GTA Online has two faces: one is a sometimes beautiful, sometimes sarcastically crazy, content-rich fun factory. The other one is a rotten, evil money making giant from a true dystopia. Why did I leave and why can’t let it go?
It would be foolish to not know acknowledge my mistakes in the first place. Like you and like everyone else I am familiar with addiction. Those were self-pity and cigarettes for me but as I tried to quit smoking, I really got into online multiplayer gaming. I started playing with GTA Online after I quit my shitty job at a school complex. I was totally burnt out and felt truly depressive.
It was bad because I had time grinding. At first I enjoyed the content but I realized its limits quickly. I was grinding harder and harder but the insanely repetitive tasks, the overall emptiness of the game and the terrible community made me realize: I should quit.
Having such problems is my flaw but designing and maintaining game mechanics that use them against the user is a problem. And it's not just Take Two's, or Rockstar's fault: the whole gaming industry is plagued with ideas that use a fake sense of greatness, victory and progress against us, against our vallets. And we just can't get enough of 'em.
I did quit eventually. I got a good job now, some perspective, I even started running routinely. I've gotten out but I can't shake the feeling that there are a lot of people trapped in this endless loop of repetition. Whose fault? Doesn't really matter, it just needs to change, be changed and be supervised by strict, morally clear regulations. The one thing you can do to make the industry better is to vote with your wallet.
We live in a cyberpunk world, baby.
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| The only thing I may look back from time to time is this race mode. Pure crazy fun. |
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Pay-to-win mechanics, grinding all day
Now back to some actual problems with the game itself. I remember the time when seeing the shadow of a Hydra or hearing the sound of its machine guns was enough to start looking for my brown pants. And then came the Gunrunning Update.
- Flying motorcycle with rockets.
- Road fortresses.
- Demo bullets for the already OP heavy sniper.
The already problematic game balance was gone completely in just a few hours. It got worse since then as more and more overpowered weapons came to the streets of Los Santos.
The game has been reduced to a typical playground where rich bullies show their superiority with the trendiest, most colorful and biggest toys. Doesn’t matter if it’s intentional or unintentional, the ground concept of GTA Online has become
- nothing more than to encourage the playerbase to spend real world money on buying in-game currency
- grind all day
- or to cheat to get the goods.
The meaningful storylines of GTA V are gone now.
If you take a look at the big picture, most new content only serves this purpose. You grind all day to buy the opportunity to grind all day differently. It feels so reduntant now.
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| There are loads of different missions but grinding is just grinding, right? |
Cheaters, beggers, bullies
During those countless hours I've met hundreds of decent players in the lobbies. If there was a well developed social layer inside the game, I may have stayed in contact with some of them, too.
Now the problem is that the game doesn't control you too much in terms of behavior. Everyone goes through the asshole-mirror eventually: I've become a bully sometimes, others just simply cheated. In my opinion, the hectic anticheat system and the badly controlled behavior side only helps the revenue stream. Why, you ask? It's simple really; a lot of players won't cheat, either out of fear, or they just don't want to. It means they're gonna grind all day or buy in-game currency with real money to get the bigger... toys.
Keeping the game in a socially somewhat broken state, adding well-priced grinding content and demolishing the complex background of it's pulling power, the awesome single player campaign are layers in a grand scheme to get more and more money of the playerbase's pockets. Once again, it doesn't matter if it's intentional or not: it does work this way.
Part of the problem is that a lot of people play game who doesn't supposed to. A mother load of 8 – 14 year olds roam the streets of public lobbies who shouldn't be there. No [finished] personality, no English skills and no interest in progress via playing the game; most of them just want in-game money to cause havoc and have fun with... toys.
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| This seems natural, right? |
Desecration
Now this one's a bit subjective but it's one part I can't get past.
Remember Knight Rider? The charismatic knight in shining armor type'o dude with the friendly, talking car doing good all over California without actual violence? Cheesiness or not, that car became a childhood icon for a lot of us.
Now Rockstar took the concept, get rid of the chatty AI pal and put rockets into it. It's just enough to avoid a lawsuit but enough to spit on its origins.
Remember Ready, Player One's scene with the Zemeckies cube? That faint music theme and the awesome effect on the movie goers? "Fuck this" said the designers "let's put rockets into the DeLorean, too. Weaponizing another peaceful icon.
(It's also out of place but worse, it's another balance-breaking asset.)
You may defend the creators that "it's just a stupid game" or "GTA V used twisted and over-the-top violence to critisize the American society" but as I mentioned, GTA Online is empty. Every character talks you about money, every new content is aggressively pushing towards grinding or buying shark cards and community is not controlled.
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| It's kinda fun on the mission but making it a weapon for kids? Oh my god, please no. |
Summary
These problems had an alienating effect on me. The guys I started with quit the game earlier; and I wasn’t really a fan of the community to stick around with anyone. I found some awesome heist crews, we did some missions together but these connection didn’t stick.
That lonely feeling contradicted the overall multiplayer aspect of the game. Why am I here? What is my purpose? Is there an end goal?
Of course there wasn’t any explanation or meaning. It’s just long lost. If you’re friends play the game and you can work together well, it’s hell of a lot fun. If you’re a solo player… you may try, just don’t follow my mistakes.
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| I took this one on the night when I finished The Doomsday Heist. Right after the mission we had a snowfight with the other crewmen. When we finished I went for a cruise... just to realize this "loneliness". The game is sometimes beautiful but it's way too alienating. |
...and of course, the technical issues all over
This game loads a lot and where I live, connecting to servers is especially slow. You also have to wait a lot for players when you want to play not so popular game modes. It neither helps that the system is really clunky and oversimplified. Also there were lag issues everywhere.
Long loading and connection times can be forgiven if the game is rewarding. GTA Online is often not.
One of the reasons I gave up was the increasing system requirements as new content (bigger toys) arrive. When I started playing my old HD6670 was sufficient enough to run it at around 24-30 fps on 900p with minimal settings. But the last mission of Doomsday Heist tanked it: if I could reach 12-14 fps with lower resolution, I was lucky. The game became unplayable; only pure luck helped me finish it. Even it was a foreseeable problem, it still made me disappointed a little. I did not want to invest in a new videocard just to play a game I was getting tired of.
So was it worth it?
Still, I miss the game somehow. What I loved:
- the look and feel of Los Santos
- just driving around with some funky car listening to the radio
- just driving around with some funky car making… friends, I guess?
- escaping moderate/not OP players while doing a mission in public session
- those tricky public session challenges
- random FFAs in the city/desert when everyone uses balanced weapons
- Lester’s utter craziness
- doing crazy stunts with a Buzzard heli… while chasing someone
- the heists: these were the best multiplayer experiences I’ve had in a while
- the Nascar-like racemode with the awesome tracks and cars
These are just some of the highlights. It’s a real heartache to see so much potential being wasted for the sake of the ever-growing revenue.
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| Did I mention how beautiful the game is? |
My advice is...
If you really wanna play with this one, do it! But if you start showing any of the symptoms I mentioned… run and find something more positive and less time-consuming before you start hating it. And do it with friends! It's much more fun that way.
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| Play it with friends! Heists are pretty much awesome: even if you're not into this grinding stuff, these mission worth the time. |
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| I tried to sneak past these guys peacefully. Aaaand see that chopper on the left? And that weird stuff in the air...? |
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| The Sabre GT is pretty much my favourite car I've ever owned in any computer game. |
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| My trusty Ocelot. I never really liked those supercars, simpler sport cars are simply much more fun. |
I also used these pictures for my other GTA Online articles at Nagyon Bödön.
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