Grand Theft Auto Online

[haxxorzd00d]

So, GTA V is coming. The online part of it launches on October 1st, and I'm totally ready to party with some friends. The question is, which friends?

If you're getting the game, use this thread to post your platform of choice and in-game name, so we can add friends and group up for some mayhem in Los Santos.


Platform: PS3
ID: haxxorzd00d

[Thelepearchauns]

I have it preordered for the 360.

However...if and when it comes out for PC, there is a good chance ill get it again to play with all my PC buddies

[Invunarble]

Hurrrah fellow 360 player!

Feel free to add me on XBL sometime lep if you'd be up for madness when GTA online comes out.

[Thelepearchauns]

Gamertag: Theleprechaunz

[haxxorzd00d]

GTA Online is out now! I'm still looking for anyone playing on PS3 - add me and we'll break some banks together.

PSN ID: haxxorzd00d

I know that out of the 3 people on Escapecraft that aren't part of the PC master race and actually own a console, most of them have an Xbox, but come on, there must be some more PS3 players out there.

[Invunarble]

There MUST be more people out there!

I know motor has a 360 as well, but he doesn't have XBL gold... motor y u no gold?!?!

[Wildwill002]

I know that out of the 3 people on Escapecraft that aren't part of the PC master race and actually own a console, most of them have an Xbox, but come on, there must be some more PS3 players out there.

[Invunarble]

I'd just like to point out how horrible Rockstar's servers have been today, with this just on the social club website alone:

Only you, Rockstar.JPG

I'm not even going to mention how painstaking it was waiting for hours for each individual FUCKING LOADING SCREEN to finish, just to have Rockstar delete my character over and over and over again...

[RobipodSupreme]

OMG add me on facebuk, invun, i r ur bestest bud-E!

[Invunarble]

I would, but as you can see THERE IS NO TEXT ANYWHERE

[Wildwill002]

Have you tried turning it off and on?

[Invunarble]

I tried throwing it... is that a good idea?

[motormaniac]

I am gold noaw.

[Invunarble]

Gooooooooooooooooold!

Add me on the rockstar social club sometime motor, and we'll go rob banks or something together

[motormaniac]

Well I would love to. But y'know, my character got deleted so I lost all progress of even finishing the tutorial missions. And now I'm back at square one because the first mission won't start even though it is a race against an AI. Rage.

[Invunarble]

Did you see what I said in IRC? When you get to the loading screen for the first mission, just wait it out. It took me about an hour, but I finally got past it (actually came back to a different mission) so I assume you don't *have* to win the race to proceed.

Now you just have to experience the fun of all of the random ping timeout and kick errors!

[Thelepearchauns]

I played the first mission and the dicked around a bit for an hour with the 3 other people who managed to beat the 40 minute load screen monster...

[wokka1]

You'd think that Rockstar would have done their homework and realized what it takes to start up a new online game Sounds like they don't have their server infrastructure in place to do this.

[Invunarble]

Rockstar's servers seem to be a collective mess on consoles in general. I mean, I don't know what's worse - GTA IV's "Disconnected from game session, returning to singleplayer" error messages 95% of the time or GTA V's infinite loading screens... :\

[aflycon]

I'm sure they're just slowly working out the kinks. This is the first weekend since the multiplayer's been available, so most of the servers are fully loaded and bogged down to the point that it's almost impossible to play today.

When GTA V launched, they almost doubled their sales expectations. I imagine it would be pretty difficult to account for nearly twice as many players as you'd thought, with only two more weeks to prepare.

So, I think they'll fix their shit soon enough.

[aflycon]

Warning! Lots of curse words and angst concerning GTA Online ahead! Read at your own risk!

Spoiler! :

So, I think they'll fix their shit soon enough.

How totally, thoroughly, unconditionally, utterly, wholeheartedly, unmitigatedly, absolutely, entirely, positively wrong I was. Rockstar has not fixed their shit and I am beginning to think they won't bother at all.

On day one, it took me over an hour to join the lobby for Lamar's race so I could get on with the introduction. That, I can understand - hey, they didn't expect to have so many players. But from there, it really only went downhill. Servers have been totally unreliable, and the only time I've been able to play for more than about 15 minutes without a disconnection is between midnight and 4am (Blackadder can attest to this). For the first few days, I coped with this. A few jackasses killed me on sight, and I somehow died on my way out of a convenience store without banking the cash from previous races - lost about $40K a few days in. But that's okay, right? It's GTA ... you're bound to get killed a few times.

Then the worst of it started.

Four or five days in, I joined GTA Online only to face the Character Creation screen again. What? Where was my character? What happened to Rank 17 Mike Hunt with all of my money? I was pissed, but I chalked it up to an error with my connection; I made a new character (in Slot 2, to be safe) and started again. Luckily, I found that the bank money saves to your Gamertag, not each individual character. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but okay - I wasn't complaining. Other than an absolute fucking idiot that got paired with me in the introduction for my new character, all went smoothly (minus the constant disconnections and loss of 3-5 ranks every now and then, due to cloud server errors) until I reached Rank 29.

I said that was the worst of it, but I never saw this coming.

In one night, I played from about 3pm to 10pm with some friends, dealing with the disconnections since the cloud servers had allegedly been fixed (and I wasn't losing any ranks, so it was okay). I got up to Rank 39, finally had exactly $217,000 for the cheapest Heist-worthy house, and was able to settle down. Penniless, I explored my new apartment and garage before calling it a night. When I came back the next day, I was irate - for a second. My clothes had changed, and the counter at the top of the screen said $141,000, not around $50 as it had the night before. And, just to the left was my RP bar: reading Rank 29. I did a double-take to make sure I hadn't spawned on the street; no, I was in my house, but my Rank had been reset and I'd gained almost a hundred and fifty grand ... after a moment, I realized that my save data had simply reverted to how it was when I started playing the day before.

So, I figured that $140K and a house weren't so bad in exchange for ten ranks, and started from 29 again. Each night for the next three days, I'd find myself up to about Rank 35 before calling it quits, and back at 29 the next day, with the same amount of money, regardless of how I saved or what I bought. Interestingly, I was able to buy and customize cars and store them in my garage, without them disappearing alongside my Rank. For a few days, I was farming GTA$ in exchange for RP, and that was okay with me. I thought I'd game the system until Rockstar fixed it, because what else was I going to do?

Leaving the Los Santos Customs in my Futo, I found some dickhead waiting outside. He shot me - one shot kill with what looked and sounded like the Combat Pistol, which was confusing - and took, then destroyed my car. Okay, he had to pay the insurance premium, and that should have been enough for me. But you can't just go around doing that, it's a shitty thing to do. So, as I passed him after highlighting him on the map, I tossed a Sticky Bomb on his car. One press of the D-pad later, I'm a Bad Sport and have been removed from the game. Turns out his shit-lord friend was driving next to him and both cars were destroyed in the blast.

Are you fucking serious?

GTA Online's Bad Sport servers are a special type of hell that no honest player should ever have to visit. Everybody there is either genuinely a bad sport or, like me, upset about being mislabeled. The difference is that, unlike these troglodytes, I do not go around taking out my anger on the other "bad" sports by recklessly killing them, preventing them from completing missions, destroying their property, etc. Originally sentenced to 24 hours, this is now my third day in the Bad Sport server; the worst weapon at the hands of an angry bad sport is the report function. Every time another bad sport reports you, another day is added before you can be "forgiven" for whatever made you a bad sport. But this function is unregulated, and available to every angsty or malevolent player labelled as a Bad Sport.

Is it not glaringly obvious enough what the intrinsic flaw in this system is? There is NOTHING to prevent the fifteen other bad sports in your session from adding fifteen DAYS to your sentence, every time you try to wait out your twenty-four hours. Luckily, not everyone who's a bad sport is also a brain-dead idiot, so I've only had about three days added to mine so far. But I've done not a single thing to warrant it! I haven't killed anyone, blown up any cars, even collected a bounty - I've barely left my apartment.

So, I'll be waiting out my remaining 30 hours offline, since I can't even risk joining a server lest somebody decides to rally the others and add two more weeks. In short, GTA Online is an absolute fucking shitstorm and should be entirely avoided until the end of October, save for logging in one time so you can be added to the list of stimulus package recipients (which Rockstar will probably never make good on). Do not even think about destroying someone's Personal Vehicle, because if you enter the nether world that is being a Bad Sport you will not see the light of day again for some time.

TL;DR GTA Online sucks

[Invunarble]

I was pissed, but I chalked it up to an error with my connection; I made a new character (in Slot 2, to be safe) and started again

One of the tips Rockstar threw into the loading screens about a week after GTA Online's launch was that pressing x to refresh your connection on the "connection failed" screen and making a new character in your existing character's spot would fuck up your save data. Granted, the message doesn't appear that often, but I'd assume your character reverting to level 29 had something to do with that (also another tip said to make sure you go back to singleplayer from the D-pad wheel or the menu when you're done playing, as that forces a save).

I don't think they conveyed their message that clearly, though. For about 5 days since the game launched, I went through 6 different characters all because the servers would keep shutting off and deleting my character (I didn't know I wasn't supposed to save over each slot at the time either) - and the original starting race you do with Lamar was fucking horrible. Lo and behold, I must've spent at least an hour or two on each character that week trying just to get past that loading screen.

On the topic of the fucked up "Good sport/Bad sport" system they have going, I think I've almost kind of gotten lucky with it working. Because of the fact most of my game sessions have just been doing private races with friends, I haven't been thrown onto the bad sport servers yet because of all of the "good sport" rewards I would get from farming these missions. However, this seems like it's all easy to lose: I was flying in a buzzard a few days ago, doing bounty hunting missions, and I ended up shooting a rocket at someone pursuing the bountied target and blew up his car with his friends inside - which instantly netted me a kick from the session, 4 fucking popup messages telling me I'm going to be a bad sport if I do it again, and coincidentally a 20 minute loading screen just to find another session.

I'm really not liking how it's been almost a month since GTA online's release and the only potential fun you can have with it is doing private missions with friends. Just about every other mechanic in the game is fucked up in some way or another - whether or not that's their reputation system, matchmaking, people fucking killing you in a jet while you're about to take off (which to Rockstar's credit, at least passive mode does work), or just getting random timeout errors or "kicked from session" messages when neither of the two have happened.

Rockstar's bug patch they released last week didn't fix shit, either - The only noticeable bug that they fixed with spawning in personal vehicles and being locked out when you exit, only to have a duplicate spawn nearby wasn't really a big deal to begin with. The fact that most of their networking problems and even their most simple game mechanics still don't function properly is much more irritating then a duplication bug with personal vehicles.

Don't even get me started on how broken missions are, especially now that everyone resorts to farming them (and they nerfed mission payouts, too)...

[motormaniac]

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet. At the start yes, they were having bad problems. Server messups, characters getting deleted, etc. But (at least for me), this has all been fixed now. You get the occasional server hiccup but that's about it anymore. Tired of getting shot by people? Turn on passive mode, then you can't get shot until you turn it off. I've blown up multiple people's cars out of rage and haven't had any bad sport problems. Whenever I do it, it just says "Bad Sport! Don't do it again yadayadablah". And if you're still having character issues, they're dropping $500,000 into ALL GTA online bank accounts for everyone who has played this month.

[Thelepearchauns]

In reality, I havnt had any problems since the first night. I havnt done all that much in the game, only reaching RP13, but the problems everyone describes have never happened to me. I still have the same derpy looking character from day 1. I havnt lost any money or reverted levels. Ive never been put on a bad sport server despite starting several firefights and intentionally stealing other players cars and driving them into the ocean. I usually go 10 matches/missions before any kind of connection error and at that point its time for new blood anyway. Im loving GTA online so far. I guess im one of the lucky ones

[Invunarble]

Some of these hashtags that get thrown on your snapmatic pictures on the Social Club page are really strange. Here's an example:

#ronalternateswindfarm.PNG

Remember kids, #ronalternateswindfarm

[Invunarble]

Also, if any of you guys are sick of having to do races over and over again to get anywhere in the game because fucking Rockstar nerfed mission payouts, then check out this glitch I just recently discovered:



I've done it a few times now, and it's worked excellently for me - I get about $30,000 each time I do it. I haven't tried it with any other vehicles then the Baiti 801, but I'd assume it works just the same. Keep in mind that you can't sell vehicles to the LS customs when they're worth more then $50,000 (so keep an eye on that), and you also have to set your spawn point to "Last Location" instead of "Property" if it's already at that by default (or else it may not work as intended).

Quick, do it before Rockstar patches this! >_>

[aflycon]

"If any of you guys want to have your character's stats and bank wiped, then check out this glitch" - Invunarble, 2013

They've been cracking down on glitch-abusers these last few days. If you've been making use of the Bati bug, you're probably going to get fucked.

Anyway, my problems are pretty much gone by now. The most recent patch seems to have smoothed over almost everything, which is nice. I did spontaneously lose $25K the other day, but that's like three races so I really don't care much.

What did you guys buy with your stimulus packages? I bought the Velum, and Blackadder bought the 10-person bus (no regrets).

[Thelepearchauns]

I bought a Voltic and a nice high rise apt.

[Invunarble]

"If any of you guys want to have your character's stats and bank wiped, then check out this glitch" - Invunarble, 2013

They've been cracking down on glitch-abusers these last few days. If you've been making use of the Bati bug, you're probably going to get fucked.

This must be a recent thing - I did the glitch before patch 1.05 came out, and I still have all my vehicles (my Bati 801, Infernus, Coquette, Carbonizzare, and chrome Adder, all with max stats) and $350,000.

But yeah, if they're actually looking at stats and wiping your characters now, I'd recommend not using the glitch I just mentioned.

[aflycon]

I'd just be wary. I'm thinking they're taking my money because my spent/earned stat doesn't match up (I had mentioned when I kept getting my progress reverted and was spending the money anyway). I lost another $50K spontaneously again today, which isn't much - but it's a pain. I wanted to put some sick turbo on my Dubsta.