I mean, technically, you can. They will invite you, you can accept their invites, and you may then begin a long and difficult sequence of missions with a team of random internet weirdos. You just shouldn’t.
I should know, I’ve been trying. Having started a new character on the PC version, and with most of my friends playing the game on console, I haven’t been able to settle in and try the heists with anyone I can confirm is a breathing and functional human being.
So I figured, fuck it, I want to play these heists, so I’m going to play them with internet strangers, see how it goes.
Big mistake.
Rockstar go out of their way to emphasise the difficulty and need for communication with these missions in the loading screens, and you spend enough time looking at them in GTA Online that I should have paid more heed.
My first mission was over almost as soon as it began. The host had a mic, and spent the entire transit time trying to plan a strategy. We arrive at our destination, a dude jumps off a motorbike, runs into a crowd of bad guys armed with only an uzi and is dead in about half a second. He respawns and does the same thing again. Game over.
Given the time lost in loading screens, matchmaking and driving to the heists, and with a vision of hours wasted with this idiot, I dropped out of this game and vowed to try another night.
My next attempt went a little better! We were supposed to hijack a plane at the airport. We got there OK, killed the guards OK, and despite an early casualty clearing out the hangar bay were on our way. Then one player got in and started taking off without the rest of us. I ran to get on the plane, and just as I got near, it lurched in my direction and ran over me, ending the heist.
I shouldn’t have given it a third try, but I did, just to be fair. My third attempt involved me and another guy heading to the docks to steal a car off a freighter. Having both arrived in my car, which was both weird and kinda cute at the same time, I got out and started sneaking towards the entrance.
I don’t know why I bothered. My fearless/brainless companion had run ahead and started firing a .50 cal pistol at every scalp he could see sticking out over the top of the ship, which triggered the alarm and had him killed twice in about two minutes. Heist over.
Maybe the problem here was communication. Not many people like to chat publicly in this game, and without the ability to coordinate tactics and movements properly, these operations that otherwise require intricate teamwork are instead being attempted by mute individuals, running around blindly and doing their own thing.
Or maybe the problem is just that GTA Online is full of idiots.
Whichever it is (and it might be a combination of the two!), don’t be like me and ignore Rockstar’s warnings. Heists are for friends, not strangers.
Comments
20 responses to “You Can’t Play Heists In GTA Online With Randoms”
Eh, depends on the people you can find. All the randoms I’ve played with have been great and I’ve been able to get through the first 3 heists with only a few restarts and little to no communication
I’ve recently started gta online. I just take my cues from Payday; if you don’t know what you’re doing, follow the leader and try not to get shot. If you’re doing something significantly wrong someone will let you know.
My only problem is that after a lot of heists I feel the need to quickly pop into passive as there are a lot of dick bags that will turn on ex team mates the second they know you have money.
All the heist money goes straight into your bank account rather then being in cash. So you shouldn’t panic too much
Agreed with everything said here. I played with one or two consistent friends, filling the remaining spots with randoms. Holy shit, some players are so damn bad. You’d get the people who’d inexplicably leave half-way-through. You’d get the people who would just try and blow everyone up (including themselves). Along with children and generally bad players.
Finishing everyone Heist took us one month, with semi-regular play each night. Particular missions stood out as difficult, mostly because of the randoms.
Not looking forward to dealing with them again.
I was at the paccific standard and i only had 2 friends online at that moment and started the final heist with 1 random.
And we finishd the heist without a retry and $1.001.342, also the guy did not have a headset.
So yeah not all randoms are bad.
This game is terrible at matching you with people from the same continent as you so most of my online experience have been atrocious.
Really poor effort by Rockstar
The problem isn’t communication…its just stupidity. There are plenty of games where players will learn to react to teammates’ ACTIONS, and not rely on being told what to do.
Granted, GTA isn’t the type of game that promotes players to act with any semblance of sanity and intelligence…
You forgot to mention the part that even if you do manage to complete the heist there’s a near 50% that your so called team-mates will just act greedy and attempt to kill each other you included just to score a few extra bucks or for there so called lol reasons.
Doing Prison Break Finale last night with 2 other friends and a random – got the guy out of the prison, lost the police in the plane and was skydiving down to the landing zone. Friend in chopper waiting, me and other land all safely… the random though… drops his parachute and slams flat into the ground.
Never been so mad.
I had a demolitions heli person not use the heli while we were in the prison. That was a frustrating experience…
I can top that. Had everything done, we all just needed to get into the Heli to finish the mission. I’m in the Heli as the pilot, all three ransoms arrive just fine. Two get into the Heli… Third walks right into the back rotor, failing the mission. We all laughed for about 5 minutes straight… Then failed several times before calling it a night.
I’ve had something similar to that happen twice in the past 24 hours. It’s frustrating beyond belief, especially when you’re only seconds away from completion! Nothing more demoralising than falling flat on your face when mere centimetres from the finish line!
I find it helps to put your mic on and tell them to stop dicking around. Suprising how many people will stop being idiots and get the job down when you tell them to get in line 🙂
That second heist that Luke mentioned, only the designated pilot can get in the plane. He/she is supposed to take off and leave the rest there to mop up.
Was going to mention this. The rest of the team is supposed to leave on the ground.
The amount of times I’ve seen people say “I’m joining a friend”, or “I’m going for din er” etc. Then they leave, and Bam! Heist over because someone left. I agree with you Luke. I spend more time in heists being frustrated at having to completely change what I’m doing because someone decided that they could do the whole mission without anyone else’s help….
When I play with friends, I can really get into the story and character of these heists, and it makes them that much more enjoyable.
You’ve just summed up my issues with randoms in team based games. With friends, everyone knows what needs doing, does their respective job like a pro, BAM! We’re all rolling naked in money at the end (not together, far too awkward). And much of the time, everyone savours their teamwork coming to fruition. With randoms, too often there’s that one player hell bent on lone-wolfing and screwing up the gig because of it. I kinda like that the GTA heists penalise you for it, but it does become a pain in the arse after a while.
Exactly! Promoting team play is great! However, it can be frustrating if everyone is penalised because of the people who decide they can go alone. But I suppose that’s exactly what team work is. A team is only as good as it’s weakest link right?
Would help if it wasn’t as laggy as shit all the time and matches you up with people from other countries or something that can’t speak a word of English.
Not sure why the matchmaking can’t try and group you with locals first.
So I’ve had some similar stories over the past week.
So I was doing the Humane Labs Raid finale and at the start someone used the chat to tell us that he is “Da best pilot evarz” so he wasn’t granted the roll of the pilot, this was quite frustrating as the gunner because every time another helicopter appeared on my map he would ignore me as I was telling him to go up, using both my mic and the text chat he would sit roughly 3 ft off the ground. Miraculously we managed to survive until the ground team managed to get outside the lab and we went to collect them from the smallest beach in existence only to have the rotors bounce off a rock and tip the helicopter at an angle to turn our leader into minced meat sending him ragdolling off into the horizon in a manner that reminded me of the afternoon cartoons I used to watch. The pilot apologised though and asked to swap places and the following turn we finished it.
I think the most frustrating heist that I did was playing the Prison Break with people I assumed were quite proficient at it as the leader was giving directions using the text chat instructing the level 6 pilot who had never flown before what to do. Once the pilot had picked up the ground crew and taken off, the leader left without notice. His friend who was with us told us that the leader had to get off because it was bedtime, now considering that it was 9:30PM at this point I assumed that he might be in a different timezone but his mate added on that he does in fact live three hours away from me. I’m guessing he didn’t meet the age restriction for playing GTA V.