Grand Theft Auto online has been released worldwide today and, as expected, has encountered some “teething trouble”.
Before we get into the troubles, here are some details about Grand Theft Auto Online:
- Access to Grand Theft Auto Online is free. For those who haven’t connected yet a small update will download when connected and from then on the Online mode will be available through the pause menu and from the character radial.
- Grand Theft Auto Online takes place a few months before the single player story.
- There are anti-griefing mechanics in place to prevent players stealing cars from garages or shooting up an apartment.
- Grand Theft Auto Online is going to be a constantly evolving “collaborative” effort between Rockstar and the players. There will be many jobs available from the outset with more being added in with the upcoming content creator
There are a couple of really interesting paragraphs too. One about the character creation system:
The hereditary-based character creation system of Grand Theft Auto Online allows for a multitude of options to create your avatar that will then inhabit the online world of Los Santos & Blaine County. Choose your gender then decide on your mother and father. From there, you can choose to give one parent genetic dominance or leave them more evenly matched. The choice is yours. Next, you adjust a set of lifestyle variables which help determine your character’s appearance and starting stats. Decide how much sleep he/she gets, how much partying they indulge in, how much honest work versus illegal activity, and more. Essentially, you can adjust the genetics to wind up with a fresh faced lad or lass or a grizzled, haggard degenerate or anywhere in between! You’ll also be able to preview your end result in real time all throughout to ensure you’re satisfied before putting your character on a direct flight to LS. Of course, once you’re out and about in the open world, you can further customize your character with haircuts, clothing and accessories to suit your tastes.
And a potentially reassuring one about the inclusion of microtransactions:
To allay some concerns we’ve heard on this subject, we can assure you that the game is designed such that the option of purchasable GTA$ should not disrupt the playing field – and there are a few mechanics in place to help ensure that. All players still have to rank up with Reputation Points (RP) in order to get access to purchase high-end items. No one can begin GTA Online and simply spend a lot of money out of the gate to get a leg up. You will have to earn your stripes and play to unlock access to the aspirational clothes, guns and other items. Please also remember that in GTA Online, hustling to afford the finer things by earning GTA$ doing robberies, stick-ups, winning races and other profitable activities is a fun gameplay experience rather than ever being a ‘grind’. As we mentioned on Wednesday, we will constantly tweak all areas of the game to make it play fairer and iron out any balancing problems (while fixing all the other problems we encounter!), but we really need your help in figuring out what those issues are. So please work with us on that!
So there’s your big info dump about GTA Online, now onto some of the issues. The short version is that Rockstar underestimated the demand on servers and so have been struggling to cope with the vast amount of people trying to get online. The team at Polygon experienced an issue when they tried to log on, as have many people.
These issues should be sorted out over the next few days or weeks. It’s a shame that the launch hasn’t been successful, but I don’t think it’s going to come as a shock to anyone.
We will be starting crews for Grand Theft Auto online so expect some details both on here and via our Facebook page over the next few days.
