I was super excited for GTA Online. I missed out on GTA IV’s multiplayer and remember my friends constantly telling me how much fun they were having and how I was missing out. So when I got a copy of GTA V I was more excited to jump into online than the single player. Unfortunately for me and tons of others GTA Online would launch with a plethora of server issues and bugs.

My time with GTA Online started rather smooth. I downloaded the 59mb patch on Oct 1st, Made my character (The character creation in GTA Online is kinda weird) did the first tutorial race and mission. Then being unsatisfied with the look of my character I decided to remake. I remade my character and jumped right back in….to a infinite loading screen. From then on getting online seemed impossible.

These issues were expected, Rockstar themselves said there would be server issues at launch. GTA V had surpassed $1 billion in sales only three days after release, so server issues aren’t surprising. However the other issues that came out of the launch seem like they could of been avoided with a proper beta test.

Now I wasn’t upset with the server issues, I was expecting it. However the complete loss of a character after a 10 hour session with friends the day before did kinda bum me out. I even held off making a new one in the hopes that Rockstar would find some way to restore them. Of course there were other issues in the game. Like people losing their cars after placing them in there garage. People using exploits to gain more money and rep. Also a nasty bug that actually affected some players single player game.

After a few weeks Rockstar finally patched most of these issues. As compensation for a disastrous launch. Rockstar announced that they will give players $500,000 over the month of October. $250,000 of in game money will be placed in players accounts over the span of a few weeks. HOWEVER this has been delayed due to another issue where players would lose progress there character had made after quitting the game. (This has only happened to me a few times and appears to be fixed on the 360)

The game is a lot more stable now and I have been having a far amount fun with it, but there are a few things that bug me. The auto aim in the game, I feel like the game would be much more competitive and fair if this was turned off for everyone, Fire fights boil down to who saw who first instead of whose aim is better. Also the movement in GTA games have always felt a bit wonky to me. I hate to compare it to Saints Row but I really like the movement and aiming in that game it feels a lot more fluid then in GTA.

Like I said I’ve been having tons of fun playing GTA Online with friends, but its becoming stale. With the content creator and heist mission forthcoming I hope these will breath new life into GTA Online. Missions are fun but you only get new ones every few levels. So your stuck doing the same ones over and over again til you reach the appropriate level to receive new ones and with Rockstar lowering the amount of money you get for completing some missions and 50% less money for repeated ones. Doing missions for money seem pointless. Then again GTA Online’s micro transaction has yet to launch. So I guess Rockstar has to give players some incentive to give them more money.

Overall I’m really enjoying GTA Online but feel like if they don’t release new content soon I may burn myself out too much to care about heist and the content creator. Especially with new consoles right around the corner.