Red Dead Online Update Coming Later This Month, Here's What Is Changing

By Jessie Wade

New features and improvements will be added to Red Dead Online’s Beta on February 26, including a new Law and Bounty system, weapons balancing, and mini-map changes for players.

In order to prevent players from being repeated targets across the map, Rockstar said that player blips’ visibility will be reduced over long distances – a person’s map position will only be displayed if one is within 150 meters of another player, otherwise it will only appear on the map while firing a weapon.

A new system will also be put into place to shed light on overly aggressive and destructive players. The more hostile a player becomes in the game, the more visible that player will become on the map.

Rockstar notes aggressive behaviors include, attacking and killing other players or their horses outside of a structured mode, Free Roam Mission, event, or competition.

Posse-wide Parleys and improvements on Feuds will be included in the update as well. Parleys will be able to be initiated by the player to their attacker’s entire Posse after a single kill. Or, players can propose a challenge to their opponent with a Feud, Posse Feud, or Leader Feud after one kill – which is basically a mini-deathmatch style of play on a time limit.

The new Law and Bounty system will give players with a high bounty the opportunity to fight against an NPC Bounty Hunter – which could end in a positive or negative outcome.

Criminal behavior will have a higher bounty than other, lesser crimes, such as if you kill another player versus if you assault a random person in the town. Looting and ransacking are considered lower level crimes though and will just decrease your honor.

Daily challenges will offer more variety, including selling items at a Fence, hunting and skinning animals, foraging for herbs, clearing hideouts, and more. Rockstar plans on continually expanding the daily challenges for rewards, streaks, and other bonuses for players to acquire.

Other improvements from community feedback include re-balancing the accuracy on the Varmint Rifle, voice chat reduction for closer proximity, and horse cargo fixes that will be continuous due to the numerous issues.

For more on Red Dead Online, read about the main details of the modes, IGN’s Wiki guide of everything Red Dead Online, and our review of Red Dead Redemption 2 where we gave it a 10/10 saying, “It’s a gorgeous depiction of an ugly period that’s patient, polished, and a huge amount of fun to play, and it’s combined with Rockstar’s best storytelling to date.”

Jessie Wade is a news writer at IGN and loves writing about RDR2. Chat with her on Twitter @jessieannwade.