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The GTA Online Problem – How Co-op Doesn’t Work In A GTA Environment

Next week will mark the fourth anniversary of the fifth entry to one of the most, and controversial game series of all time. It carries on to be a success.

July 30, 2019

Grand Theft Auto V is popular, like REALLY popular. GTA Online, however, is on another level!

Next week will mark the fourth anniversary of the fifth entry to one of the most, and controversial game series of all time. It carries on to be a success even to this day due to GTA Online. The online component has managed to make Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two a lot of money, with the mode making $500 million in micro transactions on top of the $1 billion that was achieved through GTA 5 sales.

Now Rockstar has continued to add more and more content to GTA Online to keeps its longevity going. This is nothing new in the world of online gaming. We have seen this for years in the case of World of Warcraft and Eve Online as a way to keep the player base consistent. Rockstar won’t be anytime soon changing this, their bosses over at Take-Two do seem to find the online component more important than the promised story DLC which is what the fans want slightly more than more online features.

But this is not a discussion on bad business ideas. GTA Online is very enjoyable, and the content that is released is a hell lot of fun. However, the content also shows a glaring flaw that GTA Online has in terms of co-operative play, which has been pushed by Rockstar many times with modes such as Bikers, VIPs and, the main culprit, Heists. I call it the GTA Online Problem, not an original title, but clearly the most straight forward. Games such as Payday and Left 4 Dead are built solely around the Co-op mechanic (with the option to go it alone if you so wish) and the player base reflects on this. People who go online in these games all have one thing in mind, to play with someone else, whether it being a stranger or a friend, the game is built to ensure that cooperation is achieved one way or another if two or more people end up playing a game. GTA Online is different. The nature of GTA’s gameplay is mayhem, there is no doubt about it. The series enables the player to act out in ways that would be deemed very unacceptable in the real world. It is a cathartic release, (well for me anyway, Ted Bundy 2.0 people) and working on the same page as another player is the last thing on peoples minds. That is unless that other player is a friend of yours. This is where Rockstar saw an opportunity. Looking to implement the heists in the single into the online side of GTA 5, this was a move by Rockstar to ensure retention in online players with a highly regarded mechanic in the single player campaign, which was in fairness a little lacking.

So we get Heists, great, it is fun, when all the elements are working together. Have a group of mates in your session, you have got yourself a nice paycheck at the end of it all. But let’s face it, our friends are not going to be online all the time, and rather than waiting for them, you decide that you are going to do a heist mission with complete strangers. This is where the problems begin. Going back to what I said earlier about co-op modes working well in games which are built to act that way, meaning that all the players of the said game will go in expecting to work with other people to achieve the end goal. GTA is different, the purpose of the game is to be an absolute jerk to NPC’s and by extension, players which are online. Yes, there are other modes in the original build of GTA Online which meant working in a team work, team deathmatch being the key example of this. The reason why this works is that there is a competitive edge to it, and in all fairness, there is no team effort really required, all you have to do is just add to the kill count by essentially being a jerk to someone.

Modes like Heist, on the other hand, require communication and actual teamwork, teaming with a stranger will be an unpredictable result, either they will work with you, or be a jerk. They will mess around, not listen to directions, even if they have a mic (instead they will would be probably playing music full blast, the prerequisite for any GTA player with a mic it seems) and they will rage quit because of a heist failure. THIS is my major gripe with the mode, and any other co-op mission of this nature. Because if one person leaves for any reason, that’s it, mission over and all the hard work you have put in the mission was all for nothing. The amount of times I have tried to complete the car setup part of the Prison Heist for the 4 months and I haven’t been able to do it because of people either quitting the game or not joining at all.

And that previous point is the main reason why I wanted to write this tonight, people have worked this out themselves, and no one wants to play. Heists are at a deadlock right now because rules set by Rockstar does not work well with the player base. The co-op modes only work if you are with friends, and that is the truth. Maybe in the future Rockstar will implement a server where people that want to play co-op will be able to co-exist so that people could play co-op modes with strangers who are willing to play by the rules of the game. Right now, Heists and other modes such as Bikers and VIPs do not work well, which is a shame because I really want to be able to play a heist mission or lead a gang of bikers without having to worry about unpredictable nature of other players.

You will never be able to remove this element, that is like trying to fully control free-will which is an impossibility. Just some measure would be nice to the make the experience a little more bearable.

Still, four years and still a best selling game. Not bad GTA V, not bad.

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