It's time for the first Red Dead Online update, the one where Rockstar tries to rebalance the economy so that beans aren't worth more than gold and so that salmon isn't the only thing in the game worth its weight in...beans, I guess. Tomorrow Rockstar will be adjusting what appears to be a wide-ranging suite of payouts and prices to make the game feel less grindy and more rewarding as it moves into its second week. Here's what it had to say in a blog post detailing the changes that will be going live on Friday:
Increasing the cash and gold payments across a number of different activities including Free Roam Missions, Free Roam Events, replays of A Land of Opportunities Missions, Showdown Series modes and more.
Reducing the prices of most weapons in the Wheeler, Rawson & Co Catalogue and Gunsmiths. For players that have already purchased weapons at the previous prices, we will automatically deposit the difference to player balances starting today - please look for an alert message the next time you log in to the Red Dead Online Beta to notify you of this change, refunds may take up until December 10th to reach all players.
Balancing the values of select pelts, skins and fish as well as horse reviver and pamphlets.
The above balances are the necessary work of balancing an in-game economy to make it more player-friendly. I have the suspicion that Rockstar did some of this on purpose, at least to some degree. I don't quite mean a nefarious plan to rob us of our time, but I do think that the designers erred on the side of the grind in these early days so that whatever balancing they did would end up rewarding players more, not less, which always goes over better with a community even if the end state is the same.
To that end, Rockstar is also giving everyone a whole bunch of free money: at least what appears to be a whole bunch of free money at this early stage in the game. Anyone who logs into Red Dead Online before midnight Pacific time tonight will be receiving $250 in in-game cash along with 15 gold bars, the latter of which is a real boon in an economy where a single one can take hours and hours to earn. We'll see how valuable that cash is in a new economy, but for now, it certainly makes up for lost time grinding out deathmatches for pennies.
Check back tomorrow to see how well things actually changed. Until then, the game still needs some stuff to spend the money on, or else we're just hoarding.
