Red Dead Online leaves beta with a massive new update

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You may have been happily enjoying the Red Dead Redemption 2 online multiplayer portion of the game, Red Dead Online, so much that you'd forgotten it was actually still running in a beta testing phase. That has now come to an end with a massive update, with Rockstar now confident enough in its open-world cowboy simulator that it can pull that beta tag altogether.

Not that Red Dead Online will now be a static, unchanging game – as a 'live service' accompaniment to the solo epic Rockstar created, the multiplayer game will still get loads of regular updates. 

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But it's reached a point where its systems are finely-tuned enough for Rockstar to now focus more closely on new content rather than bug fixing and balance tweaks.

And the new content with the latest update brings lots of meaty additions...

What's new in Red Dead Online?

Perhaps the most meaningful change is a new anti-griefing system. Players will be able to set their profile as either offensive or defensive, increasing or decreasing respectively their visibility on the map to those looking to engage in player-vs-player combat. The penalties for attacking both play styles will scale intelligently with new hostility system tweaks, making those that continually disrupt peaceful players' games likely to find themselves in the firing line.

The core Jessica LeClerk online story campaign also gets updated, with new story missions for both honourable and dishonourable players, while characters from the main Red Dead 2 storyline will now pop up in free roam. New mission types include jailbreaks and wagon thefts, while the dynamic, random encounters you'd face out on the prairies in the solo game (such as sucking venom from a snakebite victim) will now be introduced into the online mode, complete with rewards of their own.

Gold payouts for missions is now up across the board, with the biggest rewards now as much as doubling compared to previous rewards. Poker tables have been added for gamblers, and Posse Versus activities now include fishing, bird shooting and herb gathering challenges.

That's just the tip of the iceberg for a very rich update. Find out more in Rockstar's complete patch notes.

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