[h1][b]Greed Dead Online[/b][/h1]
I’m writing this in conjunction with my VERY positive RDR2 review just because I feel I need to get this off my chest. Ignore the number of hours it says I have, I've played this garbage for dozens of hours on my full copy of RDR2.
I like 100%ing games, which in my book means getting all the achievements on Steam. It’s my thing and I enjoy it, but every now and again that fixation of mine forces me to submerge myself in fecal matter such as this abysmal excuse for an online mode.
[h3]Unfinished story[/h3]
If you were excited to play this for its storyline or to further expand RDR2’s stellar universe then you’re ♥♥♥♥ out of luck. The story of this game mode, as half-assed as it was from what I’ve seen, was completely abandoned and unfinished in favor of R* other money printing machine; GTA5.
[h3]♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ servers/dev support[/h3]
The servers suck ass and will kick you out of your session or change your session for seemingly no reason. This is common knowledge in the RDO community and is basically an accepted part of playing the game like “oh yeah the servers just do that sometimes, you get used to it.” This is not to mention that the devs do absolutely nothing to combat cheating, hacking, exploiting and the like. You are basically on your own. This brings me to my next point.
[h3]A community of griefers and exploiters[/h3]
This community of no-life having dweebs and cringe merchants have taken to using cheats and exploits to make other players miserable in a desperate attempt to find some kind of enjoyment or meaning in this piece of ♥♥♥♥ game mode that they have sunk so much time, effort and (most likely) money into. They will use the items and superior equipment they grinded for to bully new-comers and use exploits to lock them out of online mission completion. This comes in many forms but just as an example, players will kill you, steal the item/satchel you’re trying to deliver and hand it over to a non-interactable NPC. This basically means the mission is soft-locked and you’re stuck in an inifinite time loop of fighting the griefer until they get bored.
I’ve had also had multiple encounters with unseen hackers that can grief you by controlling the game, detonating explosives on you, spawning infinite wild animals on you, setting you on fire, killing your horse, spawning loot chests for you, and if they want to, dropping your FPS to single digits and crashing your game. R* does nothing about this. This game mode is straight up ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ designed to be a greedy cringe fest so it’s no wonder it attracts pathetic people like this.
[h3]Pay to win[/h3]
You are objectively at an advantage over other players in this game mode if you have money, whether that’s the regular in-game currency or the online mode currency (gold bars). You go into online PVP matches with all your amassed fortune, weapons and consumable items, which give you an advantage over other players. A player will one tap you with his Carcano rifle that he bought (either by grinding for it or pay2win) and you are forced onto an uneven playing field because that rifle is locked behind a level requirement and an in-game price tag. Deadeye makes or breaks online shootouts and if you have a huge stockpile of consumables to keep your deadeye topped off then you’re basically unkillable, and if you don’t then good luck to you.
[h3]Weaponized tedium[/h3]
R* knew exactly what they were doing when they designed this piece of ♥♥♥♥ online mode. Everything costs money just like in the story mode; Ammo, consumables, equipment etc. Normal horse breeds have been nerfed into the ground and elite horse breeds have been nerfed to be passable. The weapons you start with are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and all the decent weapons are locked behind level requirements and price tags. Even clothing to avoid the cold/hot debuff that drains your cores has to be purchased and your not given a winter outfit by default.
The problem is that making money is a miserable slog. Online missions are boring and repetitive and barely give any currency. Gold bars can be earned by clocking in for your shift on a daily basis and doing the most mundane meaningless tasks disguised as “daily challenges” just to receive a whopping 0.1 gold (not a joke). The real way to earn good cash and gold is to grind one of the trader roles (bounty hunter, collecter, trader, etc) and all of those are also locked behind a gold bar entry fee.
All of this is happening while the micro transaction page is winking at you to just pull out your wallet. All prices for almost everything can simply be bypassed by throwing IRL money at the problem. Either that or embrace the grind and treat the game like a day job. This isn’t a video game anymore, this is OnlyFans without the tits.
[b]TL;DR[/b]
Boring mundane unfinished mess full of hackers and exploiters with bad servers, zero dev support and zero anti-cheat. Mode is designed in a way that pressures you into paying extra money just to try and enjoy yourself. A cancerous tumor of unbound greed trying to attach itself to one of the best games of all time.
[i]“This place ain’t no such thing as civilized. It’s man so in love with greed, he has forgotten himself and found only appetites.”[/i]
[b]- Dutch van der Linde, Red Dead Redemption 2[/b]
