Red Dead Online One Year Later (Topic)

Read Dead Online was released a year ago. The path of the game was not easy, although not as difficult as that of its predecessor. It is difficult to consider Read Dead Online in isolation from GTA Online, since both the first and the second case are an amazing experiment of Rockstar. USgamer took a look at what Red Dead Online is like a year later, we've translated the highlights.

It all started with GTA

Grand Theft Auto Online is one of the largest games in the world. Hundreds of thousands of players log into it every month. But when it launched six years ago, it was in chaos. Many believed that it would soon be closed and was given an average of six months. But Rockstar did not give up this venture, and now, six years later, online is still there. Over these six years of polishing and refinement, Rockstar has learned several important lessons and applied them to Red Dead Online, which celebrates its year since launch. And she's doing clearly better than her predecessor.

GTA Online, released in 2013, was Rockstar's first real debut in the online world. Before GTA Online, the company also released games with multiplayer modes, for example, the same Grand Theft Auto 4 and Max Payne 3, but GTA Online was different. The studio decided to support the game for a long time, adding new features and content. It exists separately from the single player, it is a separate game with its own name, website and development team.

The first months of GTA Online GTA

Online launched on October 1, 2013 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In many ways, it was the game that many fans have dreamed of. Finally, you can play Grand Theft Auto with your friends: steal cars together, fend off the police, and perform silly airplane stunts.

Servers crashed immediately. This prevented an adequate launch: some heroes were removed, male characters turned into female characters, player money simply disappeared, and servers threw players out right during missions. And after several weeks of sheer frustration and headaches, the game started to work. Gamers found ways to entertain themselves and earn money, but they did not understand why it was necessary.

The main goal in GTA Online has never changed since its launch - to make a lot of money. Players today have tons of cool and useful things to buy with their illegally acquired money, but the first year in GTA Online was different. Most players replayed the same missions like Violent Duct, slowly earning enough money to buy a cool car and a nice apartment. Solid grind. But once you finally bought yourself a car and a house, you had no intention of doing anything else.

The first updates did not help players find a reason to continue playing. The very first update was called Beach Bum. It adds several new hats, shirts, new weapons and buggies. This was not enough and only irritated players hungry for big missions or internal events.

In reality, gamers wanted the heists that were promised before launch. The trailer for GTA Online featured what looked like an early heist in the game, promising that players will be able to complete these multi-level missions with friends. But right before the launch of GTA Online, Rockstar announced that heists would not be part of the game at launch. It took years before they were finally added in March 2015.

The early months of Red Dead Online

Rockstar has learned from the past when launching Red Dead Online. First, they added the BETA tag to the top corner. This was done to temper expectations for something great. This is a way to say: “Hey guys, we are not finished yet and not everything is working fine. This is beta, ok? "

Red Dead Online's launch hasn't been smooth. There were crashes, crashes, but everything was not as bad as the first launch of GTA Online. This was partly due to the fact that Rockstar released RDO gradually, the launch took about a week, which helped the servers not to crash. So from a technical point of view, RDO was better than GTA Online.

It should also be remembered that RDO is not a copy of GTA Online. This online mode has been more developed. In many ways, this is the prototype of what we originally wanted to see in GTA Online. Not much better though.

At the start, players had several story missions, Deathmatch, several random events and a large world to explore. This content was not enough.

Many players came to RDO and played it like in GTA Online. They were trying to make large sums of money and gold quickly, but in the early months there weren't many ways to get up at RDO. When players found ways to make good money, Rockstar would update the game and cut payouts, which frustrated many players. For example, a popular way to make money at the time was to hunt animals and sell the catch in nearby stores. Rockstar didn’t like how much the players were getting for the hunt and they cut the payouts. This led players to protest using the cougar cloning glitch to make more money.

They came to the butcher's shop on a horse with the corpse of an animal, went to another shop. At this time, the horse disappeared, and the body fell to the ground. Then the players came back, called the horse, and it came, but with another corpse. The players did this several times, and then sold everything at $ 13.50 per carcass.

Lessons learned

The biggest lesson Rockstar learned from GTA Online was that they focused on creating content that was appropriate. In GTA Online, players had a huge variety of content, but it didn't make sense. It seemed that he did not fit the criminal lifestyle. Sure, you can do car theft, but players can also compete in triathlon, golf, invite friends to watch TV, or go cycling in the mountains. Some of these things were fun, but the players didn't come for them.

It took the studio two years to understand the true essence of GTA Online. It all started with the March 2015 Heists update, which finally gave players the ability to engage in heists. The studio immediately understood what RDO should be - a place where players want to play the inhabitants of the wild west.

Roles are the biggest and most exciting update for Red Dead Online. They were added this September. This is unlike anything found in GTA Online. There are currently three roles in the game: bounty hunter, collector, and merchant. They all have their own challenges, rewards, levels and missions. They give players more goals and more ways to make their character unique. Become a vicious bounty hunter, for example, and you can unlock new animations or items that your friends will envy.

What GTA Online and Red Dead Online Are Now

GTA Online and RDO are better games today than they were at launch. Fortunately, Red Dead Online has become the best game in a much shorter time than GTA Online. Rockstar has learned many important lessons: not overloading players with content, not promising what you can't add, injecting essence into the game, building a world where players can get lost and give them a reason to play for more than just making money.

Red Dead Online isn't perfect and still has troll and PvP issues, but the overall experience is good. Players play it because they sincerely want it.

GTA Online is also better today than two years ago. The casino upgrade was controversial because it added gambling to the game and some countries even blocked upgrade features due to gambling laws. But the story missions it added and the casino itself have become popular add-ons.

It may have taken Rockstar years and learning from their mistakes, but they finally figured out how to make online games. How quickly Red Dead Online is evolving makes one dream of Grand Theft Auto 6. Of course, we don't know for sure if the next project will have an online mode, but it's safe to assume that it will. And if the updates and enhancements to RDO and GTA Online are good fields to learn, perhaps GTA 6 could have one of the best open world online games ever made.

The Topic of Article: Red Dead Online One Year Later.
Author: Jake Pinkman