[h1]Five Things Still Wrong With 'GTA Online'[/h1]
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I’m desperately trying to log some hours into GTA Online in order to be able to convey what I think about it, but it’s proving difficult. Like every other major online launch in recent years, GTA Online is riddled with issues, and it’s still incredibly hard to play for a number of reasons.
Here are a few of the most pressing technical problems at present, along with one or two thoughts on the content of the game itself.
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Login Issues Persist
While it’s not complete shutdown
like the first day or two after launch, GTA Online is still having trouble even getting me into a session during anything approaching peak hours. Yesterday, I was able to play a bit early Saturday morning, but as soon as everyone started waking up, I was booted and never able to log back on for the rest of the day. And as anyone who has sat through GTA’s lengthy initial slideshow loading screen, it can be frustrating to wait a full five minutes per attempt, only to be greeted by a timeout message.
Infinite Loading Loops
I’d almost rather have the game not work completely then have it act like it’s working, only to freeze when I attempt to get into a job. Often times I’ll enter a mission, and a little loading wheel will appear and the options for the mission will never end up showing up. Other times, after a job, the camera will pan overhead for a bird’s eye view of the city, but again, the loading never stops. Some places are completely broken like the shooting range, which simply blurs the screen, but displays no options at all. The problem with each of these is that there isn’t even a time out message after a waiting period, and there’s no way to back out. I’ve had to restart my game frequently with these bugs, and again, the initial loading time to get back in is a headache.
If you can get back in, that is.
Progress Wiping
The biggest problem with the above issue is that it’s often paired with progress wiping. As in, I’ll run around, rob some stores, sell some cars to Los
Santos Customs, buy some new clothes and guns and make a bank deposit, but then I’ll run into an infinite loading loop which will force me to reset the game. While most online games save progress whenever you do anything of note, there’s apparently an issue with GTA Online’s servers which is killing that ability. I’ve lost entire levels of progress, thousands and thousands of dollars and many of my purchases because the game simply doesn’t save when you think it will. This is arguably the biggest glitch in the game right now as I really don’t want to spend time doing anything if it’s likely my progress won’t even be saved. I’d rather just have the game not let me in at all at that point.
Money Reward vs. Time Spent
Moving away from technical glitches, when I have been able to play, I’ve noticed some weird disparities with mission rewards, something that single player also suffered from, but in a different way. While jobs aren’t paying
zero dollars, which happened to poor Franklin, Michael and Trevor more often than not, time spent doing jobs vs. the reward you get for them seems to be a bit…off. For example, I did a “story” mission (if you can call it that) where two teams were tasked with getting a briefcase back to their respective bases. It was a rowdy affair and lasted a lengthy 20 minutes as the case carrier kept getting killed repeatedly. In the end, my team won, and we got $2000 for our trouble. Afterward, I signed up for a three minute bike race in which I got second place. My reward? $2800. I may be wrong, but generally I’ve found racing to be WAY more cost efficient than doing missions, and honestly the most reliable, fastest way to make money is either sell cars to Los Santos in free roam or rob stores and lose a two star wanted level. But this gets repetitive quickly. I’m hoping that eventually there will be bigger jobs and cash rewards will pick up (not to mention actual heists), but the highest end cars and apartments and weapons seem like an impossible pipe dream with the meager earnings so far.
Character Creation
While no one is disputing the beauty of Los Santos and the San Andreas countryside, Rockstar spent far less time on making its citizens visually pleasing. Without a doubt, GTA Online has the worst character creation system I’ve seen in years, which is a problem given that the core concept of the game is to want to make your character become an ultimate criminal badass and be the envy of the town. Rockstar was trying to be cute with their little genealogy system which has you choosing parents and grandparents instead of manually adjusting eye height and cheekbone width, but other games have those systems in place for a reason, because you can actually create interesting looking characters with them. But here? Everyone is some generic douche wearing sunglasses. I spent a solid hour trying to mix and match parents to make my female lead look not terrible, but I’m still not happy with the end result. Clothing also fits abysmally, and the fact that there’s really only one body type across characters makes it even worse. Saints Row has the
far better hero creator, and while I’m not asking for green hulk skin or cat eyes, there needed to be a lot more work sunk into making your character more customizable.
That’s all for now. I’m off to go attempt to login again and see which of these bugs I’m getting today.
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