My experience with GTA Online so far (Spoiler alert – it’s not good)

Now, don’t misconstrue my wording in the headline – GTA Online seems like it will be good, very good in fact. When it’s working. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case right now. But before I jump into the details of how my first few days with GTA Online has been, let me start from the beginning.

On Tuesday, October 1, my phone was blowing up all day with texts from friends excitedly talking about finally being able to play GTA Online when we all got home from work later. Knowing how many people had bought the game and would also be wanting to play that first night, I made sure to mention that we might run into some issues. Rockstar had been having problems with the Social Club, the stat tracking system in place for Rockstar games, since GTA V had been released and I could tell that those problems would probably translate to issues with the actual online component of the game.

Night rolled around finally (Tuesday is deadline at the newspaper) and as I drove home, I couldn’t help think about the horror stories I was already reading on the internet. Stories of connectivity issues, freezing, getting stuck at loading screens, and loss of characters already abounded online and the first day that GTA Online was online wasn’t even through. But, then again, I also knew that plenty of people could connect to Online – I was watching a stream of Online being played that morning before I went to work. As I headed home, I hoped for the best but prepared for the worst.

When I booted up Online for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised that nothing seemed to be going wrong immediately. I could reach the character creation suite (more on that below) and the game seemed to be moving along as it should. Lamar picked me up from the airport and off we went, into a seemingly never-ending stream of cutscenes and quick hints about what to do once Online before the tutorial even started.

Backing up for a minute – the character creator. Seriously, Rockstar, WTF? I really want to know, just what were you thinking with that nonsense? I get you’re trying to be different but picking your grandparents and parents from a list of random characters to determine your character’s features is just plain weird. Not only that, but the way starting stats are determined is by divvying up points between ambiguous stats like “Sleeping” and “Partying.” None of it made any sense to me so I just randomized my character’s look until I got something I liked. My first character was a generic white guy in a white T-shirt and white shorts. I was so over trying to figure out the mysteries of the character creator I decided to keep this character who was the utter definition of generic. Luckily, he wasn’t long fort his world. Moving on.

Before being allowed to roam free in GTA Online, the game forces you to complete a tutorial sequence. And not just a series of interactive bits to show you the ropes or a mission comprising the main aspects of Online. No, the tutorial requires multiple missions to be completed, some with other players. The fact that everyone who bought the game was probably trying to play Online at the same time was probably more of a curse than a blessing.

With the cutscenes finally coming to an end, Lamar brings us to the first mission – a race. This sequence started with my character getting out of Lamar’s car and walking to a corona to start the race. A short cutscene kicked in, showing a car driving up to my character, an NPC getting out, then cutting to a loading screen. A few seconds later, that same cutscene played again. Following that was another loading screen saying “Waiting for other players.” No matter how many times I backed out to the Dashboard or restarted my system, the above was the only result I got. After a few hours of frustration, I decided to just play single player – vowing to my friends to not bother playing again until I could turn it on and it worked right.

I’d say the most maddening part of the whole experience so far is the fact that my two friends who I had been texting about playing GTA Online earlier in the day, weren’t having these problems. They’d breezed through the tutorial and were robbing convenience stores and playing missions, excitedly telling me about their exploits in Party chat, as I sat stewing, feeling like I was stuck in an endless time loop.

I didn’t try playing Online again until Thursday evening. By Thursday, the outcry from those who were having the same problems as I was – or worse – was met with a handful of fixes from Rockstar. First, they said to delete and re-download the first patch for the game and to secondly delete any character that you were having issues with.

For reasons I’ll never understand, these fixes actually made a difference for me. After re-downloading the update and making an even better character (my father is John Marston, somehow, and he looks kinda like the Shield’s Dean Ambrose), I was forced to sit through the opening cinematics again as Lamar picked me up from the airport. I was more than a bit anxious for them to be through so I could see if the fixes described by Rockstar made a difference.

Whatever Rockstar had fixed so far seemed to have a positive effect – I got through the first few tutorial missions (crucial, really, I had no idea how to drive cars in a race or buy clothes /sarcasm) and was anxious to actually get to the meat of the mode. Unfortunately – I hit another snag. The final part of the tutorial was to compete in a specific deathmatch. Upon reaching the location of the deathmatch and triggering the lobby screen I proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. After 10-15 minutes I realized that this wasn’t a good sign. Actually, I realized it much earlier but still tried to keep a positive outlook on the situation.

With no other course of action, I backed out to the Dashboard, hoping that in doing so wouldn’t further exacerbate my problems. When I got back into Online, it seemed I had somehow skipped the final tutorial deathmatch and was in the game’s free roam – not a good sign, to me. There were other players in this session of Online but whenever I tried to join a race or deathmatch, I was either booted or the session failed as it was about to start. I tried joining friend’s games and I tried inviting people in to find that it would only let me play with one of my friends (not both who were online) and in this session, we were the only two players.

There is news that Rockstar will be releasing another patch today for Xbox 360 and PS3 but I was online this morning and didn’t notice any update for GTA V. With the weekend coming up, I’m expecting much of the same so bear with Rockstar through these difficult times.

I did get to experience GTA Online very briefly and only the very first, few activities open to me. Really, all me and my friend did (remember, we were the only two players in this session – the game didn’t put any other players in with us) was rob a few stores but I was very surprised and to find the same smooth gameplay, driving and shooting Online as offline with minimal lag or slow down. Earning money in Online won’t be as easy as in the story mode with low level players only allowed access to a few weapons and missions, aside from deathmatches and races. The police in Online also seemed even more aggressive than in the story – even going near another player with a wanted level saw the police also start to target you. Overall, I can’t wait until GTA Online works smoothly without and issues but it’s impossible to know when that might be.