Have Rockstar become too big for their own boots?

thecremeegg

thecremeegg

thecremeegg

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Given the horrific state of GTA5 online what with loading times and hackers and seemingly nothing on the horizon to be done about it, do Rockstar deserve the amount of praise they receive?

If this was a game by EA then the gaming press would have slaughtered them by now but it seems they're just getting away with milking the cash and not bothering to sort anything out? Sure the game itself is fundamentally pretty good but it's completely neglected.

I should have learned from the disaster that was GTA 4 online but I didn't :p

So, are they still worth all the glowing words of praise or are people are ****ed off with them as me?
 
Rockstar have banned countless hackers and already provided multiple patches to ban hackers. The problem is GTAV is probably one of the more popular online games on Pc at the moment and even more so for hacking due to the open nature of the gameplay.

They have tried to resolve some of the loading time issues but most of it is down to connection issues with it being p2p which is just luck of the draw who you are matchmade with. It could be designed better but it was probably designed 4+ years ago with previous generation consoles in mind which this is probably one of the best methods for a seamless online experience.
 
thecremeegg said:
Given the horrific state of GTA5 online what with loading times and hackers and seemingly nothing on the horizon to be done about it, do Rockstar deserve the amount of praise they receive?

If this was a game by EA then the gaming press would have slaughtered them by now but it seems they're just getting away with milking the cash and not bothering to sort anything out? Sure the game itself is fundamentally pretty good but it's completely neglected.

I should have learned from the disaster that was GTA 4 online but I didn't :p

So, are they still worth all the glowing words of praise or are people are ****ed off with them as me?
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EA (and Ubi, and Activision) get slaughtered because they release buggy games which aren't especially great anyway. They don't exactly feel like they're reaching for something special, and yet they're still delivering substandard QA.

People will be patient with some missteps when they feel that those issues are due to ambition rather than laziness or money grubbing. And if they feel that those issues are being worked on - rather than starting to see adverts for the next game in the series and knowing it's never going to be fixed.
 
Witcher1979 said:
Every PC game has hackers online, why should GTA be any different?
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Not to this extent though! I can't name another game I've played that has hackers in 90% of servers!
It's almost impossible to play online without either disconnecting or meeting a hacker. It's pathetically poor!

I haven't seen any evidence from Rockstar that they're working on sorting it out or preventing it?
 
To be honest they've done a really good job with GTAV. I was very sceptical of what the 'port' would be like after the horrible experience with IV.

They deserve a decent amount of praise for producing what I would call the definitive version of the game for PC. The online portion might be an awful experience. I don't know because I didn't buy it for the multiplayer and as such I haven't really touched that aspect of the game.

Combine that with the good experience I had with Max Payne 3 on PC, L.A. Noire & RDR on Xbox and I would say they are one of the better development houses around today. Yes there are aspects of their business that I'm not a big fan of (most prominently Social Club) but I'm not about to stop buying games from them because of that.
 
thecremeegg said:
Not to this extent though! I can't name another game I've played that has hackers in 90% of servers!
It's almost impossible to play online without either disconnecting or meeting a hacker. It's pathetically poor!

I haven't seen any evidence from Rockstar that they're working on sorting it out or preventing it?
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You must have been super unlucky then or cursed as I've put a good 10-20 hours into GTA and not seen one hacker :/

Rockstar have banned a good amount of users a few week back and plus each patch has fixed some loop holes as well as background changes made that fix glitches in jobs/money cheats etc.
 
People call hacks most of the time for no reason at all, they just think it is hacks. Lucky companies only ban with 100% proof not what people "think" they are seeing. Amount of people who called hacks on A2 DayZ was freaking unreal, 80% of the time they were wrong.
 
I have yet to come across a hacker online too, granted, i haven't played loads online, but i've played enough times and on enough servers to determine my results. What grinds me is the ones who leave a heist half way through, leaving the rest of the players not able to complete it. Other than that, i've not had a bad time online really. I think the fact i don't play much is keeping me interested though, i'm still only level 26 i think.
 
wez130 said:
I have yet to come across a hacker online too, granted, i haven't played loads online, but i've played enough times and on enough servers to determine my results. What grinds me is the ones who leave a heist half way through, leaving the rest of the players not able to complete it. Other than that, i've not had a bad time online really. I think the fact i don't play much is keeping me interested though, i'm still only level 26 i think.
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I played a good while without seeing any but then they just started multiplying...

I reckon a good chunk of those who leave in heists are being DC or CTD, someone I know crashes quite often.

I think I said in the GTA thread, the problem isn't really people leaving, it's the fact that as soon as someone leaves it's an automatic fail when there are plenty of setups you could do solo or with 2/3 people.

That twinned with the loading times, lobbies and cutscenes and the inevitable failures (sometimes for really stupid reasons) and you can be attempting one heist for hours.
 
So far i've had a really good experience with GTA:Online. Been a heck of a lot smoother than when it was first released on PS3.
 
I think the game is absolutely stunning and I have yet to see a hacker.

But the online experience can only be described as shoddy at the best of times. The way you're constantly connecting and going back into free roam mode between heist missions etc is horrible. There is also always at least 1 person in the group who has issues connecting to the rest of us.

As someone in my group of friends said. "Its testament to how good .this game is that we're willing to persevere with all these connection problems"
 
I think Rockstar has done quite well, sure the MP loading times are so bad I actually refuse to play it (although last time round I played it, it was a lot better I admit). SP is fantastic although I feel the world is a touch empty and I'm in noway drawn in to do side missions like I was in previous versions. No going to the gym, far less enterable buildings etc.

GTA being the massively popular game it is, you're always going to attract a ton of hackers. Look at any equally popular game and it's the same when it first starts out, it's how Rockstar handle it over the next month or so that matters. If they implemented VAC things would be tidied up sharpish.
 
Rockstar don't do 'Online' - they never could. They excel at a single player experience and that's it. This is where they got massive acclaim for because GTAV is a single player game from the outset with online mode a secondary thing.

What we have is basically the exact same experience that console players had in 2013, which is how trainers took off as fast as they did - very little work needed to be done from the console mods. To 'fix' online right now would mean changing the way the game works at a network level and adding dedicated servers because they have no control as it stands.

I love online but agree it could be way better in a great number of areas. Them nerfing mission payouts back in the console days to promote 'shark cards' didn't help their reputation and it made the game much more of a grind then it was and out came the youtube exploit videos and mods to help players actually get to a decent level quick. The overall levelling system being linked to weapons is just all wrong i.e homing missles from Lv1, useless RPG at Lv100? GG Rockstar.

I am surprised a lot of folks haven't seen modders/hackers yet too. At this stage I'd assume that 90% of sessions one would join has someone doing it and I've been avoiding publics from day1 because I don't want to lose my stuff.

At the end of the day look at it this way, GTAO is a testbed for the next version which will be a lot better...I hope. My advice - stop messing in publics and do private sessions with friends before one of those hacks hit you.
 
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It's all about the single player with GTA imo, they get the praise because of how good that is.

The hacking problem is a problem with PC in general. Its one thing that console gaming has going for it, at least everyone is on a level playing field.
 
I honestly don't know what you expected for one of the biggest launches in a long time. There's hackers in every game whether you like it or not, it only feels so much more prevalent with GTA Online because so many people are actually playing it at the moment. GTA Online is broken at a fundamental level in a number of ways though, but I doubt they're gonna go back and re-work the whole system any time soon. We'll just have so deal with P2P servers and "ban waves" instead of a proper anti-cheat system. I do give praise to Rockstar though for making GTA Online actually functional, must have been a lot of work just to get the whole game world's traffic synced up for up to 30 people at a time, among other things. If you don't like dealing with hackers, host a private, or join a new sessions.
 
I don't play online.

I think GTA V is excellent, and Rockstar worthy of the praise they've garnered over the years. There aren't many companies out there who give me confidence that whatever they produce will be of exceptional quality.

Online is always a cesspit.
 
I have put in roughly 150+ hours into this game from launch and 70 of those hours have been online.

In that whole time I have seen one hacker chucking money about, and one hacker alter desthmatches with nukes etc - that is all I have seen so far. I have been lucky though as I have been in servers with people complaining over chat that hackers are in the session and I'm like...where?

GTA is one of the biggest games so hackers are to be expected, as someone else said, it depends how r* deal with this, if they bother at all.
 
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