Why Red Dead Online Died

Grand Theft Auto online is one of the most successful Endeavors in the history of online gaming and it came out all the way back in 2013 the title absolutely printed money for Rockstar and had hundreds of thousands of concurrent players at any given time while it may have eventually evolved into something that evoked mixed emotions from longtime players it was a solid foundation for something beautiful a foundation that could single-handedly create the biggest best and most impressive online game ever made Red Dead online a true open world Western RPG where you could role play as a bandit Outlaw sheriff cowboy Trader and anything else that your wandering Western mind could dream of Red Dead online had the potential to leave the biggest Legacy in gaming history one that could last for decades to come but well that didn't happen and Red Dead online failed to reach its fullest potential on nearly every single level the game is pretty much abandoned now with no major updates planned and immense disappointment from longtime fans of the game and IP you could say that Red Dead online has failed and the story of this failure begins with the launch of a single player Masterpiece Red Dead Redemption 2 was universally praised and was considered a strong Contender for game of the year it was beloved for its high level of detail breathtaking environment and realistic and immersive Western setting Red Dead Redemption 2 had the best atmosphere and most Lively world in the history of gaming and it was an ideal playground for players to enjoy roleplaying with friends it was the perfect game for a multiplayer expansion and expectations were extremely high but fans would soon be brought back to earth when they saw the actual product on November 27th 2018 the Red Dead Online Beta opened after months of hype and excitement players were disappointed the game was empty and while the beta was released with a humble amount of Cooperative missions a variety of free roaming side quest and solid support for PVP and competitive play it felt like it was lacking in depth there were only a handful of quest types stranger missions which are quests given to you by NPC across the map free roam missions which are short Tas found by exploring and story missions these shallow quests were the only real way to make money in the game so people got bored pretty quickly at its best Red Dead online brought a thrilling world where players competed for bounties and defended their home turf at its worst the game felt like a grindier and less interesting version of its single player the grindin in particular was something that players complained about from day one progressing in the game was slow and painful it also made the lack of content even more apparent as you were forced to continuously repeat the same few tasks to earn gold bars the games currency but even with these surface level complaints fans were still optimistic about Red Dead online and GTA online also had similar criticisms launched at it in the past and well look how far it had come when it was released it was panned for being undercooked and pointless but through a healthy amount of updates Rockstar had transformed the game into something awesome as long as they gave Red Dead online the same treatment everything would be okay Rockstar celebrated the end of the beta with a massive update that brought five new missions and this reaffirmed people's hope if Rockstar figured out how to combine elements from the award-winning story found in single player with engaging and responsive multiplayer elements like what they had just added in this update Rockstar could have had a truly unique experience in their hands and barely 4 months later they released another massive update Frontier Pursuits Pursuits weren't perfect but it was a big step in the right direction it gave players something to do with various specialized roles like Bounty Hunters and Traders each with their own gameplay these roles not only brought more content to Red Dead online but also encouraged players to get more invested in the world interest in the game was beginning to spike and it was easy to see why why it seemed to finally be building its own unique identity but despite the positive Buzz there were still issues to start Red Dead online's pacing was terrible actually getting the gold bars to access new content was borderline painful everything was still a dull grind the free row missions pay you gold based on the amount of time that you spend on them so they literally require you to waste time to make money completing the missions in 3 minutes or less will yield you zero gold while taking a full half hour net you eight basically you were incentivized to take as long as possible to complete the missions in order to make the goal to buy the items that you wanted I don't know who thought that this was a good idea but the system incentivized you to sit around be bored and take longer than necessary to make money to give you a better idea of what this looks like let's take a look at a common Quest that requires you to kill an animal that's terrorizing some locals if you kill the animal in a 20 to 30 minute window you'll earn about 4 Gold you could kill it in 10 minutes but then you'll earn even less a fairly cheap horse will cost you about six gold so you would have to do this 30-minute mission for over 4 hours just to be able to barely afford a horse and not to mention this Mission isn't even fun because you have to take double the amount of time to do it because if you do it too quickly you'll earn even less money as you could see the economy and the structure of these missions made no sense and honestly it made the game boring and uninteresting and it seemed like a ploy to annoy players and get them to spend money on microtransactions as we all know GTA online is known for its aggressive microtransactions things are so notoriously expensive that it almost makes sense to buy a shark card and get your cool weapons houses cars and companies the easy way but there were tons of things that you could spend your in-game money on and it caused it to feel exciting to work towards these goals yes it was a grind and sometimes it was annoying when you had to do the same Mission over and over to unlock a new car but the payoff was worth it walking into that new house for the first time felt like you were actually working for something this made it to where you could still enjoy the process of earning things without buying Shark cards sure you can buy the Shark cards and make it easier but you didn't have to because the process was still pretty fun especially in the early days Rockstar tried to take the same approach with Red Dead online but they missed a key point that allowed it to work in the past instead of overloading players with content they starve of it there wasn't a lot to do in the game and everything that you did do was extremely tedious yielded little to no money and was not easily repeatable it seemed like they wanted to incentivize those microtransactions that they used in GTA by removing all interest whatsoever for a player to unlock things the normal way the push towards microtransactions was too heavy and the lack of enjoyable things to do made it feel like a requirement but the bad part was that even if you did have the money there was nothing to spend it on there were no properties for sale s that you could buy and customize no saloons that you could invest money into and run no customizable wagons that you could travel around the map with and nothing with any substance only a random array of Cosmetics trinkets horses and weapons it was very underwhelming even after multiple large updates Red Dead online was still a shallow experience with major issues if Rockstar wanted to keep the game's momentum they had to do one thing to fix all of the problems add content more content would give the game depth help the endgame economy and keep it from feeling so empty as long as Rockstar did the bare minimum red Deb online would be in a good place and then Rockstar decided to abandon the game during 2020 they went radio silent they released nothing in March April or May three entire months of a critical period in Red Dead online's life the problem wasn't just that they didn't release anything but they also didn't announce anything or communicate at all with fans players went from confidence in the game's future to having no idea what Rockstar was doing and to make matters worse GTA online fans weren't getting the same cold shoulder they were getting their regularly scheduled updates and announcements and it's also important to note that this content drought took place during the pandemic a time when Gamers everywhere were trapped in their houses with nothing to do but play Red Dead online received a noticeable spike in player interest that could have translated into a permanent increase Rockstar wasted an opportunity to drastically grow the community during the same time GTA online thrived and became the king of twitch if Red Dead online had received a solid update it could have benefited from all of that attention and could have been launched back into the mainstream by mid 2020 fans were frustrated they were irritated that the many issues that Red Dead online still had weren't fixed they were bored of these shallow content and frustrated that Rockstar refused to show even half of the commitment to Red Dead online that they did to GTA and just when things were at their Breaking Point Rockstar announced another update the majority of the updates that Rockstar had released were relatively uninteresting and underwhelming things were going in the right direction but they'd never quite gotten where they needed to be people wanted more Red Dead online needed a revitalization that would add depth to the mechanics and make the gameplay worthwhile and reduce the insane grind so with the announcement of this update it had a lot of potential to save the dying game especially with the massive drought that had gone on between Updates this one had to be gamechanging so you know what they added hunting that's it the naturalist update added a role that allowed players to engage with nature in a more robust way you could track hunt and get samples from animals it also gave you two new NPCs to interact with wow how exciting to be fair if Red Dead online gameplay was already solid and its player base was healthy then this would have worked as a cool little Quality of Life Update however that wasn't the situation at all Red Dead online couldn't afford a quirky cute update especially not an update like this that that only appealed to a small portion of the player base for every player who enjoyed the nature mechanics there were three that were bored by it most players wanted to focus on gunslinging and bounties the highlights of an online western game and all that players got was the ability to go hunting there's nothing wrong with that but it meant that an update like this would face major blowback from players who weren't interested in the content they had failed to improve the fundamental issues that players had been complaining about since the beta and they hadn't communicated with players at all before this update in almost every way 2020 was a massive step back for Red Dead online it went from having a bright future to being aimless and directionless fans went from supportive to distrustful and frustrated with Rockstar the game had failed to see the revamps and content that it desperately needed and things were only going to get worse from here they came out with a bounty hunter update that added very little content and locked that content behind so many gold bars that it wasn't even worth it in reality all that this update did was anger fans without fixing any issues sure they added something new but you couldn't even use that new thing unless you had enough gold bars to buy it and you couldn't really get enough gold bars doing the things that already existed because they were so boring that you had to buy microtransactions to even get the gold bars in the first place it seemed like their priorities were in the wrong place they needed to add more free content not stuff that was locked behind a pay wall not to mention they even nerfed daily challenges which was a way for players to get free gold bars now they awarded less which made it even harder to get the new things that were just added as you could probably assume fans weren't happy so if something didn't change fast Red Dead online would be dead in a matter of months could Rockstar save it despite everything 2021 did get off to a better start Rockstar seemed to have learned their lesson and swiftly announced an update earlier in the year it was a smaller update but it showed that they were still invested in the game fans began to feel somewhat hopeful again and then several months later they shot those hopes down with their newest Outlaw pass the outlaw pass was the game's version of a battle pass and it was typically released alongside an update however this time the pass came alone Not only was there no update but the outlaw pass was cut from being 4 months to two many players felt that the pass was no longer worth it and that Rockstar was once again only worrying about the profitability of this game and not the players or the content with every single month it seemed that there were fewer and fewer reasons to play Red Dead online the player count was in freef Fall so Rockstar came out with another update maybe this time they could finally redeem themselves this one was called blood money and in many ways blood money was a repeat of the naturalist update it wasn't bad it did add some more missions and fleshed out the criminal World in Red Dead online but it wasn't good enough the missions weren't that unique or fun no new roles were added and none of the fundamental issues from the very start were fixed it was a simple Band-Aid when Red Dead online had a gaping hole in its chest in the words of PA pogon if you like Red Dead online you'll probably like Blood Money the problem is that many Red Dead online players don't really seem to like Red Dead online right now blood money was the last major update announced in Red Dead online once that update flopped Rockstar seemed to just give up they reduced the weekly update system to monthly they stopped communicating broader plans for Red Dead online and seemed to refocus on GTA desperate fans made # saav RDO go viral multiple times but Rockstar ignored them in July of 22 Rockstar announced what fans had known for months Red Dead online would receive no more major updates just a few years after its release how did it come to this Red Dead online had gone from being the second coming of GTA online to a complete flop some will Point agreed others will point to laziness I think the answer is a bit more simple Rockstar just didn't know what to do with Red Dead online despite all the comparisons Red Dead Redemption and GTA are very different franchises the high-paced urban action of GTA translates very well to fast-paced online games the more downto Earth Western Adventures of Red Dead don't that doesn't mean that Red Dead online was doomed to fail but Rockstar needed to adapt and lean more into the strengths of the game classic Western mechanics strong role playing elements in a solid story instead they stopped updating the story back in 2019 and never made much of an effort to bolster NPCs or towns Red Dead online became a worse more boring and less exciting version of the single player game and the lack of vision is what caused it to fail Rockstar could have put resources into creating Undead Nightmare 2 which to be honest would have been the best single player game DLC in the last decade but instead we got lazy updates that tried to milk as much money out of players as possible have you ever played Red Dead online what were your thoughts on the game do you think it had more potential than Rockstar gave it let me know in the comments I also wanted to let you guys know that I've launched a new channel called Solace as you all know modern YouTube is pretty exhausting and I kind of wanted to make something to go back in time and do YouTube the way it used to be done and that's what Solace is it is a channel of me playing Minecraft talking about various topics that may or may not help you things like why you're lonely how to make more friends how to improve your social life how to level up and become a better person these are all topics that I explore on the channel again very low effort low edited casual gameplay Style videos and if you want something different that kind of relaxes you and brings you back to the old days of YouTube definitely check it out I'll put a link in the description below if you enjoyed the video drop a like And subscribe to the channel and I will see you guys next time peace

Channel: RoboKast

Views: 116,981

Keywords: red dead online, why red dead online died, red dead online died, rdo died, what happened to red dead online, why red dead online failed, why red dead online closed, red dead online dead, what happened to red dead, red dead redemption 2, red dead 2, read dead 2 online, robokast, robokast red dead online, why red dead died

Id: xpI1WXn-S04

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024