Rockstar Apologizes For GTA Online Issues

[Karloff]

Rockstar Apologizes For GTA Online Issues

Rockstar's working around the clock to solve the problem.

Yes, the launch of Grand Theft Auto Online has had some problems [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escapist-news-now/8198-GTA-Online-Corrupts-Save-Files-Server-Issues], and Rockstar has issued an apology "for any inconvenience" as it asks for your patience. No, Rockstar doesn't have a solution, but asks you to pay close attention to its Updates page for future solutions. There's just too darn many of you, as Rockstar itself admits. "We are working around the clock to buy and add more servers," it says, "but this increased scale is only going to make the first few days even more temperamental than such things usually are."

There are all kinds of may be regional [http://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/200426246-GTA-Online-Launch-Status-Latest-Updates-]; PS3 owners seem to be having slightly more luck, but not by much.

Rockstar asks [http://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/200426246] that anyone who wants an automated email advising them of updates and solutions should "please log into the Support Site and click Subscribe at the top of this page."

Source: Guardian [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/01/grand-theft-auto-online-launch]


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[Mahorfeus]

This was to be expected.

I was able to get on briefly last night - took me a few tries, but I managed to have a good time. I hope they manage to fix this soon.

 

[Zeren]

I just hope they fix all of the issues that last patch caused the single player users. I can't switch to one of the trio, so my game is stalled. I can't get to his missions so I can't advance.

 

[RJ 17]

Other than the fact that it took 4 tries and about 2.5 hours just to be able to do the initial race that you have to do just to get introduced to GTA Online, I haven't had too much trouble with it. Guess I should count myself lucky since my story mode is afflicted with the "NO STRIP CLUB FOR YOU!" bug which nearly prevented me from being able to finish the game except for some pure dumb-luck by having Trevor spawn inside the strip club and allow me to start the mission.

Beyond that, however, my only issue with GTA Online is the griefing...just going to the ATM is literally a life-and-death situation as at any given moment some chuckle-head can come flying around the corner and gun you down while you're trying to make a deposit. Seems pretty easy to chase them off, though, as long as you see them coming. Here's a pro-tip: if you're driving down the road and you see a big white dot on your minimap pull a U-turn and start following you...it's probably not wanting to ask for directions. Turn a corner and go a little ways down the street before pulling around and waiting for them to turn the corner. As soon as they do, start blasting at their windshield. More often than not they'll just zip on by and leave you alone.

On that note, never get out of your car if there's white dots around. It doesn't offer much in the ways of protection, but if you're outside your car when a griefer comes around you're pretty much doomed.

All that said, I've been having a lot of fun with GTA Online so far. Once I got passed the initial race I've been able to load in with no problems at all and my story mode seems to be working just fine as well (though I'm planning on starting a new game anyways and scrapping my current one, so it wouldn't be a huge bother if the game ate my save). Again, I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones. :3

 

[Quiotu]

Other than the fact that it took 4 tries and about 2.5 hours just to be able to do the initial race that you have to do just to get introduced to GTA Online, I haven't had too much trouble with it. Guess I should count myself lucky since my story mode is afflicted with the "NO STRIP CLUB FOR YOU!" bug which nearly prevented me from being able to finish the game except for some pure dumb-luck by having Trevor spawn inside the strip club and allow me to start the mission.

Beyond that, however, my only issue with GTA Online is the griefing...just going to the ATM is literally a life-and-death situation as at any given moment some chuckle-head can come flying around the corner and gun you down while you're trying to make a deposit. Seems pretty easy to chase them off, though, as long as you see them coming. Here's a pro-tip: if you're driving down the road and you see a big white dot on your minimap pull a U-turn and start following you...it's probably not wanting to ask for directions. Turn a corner and go a little ways down the street before pulling around and waiting for them to turn the corner. As soon as they do, start blasting at their windshield. More often than not they'll just zip on by and leave you alone.

On that note, never get out of your car if there's white dots around. It doesn't offer much in the ways of protection, but if you're outside your car when a griefer comes around you're pretty much doomed.

All that said, I've been having a lot of fun with GTA Online so far. Once I got passed the initial race I've been able to load in with no problems at all and my story mode seems to be working just fine as well (though I'm planning on starting a new game anyways and scrapping my current one, so it wouldn't be a huge bother if the game ate my save). Again, I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones. :3

Supposedly the patch that started GTA Online also patched a lot of the big problems people had, including the strip club glitch, and the garage glitch that occasionally had you lose cars or upgrades.

Personally, I got on long enough to make my Michelle Rodriguez, and then I had to stop. Gotta start packing to head to the Expo anyway, so I won't have time to play GTA Online until next week, and by then things will hopefully have balanced out a bit.

 

[InsanityRequiem]

The server issues were to be expected, and maybe bugs that popped up around 4-10 hours of GTAO play where you crashing into a wall destroys the car but sends you to the other side of the map.

But when you have bugs where your created character always gets corrupted at the tutorial race mission, corrupting the singleplayer storyline when you're at 80-90% and forcing you to delete it, completely crashing the game system you're playing on when just trying to log into the GTAO servers? That's bad QA really. Heck, opening up a beta for GTAO a few weeks before release could have helped, since a lot of people preordered the game. And currently there's roughly 16 million people(at least) that bought GTA 5. One would think that that many people would cause issues, so making sure game breaking bugs in the multiplayer are found and removed would be the main thing done.

 

[Elijin]

You'd think when the online mode is staggered a month after release you cant get away with 'there was just too many of you and not enough servers'.

You had a month of looking at your sales figures and realising it wasnt going to cut it, yet -now- is when you rush to roll out new servers over a few days?

 

[MonkeyPunch]

I was expecting this. I told all my mates to expect it - yet a lot of them were up in arms.
By my reckoning there would have been millions trying to connect to the MP servers yesterday. It was always going to be shaky and I'm not at all bothered. It will work eventually.
I personally don't get the people who try and create drama over this (not saying anyone here - just in general). Games that were specifically geared towards online multiplayer have had exactly the same (and sometimes worse) issues.

 

[RJ 17]

Supposedly the patch that started GTA Online also patched a lot of the big problems people had, including the strip club glitch, and the garage glitch that occasionally had you lose cars or upgrades.

Well that's good news for me. Hopefully I won't have to worry about my game glitching up again on my 2nd playthrough. Thanks for letting me know.

 

[Blunderboy]

I was expecting it. And to be fair to Rockstar when it has worked it's been fine and a real blast. My flat mate and I had three hours of uninterrupted awesomeness.

 

[InsanityRequiem]

I was expecting this. I told all my mates to expect it - yet a lot of them were up in arms.
By my reckoning there would have been millions trying to connect to the MP servers yesterday. It was always going to be shaky and I'm not at all bothered. It will work eventually.
I personally don't get the people who try and create drama over this (not saying anyone here - just in general). Games that where specifically geared towards online multiplayer have had exactly the same (and sometimes worse) issues.

The server/login issues are an annoyance that R* should have seen coming, since we've seen these problems happen before. Specifically with EA and Blizzard.

The issue comes with the bugs that destroy and corrupt game files. How would you feel that the single player story you're in, at 95%, almost done with the main storyline and have collected most of the collectibles, is suddenly unplayable because of the implementation of GTAOnline? You lost at least 15-20 hours of gameplay because of a bug R* should have known about. What about trying to get online and you're stuck at the loading screen of looking at the clouds when suddenly your system crashes, completely turns off? That repeating multiple times?

It's bugs like those that are pissing people off.

 

[Glaice]

Just wait a month and Rockstar should sort their crap out by then.

 

[Erttheking]

Well, at least they apologized. Most companies don't have the decency to do that.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

This happens with almost every MMO and I'm not terribly surprised to see it here either. You'd think someone would have come up with a better way to do this by now.

 

[Callate]

Until it is no longer a case that even the biggest companies with the most at stake greet new server-based game content with an inevitable round of snafus and apologies and "we're sorting out the issues as quickly as we can" statements, it's going to be very difficult to convince me that the "always online, all-digital" future so many people keep trying to convince me is "inevitable" is a good idea.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

The server/login issues are an annoyance that R* should have seen coming, since we've seen these problems happen before. Specifically with EA and Blizzard.

The issue comes with the bugs that destroy and corrupt game files. How would you feel that the single player story you're in, at 95%, almost done with the main storyline and have collected most of the collectibles, is suddenly unplayable because of the implementation of GTAOnline? You lost at least 15-20 hours of gameplay because of a bug R* should have known about. What about trying to get online and you're stuck at the loading screen of looking at the clouds when suddenly your system crashes, completely turns off? That repeating multiple times?

It's bugs like those that are pissing people off.

They did [http://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/51422/some-more-details-on-grand-theft-auto-online.html] see it coming. As did some of the afore mentioned Publishers you mentioned, to a degree. But it's difficult to make something like this work off the bat. It's an ambitious project.
Also when you've got millions of connections blasting your servers it's not too dissimilar to a DDOS attack which there is not much you can do about either.

Also I was referring to not being able to play online. Not any of the other bugs.
Sure loosing hours of game time would frustrate anyone but most of the comments I've read of people raging about not being able to get online never mention anything about corrupted files. (same with some of my friends - none of them lost anything. They just couldn't play online)

Also out of interest, why do you say "because of a bug R* should have known about"? Are you implying they knew about it but left it in? Or are you implying they just didn't bother looking for bugs at all and not looking to fix them? Both seem pretty unlikely so I'm thinking you've got another reason.
Bugs that make it in to products such as these are usually things that slipped through the testing net or things they couldn't test for (you can't hire multi-millions of game testers to play online to simulate this sort of situation and all theory will never trump what happens in practice).
Rockstar surely never wanted to corrupt anyone's game saves. How would that benefit them? So it's obviously something that happened which they didn't or couldn't foresee.
It wouldn't be the first software to suffer from a save-game corrupting file.
(This last paragraph all being a little OT, sorry)

 

[RJ 17]

Other than the fact that it took 4 tries and about 2.5 hours just to be able to do the initial race that you have to do just to get introduced to GTA Online, I haven't had too much trouble with it. Guess I should count myself lucky since my story mode is afflicted with the "NO STRIP CLUB FOR YOU!" bug which nearly prevented me from being able to finish the game except for some pure dumb-luck by having Trevor spawn inside the strip club and allow me to start the mission.

Beyond that, however, my only issue with GTA Online is the griefing...just going to the ATM is literally a life-and-death situation as at any given moment some chuckle-head can come flying around the corner and gun you down while you're trying to make a deposit. Seems pretty easy to chase them off, though, as long as you see them coming. Here's a pro-tip: if you're driving down the road and you see a big white dot on your minimap pull a U-turn and start following you...it's probably not wanting to ask for directions. Turn a corner and go a little ways down the street before pulling around and waiting for them to turn the corner. As soon as they do, start blasting at their windshield. More often than not they'll just zip on by and leave you alone.

On that note, never get out of your car if there's white dots around. It doesn't offer much in the ways of protection, but if you're outside your car when a griefer comes around you're pretty much doomed.

All that said, I've been having a lot of fun with GTA Online so far. Once I got passed the initial race I've been able to load in with no problems at all and my story mode seems to be working just fine as well (though I'm planning on starting a new game anyways and scrapping my current one, so it wouldn't be a huge bother if the game ate my save). Again, I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones. :3

You know you can turn on Passive Mode, right?

Yeah, but where's the fun in that? That and the fact that I believe the game charges you $100 for doing that. Not much in the long run but still.

Evidently you weren't picking up on the mild sarcasm within my "complaint" about the griefers. Much like Left 4 Dead's vs mode, GTA online's free mode was quite obviously MADE for griefing other players........because, you know...it's frickin' GTA Online.

My only one, true complaint would be that (at least to my knowledge) there's no way of telling which white dot was the white dot that just blasted your face with a shotgun as you walked out of a store after robbing it. It'd be nice to have some direction on who you should seek bloody vengeance upon.

 

[Compatriot Block]

Other than the fact that it took 4 tries and about 2.5 hours just to be able to do the initial race that you have to do just to get introduced to GTA Online, I haven't had too much trouble with it. Guess I should count myself lucky since my story mode is afflicted with the "NO STRIP CLUB FOR YOU!" bug which nearly prevented me from being able to finish the game except for some pure dumb-luck by having Trevor spawn inside the strip club and allow me to start the mission.

Beyond that, however, my only issue with GTA Online is the griefing...just going to the ATM is literally a life-and-death situation as at any given moment some chuckle-head can come flying around the corner and gun you down while you're trying to make a deposit. Seems pretty easy to chase them off, though, as long as you see them coming. Here's a pro-tip: if you're driving down the road and you see a big white dot on your minimap pull a U-turn and start following you...it's probably not wanting to ask for directions. Turn a corner and go a little ways down the street before pulling around and waiting for them to turn the corner. As soon as they do, start blasting at their windshield. More often than not they'll just zip on by and leave you alone.

On that note, never get out of your car if there's white dots around. It doesn't offer much in the ways of protection, but if you're outside your car when a griefer comes around you're pretty much doomed.

All that said, I've been having a lot of fun with GTA Online so far. Once I got passed the initial race I've been able to load in with no problems at all and my story mode seems to be working just fine as well (though I'm planning on starting a new game anyways and scrapping my current one, so it wouldn't be a huge bother if the game ate my save). Again, I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones. :3

You know you can turn on Passive Mode, right?

Passive mode does not protect you from being run over by other players in cars. It also does not protect you from gunshots if you are in a car. It's basically useless as it is.