While I am typically someone who only plays single-player campaigns or game modes, recently, I tried out Red Dead Online for the very first time. It was a fun experience and one I enjoyed very much. I liked it more than my previous experience with GTA Online, even though it is the most profitable game ever. This was mostly due to the fact that overall, RDRO is much friendlier to the single-player experience than GTAO is. In the former, I played for hours and never was really required to play with other players unless I wanted to; in the latter, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to earn in-game currency without the help of others.
As a result of this, I was definitely more drawn to RDR2’s online mode. It was really the first time I wasn’t anxious to play with strangers online in a game, and my experience was enjoyable. That being said, as I played, I couldn’t help but think of possible additions to the game mode that could truly improve it, maybe even, raise it to the level which GTAO has risen to. Here, I discuss 4 Red Dead Online updates that I’d like to see.
4. Adding Trapping to the Trader Role
The Trader role was added in a recent updated to Red Dead Online.
As a hunter and fisherman myself, I was immediately drawn to the new Trader role that was added to RDRO. One thing that was missing from the campaign that I thought would make a little more sense in the Online mode, would be the addition of trapping capabilities.
Trapping was still a popular means of acquiring animals to be sold in the fur trade at this time. Surely, many traders at the time likely set traps to aid in their pursuit of game to be caught and sold. Snare traps, deadfall traps, and bird poles likely all could have been in use during this period.
Now, traps are typically set for animals such as foxes, coyotes, beavers, muskrat, raccoon and other small game. These animals don’t typically net a lot of money when sold in game. However, I think it would be nice for players to be able to set these traps and then check them and reset them each day if they so choose.
Adding Trapping to the Trader role would help provide RDRO players with a passive income source.
This would be a way for a player to earn a sort of passive income adding to their efficiency as a Trader. Also, it could be possible for other players to steal another player’s game if they stumble upon it just as they can hijack a player’s supplies on a drive to sell their goods. Either way, adding this capability would be a nice additional aspect of the Trader role that I believe many players would welcome.
3. Purchasable Properties
It took me a while to figure out why I could not rent a room in many of the places I did in the campaign. Then, it dawned on me that, duh, I could not affect the time when playing with other players. I felt stupid.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there are plenty of properties to purchase in GTAO even though one can’t actually “sleep” there. Why shouldn’t we be able to do the same in RDR?
Surely, this could be updated to allow players to purchase homes or stables of their own that they could go to and pass the time if they wanted. These could be filled with some customizable options like having a mounted buck or fish on the wall along with other options. This could also be done in a historically realistic way.
A screenshot of a shack in RDRO that was a rentable property in the first Red Dead Redemption.
While it is nice to have a camp to return to, I think it would also be nice to have a place to call your own in Strawberry or Saint Denis or a homestead in the middle of nowhere. Since many of these places appear to be vacated already (with many of the campaign NPCs removed,) this should be fairly easy to institute. There could also be chores added that could be completed around your property for gold or XP, such as chopping wood, getting water, etc. Luckily, there is some hope that these will be added in the future.
2. Train Robberies
Here is one aspect that stumped me from the get-go. Why would you take away one of the things players loved most about the Red Dead games? I discovered that while there are a couple of trains that roam around the landscape of RDRO, the lack of liveliness or valuables on board was disheartening.
One of the best parts of the campaign was being able to plan, execute, and get away with train robberies, either as part of missions or on one’s own. Adding this to the online mode, would be equally as fun, especially being able to do so with other players.
Adding in lucrative train robberies to RDRO would be a positive update for RDRO.
The lack of good loot on trains was disappointing to me and when I look at the success of GTAO, I can’t help but think of the plethora of ways available for players to earn money. As for RDRO, once the missions are complete, players really have to grind to get a little bit of cash. Adding additional avenues for players to earn more money in a quicker way would be great for the game.
1. Bank Heists
Finally, and alluding to my last point, the most efficient (and possibly most fun) way of rapidly earning copious amounts of cash would be through the addition of bank heists. These served as the highlights of the campaign where Arthur and the gang worked up different ways of stealing cash from banks as they were forced eastward. This game was highly lauded for plenty of reasons, but the story (including these missions) was one of the campaign’s strong points.
The best update that could come to RDRO would be the inclusion of bank heists.
These moments were fun, emotional, and netted a good amount of money. They would do the same in the online mode. Many people argue that GTAO really took off when heists were added to the game. Next month, seven years after the game’s release, the game is getting its first heist that can be played solo, meaning that Rockstar has finally listened to something that fans have been asking about for a long time.
There is no reason the same couldn’t be done with RDRO. Since the online mode is set in 1898, one year prior to the campaign, it is well in the realm of believability that the banks robbed later on were also robbed prior to Dutch’s crew doing so. Furthermore, while it is possible that, historically speaking, not every single bank was constantly robbed in the Old West, this certainly fits into the American mythos of the era. That’s how I imagine the era—with bankers constantly fending off would-be robbers on a semi-regular basis.
These could be added as solo affairs or with posses or other players. Any which way you look at it, adding bank robberies (heists, or whatever you want to call them) would be the best update that RDRO could possibly add in the future. Who knows? It could just help elevate the game mode closer to GTAO territory in terms of profitability. I know that I would definitely put more hours in then.
What are your thoughts on these additions? What future updates would you like to see to Red Dead Online? Comment here or feel free to make a post in our forums.
