Harlock1796

Parley, maybe?

This sounds familiar! I was pretty obsessed with Elite Dangerous for a couple of years (having been a fan of the early '80s original on the Sinclair Spectrum), but haven't booted it up since the day RDR2 dropped. Back to the OP: Like the folks above have said, be prepared to run into some idiots along the way, who will shoot you to death for no obvious reason. Don't let it get you down and don't let it put you off the game, you don't really lose anything from being murdered in this way. I don't find it happens as much as it used to, and if you do encounter it, the 'Parley' option while you are waiting to respawn is your friend - choose to Parley, and the murderer (and his Posse) can't touch you for 10 minutes. Other than that, take care when designing your character. You can change their appearance later on, but there is a price for that, and it's a high one for someone just starting out. There are loads of customisation options for the appearance, make sure you use them all, unless you don't mind looking like a sideshow freak, of course. Good luck!

Weird If you can see the cards, you should be able to see the timer, as they are in line.

What's more, nobody seems to be playing it - I've had a few tries now, and never been in a lobby with more than 2 other people.

That bit of the song is talking about the battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, and yes, the British were using Congreve rockets, which have little practical value other than terrifying horses (from direct experience). Nice rifle, by the way. I quite fancy a Zulu War era Martini Henry (both in RL and RDO), which would be entirely in keeping with with the game timeline, but essentially not much different in form or function to the Springfield, so probably superfluous.

Or do they have a cunning plan? I can't think of many games where you level up your character or "battle pass" (for want of a better generic description for what the outlaw pass is) on a straight line basis. As an obvious example, levelling up your RDO character, each level requires incrementally more xp than the previous one, notwithstanding that, after lvl 99 there is effectively no benefit at all for levelling up (treasure maps excepted). Why then, do the outlaw pass and the 3 roles level up on a straight line basis? I got to lvl 70 on the battle pass within about 1/4 of the time available, and hit collector lvl 20 without even trying. I haven't really tried with trader, but from watching my son, the first 5 levels (which is where I currently am, having not done much of it) seem to be the only grind - once you can upgrade your wagon, progress seems to be exponential. R* aren't fools, they know this. Are they drawing us in with an initial early win, before boosting the gold requirement and difficulty in recouping it? Will the next outlaw pass be incremental? Will lvl 21- 40 (assuming they exist) on the roles be harder? Don't get me wrong, I like unlocking all the stuff, but I might like it even more if it felt like there was some challenge involved. For completeness, I should acknowledge that the bounty hunting is a bit more of a grind - I've done a fair bit of that, including all but 1 of the 5* legendarys solo, and am still bumping along at lvl 11. That feels to me more like where it should be, though. So, back to my original question. Did R* just not think it through?

You're reading it right. You keep everything on your horse when you FT, now (ahh, the Beta, whatever became of ye?) I never even considered a camp fast travel post until the trader role gave me a reason to go to camp. Now I use it a lot. A LOT!

I have never been robbed on a local delivery. If you don't want to be robbed, and you're flying solo, go local. The game specifically warns you that, if you go long distance for the higher reward, you can be attacked. It seems to me that, if you don't want to be robbed, your options are pretty clear.

Add the arsonist one to the crap payout list, too.

I'm assuming it's advertising revenue - the RDO videos are interspersed with commercial ones. I'd rather it wasn't there, but as The Saint says, it's probably a financial necessity, and a relatively small price to pay for this forum being available to us free.

I'm no expert, but it was my understanding that after the Samurai were effectively crushed by the Imperial army, even wearing samurai clothes was dangerous. You wouldn't just be able to walk up to a ship in Nagasaki docks and board it dressed as a samurai. The authorities wanted to stamp out the whole way of life - hairstyle, clothing, training, the lot, to eliminate the chance of any resurgence of the way of life as a threat to Imperial power. Getting to late 19th century America still dressed as a samurai is a pretty unlikely prospect. More likely, though, than still dressing as an 18th century pirate. Trying to get hold of a tricorn hat with a feather in it in 1898 - good luck with that.

The other option is to hogtie them both, put one on your horse, 'borrow' a horse from the bounty camp, put the other bounty on that one, and ride it back to the jail, with your horse following along behind. In theory, you could then drag a third one in at the same time.

I'm suprised that Madam Nazar doesn't sell you a special collector's stick, or a broom handle or something, for $450, to go with the $350 shovel, specially designed for poking things out of trees.

This is the truth. I over-generalized.

Yes. I view bounty hunting as my hobby, whereas trader and collector pay the bills. The legendary bounties pay out pretty well though, even at 1 and 2 *

That's a pretty good idea!

Same problem here- I had already blown my long streak before the update, but had started to rebuild, and it seems I was re-set on Tuesday/Wednesday. Having re-started my streak last week, and not missed a day, Wednesday was back to day 1 (presumably as a result of the small Tuesday update?)

Did one last night, the quality of the enemies did seem better. I was hunkered down in a bit of cover, working out how to dislodge the bounty from a tall wooden tower thing without killing her when BOOM! I was headshot by a bandit with a rolling block rifle (NWO didn't save me that time). I, too got the .32 gold and $65, but I don't think my XP haul was quite as good as @Antonia's.

I am very excited about this.

This. If I'm out walking my dog, and the shadow of a bird goes across me, I'm immediately looking up, expecting to shoot it and harvest some feathers. 😮

I got excited about the 20% off horses until I saw the rank limit. I'd have finally coughed up for the grey MFT if I was getting money off!

What I have noticed recently (the last 2 weeks or so) is a failure to connect to lobbies at all. My usual method is 'quick join' through the left d-pad button menu. That sometimes now leaves me hanging in the revolving cylinder/changing photos cycle for a long time, which it never used to do, and then will sometimes spit me out into the start of a game, only to freeze and dump me back in free roam. Before this phenomenon I have never had any connection/loading/disconnect issues, I've been dumped out of the game about 3 times in total in about 300 hours of play time. Given that there are about 23 million copies of RDR2 out there, I think its unlikely, even if there has been a drop off in players, that they can't scrape together a lobby of 8-10 people in any given server area. I suspect it has more to do with dodgy connections and matchmaking than absolute lack of players.

It's time of day dependant, for me. Any time 7pm - 2am UK time lobbies always have plenty of people in. 8am UK time, not so much. I haven't noticed any particular change in this recently, its always been pretty much the same.

Blue dot and defensive mode are not the same, and neither are red dot and offensive mode. I'm always in offensive mode, and almost always blue dot (I 'never' (more or less) shoot first). I don't think you can be red dot and defensive, but aside from that, dot colour is not a signifier of offensive/defensive but rather of hostility level. But yeah, even in defensive mode, if you get some pesky outlaw with a rolling block or similar rifle, and you happen to be standing still (fishing, for example) he's going to be able to pick you off at long range.

I was thinking The Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz!