How good is GTA Online? That’s not one of those statement things, like ‘Man, how good was Robert De Niro in Raging Bull?’ It’s a genuine question: how good is it? Is it good? Have you been able to get online?
Given that I haven’t finished GTA V’s single player yet (and I’m really having to resist busting out a bunch of other games like Pikmin 3 and FIFA 14 as a distraction) I haven’t had the chance to check it out yet. Mainly because I’m not that huge on online games. I love playing shooters online — mainly Halo 4 — by that’s it really.
Am I missing out? What am I missing out on?
Think of this as your place to talk about GTA Online: the things you love about it, the problems with the experience, what you’d like to see. Any war stories> You can drop them here too!
Have at it!
Comments
53 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: GTA Online”
I’ve probably dedicated about 2 hours attempting to play GTA Online so far, but haven’t been able to get past the initial pre-race screen for the tutorial race. Attempt number 3 tonight.
+1
No major problems for me other than the occasional drop outs and mission glitches but yeah all good playing on Xbox 360 already got the $400,000 house with 10 car garage
I’ve been trying for the last two nights, I’ve just about lost all interest in GTA: Online. Love single player though.
You SHOULD be able to create a solo instance from the online tab in the main game’s menu & just race lamar without it screwing around. Worth a try anyway.
Thanks, will try tonight.
Yep. I’ve been starting in story mode a lot, and then creating an invite only game for myself and friends. Also stops random other players from killing you whilst you’re trying to complete objectives..
Yep same, tried a bunch of times last night and the most promising was at 12.30 where i sat through the unskippable cutscenes with Lamar only to have the whole thing freeze up once I tried to enter the first race.
So frustrating! Especially when there are a lot of people who have been pretty successful in playing it. I’m gonna go crazy if I watch that cutscene again.
Exactly what happened to me every single time. Still happening today.
hey dude, if you start an invite only game it will boot with just you in the world. This will let you complete the tutorial sections of the game. Once you complete them you should be able to jump across into online as normal.
worked for me mate.
After a few unsuccessful attempts, I tried that myself and it still hung on the “Launching session” part…
It’s worth a try obviously, but it didn’t work for me.
PLayed briefly last night, has serious potential to be a massive timesink. Can’t wait to do a friends/crew only session away from random griefers though
It’s been interesting. Managed to get on the servers, get kicked off, timed out, sometimes it saves, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve made a few characters and seen the intro more than a few times. The modes/jobs themselves are plentiful perhaps not so varied but there is a lot already there considering.
The only real appeal for me is playing with friends, forming crews with them and taking on other crews to earn the rep and the cash, or just chilling in a virtual playground both diverse and decadent!
Heaps of races / deathmatch spots but 95% of them give me a ‘could not download’ message. Very few actual missions and most of them have the same download error.
I haven’t even tried yet. I only finished the story on Tuesday night as the online servers were going live, but I went to bed once I finished the final mission. My wife was playing GTAV last night and doing collectible stuff. she would periodically try to connect only to sit at a loading screen for ten minutes then quit to dashboard. I think she’s managed to get in long enough to make her character, but she hasn’t been able to DO anything.
(Reviewed on XBOX 360S)
Not missing out on much yet, as most stuff doesn’t work most of the time.
On the second night I did manage to get through the tutorial mission, but I’ve had almost no luck getting jobs to load. There were alot of griefers treating the open world as deathmatch which ruined it a bit, but it looks like there’s a voting system to end up throwing all the griefers together in separate sessions which is good.
I ended up bolting out to Blaine county to get away from all that, and ended up just running around robbing convenience stores. Wanted levels seem to increase more rapidly in online, by my third or forth armed robbery I went straight to four stars (that’s when losing my wanted level in between robberies). The plus side of this though is that I found myself exploring alot more to hide from cops (particularly helicopters). This is where things really shine for me. Being able to finally hide in a bush, or under a bridge, or in a tunnel, and for it to work how it should, is so liberating. This is the sort of improvements we need in gaming, not shinier graphics.
Agree with most of this. Hiding from the cops is fun, to an extent, and it’s satisfying when you pull it off.
Somehow though, I’m feeling like planning a fun heist together is more so ‘the sort of improvements we need in gaming’, rather than hiding in a bush for a while.
GTA Online is a lot of fun, but the servers never work. Whenever you try to start a mission or play a game, it fails to download and kicks you back into free roam. Which makes it harder for people to begin playing as you have to play two missions consecutive before being allowed into free roam. If neither game loads up then you’re kicked out of the game altogether.
This also creates a problem with earning money, points and exp, as that’s where most of it comes from. Without missions or gametypes, leveling up and earning money is a grind and doesn’t pick up until level 10.
Aside from that, free roaming is a lot of fun, particularly when you get a gang and start holding up stores, speeding away from the police (where the stars rating increases the more you rob in a session) and hoping whoever stole the money is trustworthy enough to give the gang an equal share. If they don’t, you hunt them down, or put a bounty on their head once you reach level 10.
Problem is, once you’ve robbed every store once then every time after is a grind. I’m under the impression that once you level up high enough then banks and such are unlocked. But you can’t do that in free roam as the exp payout is so low.
Without gametypes then that means a lot of people in free roam have nothing to do but hunt each other down. Once the servers pick up and we can start playing the missions then it will really pick up. Until then, all you have is store robbery, and spawn killing.
(also, how can you play Halo 4 online?)
I’ve seen the Launching session screen at the tutorial race longer then I’ve seen the intro because of character save glitches. I’m sure once it calms down and I can actually get in, it’ll be awesome
Damn dude, you’re totally missing out on the vast array of amazing error messages you get to experience.
Hahah this ^
I’m reposting from the other thread but I can’t help myself:
http://i.imgur.com/YyIk2Gh.jpg
Couldn’t get past the “waiting for other players” on the first race mission. I am dreading getting in though and meeting the same d!ckheads that plagued RDR. I see a lot of comments above about these griefers. Hopefully the option mentioned works because with a world like this, I hope I get the time to roam and explore without dying every 5 feet.
Strange thing is I have read a few comments about how griefers are almost synonymous with a game like GTA, but it is heartening to read twice as many more comments from people saying they just want to play with friends and crews without those annoying arse hats. I guess I will just have to find one of those crews.
Had about sux hours of messing around in free roam with a friend last night. Was great fun taking it in turns of being getaway drivers for random robberies. Had no issues with it.
Jobs, on the othe hand, we’re hit and miss. Some worked and some didn’t.
You from NZ bro? 😉
DOH! Hahaha. Stupid smart phones ^_^
When its working reliably it’ll be god solid fun. At the moment there’s still way too many disconnections and stalls when joining a session and numerous instances where you drive across the map to get to an activity only for it to immediately say that it failed to download & kick you back to whatever you were doing.
Driving around in a solo/closed friend instance* and being able to just drop into open multiplayer jobs on the fly is pretty cool, it should let you play with a mate or 2 just having fun & then play specific activities with randoms on a whim rather than having them running around pissing you off acting like dicks.
One notable bugbear is related to the occasional long session loading times, the game plays the radio while loading and if you’re sitting in the load screen for ages, it can get damned annoying especially when it inevitably loads one of the stations that you hate. You get control of the station once the interface loads but that’s after the long loading time.
It’s worth trying now but it’s probably not a bad idea to have a book or laptop/tablet handy just in case you get hit with some delays.
*you select the instance from the menu’s online tab, select play & it gives you options for what type of match to do
Finally got on last night, after the tutorial race I glitched around a bit, had an identical car to mine spawn on top of the one i was driving, teleported around the map a bit, BUT THEN things settled down and it worked perfectly, no lag whatsoever mucked around for a bit before joining my crew and then things went from fun to hilarious. We did a couple of hold ups which were hysterical as we all yelled profanities through our headsets to “intimidate” the clerk, I had one jerk knock me out as we were escaping a stick up and to my delight when i respawned 3 of my crew members were kicking him to death in the middle of the street for me. I could go on and on but I’ll just sum up by saying It is glorious and made all the better when playing with friends. I can’t wait to get back to it.
I’ll just continue with the single player for now. I’ll go back Online when the servers have calmed down. In the meantime I’ll believe you if you say it’s amazing
It’s nowhere near as polished as the SP. My advice is keep playing SP as long as you can. I’m torn now, because Online is so horribly broken, but my SP millions seem worthless as they’re locked away for me only..
I’ve managed to do a couple of races and jobs with my xbox live friends but every other job fails to download. Trust me once all the connection issues etc have all been ironed out it gonna be awesome. Patience is the order of the day.
Lvl 8 ThUG 4 life, any crew looking for members?
KoAU is the unofficial Kotaku Australia one
Everything seemed to start working for me and mate late last night on PSN. He was a bit ahead of me and wandered into a store to find me while I was doing my first hold up. Next thing we are in a shootout with the cops and I’m screaming at him to drive faster as we had a helicopter spotlight on us.
I am wondering what that looked like to the other players we shot past….
All in all, after the issues, the short time we did play was very fun. I just 100%ed the main story, took about 70 hours and the GTA:O looks like it has a lot of potential to keep that number rising. The missions are still buggy, but it was fun going back to enjoying the amazing environment after the grind of collectables, and even more fun with a mate.
Played for a couple of hours. Won the first race. Stole some drugs. Got myself a sweet green Buffalo as my first car and have about ten grand in my account.
My issues more revolve around a two week old baby requiring quite a bit of nocturnal attention. Think it’ll be some time before online is all that viable for me. Looks fun, though.
Its been working for me this morning.
Feels like it will get much better as the community settles down and everyone develops a code of ethics and divides into different groups like productive player, socialising players or ‘battle royale’ players or something else entirely.
Definitely this. Its happened with DAYZ as well where theres servers dedicated to assistance, playerkillers, competitive play etc. So it’ll happen here too.
I had to reboot about 6 or 7 times to even get the initial tutorial race to load, and in the end it was just me and Lamar (no other players).
Then during the “steal drugs” part of the tutorial, I was kicked from the game by players I had never seen. To make it worse, when I got back in and completed the mission, I was told I was a “Bad Sport” for quitting during a mission… Ugh.
So after finally finishing the tutorial and being able to join my friends, what is there to do? Drive around, hold up stores, races, and deathmatch style games… What about co-op games? Major heists? Tennis? Golf? Basically, there’s bugger all to do unless you want to play deathmatch. And even when you do that, quitting separates you from your friends, and dumps you in a random open world.
Oh, and then when I was trying to figure out where the “quit” option was in the menus, some dickhead ran up to me and started punching me.
Honestly, the whole thing is pretty pathetic so far, especially from such a big company.
Ughhh. In the 30 or so minutes I got in last.night before cloud saves went.and my character was wiped; it looked like a clever idea and a fun, unique MP experience but ive never put up with so many connection errors before.
I was able to play for around 3 hours last night. It put me in a server with a friend and we had a blast. Most missions say ‘failed to download’ when you try to initiate them but I was able to host a deathmatch with 4 other players. The free roam feels exactly like the single player and being with a friend cruising around holding up stores and evading the cops together is so much fun. Loving it so far.
@shiggyninty and I robbed a bunch of gas stations and liquor stores together. Epic getaways!
I had a few problems in the first hour or so, but being that i tried getting in as soon as it opened, that was to be expected. I haven’t had a problem getting in since. I’m sad for everyone that’s having problems. Because apart from the griefing, it’s pretty fun to free roam with other people. The missions do tend to lag or time out though.
But the griefing is a huge problem. There is a setting called “passive”, where people shouldn’t be able to kill you. True enough, bullets go straight through you. But they can still run you over and steal your gear. The second you step into a car, you’re vulnerable too. It’s pretty crappy that the setting doen’t work properly yet.. There is so much griefing..
they should close GTA online till they fix the problem, last 3 days haven’t got to “see” the online intro yet.
I tried joining on launch night out of curiosity, but that failed. But I went and played for an hour or so last night had a lot of fun.
Got my character pimped out in a leather jacket and some aviators, then went and stole a car, I then proceeded to shoot a dude who wouldn’t let me into LS Customs, I was tempted to steal his purple sedan but I though I should be nice.
Then I though a drug deal was on the books for which I got a killed on sadly. But I chased down the dude who killed me and flattened his corpse in my muscle car.
Then I thought a bit of light gun point robbery at the local service station was up, the person who came along with me to rob it decided to shoot the attendant and flee, whilst I took all the money and ran from the cops. Then I dove into some Last Man Standing, where my team came out on top. I found it enjoyable & fun.
I have the morning off tomorrow.. I’m really hoping it will be possible to get online and play even a little bit then.. not wanting to have everything all at the same time.. just want to experience the game in an online dimension in some form.
Oh baby. If your goal is to experience something related to GTAV online in some form, have Rockstar maybe got something for you. /end snark
Seriously though, I’m sure you’ve gathered from the above posts, low expectations are the key here.
Definitely 🙂
Now I can’t even access the cloud servers anymore.. lol.. it’s gone from bad to worse 🙂
Launch into story mode and then start a private game. No griefers, invite your mates, no lag.
When GTA Online Launched i could do the character creation and tutorial fine its just missions i cannot do tells me cannot download.
Sigh third night and no joy so far… Can’t progress beyond the errors/loading screens; even when attempting solo play the game keeps loading forever and getting nowhere
After finally being able to get online, I was greeted with screaming wog children and cars constantly chasing/ramming into me while I tried to get from point A to point B. Then I ejected the game, threw it out the window, and was compelled to take a shower immediately because I felt so dirty.
It’s enjoyable when you can actually GET online! Long ass loading times really spoil it for me.
They’re getting there. I just finished a session with friends. It’s great when it works. Doing jobs is the way to make good money right now. They’re fun too.
I spent about 1 hour (realtime) in the screen saying “joining session” before it worked.
I only had issues the night online went live, I put in almost 8 hours uninterrupted play yesterday, all in a crew only world and was accidently bumped into open worlds with no issues as well. Hopefully everyone else gets to experience it like I have. I’m still waiting for bigger heists to open up and its been bit of a grind to get exp so far, i’ve just reached level 11, i’m hoping they will make it easier to level up.