Grand Theft Auto is one of my favorite series in gaming of all time. I have always enjoyed the campaigns and the gameplay in single player mode. However, Grand Theft Auto V is the first game that I have ventured deep enough to actually get online with, as I never found the time on GTA IV. Well, that experience was rough to say the least. I came across numerous issues that just should not be found in a multiplayer game, and more often than not I realized the game just was not worth it. Here is a recount of those experiences.

Extremely long loading times

I kind of already knew GTA had long loading times, since the single player was a good indicator of that. But the multiplayer portion is even worse. I had issues where the game would not save my settings, and instead reverted them every time I quit the game. So when I set it to load the game into Online Mode instead of Story Mode, as soon I quit the game, it would revert back to loading into Story Mode, making my wait time even longer, since now I had to wait for it to load into Story Mode and I had to manually make it load online.

Not only this, but when I actually got online, since I did not have any friends playing the game anymore, I had to wait extremely long times to play the mini-games within the multiplayer mode. These mini-games themselves are quite enjoyable, except for the fact that it takes at least 5 minutes to find yourself in just one match or heist.

Do note that I play the game on PS4, with no SSD installed on it. The game is on PC as well, and if you install it on an SSD, your load times will be much better. Still, I believe there still a large amount of players playing on console and at least on that side, the loading times can be very frustrating.

Broken matchmaking

This goes along with the wait times for finding matches. It seems so broken, the way the system is set up to find you a match. Basically, your in-game phone will buzz if there are games you can join. You have to join these practically immediately, because if you are even a minute late, that game may have already started and you would find yourself in yet another loading screen, except this time there isn’t a game to load. Fun.

When you are trying to host your own game, it could be a nightmare too, if you don’t already have friends to play with. First, the invitation system for people to join your game is horrendous. You send an in-game invite to random players, but the problem is that most players ignore these invites, making it harder for you the host to find people to play with. Like I said, games can take 5 or so minutes just to populate with people that want to play with you. This is all not even mentioning how some game modes don’t even have players playing them anymore.

Griefers and trolls

Oh, in the online world you really are not safe from people that troll or grief your game. That is expected from any online community. But it is pretty rage-inducing in Grand Theft Auto anyway, since the game relies on a lot of cooperation. Take heists, for example. This is a game mode where you definitely need teamwork to get done, as everyone has their own roles. Problem is that most of the time, people don’t have mics connected when it seems absolutely crucial. There was also a mission online that I was never able to complete, in 4 tries, because people were unable to complete the easiest of tasks. The game relies on cooperation a lot, but if you are not able to complete a job when other people mess up, it just takes the fun away.