Grand Theft Auto V

A few observations about online:

  1. I’m sorry to all members of the SDMB crew for repeatedly spamming them with mission invites. It automatically sends invites to everyone on your friends list and crew list every time you start one.

  2. Despite the above, there’s no way to set yourself up as a party to ensure that you’ll always go to the same freemode server or be on the same team during missions and deathmatches.

  3. You can buy clothing from any store. You don’t have to go to the high-end clothes shop to buy a nice suit. Just go to the nearest clothing store or ammunation to buy whatever you want.

  4. Autoaim works fine in multiplayer. Almost a little too well. If somebody on foot sees you while you’re in your car and in range of their gun, good luck getting out alive. Always always always deposit your money. Protip: you can deposit your cash via the internet on your phone, so you don’t have to go find an ATM and stand out in the open while you’re doing so.

  5. Rockstar has so much potential here, but I’m more than halfway expecting them to waste it. I’m only level 16 and I’m already getting bored with what’s available. I’m really hoping the promised heists are incredible.

  6. Re: heists. My reading on the interwebs suggests that you can only plan for heists if you have one of the homes with a 10-car garage. Plan accordingly when spending your GTA stimulus package.

There is an option to request the team you used on the last mission, when you start a new one though.

I wish there was a greater choice in nice suits - they cater well enough for the hippity-hoppity leisure-wear crowd.

The option to change aiming-type is greyed-out when I go to Online options, but maybe you’re right. As if the psychotic tween COD veterans need any help with their headshots.

Is that on PSN or Xbox? Because on PSN at least you have options on who to invite - you can invite friends, or crew members, and you can manually pick from friends or crew members that are online if you like. I normally invite crew and friends, see who responds, and then auto-invite. The auto-invites are frequent (from all sources), but they’re not obnoxiously so in my opinion.

If you enter Online from Single Player, you can start a “Crew Only” server. The question is, when you complete a mission do you go back to that “Crew Only” server or not… If you select Freemode from the mission voting screen that comes up after every job, you’ll all drop back into the same Freemode instance, I’m pretty sure.

That was a problem in GTA IV too, auto aim made being in a car a bit of a liability. Rule #1, get out of the car when facing humans on foot!

A few more options will open up for you soon. Lester will start giving you missions, and so will Martin Madrasso. Those are tougher missions that require more team work. Martin will also open up Gang Hideouts for you, which are just shoot-em ups that are in Freemode, not instanced. You can get good weapons from those that you wouldn’t normally have access to yet. Lester will open up Armored Truck robberies, which also spawn in Freemode, though I haven’t done any of those yet. I’m leve; 25. I’m stuck on one particular Martin mission that requires some real thought to plan out, and that can’t be handled alone.

Correct, so far as I’ve heard. Only the apartments with 10-car garages have planning boards.

You may need to set this while in SP. I joined a free mode mission, was prompted to change my aim mode, and then couldn’t switch it back until I went back to SP, but I might have been missing something. Auto-aim is effectively required if you anticipate any PvP action…

Yeah, I think they probably intend on offering clothing as microtransaction DLC in the future. It’s an easy way to squeeze pennies from the users.

eta: I know that you can set up crew-only stuff. That’s easy. I’m just saying that any time you tell the game “go ahead and try and find players,” it will auto-invite every single person in your crew or on your friends list (who is in the game) while it looks for players. You can’t tell it not to.

Usually. Not always.

Basically I want a way to “party up” like in Call of Duty. I want to be able to link up with certain players for a session and have the game always put us in the same freemode and always put us on the same team for team-based deathmatches or missions, provided there are enough other players.

Gotcha. Rockstar really needs to do a FAQ, or a question and answer session on some of the more basic things in GTA Online to make it clear exactly how to do certain things rather than letting people try to piece-meal it out on their own.

How does that improve things?

I did fly it for the mission where Michael rappels down the side of the tower but that was easy as there was no time limit.

Thanks for your help.

I’ll join the crew tonight. I am Vortigern83 :slight_smile:

The more you fly with each character, the better you’ll get - not just from your standpoint, but from each character’s standpoint. You will need to pass the Flight School (as Michael) at some point in order to progress past a certain point. I’d recommend just grabbing a heli and flying around for a while, going under bridges, etc. The more you fly the better that character’s skill gets, and you’ll noticed a marked difference.

  1. I have not experienced this, you have several options for invites when hosting jobs but none are automatic that I am aware of.

  2. True. Sorta. The sessions are for all intents and purposes a VERY interactive lobby (world) for the instanced jobs. That said if you start the online game from the solo game (not from launch) you have several options including solo, invite only, crew only and random.

  3. We will see more clothes, bling, cars, apartments, etc from DLC/store. And while I never buy stuff for real money, this game has been in its clutches and i might pull the trigger.

  4. Autoaim does not work in car, so yes you can be sniped by players on foot. This is a common strategy. You can if you wish, change the setting from autoaim to freeaim in the solo game and you will be grouped with others using same.

  5. To each his own, this game is DEFINITELY not boring me. I am as hooked as ever on any MMO. I too see potential and they have a hit. I suspect this game will be around for some time and that it will spawn a new genre!

  6. Heists coming in DLC/store, rumored to be in late October/Early November. Yes you must have 10 garage apt.

Yeah, if you’re trying to fill up a lobby by selecting the “auto invite” feature, which just shotguns invitations all over the game, it’ll always invite your crew and friends.

I’ve had a lot of fun in online play! As you level up, more and more activities and jobs are unlocked. I’ve particularly enjoying teaming up with people for survival mode and vehicle deathmatch (tanks or jet fighters I’ve tried so far.) Some of the missions are also very fun, and some are pretty lucrative in terms of $GTA and RP.

As for the lobby-world pvp, mostly it’s a waste of time. Fun, though. (You can make way more RP and GTA$ in missions and jobs.) One of the things I want to try is to haul around with a crew in a vehicle, targeting people with bounties. You get RP for driving around with crew members, which is true on missions as well.

In addition to launching the lobby world of GTA Online in the modes chargerrich mentions, you can also choose to find and load a new session at any time from the online screen if the people in the lobby game are useless jerkwads (for example, camping the vehicle impound lot.) Luckily, no one can camp anywhere for long, because the cops inevitably show up, and you have to flee or get dragged into a spiral of death until they get you, which they will eventually.

One warning about using passive mode. It doesn’t prevent you from being killed by incidental damage, for example splash damage from explosives or being run over. It will however protect you from being sniped in your car when you’re fleeing from the car impound lot, or coming out of a convenience store after having [del]robbed it[/del]purchased snacks, or what have you.

So how do you join a crew? There’s no search function from what I can see. Can someone invite me maybe?

You don’t need an invite. Go here:

http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/crew/the_straight_dopers/

You need a social club account and then you need to link that account to your PSN or XBOX Live account

So is it just a coincidence whenever I connect, or are you really always playing that “Commute” race over and over? :slight_smile:

It’s a fun race, I’m just a bit confused over why people seem to replay it continuously, by unanimous vote – seems like there’s a whole bunch of races and missions that hardly anyone wants to play.

I have logged approximately 250 races and at least 75% of those are on “Commute”… yes I love it :wink:

Also it almost always have activity and I am guessing here, but I believe it is one of if not the most popular race map.

I got online once and did a race. It seemed that the people I was racing all had souped-up rides… how is that fair?

If you host, I think you can disable the ability to bring in souped up cars. That might be a strategy to try if you’re a racing fan.

I joined up last night. Played for a little bit but couldn’t stay on long. Look to see if loach232 is around.

Anyone using the iFruit app? The Chop minigame is pretty boring.

Two days back I purchased a nice motorcycle. It’s now gone! I checked my garage (home and external) and impound and it’s not there.