Gamer Frustration: Red Dead Redemption’s Sandbox Multiplayer is too Open

“Boom! Rat a tat tat!” were the first sounds I heard when I jumped into Red Dead Redemption’s multiplayer for the first time. I was expecting to pair up with a few other gunslingers and cooperatively take down a bandit hideout, but was greeted with higher ranked gamers with a hatred of noobs. I died 17 times that day before I quit my session.

Red Dead Redemption has 2 distinct multiplayer modes: structured and free roam. Structured multiplayer games are your basic solo and team based matches found in just about every game released this year. Free roam multiplayer is a bit different. You are dropped into the Red Dead universe with nothing but a burro and pistol. On screen pop ups give you a few options in this mode: you can either play cooperatively with a player (hunt, take over bandit hideouts, have a picnic) or go after fellow gamers for a small boost of XP.

Herein lies the problem, during all 3 free roam play sessions, I’ve been attacked by higher ranking players repeatedly. I wasn’t looking for a fight, in fact, I was looking for their help with taking out a nearby bandit hideout. Sadly, this is not what they wanted and there was little I could do about it.

As a higher ranking player, you get access to faster horses and better weapons, not to mention that your rank directly correlates with the time you dedicated to mastering the games mechanics. This left me, a level 2 novice, with nowhere to turn. My repeater was no match for their scoped rifle and my slow poke of a donkey wasn’t doing me any favors either.

Sure, I could have leveled up by playing team deathmatch before playing free roam, but quite frankly I don’t want to. I play too many structured multiplayer matches in other games as it is. I wanted to explore the wild West freely with some new friends and cooperatively kick some bandit butt. Sadly, that didn’t happen.

Red Dead Redemption is a great game. I’m having a blast with the story mode and free roam is a lot of fun if you can find a group of people willing to play with you, but I can’t help but think I’d have more fun if it didn’t take me 30 minutes and 15 deaths to finally find someone willing to play co-op with me.

What are your thoughts? Have you had similar experiences? Are you one of the devious gunslingers who gets their kicks from picking off novices?