cascadianhobo

I've been experiencing regular, persistent disconnects since pretty much the first week of logging into Online. I've even opened a support ticket (and, amazingly, got a response which is now up to multiple replies, so some credit to R* for responsiveness from me at least). The most common disconnect screen I get references error 0x20010006, though I have a growing collection of screenshots referencing other error codes. I have done a number of things that seemed to have helped somewhat, though have not resolved the problem. On the XBox, I had already configured it with a hard wire conenction to my network and a manual, static IP address on my home network and manual DNS set to Google's public servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4). I later followed the advice on the R* support page to forward a bunch of ports (page for XBox, page for PS4). I also enabled UPnP and eventually disabled the UPnP security features as well. My router and general network security now compromised anyway, I followed advice I've seen elsewhere online to put the console IP in DMZ mode which in essence puts it outside of any firewall -- the way my router works, any inbound request gets forwarded to the console, bypassing the router entirely. I can say that overall the problem seems to have alleviated somewhat -- nothing I mention above made it worse, certainly. I've started taking screenshots and even capturing video of as many of the errors as I can if only to track their frequency as I continue to make changes. I've also run the console over a 4G wireless connection via a phone with mobile hotspot, which worked well enough for a few hours though there was a noticeable increase in laggy behavior. I don't recall remembering any of the disconnects I usually experience, but that was over just a few hours during an outage of my usual ISP, Comcast/Xfinity. But I've been meaning to try and run it over wireless for an extended session in order to log any disconnects and compare relative frequency, especially since many of the reports of regular disconnects I've read online also seem to be from Xfinity customers. The most common disconnect occurs when transition between "instances," which is a phrase used during my World of Warcraft days to refer to server instances of code running to enable a subgroup of users to connect for things like dungeon raids -- I believe "lobby" is the equivalent RDR2 term. So when leaving the race series lobby to return to free roam, or returning to my free roam session from an event like the fishing competitions, that's when I'll most likely get disconnected. I get a few seconds heads up when I try to open the player menu (tap left on the D-Pad) and nothing comes up. What's rarer, but still happens, is a disconnect out of the blue such as in the middle of a race, story mission or randomly during an otherwise continuous free roam session. I've also had some crashes that seemed to originate client-side where the image will freeze and the audio buzz and the only way out is a complete console shutdown. Anyway, mostly sharing in the hopes of comparing notes. If anybody has any questions about router settings, I can do my best to answer.

Great. I usually take a break in the early evening (PST) but will add and say hello. Thanks! ETA: D'oh, just noticed you are PS4. Sorry I wasn't more clear that I'm on XBox - I online added it to my profile last night and was trying to be old-timey subtle about it in the original post. My bad. That there is not necessarily real technical constraints (the real constraints are mostly business-related, IMHO) keeping the communities separate is frustrating. A relatively new frustration, as I'm relatively new to console multiplayer.

Thanks, I will!

I'm mostly mystified as to how the mechanics of horse collisions play out, generally. I feel like I would crash less often if I understood which angles of attack were more dangerous than others. Not to cause collisions, mind you, but to avoid them. There is a barrel on the Fort Wallace course that I'm nearly convinced is a trick barrel, because every time I go for it I faceplant, though no other obstacles are readily apparent. Every time I feel like I'm starting to get an intuitive sense of crash mechanics, something happens that throws my model out the window. Methinks server lag also occasionally plays a role. And if there's catch up or rubberbanding, which many report there is and which I guess it's happening but it's done subtly? And, in the case of shotguns to the back, not so subtly, but in an indirect way if you catch my drift. . I've never tested trying to slam onto the brakes to throw a horse behind you, partly because it's pretty unsporting, but also because I have no sense of how brute or delicate the collision mechanics are or what degree of randomness is injected as a substitute for nuanced physics and therefore what chances I'd have of surviving, much less finding the holy grail: a counter to the aforementioned shotgun to the back. @dredd1961 It's helpful in that it seems subjective to everyone else, too! I enjoy that the horses all have distinctive personalities and playstyles, I really do. For instance, I find my Arabian way less jittery than my Turkoman, for which I'm having a bit of buyer's remorse and kind of wish I'd joined the Cult of the Fox Trotter. My Nokota got pushed into the rail ahead of the last turn in Saint Denis Plantations today in what to all appearances was a deliberate maneuver - and an effective one, with Molly going down and taking any hopes of a spot on the podium with her. So I'm going to be taking my Ardennes in to the next Race event and see if I can get the rubberbanding and collision modelling to work for me instead of against me. I'm currently bringing Karen, my Ardennes, to races just for a change of pace and testing purposes. Too early to draw any conclusions, but fun. One difference is playing from behind seems to mean more shooting to catch up. And the shooting is not my favorite part (though I'm becoming a better shot for having had to practice). There's been maybe one collision where it seemed it might have made a difference, but another where I thought it might and didn't. *shrugs*

By "Hidden" I don't necessarily mean "poorly explained" like the weapon familiarity mechanic, since the information is there if you know where to look for it. The best example I can think of is horse courage - beyond what you might be able to infer from the copy in the catalog descriptions and derive subjectively and qualitatively from playtesting, there is no discreet, visible quantitative metric. For instance, I read somewhere that the Ardennes is the most steadfast/courageous in the sense that it will tolerate the most fear before bucking you, and that seems to have be borne out in my experience (especially compared to my Turkoman, from which I can kind of understand how such a healthy breed went extinct since it will turn tail and run at the drop of a feather). But unlike health, stamina, speed, acceleration and agility there's no explicit rating or ranking that's visible to players in- or out-of-game. I bring up the question for two reasons: One, as a racing enthusiast, I have a blue roan Nokota ("Molly") and Nacogdoches saddle with Bell stirrups, which in theory should equal in speed the best Thoroughbreds and Fox Trotters. But I regularly find her struggling to match pace with those two horses in particular. Could it be character weight, maybe? Or some kind of rubberbanding? Because it's not just that other horses catch up to me, but actually pass me in a side-to-side contest. On a similar note, the same horse really struggles on the Spider Gorge course. Whereas my black Arabian ("Lenny") seems to struggle a bit at first by then finds his stride and barring a duel with a Fox Trotter holds its own in top speed over the rest of the course. Maybe the Nokota, a relatively small breed, struggles in the deep snow? And I'm also curious if horse size plays a role in the outcome of collisions. Would my Ardennes ("Karen") hold up better in a Saint Denis Streets brawl where a lower probability of eating cobbles with your face might more than make up for the lost speed?

Cascadian Hobo is a middle-aged man with too much time on his hands who enjoys Saint Denis by moonlight, long walks on the Blackwater beaches and that gurgling sound when the arrow hits home on a headshot followed by the whoosh of equine flatulence that wafts over the newly minted corpse as he and his horse take the lead in a Target Race. Cascadian left a respectable Pacific Northwest home at a respectable age to seek fame in The East. It proved too fickle a food, and his coincidental lack of enthusiasm towards the pursuit of fortune eventually left him jaded, forlorn and headed west in a boxcar. Not without his resources, his wide range of interests has given him significant skills, experience and insight which he he is maybe too willing to share with fellow travelers. Address mail to Cascadian Hobo c/o XBox general delivery or possibly watch for hobosign appearing from u/cascadianhobo at r/reddeadonline. (Seriously, looking for other adults to chat with, dork out over game mechanics, strategy, theorycrafting, min-maxing and otherwise work together in order to save ourselves some grief and remain competitive in PvP despite our advancing years and failing faculties.)