Red Dead Redemption 2 [PS4, XBone] - PC in November

[Snowy]

Don't recall any major patching this week mate. Get playing but be warned it eats hours like they were popcorn!

[Snowy]

Hating myself at the moment.

I really dislike adversarial games and was not expecting to enjoy RDR2 Online, given my brief encounter with GTA online and my hasty retreat from it. My surprise to find that almost everyone playing RDR2 online was a friendly type was a very pleasant one. I have so far lost about 4 days to this and I only really started playing it over the Xmas break - I have done a lot in all four trades (trader, bounty hunter, collector and moonshiner), am level 50-something, have a good arsenal of weapons, am making a good amount of cash, and my cowboy looks cool, so all good.

I have had a couple of run-ins with griefers, but having a nice range of weapons and being able to put them down repeatedly has generally meant that they were a brief annoyance and soon vanished in search of prey that didn't put them in the ground quite as often. With griefers I tend to take their horse out and then them - an act that costs me $4 a time for being nasty, but relegates them to 'scrawny nag' the backup horse for about 10 mins, a horse that gets gassed out almost as soon as it hits a gallop. My view is that this will set them back a lot more than just my killing them and having them immediately respawn. Seems to work.

So the self loathing? Well I like doing nice stuff - for example if I am having a good run and enter a town with a low-level player in it, I will take a pristine kill from my horse and leave it draped over theirs, they can sell it for a few bucks which helps a lot early on. That kind of thing. I also tend to help people out on deliveries - I could kill them, steal their wagon and if I deliver their goods I get the money and they lose the goods they worked to make. I don't. I ride shotgun for them and help take out any enemies, be they NPC raiders or other players intent on robbery.

Often delivery runs get ambushed, especially at the end, with a gunfight against NPCs to deal with before you can cash in the goodies. Last night I was riding behind a guy doing deliveries as he entered the town of Blackwater. As we rode in, I could hear gunfire and knew that either another player(s) was shooting up the town or there was a set-piece gunfight taking place. I had a load of pelts to sell, so was going to visit the butcher and flog them - the gunfire was coming from the direction of the butcher. I figured it was a set-piece for the guy on the Trader run, so decided to hang back and lend a hand with my bolt-action rifle.

I took aim through my scope, saw a guy running along with his gun out, and shot him. *Murder* says the screen, with the name of the player I had just decapitated with my high-calibre rifle. Fuck. I thought I was shooting at an NPC. I turned and rode out of town - if the player presses charges on me for killing them I can expect the NPC sheriff and his buddies after me. Nothing happens. I still have all my pelts to sell and the nearest butcher from Blackwater is a good 10 mins ride away, so I head back into town.

As I do so, the guy I shot walks up to about 5 feet away. I start fumbling with the very awkward emote system for an apology (I later find out there is no such emote and I don't have my headset on so can't verbally apologise) when he pulls his gun and starts shooting at me. He clearly hasn't tweaked his aim as a headshot is generally a kill, and instead starts bashing my health with body shots. Instinctively I pull out my pair of fully customised Navy Revolvers - hand cannons basically - and once again escort him from this mortal coil. I sell my pelts quickly and again ride off, seeing his marker homing in on me again.

A few shots whizz my way but none hit me. I hop off my horse a little way out of town and take cover behind a boulder to see what he does. Rather stupidly he climbs on top of the saloon giving me a lovely silhouette, and continues banging away in my direction with what I assume is a low-quality unmodified repeater. The rock takes the occasional hit, but otherwise his shots aren't getting close. I decide that he needs a lesson in what qualifies as good cover and headshot him again, this time with my Carcano rifle which you have to be lvl 50 to obtain and which generally serves as a useful dissuader from idle aggression. He is lined up against the setting sun and gets taken in another single headshot. Staying in cover, I look him up - he is level 12, so just about getting started.

Then he disconnects.

I have done this myself in other games, where I decide that I don't need the toxicity of the game and quit. Often I don't come back. I hope I haven't inflicted that experience on another player

[Animalmother]

Your almost certainly more broken up about it than he is, I wouldn't feel so bad.

[Rusty]

Hells yeah. It happens and you are the good guy in this

[Snowy]

Your almost certainly more broken up about it than he is, I wouldn't feel so bad.

Aye I know, but I couldn't help thinking afterwards that I should have just let him get his revenge kill in the first time, to say nothing of the third slap-down headshot

[Rusty]

Nope, he's leaned a valuable lesson

[Animalmother]

Nope, he's leaned a valuable lesson

Do not fuck with the Snowman!!

[Wrathbone]

It'd be off-theme if everyone in the Wild West was friendly and pleasant to each other all the time.

[Oct]

Is it worth getting the special edition over the standard one?, it's only £7 difference on the PC

[Snowy]

It does help you get going faster, both in SP and MP, as it gives you some guns that are key as well as a good horse in Online (which I have used from the outset). The extra mission and bounty targets are fun too.

Bottom line, if you aren't bothered by spending a few quid more, do it.

And when you get online, add OriginalSnowy to your friends list, happy to get you started

[Lee]

Nah Snowy we all do that and attempt to get the fecker that killed us then give up and do something else when we just get our asses handed to us some more

Just a part of online gaming. Makes it fun and all random after all.

[Can't think of one]

Don't add him! His a teamkiller!

¬_¬

[Animalmother]

Was playing BF5 the other day and some fuckstick camped the spawn area and sniped me. The Edwin then teabagged me. Like a dumb ass I spent the rest of the round trying to find, kill and teabag back. Fucking ridiculous carry on!

[Snowy]

Hahaha that is uncanny.

I logged into RDO last night just to kick back for a while after getting in from work, figured I would do a couple of dailies, collect a set or two for the collector role and increase my cash reserves, and do a bounty or two.

Popped into Valentine and visited the gunsmith - I had a voucher to get 50% off selected shotguns that was about to expire so had picked myself up a sawn-off. On walking out I alt-tabbed to the interactive collector map web page I use to speed gathering collectible sets to see where I needed to go first. As I did, a player came out of the doctors office opposite, ran up to me and grappled me from behind. I have done this before by accident so flipped the game back to full-screen (my alt-tab let me still see the game screen as well as the web page) and waited to see if he let go in embarrassment - but no, he starts walloping me. Hammering the B button quickly broke the grapple, and rather than engage in fisticuffs I did the decent thing and pulled out my new shotty and decapitated him with it up close and personal. If you pull off kills at point blank range you get a cracking little execution animation, and literally vapourising this chap's head had me in stitches. I instantly reverted to [Mama]Snowy the Kingpin player of ~20 years ago and teabagged his headless body.

I then pulled up the player list to see what to expect, looking for the telltale red player name among the others who were blue as they weren't aggressive to me. Level 5. Blimey. At that level tackling a well-geared player is nuts, you haven't improved your starting health and stamina by hunting etc and won't have anything to speak of in terms of weaponry. Sure a headshot is a headshot, but the guy packing the modified longer range and much more accurate weapons is a lot more likely to score one first.

The teabag had sent him into an Animalmother rage though, and he came at me again and again. I popped him about 5 or 6 times (without his scoring a kill) before I got bored and fast travelled close to where I wanted to start my collector runs.

No feeling bad about schooling this one - he initiated the proceedings and learned a lesson

[Rusty]

You teech 'em good