lamboblogging

When the grind in a video game is fun it doesn't really feel like a grind. A good example for me is Modern Warfare. Like a lot of people I heavily dislike a lot of things about that game, especially the maps. But I can have a bit of fun and pop off in the Shoot the Ship playlist - which consists of the two fan favourite maps Shoot House and Shipment.

I can literally play that shit for hours per day and not really get too bored. I consider that good grinding. I'm grinding my Battle Pass but not really paying attention to it, just having fun. Meanwhile the GTA grind to me is boring as fuck. The same copy & paste delivery missions, over and over again. Back in 2013 I actually had a lot of fun grinding. Everything paid a somewhat decent amount relative the price of stuff. If I remember correctly, I could make 50k to 100k per event depending on what it was and how well it was completed. Me and friends used to play races, deathmatches, contact missions, gang wars, survivals, etc. We would have a handful of stuff that we would always pay cough Rooftop Rumble cough, but we would always find new stuff each day to play. About 2 days worth of playing hours of different stuff meant we had an Adder. Imo the economy was much fairer and it incentivised diversity - you could play whatever you wanted with friends and make enough money after a few days for what you wanted.

There's a lot of content in GTA Online. The game nowadays however sticks you in a small box of things to do that's good at making money - the content of such is both incredibly boring/repetitive and highly frustrating. Many of us, after grinding tens of million or hundreds of millions are completely bored and exhausted.

What do fucking people expect us to do? Grind like a UPS driver for thousands of hours just to buy stuff that would take me way less time in other games? I want a car in The Crew 2? I have fun playing a few Hypercar races for a few hours and boom got it. I want a a new DLC weapon in Modern Warfare? I grind the Battle Pass for a few hours and boom got it. I want a high-end vehicle in GTA Online? It takes fucking forever and is waaaaaaay less fun than the other games grind. Racing for money to get cars in The Crew 2 is fun, deathmatches for weapons in Modern Warfare is fun. Literally being a fucking UPS driver is BORING. I did NOT buy GTA to roleplay a fucking UPS driver. Nobody who has grown up with GTA and bought every game buys GTA to play like this. It's fucking shit gameplay and boring as fuck.

I will glitch until a fun, high reward option is available for me to play for hours at a time.

See many of us are not upset about the concept of grinding. Sure we can debate about the level of grind in this game. But what we really care about is fun. It's a video game after all and many games have a fun grind.

See grinding is designed well when it actually aligns with the core gameplay and fun of the game, when the reason you bought it in the first place is the core element of the grind. Nobody loves the GTA series because they like delivering things a million times a week repetitively to earn GTA $. We love GTA because of the figuratively endless amount of things we can do. Land racing, air racing, sea racing, rampages, sports, combat challenges, mission time trials, missions, heists, etc. You get the idea.

Back when the game first released, the payouts for all this fun stuff was fairly decent. I had fun with friends playing a collection of our favourite races, deathmatches, contact missions, an occasional heist, etc. Then year by year they cut the payouts and only eventually gave us business to earn decent levels of cash. Which btw take forever to acquire and make profit from, as you need to use the low payout methods to finally have enough to buy them then buy the overpriced upgrades as they're useless without them. Once you have finally managed to grind for weeks to have upgraded businesses running, none of the gameplay that comes with it is fun or GTA-ish. What I pictured before buying business in GTA Online was me emulating a mob boss, sending my thugs to do my bidding, earning money from my invested drugs and selling them, etc. Sort of like how it works in other games like The Godfather and Scarface. But no, in this game you don't actually feel like a boss even if you're technically the boss of the business and paid for everything. You have to do almost everything yourself and that amounts to roleplaying as a UPS driver.

All the businesses essentially follow the exact same copy & paste gameplay formula which boils down to role playing as a UPS driver after killing some AI, with overpowered aim-bot AI or players trying to take you down during delivery (with lobbies full of God mode players that Rockstar refuses to punish and patch). Wow, much gameplay. Such fun.

10/10 - IGN ~ "Like being a UPS driver but somehow even less fun"

It's either bore yourself to death with the businesses, which are no fun and imo anti-GTA in gameplay. Or you play the low payout content for a loooooong ass time to the point that it becomes just as boring as the grind is too long. Or you can glitch money.

Shark Cards as a micro-transaction (funny how they think the cost is micro) wouldn't be an issue either if everything was decently priced. The most expensive Shark Card costs £64.99 and gives $8 million dollars. Do you know how shit value that is? People used to complain about Activision with Call of Duty, how the £35 Season Pass was overpriced. That Season Pass used to bring about 8 new Multiplayer maps, 4 Zombies maps and around 6 new weapons. That's 18 pieces of content, 12 pieces (the maps) arguably cost more money to design and create than cars/weapons. A £64.99 Shark Card would get you 2 upgraded F1 cars. That's disgusting value.

I would still consider GTA $ overpriced if it was £0.5 for every GTA $1 million, but at least that would be semi-acceptable. That would equate to a $2 million supercar costing £1. Just as a comparison, the racing game Assetto Corsa sells DLC car packs. Looking at a random pack, the Prestige Pack DLC - it's £5.79 for 9 cars. That's 9 cars that are x10 more detailed than GTA cars and also cost the developers real manufacturer licenses to use in their game. A car in a racing simulator costs way more to create and is being sold for way cheaper than a made up, cartoon looking GTA car.

Even if for whatever reason you're a diehard grinder and your grinded money is what you get your ego from. You literally cannot deny Rockstar is as bad as other AAA developers when it comes to extorting money out of people. Heck, they are objectively worse now considering how disgusting the value of Shark Cards are and how other AAA developers have adopted the consumer friendly Battle Pass system.

You can virtue signal and stroke your grinding ego all you want about this game. The fact of the matter is A LOT are NOT happy with the GTA economy and grind. A LOT of people are NOT happy about how overpriced Shark Cards are. These are legitimate largescale issues with the GTA economy that you cannot ignore or brush under the table.

Submitted August 29, 2020 at 12:15PM by MetalingusMike https://ift.tt/3lvuqck