MMaRsu
Gold Member
Haha what? Do you even know who Leslie Benzies is?
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GTA Online has generated over half a billion dollars in revenue
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Haha what? Do you even know who Leslie Benzies is?
UnforgivenTwin
Member
Hell,I'm level 645 and I think I'm done with the game lol.
The Albatross
Member
Some interesting snippets...
This is from Benzies legal team. Interesting that they say "Purchases have nearly 100% profit margin" and also that the Houser brothers have little interest in GTA Online. Something that many people have suspected. Gives me some hope for the next GTA, which I was fearing might be pushed to Online-only.
Also the court case says that Rockstar has had $3billion of revenue from GTA V.
That's... crazy.
This is from Benzies legal team. Interesting that they say "Purchases have nearly 100% profit margin" and also that the Houser brothers have little interest in GTA Online. Something that many people have suspected. Gives me some hope for the next GTA, which I was fearing might be pushed to Online-only.
Also the court case says that Rockstar has had $3billion of revenue from GTA V.
That's... crazy.
Consumer
Member
Not sure if you've read all of today's relevant R* articles/threads or know the history of the company, but Benzies seems to have been the driving force behind GTAO's conception, or at least the general direction of it, which is a terrible one considering GTAO's broken economy & progression system.
The Housers have always been against quick cash-ins, chiefly concerned with quality above all -- this is why they said they'd never regularly release GTA every 1-2 years. So it seems pretty evident that Benzies is responsible for the mess that is GTAO.
EDIT: Just look at the quote in the above member's post, reaffirming my point that the Housers never really cared for GTAO.
ExitPlanetDust
Member
Here, I made a video.
The option to manually select contact missions from the options menu has been present since I started playing online around this time last year. There was an update toward the end of last year that removed the bigger ones like "Titan of a Job", but they could still be selected from the random menu that appeared at the end of the mission you were playing. These missions were later added back. I'm not sure if they were removed on purpose or if it was a bug.
yer gonna have to grind stage coach robberies to afford that new donkey and sombrero you want.
haven't played GTAO in a bit, what did they do exactly?
They've put out content that you need millions of ingame dollars to make, which is a problem because you can only make a lot of money in the Heist finales. Most of what they've asked lately regarding costs has been far too high when compared to how people make money in the game, making it clear these are incentivized by the microtransactions.
To be more specific, in order to buy an ingame yacht, the cheapest one is $6,000,000. To move its ingame location on the map, it's $25,000. You're lucky in some Jobs if you even get $20,000. The ingame placement of the yacht is largely cosmetic; there's no value for one place over another, and they have the balls to charge ingame fees for something like that.
Putting this in perspective, I have put over 270 hours in the game on PC - at least 200 is in GTA Online - and I have accrued a lifetime total of $6.8 million dollars. I'm Rank 85, when practically all of the playable content in the game has been unlocked. They're asking for a lot.
The last two or three major expansions to the game have had this problem where things cost an absurd amount of money. It started with Lowriders, where upgrading cars was $300,000 for shit vehicles.
Gotcha, thanks. I haven't played since the yachts showed up and immediately saw they were out of reach for how much I play. I'm around 90 or something and knew I'd have to grind heists like crazy. They're moderately fun but I'm not that desperate for a yacht.
PHOENIXZERO
Member
That's exactly why we never got any story DLC. 
Why spend 20+ million developing a single player expansion when you can spend significantly less just releasing minor content updates for online that will push people who don't want to spend the time grinding for GTA fun bux into spending real money for fake money?
Why spend 20+ million developing a single player expansion when you can spend significantly less just releasing minor content updates for online that will push people who don't want to spend the time grinding for GTA fun bux into spending real money for fake money?With the online game being such a major success, I have to wonder if the next game will just be an online service type game. I mean its where the money is and where people are spending the most time at. Seems pointless to have a single player when their user base is pretty much willing.
The Albatross
Member
With Benzie's gone from Rockstar, he definitely seemed like the biggest advocate for GTA Online with little buy in from the Housers, so I think the likelihood of an all-online GTAVI is less likely. Plus, I think they said in the court filings that GTA VI made $3b in sales... crazy.
SlickShoes
Member
Folk suggesting all the success is down to the Housers are bonkers.
Rockstar North is like ER for other rockstar games, if it's not crunch time then the testers are finding bugs in the other games in development and sometimes devs are sent to completely overhaul one and salvage a game.
Rockstar North deserve 99.9% of the credit for GTA games, the fact that so much of it seems to be directed towards the company as a whole and the housers has always baffled me.
Rockstar North is like ER for other rockstar games, if it's not crunch time then the testers are finding bugs in the other games in development and sometimes devs are sent to completely overhaul one and salvage a game.
Rockstar North deserve 99.9% of the credit for GTA games, the fact that so much of it seems to be directed towards the company as a whole and the housers has always baffled me.
Real_Madrid
Member
GTA V made 1 billion in 3 days before GTA Online was even available.
A GTA V without SP would have sold much much less.
NoKisum
Member
Deposit your money via phone or in your apartment/garage, much safer.
Ugh, that would really suck for both GTA and RDR if it happened. Absolutely loved RDR's single player. That would be like Naughty Dog going multiplayer only with TLoU and Uncharted.
shadowsdarknes
Member
Use your phone in passive mode lol
Eh there's nothing appealing about that either. There shouldn't even be a need to put money in your bank, it should just go there. The focus should be on playing the game, not forcing people to opt out of it just so they can safely put their money away.
the_sun_king
Member
I'm already prepared for GTAVI to be online only.
Edit:
LOL, this is what I get for not reading every page first.
Now who knows if I'll play it.
Edit:
Some interesting snippets...
This is from Benzies legal team. Interesting that they say "Purchases have nearly 100% profit margin" and also that the Houser brothers have little interest in GTA Online. Something that many people have suspected. Gives me some hope for the next GTA, which I was fearing might be pushed to Online-only.
Also the court case says that Rockstar has had $3billion of revenue from GTA V.
That's... crazy.
LOL, this is what I get for not reading every page first.
The real question is how much would a F2P GTA game make?
That's not my understanding of how Rockstar works. From what I know about them Rockstar NYC acts as the head working with numerous studios. Yes, Rockstar North leads developing the game and is as equally if not slightly more important than NYC. However, there are as many if not more people outside of North and NYC working on the game also. Rockstar NYC and North both deserve equal credits for their efforts on GTA.
Rockstar NYC oversees the entire process. They handle the story, audio recordings, voice acting, music, coordination between studios, technology, promotion, hiring, and the other typical responsibilities that parent companies do. San Diego was responsible for the RAGE engine and supports it. Then there are the other studios Rockstar Leeds, Rockstar Toronto, Rockstar New England, Rockstar London and Rockstar Lincoln, and dozen 3rd party companies involved. Rockstar even has it's only dedicated team at Technicolor India that involves a few dozen people. These other parties allow North to focus on their components.
The credits for the game are insane: http://en.wikigta.org/wiki/Credits_(GTA_V)
valkillmore
Member
They handled this right. Buy the game for $60, get GTA Online access with it, spend money if you WANT TO. Or don't. I found it relatively easy to earn enough money with relatively little 'grinding' or mission repeating to afford my first apartment and several clothes.
They should definitely do GTA VI in a similar way, NOT online-only, that would fucking suck.
They should definitely do GTA VI in a similar way, NOT online-only, that would fucking suck.
I've thought this for a while but I've always seen heists as nothing more than a testing ground for how coop would work in the real world /be received by the community. Not quite online only like others are saying but in pretty sure RDR 2 or gta 6 will be fully coop with huge focus on coop play
The single player will still be there but i do think it's going to be fully coop. Nor just heists either the whole 3 character system had always screamed coop to me
shadowsdarknes
Member
It's a pretty minor inconvenience. Anytime I finish a series of jobs I just open my phone in a private spot and deposit my cash. I'd argue that using some sort of web browser with a mouse pointer guided by an analog stick could be better, though.
But there are actually a few things in the game that require on hand cash.
Strippers/Hookers, Car Washers, Vending Machines, etc.
That's not really the same at all.
GTA 5 Online already does have cutscenes and dialogue for Heists/Lamar, and in other places.
You could still have single player missions in the online world. They could still feature cutscenes and a story. Only difference is that you'd be a silent protagonist going along for the ride with all of the other characters. And your earnings and experience would build toward your character.
Uncharted is a linear story no hub world. Removing SP for a SP/MP hybrid could work just fine. There would still be an enormous amount of content just for the lone player. But you also have the ability to do so much more.
shadowsdarknes
Member
Edit: Merge
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
Either you just started or you haven't put a lot of time into online.
Mass Effect
Member
God damn that's just insane. And it will keep making money for years too.
That's a given at this point.
That's a given at this point.
ItWillGetBetter
Banned
That much money and all we've gotten in updates were fkin cars and bs like that.
If any other company made that much money, we'd have had 4 awesome expansions by now.
If any other company made that much money, we'd have had 4 awesome expansions by now.
The Albatross
Member
I agree with you that the money aspect in GTA Online was done right in that the communitis did not get split up with added DLC, and everybody had access to everything as long as you could afford it.
But virtually everything else was screwed up in GTA Online. It's one of the worst executed multiplayer modes in any major game that I can think of. And I still put a shit load of time into it.
The cash/deposit/bank system was one out of dozens of terrible, bizarre design decisions that made absolutely no sense. It was a useless extra step that you shouldn't have had to do... Completely pointless. And the way it's described by Benzies in those early interviews is just flat wrong. In the interviews about GTA online he talked about how a job leader could invite you to a job, where you'd go do a mission in the game, and then the job leader would get the reward for it and divide it amongst th epeople, who would then have to securely deposit it in a safe place. This sounded awesome by design, terrible in implementation, and was only half-heartedly implemented into the game... ANd then you also found out that "Jobs" were contrived missions with long loading screens in isolated game worlds, and that you;d be brought back to a hub world usually separate from the people who were playing the job with, and that there was effectively no real risk to not depositing your money, and no reward for depositing your money.
THe bank deposit system was a useless extra step that made for it to be annoying with no benefit to the player.
There are dozens of other design decisions that follow this same idea of being a stupid design decision with no benefit to enjoying the game. Many of these were changed through patches months/years later, but this was how it was designed:
- The insurance system. Why does a videogame have car insurance? Why would I EVER have to pay for somebody's car if it's "uninsured" ? If you buy a car but don't insure it, it's preposterous that destroying the car (driving into a small pond) would mean you lose the car for ever "unless you have insurance!"
- Death tax. Why would any game in the GTA universe charge you $2,000 for dying.
- The "bad players" lobby or whatever it was. Why would any game in the GTA universe move players from "Good players" to "bad players" and not allow friends to play together?
- Why are jobs locked to certain ranks? Why were some jobs only available some times? Why did you have to "Get a call" from an NPC to play a job? Why would you get cool jobs sometimes, but only get shit "Shoot up the dock!" jobs other times? Why couldn't you pick jobs from a list? (this was changed but it took like a year to change this)
- The voting system was horrible. Let's say you want to play co-op missions with a friend, you do one of them, and then after the mission it has you vote on 6 random jobs... 4 of which are parachute jumps, 2 of which are death match. Wut? (this was changed 1+ year later)
- The horrible, horrible lack of match making and invite-only job system. It's the worst matchmaking of any online game in the last 10 years.
And this isn't even talking about the flat out horrible things tht never changed... Empty lobbies, the horrible load times, the lack of any menu at all, the mysterious layout of all of their menus, the stupid invite system, the lack of a party system, the inability for people to group up and say "Let's play 5 v 5 Cops vs. Crooks mode!" the horrible auto aim, the divided lobbies for auto aim vs. non auto aim, etc, etc, etc.
Almost every decision Rockstar has made with GTA Online was a bad one. Adversary mode has been the only generally good decision they made, but even then, the it can be so difficult just to get into games with other people.
I am a -bought 360, PS4 and PC version of the game- type of GTA fan but never and will never buy shark card cause i have fun with current earnigs.
I thought most of people saw things the same way but, WOW. Half a billion?
Online is great. I love races, cant get bored of them, there are so many good places in the map to create great races of all types, thats the best "arcade race" game ever for me. Love Deathmathes, it was a dream of mine to feel Max Payne's 3 shooting mechanics in an diverse GTA online world, and like very much Adversary modes, especially the defence/attack and the Beast ones.
And i dont have any friends who play the game to play in private rooms. Imagine if i did.
I think there will definitely be a Single Player DLC, but after reading the RDR thing about Benzies well i am a little concerned
I thought most of people saw things the same way but, WOW. Half a billion?
Online is great. I love races, cant get bored of them, there are so many good places in the map to create great races of all types, thats the best "arcade race" game ever for me. Love Deathmathes, it was a dream of mine to feel Max Payne's 3 shooting mechanics in an diverse GTA online world, and like very much Adversary modes, especially the defence/attack and the Beast ones.
And i dont have any friends who play the game to play in private rooms. Imagine if i did.
I think there will definitely be a Single Player DLC, but after reading the RDR thing about Benzies well i am a little concerned
ZombieSupaStar
Member
that gif illustrates another problem with gta5, dude hasn't even hit the sidewalk yet and franklin already at 1 star. Tone down the cops R*!
The Albatross
Member
Good point, his map turns red even before hitting him.
Tevious
Member
This makes me less optimistic about GTA6 and the next RDR's online. Shark Cards are ridiculously overpriced considering what you can actually buy in-game with the money. How long has it been now since GTA5 online launched... and that fucking stock market or casino is still not even open. Earning cash is such a grind and everything is disgustingly inflated to make people want to buy shark cards.
Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
Great, and that means that RDR3's multiplayer will probably be the same dumpster fire that is GTAO.
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