missing npc's?

[Profile Name]

is anyone else not finding any animals? or when I'm out and about i noticed i stopped seeing roaming npc's with horses and wagons. I'm trying to hunt for material but I've spent like an hour searching for something to kill and cant find any.

[in]

Probably in online? Having more players in sessions affects animal spawns. Which can be rather random. Sometimes they spawn, sometimes entire areas are clear. It's better to make "solo" session for hunting.

[kevin1957]

i just logged out.no animals or wagon drivers.no npcs.i reckon it has something to do with the server issue thats happened over the last few days.the one exception i encountered was a roadblock,full of revenue agents.

[Smask]

Same here, a fair few npc is missing on public sessions, have not tried private session yet.

[Danaralala / Dana O'Reily]

Idem, no animals , no Npc in city and this ***** error FFFF sometimes

[Duchess_Danni]

They've been missing for most of the day. No animals, no NPC's, no birds. Earlier today, they appeared out of nowhere near blackwater, and within seconds I got the Error FFFFFF again. Loaded in again and they were all gone. About 10 mins ago, My Posse and I were just roaming the grizzlies around lake isabella for a bounty. Finished it up and then the NPC's appeared, riding horses. Rode down to hanging dog ranch and the plains along the river was swarming with animals...it appears it may be fixed.... fingers crossed!!

[Bad 💀 Motha]

There is not as much AI activity in Online Mode compared to Story Mode.
GTAV is the same way. They do this to help balance things out so the game doesn't get sluggish when playing the Online. Online has some obvious limits that Story Mode does not. In Story Mode I can lose sight of an animal and then finally go catch up to it and/or find it a short time later. In Online most of the NPCs and Animals do not spawn in until you are generally close, and they can de-spawn in much shorter distance compared to Story Mode.

Just switch sessions and then hopefully the game world refreshes for you.
ESC > Online > Free Roam | Camp | An Event Type | Game World Region

Or trick it to happen another way, such as L key > Quick Join > Pick an event; such as a Featured Series or something. Once that loads in fully, quit. You will loaded into either your own session or most likely a different one then you were on before.

[JuiceWSA]

Originally posted by Smask:

Same here, a fair few npc is missing on public sessions, have not tried private session yet.

Solo Sessions always have all the animals and NPCs - at my house.
YOU are creating the session. If you have a Yam instead of a Potato you'll probably get it all.

Public Sessions have to negotiate a lot of stuff between everyone and when R*'s Network is Belly Up - it's a crap shoot - as we all are painfully aware of at this very moment.

I'm going in now for another Daily - Solo.
I've already been disappointed a few times today Publicly. No need for any more of that today. I predict if FFFFFFFF is miraculously cured, I'll hear about it.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It doesn't have much to do with R*
R* just runs scripts, a transaction system and things like that.
The game itself is run off of each persons PC. If you have a slower PC, that doesn't affect how NPCs load into the game world and such.

R* Games are Peer-2-Peer. So whoever was the first person to load in; is the Host. If that person leaves its possible it will randomly either throw everyone into different sessions, their own session due to network issues after the host leaves the game. Or another person is randomly picked by the R* system to take over as the host. Usually its the later that occurs.

If you do have a potato PC, then please, do not be the host. If you find yourself as the host in a public game, it might be helpful to press ESC > Story > Exit. This exits RDO and puts you back at the main menu system. Then enter back into RDO using options like Free Roam or Camp.

If you have a strong PC, then you can help out by being the host. To force this to occur, bring up Resource Monitor in Windows OS, in the Overview tab, find RDR2.EXE and right click it and press Suspend. Wait approx 10-15 secs. Then right click it again and click Resume. This should end up tossing you a little pop-in message in the upper left within the game; saying that "due to network error you have changed sessions"; then in-game press L key and go to Players. You should be by yourself now. Eventually as you play the R* system will see you are one of the hosted public sessions and allow people to be thrown into it eventually.

If a potato PC is running the session, then it's going to be terrible for everyone in it.

Overall when you are in a session, even a public one where someone else is the host, most of what goes on in the game world is triggered by your machine. Unless there are players within proximity of one another, as then this would trigger a more in-depth sync between the game worlds of all players involved within that close proximity, otherwise their PCs don't play too much of a role in the game world sync'ing for you. If players are close enough to show up as Blue or Red dot, then all of those PCs are attempting to do this in-depth sync I refer to. If they are far enough away that no one shows up on anyone radar/map; then this sync doesn't need to occur in such an in-depth way.

[Wulf]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

It doesn't have much to do with R*
R* just runs scripts, a transaction system and things like that.
The game itself is run off of each persons PC. If you have a slower PC, that doesn't affect how NPCs load into the game world and such.

R* Games are Peer-2-Peer. So whoever was the first person to load in; is the Host. If that person leaves its possible it will randomly either throw everyone into different sessions, their own session due to network issues after the host leaves the game. Or another person is randomly picked by the R* system to take over as the host. Usually its the later that occurs.

If you do have a potato PC, then please, do not be the host. If you find yourself as the host in a public game, it might be helpful to press ESC > Story > Exit. This exits RDO and puts you back at the main menu system. Then enter back into RDO using options like Free Roam or Camp.

If you have a strong PC, then you can help out by being the host. To force this to occur, bring up Resource Monitor in Windows OS, in the Overview tab, find RDR2.EXE and right click it and press Suspend. Wait approx 10-15 secs. Then right click it again and click Resume. This should end up tossing you a little pop-in message in the upper left within the game; saying that "due to network error you have changed sessions"; then in-game press L key and go to Players. You should be by yourself now. Eventually as you play the R* system will see you are one of the hosted public sessions and allow people to be thrown into it eventually.

If a potato PC is running the session, then it's going to be terrible for everyone in it.

Overall when you are in a session, even a public one where someone else is the host, most of what goes on in the game world is triggered by your machine. Unless there are players within proximity of one another, as then this would trigger a more in-depth sync between the game worlds of all players involved within that close proximity, otherwise their PCs don't play too much of a role in the game world sync'ing for you. If players are close enough to show up as Blue or Red dot, then all of those PCs are attempting to do this in-depth sync I refer to. If they are far enough away that no one shows up on anyone radar/map; then this sync doesn't need to occur in such an in-depth way.

This is exactly how I understand it as well.
I haven't joined any friends sessions since the error began as everyone I frequent is using this circumstance as a reason to take a break.
I'm curious if the error still happens when others join someone else's private session.
If we can deliberately make it happen, in a test environment, we should eventually be able to track what's not syncing correctly or at least have a much clearer understanding of what is going on.
I know, this would be something R* should be doing. I'm a troubleshooter in my profession and by nature.

[JuiceWSA]

Originally posted by Wulf:

I know, this would be something R* should be doing. I'm a troubleshooter in my profession and by nature.

It is difficult for me to believe that R* doesn't know what's 'causing the FFFFFFFFs.

I'm sure there are some pretty smart cookies over there in The Network Division. Something like this - affecting the entire player base - doesn't slip through the cracks.

If they'll admit it, or do something about it - remains a mystery.

[teenienagini]

I'm also having the problem. No NPCs, no animals. Then I had a coach with horses but no driver, that happend a few times. But after loading again it either rand perfectly but short (then the error happend) or I had this lonely, lonely world to play in...
And before you say something about the performance of my computer: It ran perfectly in the last year with RDR2 und RDO. I never had problems until two days ago this Error FFFFFFFF started... Since that the game is a mess.

[Trespasser07]

Originally posted by Profile Name:

is anyone else not finding any animals? or when I'm out and about i noticed i stopped seeing roaming npc's with horses and wagons. I'm trying to hunt for material but I've spent like an hour searching for something to kill and cant find any.

Yup, happens to me all the time, no animals, riderless horses, driverless wagons, ghost towns except for merchants. There's a tedious workaround where u have to rest by the fire in camp, go to change appearance, exit to a solo lobby, etc. But it sucks.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Ok so I played today for over 4 hours; only 2 different sessions within that time; both public. No mods, no scripts, nothing but the vanilla game like it should be. Everything was fine until I'm within reach of Treasure Stash (yes it's legit I used treasure map) soon as I go to open it I get the "FFFFFF" error thing (game crash). Whatever this error is, it comes right back soon as try to play RDO again. Story Mode though no problems. To get the error to not happen again so quickly I have to reboot the PC.

I've only gotten this error while playing maybe less then a handful of times in all my hours of playing RDO on PC (since March 2021). IDK what is going on. If you search online you'll see this game went through this before. Whatever it is its on Rockstar's end. I played over 12 hours in my own private sessions; even with friends (we all using same password via the startup.meta script) and we had no problems; not with Rockstar transaction system, treasure maps, metal detector; not really any problem to speak of while playing it that way.

*shrug*

[Wulf]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Ok so I played today for over 4 hours; only 2 different sessions within that time; both public. No mods, no scripts, nothing but the vanilla game like it should be. Everything was fine until I'm within reach of Treasure Stash (yes it's legit I used treasure map) soon as I go to open it I get the "FFFFFF" error thing (game crash). Whatever this error is, it comes right back soon as try to play RDO again. Story Mode though no problems. To get the error to not happen again so quickly I have to reboot the PC.

I've only gotten this error while playing maybe less then a handful of times in all my hours of playing RDO on PC (since March 2021). IDK what is going on. If you search online you'll see this game went through this before. Whatever it is its on Rockstar's end. I played over 12 hours in my own private sessions; even with friends (we all using same password via the startup.meta script) and we had no problems; not with Rockstar transaction system, treasure maps, metal detector; not really any problem to speak of while playing it that way.

*shrug*

Nice report.
Public sessions only, check.
Possibly corrupts "something" that possibly gets reset upon pc shutdown, check.