americans use is an industrial strength hot melt glue disguising as food (compare the two photos above and you will see a difference in the way the cheese melts) lolol Basil, home made Mozzarella, tomato sauce made with only real tomatoes and good quality olive oil is my fav and some of the restaurants in Toronto actually cook it that way. And don't even get me going on Alfredo sauce. lolol

Apple II was my first computer, my friend made it from scratch. There were schematics available for it on various university mainframes, ARCHIE could find them. The components were all off the shelf, Apple sourced their parts from suppliers the US military used so it was easy to burn a board and solder the electronics. And yes, the clones had the same problem as the early Apples, they had no internal cooling fan for the CPU and after being on for a few hours it would shut down. There were so many varieties of PC before IBM came out with their model, it is hard to keep track. All of them were extremely expensive, the IBM PC was 10 grand (CDN) when it came out and after two or three months the hard drive would fail in the majority of the models. I have never used a Seagate hard drive since then. The first games that I played were on an IBM mainframe, I had access to the University networks so there were lots of options, Zork, Asteriods and game theory simulations were the main ones. Most of my gaming has been done on a PC, I didn't switch over to consoles until the PS3 came out, console games, especially the Nintendo didn't support multi player online and collecting bananas really isn't my thing. lolol Our family, my children have always had Nintendo and Sony consoles from the get go, they stiil swear the Nintendo 64 was the best but I always felt restricted using those systems. In my view consoles weren't a viable online multi player option until about 5 years ago. Never got into Apple games. their systems were always so expensive, IBM clones were cheap and easy to assemble but security was/is always a problem. Apple was not into networks until after the Mac came out.

Haven't had much luck with running a posse, too few players on at a particular times. Random players in the lobby are a crap shoot, you don't know if they will frag you at the end of a mission. The trolls and the griefers seem to be fewer in number but the hog tying awards almost guarantee that this will be a ongoing problem. For the most part the online play seems to follow the GTA V pattern, you are a target as soon as you leave your campsite and as long as you remember that you will be okay. So far the best areas I have found for crafting/hunting are Ambrino and Rhodes (when nobody is around), its important to be near a butcher if you concentrate on hunting. A prime, 3 star deer carcass will get you $7, playing a Stranger mission will get you $10 maybe so if you need $$$ trying hunting. The Bolingbock sniper rifle with standard bullets will take down most big game with one shot, I even use that rifle in Story Missions to pick off NPC's, one shot will usually take them out.

That sounds good, I will not name and shame, not wishing to start any flame wars this makes sense. In regards to Rockstar not matching you up with any one you have previously blocked, I am not sure if this is true I would think that would be part of the PSN service. For the most part after I block a troll, I never see them again so there must be some kind of filtering going on somewhere in the network. Even though RDR 2 is still in beta, it's a troll/griefer fest with, from what I can see, little potential for change. Until there are stronger penalities for players who decide that random unprovoked attacks on other players are the way to go, it will simply become GTA V set in 1897. The question for Rockstar is who will provide the better income stream, griefers or grinders? Games are are an industrial product designed to create profit and are subject to all the market pressures like most consumer goods, RDR 2 online will follow the money.

Before I start listing the perps, I thought it would make sense to see what other members think. What I propose is listing players to avoid in online play, you know the type, random players intent on causing as much grief to other players as possible. Not sure this will have much effect, trolls are unrepentant jerks, but it might lessen our frustration by being forewarned. The criteria for an online player to be listed here is simple, any random player who frags another player who is peacefully riding, hunting crafting or otherwise engaging in non aggressive behavior.

So far it is shaping up just like GTA V, lots of trolls, lots of griefers. The online verbal trash found on the GTA V public channels is not as bad here. Personally unless Rockstar modifies its honour system they have implemented for the online play, I won't continue playing it online. There is little consequence for an online player who randomly whacks other players peacefully hunting/traveling etc, its a griefer's paradise right now.

Because the Net is global, English words translate strangely between cultures, there can be confusion about what a particular grouping of letters means. When I set up my account I wanted two things in my handle, easy to remember and bland enough to be ambivalent. This was not an exercise in political correctness, just a choice for ease of use with maximum privacy. My handle is Redstarski, red for fire, star for direction and ski for what you do when there is a meter of snow on the ground outside where you live for 6 months of the year. I tried to use Etobicoke as my handle but the bot wouldn't let me because Etobicoke is considered a vulgar/profane word by some game servers. Seriously? Since when is Etobicoke a swear word? lolol That's what I mean about particular groupings of letters, you never know what they really mean when translated.