Red Dead Online Seems Focused On Gaining Players, Not Keeping Them

Despite having an impressive roadmap courtesy of its predecessor, GTA Online, Red Dead Online has still struggled to consistently deliver new content that fully expands on the end-game experience, leaving existing players out in the cold in what appears to be an effort to bring new players in. The Specialist Roles were the best overall expansion for recurring players, giving them new things to work towards and unlock, but Rockstar’s approach is still indicative of its focus.

Initially, there were only the three Specialist Roles for Red Dead Online; Bounty Hunter, Trader, and Collector. It was another six months after that until the Moonshiner was released, giving players the closest things to purchasable property in Red Dead Online thus far, and another six months before the Naturalist was released. In the time since. Red Dead Online has gone standalone, while featuring large sale markdowns or even free-to-play weekends along with the release on Games Pass, and the two most recent updates have focused on more ways to earn money, gold, and XP without adding new things on which to actually use said assets.

It’s not that the content of these updates is bad. The Legendary Bounty Hunter pass added more levels of unlocks and some decent missions, as did the spring release of Telegram Mission. The recent Blood Money update may have started slow, but the addition of Call to Arms gives Red DeadOnline some much-needed life that is some of the game’s best content to date. The problem is that none of this addresses the core issue of there being very little for seasoned players to work toward, and everything Rockstar has done over the past year seems entirely focused on simply getting new players instead of rewarding the existing player base.

Proof Of Red Dead Online’s Focus On New Players

The recent release of Red Dead Online: Blood Money is the main proof of Rockstar’s focus. Even in its Newswire announcement of the content, Rockstar boasted that the new Crimes & Opportunities missions would be available at no up-front cost, a direct response to the current Specialist Roles all requiring gold to access. The caveat is that recurring players have plenty of gold to purchase access to a new activity. For the majority of hardcore RDO players, money is actually pointless.

The issues don’t stop there, though. Rockstar touted the impressive launch of both RDO: Blood Money and the GTA Online Los Santos Tuners update during the Take-Two earnings call having the highest player counts of any update launch. GTA players received an extra $250,000 in-game money as a thank-you for the success of the update. Red Dead Online players got no such thing. Even in the earnings call discussion, Take-Two stated that the large part of Red Dead Online’s success has come from the increase in new players since going standalone, a fact which coincides with Blood Money’s wealth of new missions to earn money at no up-front cost.

Rockstar’s focus on expanding playable content for new players is quite evident over the past few months, and it even has showcased this focus by bringing back exclusive outfits from previous Red Dead Online Outlaw Passes so new players can have access to items they missed. With no concrete details yet on when the game will release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S and no information about what the winter update will entail, the horizon is a bit murky for Red Dead Online, but hopefully somewhere along that horizon Rockstar will manage to strike a balance between having ample content for new players and rewarding purposes for recurring ones.

Source: The Motley Fool

About The Author

Rion Duncan
(79 Articles Published)

Rion Duncan is a science-fiction author and avid gamer. After spending his youth in marketing he finally returned to his first love of imaginary worlds and fantastical characters. When not working on his book series Idonia or recording episodes for his Eclectic Podcast, he spends time doing his favorite activity; playing with his two-year old daughter.

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