GTA Online is falling short, real hardOctober 27, 2013 by

GTA single player was undoubtedly a good game.  Executed well, solid gameplay, decent story, and it sold well.  You can't fault it.  But the online has been a train crash since day one - and I'm tired of hearing everyone defend it with pipe dreams of updates and patches.  You can't release a broken, unpolished game and redeem it with a bunch of patches.  A game should be complete and operational when it is released.  Games are not held to some higher standard above everything else in our world.  You can't release a car without airbags and be like oh we'll fix that later.  You can't release a movie and be like "just kidding this is the real one next month".  Gaming is in an era  where DLCs and updates are common - but that should improve the already finished product.  It should NOT be there to fix what wasn't done properly - and if it is, IT SHOULD FIX IT THE FIRST TIME. Numerous updates and patches have already been released, and GTAO has only been active a few weeks.

The game is broken and it is losing a passel of players on a daily basis.  Connection issues are still plaguing players and preventing them from getting on.  Glitches and bugs are causing hundreds of players to lose everything they fought for and have left them aggravated and looking for a different experience.  And that's just the whoopsies.

The design itself leaves quite a bit to be desired.  The free roam mode is great in concept, but the PVP modes, which includes races and deathmatches, is nothing but crap.  One obviously missing link that should have been obvious from their other games such as RDR and GTAIV, is posses.  Posses are the ability to team up with friends and stay together across game types.  BF3 called them squads.  COD calls them parties.  But there's a reason they are so common - it works.  Instead of taking what they did right in previous titles and building on it, GTA decided to start fresh and tried to fix what wasn't broken.  In turn they broke what didn't need to be.  The only deciding factor of teams is the crew system, and it doesn't even work.  Even if you ignore your friends that aren't in your crew, even if you decide to ONLY play with your crew and no one else - you still find yourself on the opposite of your crew mates, and that's after you spend an hour trying to connect.  Then the actual online gameplay is basic, clunky, and boring.  And if you do well?  You get a "killstreak" which makes your screen bloodshot, and impossible to see.  Hindering your performance.

And to speak of the crew system, Rockstar made a big deal about it themselves when MP3 came out.  It was the in game version of a clan, complete with clan stats, clan battles, challenges, and extra XP - but here we are, a month into the game's life, and crews are still useless.  Something that should have set the game apart from other online PVP games is holding it back.

Ultimately I feel like Rockstar is constantly plagued with the same problems.  The same problems that RDR online was riddled with.  Rockstar has great ideas, but horrid execution.  I am a huge rockstar fan, but I am extremely disappointed with all things Rockstar MP related.  I played RDR for years, online, every day.  And the same bugs, glitches, and server issues that made that game unplayable within the last year have seemingly carried over to GTA.

I'm sure they have the opportunity to release some killer updates and DLC to fix and/or improve the online experience.  But that doesn't erase the huge opportunity they have already blown by losing thousands of players to horrible planning and execution.

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