Today’s world update to Red Dead Online seeks to attack a wide variety of issues players have provided feedback on since launch while adding new content and dropping the “beta” from its name.
Most notably are the changes to hostility and the addition of a playing style preference. While other issues during the beta were more easily ironed out as time went on, griefing of players that wanted to just explore the world of Red Dead Online passively by players who wanted to be on the offensive has remained a core problem with Red Dead Online.
The update today seeks to address that in the following ways: First once you’re updated, you’ll be able to toggle whether or not you want to play an Offensive or Defensive playing style. You’ll be set as Offensive by default which will be similar to what players are used to, but if you decide to change to Defensive you’ll be afforded some protections that will make it easier for you to avoid combat.
You cannot be lassoed, melee attacked, nor can you be locked-onto by other players. Also you cannot receive or deliver critical hits and you won’t be pulled into PvP activities.
Defensive players that try to preform some of the mentioned offensive actions will be penalized. While Offensive players that try to go after you anyway will also incur severe penalties in the updated hostility system which is best described by Rockstar themselves via their official post of the update:
“With today’s update, players will never receive Hostility or Bounty increases for defending themselves against a player who is blipped as an enemy, or for killing high Hostility players. If a player attacks another player, they will not be marked as an enemy to everyone – but rather to the attacked player only, who will not receive a penalty for firing back.” via Rockstar.
The higher your hostility, the more visible you’ll be to other players on their radar and the further away you’ll be placed from your death point. Or in other words, if you’re a jerk the game is going to make life harder for you to continue being a jerk, even more than before.
In addition the above two other major changes include Gold payouts being increased across the board and the removal of auto-aim headshot tracking for PvP. For the latter, what the means is that you’re going to need to manually nail your own headshots rather than just flick the aim up after locking-onto an enemy player.
Aside from tweaks, this update also includes the addition of private and public Poker matches, new missions for both honorable and dishonorable players in the Jessica LeClerk saga, new Free Roam missions, dynamic events, and on-demand competitive fishing.
Finally, the post looks ahead as well. This summer “Roles” will be begin to be rolled out to Red Dead Online. The first set include: Bounty Hunter, Trader, and the Collector, each encouraging a specific play style and will offer increased XP towards specific actions to unlock attributes that presumably benefit that role.
That’s just the stuff we felt were most notable. There are a lot more changes that Rockstar details in their annoucement, more than we can reasonably include here. So make sure you pop over there if you’re interested in all of the balance changes that were made and the new content that is on the way today.
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