1.18 Update Released

[AmyStone]

9 minutes ago, Leftover Pizza said:

I don't have time to kill them all. And I don't want to either. Seeing the world alive again is so much more immersive than roaming barren lands. 

Um, I wasn't saying you had to. Just that not so long ago you could easily kill and skin everything you see. Now you can't - which is nice.

[Leftover Pizza]

2 minutes ago, AmyStone said:

Um, I wasn't saying you had to. Just that not so long ago you could easily kill and skin everything you see. Now you can't - which is nice.

Ooh, I got what you meant, and attempted to add to your comment as in, "there are far too many spawning to kill". Came out a bit wrong, by accident  

 

I'm back at the level of leaving 1 and 2 star animals alive and only pick 3 stars if needed. 
It's a very nice change from shooting every single animal you see, because it could take ages for another one to spawn. The world is so much more alive and you have to be on your guard for predators again. I love it.

[AmyStone]

I did enjoy hunting back in the early days of Red Dead. It's what I spent most of my time doing. It would be nice if they added some more hunting type things into the game. Legendary animals would be nice and having to actually sneak around to find them rather than riding into an area and blasting everything in sight.

[Lonely-Martin]

On 2/18/2020 at 11:12 PM, Fun 2 said:

We now have more stuff than we did during the beta phase. Bounty missions, Trader resupplies, moonshine missions and possibly the Camp upgrade (Trader business).

If you exclude all those features, animal spawns might work properly.

I gotta laugh a little though, this reads a little bit as though R* never planned to add content, lol.

 

How they weren't prepared for the basics of adding content is quite embarrassing I feel. This game is nearly a decade newer than GTA and that game is clearly showing to have been built from the ground up so robustly that a key part to the entire game isn't compromised with new content. 

 

It's amazing how well GTA holds up compared. (Though I dare say I don't know much about all this technical stuff and don't give enough credit, but surely they knew to future proof aspects, lol. I dunno).

[Tez2]

1 hour ago, aFinn said:

 

What is interesting is that I started playing with my other account about 2 weeks ago and that account has animals spawning almost normally (if I am alone and no other players nearby). It's been like that since beginning. I have bought into all roles now on that except moonshiner. Had a comment on one of my videos that someone has 2 accounts and the one without moonshiner has animals spawning. Don't know when they made their account though.

 

On my main account I do not see animals really, a few here and there if I stay in one area. Once lobby dips to 19 or even 20 sometimes animals start to spawn a little. It seems to depend on the lobby (host) a lot. Maybe if you are close to host or if there are lots of new accounts nearby you see more animals?

I have not cleared game cache though as I am lazy and don't want to do all settings again.

If you didn't unlock the Moonshiner role, your game won't take into account the new Moonshine dynamic missions, thus you could say your game isn't fully equipped and maybe just maybe that space you left out is used to enhance the animal spawns. So the less things you have, the better your experience with animals?

I think it might worth a try to create a completely new account and not involve yourself with any roles whatsoever, then check if animal spawns work much better than your experience in your first account.

2 hours ago, Lonely-Martin said:

I gotta laugh a little though, this reads a little bit as though R* never planned to add content, lol.

 

How they weren't prepared for the basics of adding content is quite embarrassing I feel. This game is nearly a decade newer than GTA and that game is clearly showing to have been built from the ground up so robustly that a key part to the entire game isn't compromised with new content. 

 

It's amazing how well GTA holds up compared. (Though I dare say I don't know much about all this technical stuff and don't give enough credit, but surely they knew to future proof aspects, lol. I dunno).

That was just a guess, I'm not really involved into how things work behind the scenes nor do I have a knowledge of the whole network. But you can always zoom closer into the system to find a base of the whole network which would work similar to pretty much every other network. Since we know it's P2P, and that it has some similarities from GTAO, I proposed that the issue might have to do with the new content taking higher priority which caused the game to not focus much of its attention on animal spawns.

[Lonely-Martin]

8 minutes ago, Fun 2 said:

That was just a guess, I'm not really involved into how things work behind the scenes nor do I have a knowledge of the whole network. But you can always zoom closer into the system to find a base of the whole network which would work similar to pretty much every other network. Since we know it's P2P, and that it has some similarities from GTAO, I proposed that the issue might have to do with the new content taking higher priority which caused the game to not focus much of its attention on animal spawns.

It's all good, I was more just rambling off your post, lol. Sorry. I can usually tell when your speculating or trying to offer new ideas and tips etc. and really appreciate all the info we learn too. Just the way I read it it seemed funny is all. 

 

Almost wish it were true and R* wasn't gonna add to the game, then they'd have an excuse after this long, lol. But alas, here we are and if they did lose focus because of new content, I can only hope this is a real shot in the arm for them to improve all round. Anyway, sorry for rambling and still being more negative, just getting to a point where the game is just 'meh' all too much.

[RyuNova]

[Doc101]

On 2/14/2020 at 11:45 AM, JumpingKentFlash said:

Are animals back?

It's not April 1st yet

[Geisterfaust]

As a person who's still downloading RDR 2 to play it for the first time I'm actually chuckling about animals. Basically, they can't figure out how to work with animals since 2013. I swear, R* should have never touched multiplayer games, they're pathetic and only got lucky with GTA because it's GTA. 

[4eyedcoupe]

Just reporting my experience over the last two days.  Lobbies I was in with 22-24 players the animal spawns were ok and random evens non-existant and no hideouts.  In lobies <18 animal spawns were really good but still no random events or gang hideouts,  Been in a solo lobby for several hours and animal spawns are great and random events are good but still haven't seen a gang hideouts.  

Edited February 22, 2020 by 4eyedcoupe

[DarkFlame588]

I only rarely see the red hostile random events, hideouts and moonshiner camps/roadblocks. Usually around the typical ~20 or less players. Even in a couple lobbies of 5-6 last week no white blip events popped up. Only time I see those is when my friend and I get instanced from a bootlegger job.

Edited February 22, 2020 by DarkFlame588

[Leftover Pizza]

8 hours ago, Geisterfaust said:

As a person who's still downloading RDR 2 to play it for the first time I'm actually chuckling about animals. Basically, they can't figure out how to work with animals since 2013. I swear, R* should have never touched multiplayer games, they're pathetic and only got lucky with GTA because it's GTA. 

If they released all the online stuff as story mode dlc, the crowd would still be over it as much as they are now. No one would really feel the difference if other players would have been replaced by more dynamic NPC's. Rockstar online games can only be named as such,  because you have to play online. 

[BUT THE BENZ]

not sure if the right thread, but since a couple of days (so maybe with this update?!) I noticed that I can "finally" store multiple outfits on my horse. more than the usual UNGRATEFUL three. just checked, able to switch between 7 outfits right now. no special saddle or nothing. anyone else know what's up with that?

[Leftover Pizza]

20 minutes ago, BUT THE BENZ said:

not sure if the right thread, but since a couple of days (so maybe with this update?!) I noticed that I can "finally" store multiple outfits on my horse. more than the usual UNGRATEFUL three. just checked, able to switch between 7 outfits right now. no special saddle or nothing. anyone else know what's up with that?

 

upgraded saddle bags? Those allow 7 outfits to store.

[BUT THE BENZ]

12 minutes ago, Leftover Pizza said:

 

upgraded saddle bags? Those allow 7 outfits to store.

I think I bought that, yeah, but not just a few days ago. since FP horses were on sale, that's when I upgraded...something on my horse. probably the bags yeah.  I rarely change anything about the horse and its looks. I'm content with a normal horse without masks and horns and lamps and sh*t!

[DarksunDaFirst]

Was playing last night with 20+ people in the lobby and was regularly seeing animals for the first time since the update.

 

Still not as populous pre-roles, but still regularly.  Even saw a Bison in the Heartland.

[fryday]

I played alot last week, because I had plenty of:

 

animal spawns

random encounter npcs

moonshine events

gang hideouts

etc.

 

 

It was so refreshing to have a living world again. It felt so good....

[Leftover Pizza]

30 minutes ago, fryday said:

I played alot last week, because I had plenty of:

 

animal spawns

random encounter npcs

moonshine events

gang hideouts

etc.

 

 

It was so refreshing to have a living world again. It felt so good....

 

Most of the times I had the same experience last week. Since today, it's all bad again. I'm probably unlucky joining lobbies where some players have crap connections. Even Blackwater is almost ridden of NPC's. 

[kcole4001]

Even with all the shine/bounty bugs, there were actually plenty of animals on PC.

Even when I was passed by a player riding by who was lagging like a slide show!

[StandardDonkey]

2 hours ago, Leftover Pizza said:

 

Most of the times I had the same experience last week. Since today, it's all bad again. I'm probably unlucky joining lobbies where some players have crap connections. Even Blackwater is almost ridden of NPC's. 

  Same here. After decent spawns all last week, today it's back to absolute sh*t. I've been in around 8 different lobbies today, in every one, I spawn in with a few animals around, venture a couple hundred feet away and can't find so much as a bird in the sky.

[Leftover Pizza]

5 minutes ago, StandardDonkey said:

  Same here. After decent spawns all last week, today it's back to absolute sh*t. I've been in around 8 different lobbies today, in every one, I spawn in with a few animals around, venture a couple hundred feet away and can't find so much as a bird in the sky.

 

Dynamic events not working properly, camp moved from The Great Plains to Tokyo, you know the drill....

[Leftover Pizza]

On 2/21/2020 at 5:02 AM, Leftover Pizza said:

I almost hate to say it, but animal spawns are getting better and better. Was doing a round near Lagras and the swamp was literally swarming with alligators and birds. I found an egret really easily and 3 predator skins too. Must have seen at least 25-30 gators on land and as many in the Kamasa River too. 
 

Back in the Plains, groups of deer and pronghorns, flocks of small birds and bison too. Lobby size never went over 20, btw. Must say, I had good fun in game this evening. 

 

Anybody has some ketchup for me? A jar or 2? I need to swallow my own words and they don't go down easily. What a goddamn mess of an evening for animal spawns. Even took me close to an hour to fill up the wagon during Yukon Nik this evening. 

During normal gameplay in sessions, I got myself 2 small birds and that was about it. Hunting was good for exactly 4 days. That'll teach me to be positive about Rockstar.

[RyuNova]

8 hours ago, Leftover Pizza said:

Even took me close to an hour to fill up the wagon during Yukon Nik this evening. 

 
Hahaha sounds like typical R* spite. The patch was not to fix animals spawns in free roam but it was to remove animal spawns from Legendary Bounties. That's why the patch notes were worded as saying "certain sessions"

[Talisman_83]

11 hours ago, Leftover Pizza said:

 

Anybody has some ketchup for me? A jar or 2? I need to swallow my own words and they don't go down easily. What a goddamn mess of an evening for animal spawns. Even took me close to an hour to fill up the wagon during Yukon Nik this evening. 

During normal gameplay in sessions, I got myself 2 small birds and that was about it. Hunting was good for exactly 4 days. That'll teach me to be positive about Rockstar.

If you're on PS4, there's a particular community which might cater to your needs. 

[DentureDynamite]

12 hours ago, Leftover Pizza said:

 

Anybody has some ketchup for me? A jar or 2? I need to swallow my own words and they don't go down easily. What a goddamn mess of an evening for animal spawns. Even took me close to an hour to fill up the wagon during Yukon Nik this evening. 

During normal gameplay in sessions, I got myself 2 small birds and that was about it. Hunting was good for exactly 4 days. That'll teach me to be positive about Rockstar.

Not to mention the insta-despawn issue(s).

 

NPCs (with your their loot), birds, entire wagons are all fair "game" when it comes to vanishing into thin air, even while looking directly at them.

Edited February 26, 2020 by DentureDynamite

[DarksunDaFirst]

On 2/24/2020 at 9:38 AM, DarksunDaFirst said:

Was playing last night with 20+ people in the lobby and was regularly seeing animals for the first time since the update.

 

Still not as populous pre-roles, but still regularly.  Even saw a Bison in the Heartland.

Just to update on this - having fewer and fewer problems with animal spawns.  Definitely player count in the lobby affects animal populations, but it used to be that the cutoff was 16 players for any type of animal sighting.  Now it seems to be around 20-22.  Anything less than 20 and animals will spawn regularly, anything less than 16 and animals spawn in very healthy numbers, anything less than 12 it's almost like being in a solo lobby pre-1.18. 

And solo or less than 8 players in a lobby?  Almost like single player. 

Starting to see more events now, again completely related to player count and gets progressively better the lower the count.  20-22 players is about the cutoff point.  Spawned in last night in Lemoyne and got the one where a woman is surrounded by 4 alligators, and then you rescue her and you have to be quick because a 5th jumps out of the water (and will kill her if you don't act fast enough).  So that was a healthy 5 perfect gator skins, 10 teeth, and 25 big game meat.  Lobby had 21 people in it.  Seeing moonshiner randoms, hideouts, and other random white dots (dogs, eggs, etc). 

This is my personal experience though, so I'm not countering anyone's claims.  I'm just seeing the game in a more palatable state now for people that enjoyed the hunting aspect of it.

Platform: PS4

Edited February 27, 2020 by DarksunDaFirst

[DentureDynamite]

^^ In my experience though, the changes haven't come without negatives; despawns are happening faster, and more erratically.

 

I'm personally also not seeing any increase in random events or even gang hideouts--unless player count drops below ~20 (closer to 15); then they start happening like they should be.

 

There's also been an increase in broken stranger mission code (half-launched, etc.) on top of the 'regular' unfixed bug infestation.

Edited February 27, 2020 by DentureDynamite

[DarkFlame588]

Bootlegger events are everywhere for me. Whenever I log into my camp for dailies, one is nearby, then I fast travel to my shack and one is there too.

[Red Lynx 23]

Wedesday night was the first time I had seen a Cougar in weeks. A three star that took a Bolt Action express round to the neck, ran off and keeled over. It's in my hunting wagon until Cripps needs some more materials.

[Leftover Pizza]

On 2/26/2020 at 1:39 PM, Talisman_83 said:

If you're on PS4, there's a particular community which might cater to your needs. 

 

I stopped bothering and jumping through hoops to get things done in this game. The first few days after 1.18 it was good. Many wildlife and dynamic events, but it went back to the same old sh*t quite fast. I'm fed up with all these issues that never see a decent fix. 

The way this game is structured is pretty much exactly the reason why I shouldn't be bothered playing online versions of good single player games. Most of the times they are badly executed anyway.