This week, Rockstar Games released a big Grand Theft Auto Online update focused on stealing cars. Committing acts of grand theft auto, if you will. This new expansion is titled “Import/Export.” It adds new ways to make money and some wacky vehicles to spend that money on. The problem is that, unless you already have a few million, the expansion will leave you with little to do but watch the rich have fun with their rocket cars.
Import/Export adds new ways for players who’ve achieved CEO status to invest their cash. CEOs can now purchase large storage facilities where stolen cars can be kept until you sell them. Before they can sell cars, CEOs need to steal cars. Car theft missions involve scenarios where players will have to get their hands on expensive rides, then drive them back to their warehouse with minimal damage to the vehicle.
Once this is done, CEOs will need help “exporting” vehicles to different buyers in San Andreas. Just like the CEO crate missions added in a prior expansion, the car theft and car-selling missions can be interrupted by other players in the session. For example, rival biker gangs can steal cars from you during missions and sell them for scrap and XP.
CEO stuff is the one part of GTA Online I never really messed around with. Well, that and boat races. So before I could try and play any of the new content released on Tuesday I had to register as a CEO. This cost a cool $US1 ($1) million (in-game money, of course). This left me with about $US450,000 ($611,747).
The cheapest vehicle warehouse is $US1.5 million and you must own one of these locations before you can do the new vehicle theft missions. I had enough money to become a CEO, but I was too poor to get a chance to play any of the new Import/Export missions.
I’ll do some grinding, but for now that stuff is out of my reach. I’ve read online that these new missions are decent ways to make some good money, but considering the amount of cash needed to start them it seems like the rich are getting richer. Looking at Twitter it seems I’m not the only one feeling like the new stuff in this update is really expensive.
But what if you do have a few million dollars lying around? What new toys can you purchase with your wealth? Well a bunch of wacky and ridiculous vehicles for starters. These new cars are the coolest part of the Import/Export update. There’s a rocket car…
Via Axelphobia on YouTube
There’s a big semi with a large metal plow on the front, allowing anyone who owns this vehicle to bash their way through rush hour traffic.
Via Totof13 noob on YouTube
You can buy an amphibious four-wheeler or truck. That new amphibious four-wheeler looks like someone stuck wheels onto a jetski. It also seems to be inspired by this actual real life vehicle.
Via GTAPro on YouTube
My favourite vehicle is the Ruiner 2000 which is a parody of KITT, the talking super car from Knight Rider. The Ruiner 2000 has missiles, machine guns and best of all a parachute. Fans are already doing some cool stuff with this new car. One fan even flew it from the top of Mt. Chilliad all the way across the map to the Los Santos Airport.
Via Axelphobia on YouTube
These are easily some of the most ridiculous cars Rockstar has added to GTA Online and with the recent addition of a Tron-inspired motorcycle it seems Rockstar is willing to make GTA Online more bonkers with each update. The game has changed a lot from the days when you had to wait for your boring car to get delivered by an idiot mechanic.
But if you want to get wacky you better be prepared to pay a lot of money. Some of these vehicles can cost millions of dollars. The Ruiner 2000 costs 4 to 5 million GTA$. If you didn’t want to grind to get that much cash it would cost you up to $US70 ($95) in actual USA cash money. It’s almost unbelievable how expensive some of these vehicles are.
Doing certain special missions can lower the price a tad, but to unlock these missions you have to do anywhere between four to 32 steal missions to earn a discount. For example, to buy the amphibious four wheeler you will need to successfully finish 12 steal missions.
And to even gain access to those missions you need to be a CEO and own a storage warehouse. It’s complicated, and GTA Online doesn’t do a great job of explaining this stuff until after you’ve spent some money on becoming a CEO.
But the Import/Export update is more than just crazy expensive cars and the illegal selling of them. This update, which, mind you, is free to all GTA V owners, also adds some nice feature that fans have wanted for a long time. For $US100,000 ($135,944) players can finally change their facial features.
And some are really enjoying the ability to fix their “ugly” old faces. GTA Online players can now buy the Elegy, a car that was originally available only to players who joined the Rockstar Social Club.
There is also a new adversary mode in GTA Online. I haven’t spent much time with it as I was busy doing CEO missions and grinding for money. But the mode immediately reminded me of the graffiti mode in Tony Hawk Pro Skater and I even got some Splatoon vibes.
The way each player or team is trying to cover the board with their “colour” is a fun mechanic to bring to GTA Online. I’ll have to play more to know how well balanced it is, but the matches I tried weren’t blowouts and driving around dodging players and trying to paint the map is exciting. It seems like Rockstar has really leaned into more colourful and strange game modes, instead of just adding more street races and deathmatches.
Import/Export is a large update for GTA Online and it is more evidence that the game ditching the old consoles for its newer updates was a smart move. Since doing that GTA Online expansions have gotten bigger, weirder and more complex. The prices are still way too high for players who aren’t spending every day in virtual Los Santos, but there is enough stuff outside the high priced toys for GTA fans who haven’t played in recent months or weeks to jump back in.
Just be prepared to see a lot of rich people with rocket cars flying around.
Comments
17 responses to “GTA Online Has Become An Incredible, Ridiculous Playground For The Rich”
It was already that way inside the first couple weeks, where you couldn’t do anything in the open world without getting destroyed by a tank or an attack helicopter.
Yup they force you to buy shark cards.
I’m definitely not justifying it, but I’m just looking at things from all sides here.
They have released many expansions for the online portion of the game; enough content that it would be considered an “expansion pack” or paid DLC to cover the costs of them making it. The problem with doing this in online games [as many have learned over they years] is that it greatly fragments the community, and makes it hard to find games.
Instead, many companies are choosing to release all expansions/DLC to everyone, but to unlock them you can either pay money for the in-game cash, or spend exorbitant amounts of time earning the money for free.
It’s a bit of a weird psychological problem, right? If they just had them to be bought up front, people who wanted to would happily do so and be done with it. But because of the in-game currency thing, it makes it feel a bit more…. I don’t know how to put it…. dirty? Because, to quote George Costanza, “Why should I pay, when if I apply myself, maybe I could get it for free?”
Naughty Dog have done this with UC4, with similar response from the community. It’s great having a non-fragmented online community, but a lot of people can’t see the forest from the trees and get upset about the payment method instead.
I say, just buy the shark card, unlock the content, and make peace with yourself that you’re just buying the online expansion. But that’s just, like, my opinion and all :p
“online expansion”
Except that would unlock all the content. Not 1 car for $95. 1 out of 9 cars mind you.
Mind you, the online mode itself still isn’t fully stable either. Still has some problems, not the several months after launch problems, but still for the amount of money you are proposing people spend, bullocks that.
I will stick to my actual Witcher 3 expansions. Those were dam good value for money. They cost less and unlocked all the content added, not just a small fraction of it.
Bad fragmentation is a myth. These communities are not the same ones, there’s one community for vanilla and another community for expansions. If anything it’s the developers fault for creating space for ‘no choice’ between content so that the system moves over to an expansion, then you can’t play original and so everyone feels ‘compelled’ to pay.
And just look at this article: the community will do it to themselves. We’ve now got rich kids in their own little cliques and the rest in the commons and if you actually play Grand Theft Auto and steal and blow up other players cars then you eventually get put in a naughty corner where all that riff-raff belongs.
Soooooo much like real life then?
I’m giggling a little that the auto currency exchange add-ins for the article got a little overzealous with the in game currency numbers. Now I’m imagining that Australians get slugged with Straya tax in game when they play GTA Online… There’s no escaping it.
GTA could be the kind of series to do something stupid like that as ‘commentary’.
2K would use “commentary” as an excuse for them to continue being assholes.
Need a solid gold house to go with that rocket car.
I played the game on the PS3 and had around 23 million, a top notch apartment, a cool blue ute and a little house in the desert for my dirt biking…………
the main reason i keep out of GTA Online these days is because i cant afford all the cool stuff i want to experiment with. while there are others out there hacking themselves with money to buy these things. its shite. sorry Rockstar, but im not fucking going to grind 10s of hours to make the money i need to buy one car. at least up the rewards for heists and big jobs so that it can be profitable to play around with all the cool new expensive things.
They dont want you to grind for 10s of hours, they want you to give them a few hundred dollars.
They are doing you a favour! If they had released these as DLCs it would be about 10 dollars for each of these packs but because they are free you can spend hundreds and still not see all the content!
yup! dick move rockstar! DICK…MOVE….!!!
$10 for each of the PACKS? lol
At the current rate, each CAR would be at least $20-$30. The entire pack (like the one he describes – containing 9 cars?) Ha!
I *WISH* each pack was $10! Fantasy land.
GTA Online is one big con. If you aren’t ‘playing’ GTAO already, you should absolutely not start under any circumstances, you’re not missing anything.
Everything about Online is rigged, even down the the game environment, which has been adjusted from Single Player to cause more frustration and to trick you into wasting your ingame money. Even for those who pay to get the new stuff quicker, the ‘game’ is still slow and full of loading screens and adverts for time wasting game modes that are not fun by any measure.
You have to throw down big game money to essentially buy access to these new game modes, which will take a very long time to start profiting from, then at a trickle.
GTAO overall is something that is not good human lifespan vs entertainment value.
Even the new expensive armored vehicles in the new update explode after a short while of use, unlike how they function in the scripted missions, in which they are basically invincible.
hmmmm, its not AS bad as you make it out to be, some of my fondest memories of gaming have been in GTA online, BUT! and thats a big BUT! i was playing with 3 other real life people, while using team speak. and we were heisting together and wreaking havoc one each other in open world. it makes a big difference i think.
Shows what you guys know … Everything I own in game and everything I have bought has been with money that has magically dropped on my head 😉 😉 hahaha
Just the other day I raked in a cool 25mill just standing around.
Upgraded my boat, and bought some pretty cars.
So you all enjoy sinking real money in GTA.. I’ll use both sides of my brain to gain my $$$$
Make it rain!
until you get banned if you are the one running the mod.
ive had money dropped on my had only a few times, and it was only a few million at a time.
no where near enough to get any decent stuff. mind you this was all before the last 4 or 5 dlcs were released
I hate the new DLC someone mod my account hahaha im not joking