MeinMMo author Michael has been in the GTA Online gangster business for eight years. What he has learned during this time is that the heists lure with adventures but bring only nightmares.
After nine years of GTA Online, I have to say: The game is so good because it is so terrible. Yes, the driving is great, the shooting is fun, but otherwise, multiplayer is just boredom and grind for me. And yet, there is no other game that gives me such a good gangster experience. I love making shady deals, shooting people down, and instilling fear on the streets. Everyone complains about the toxic community, rightly so, but I find that the nuisances strangely complete the game. It’s just a gangster game.
And what do all gangsters dream of? Of the heist of their lives, of course. When developer Rockstar finally introduced the heists, I wanted to drop out of school. But as cool as the missions are designed, with all the cutscenes and assignments, the heists are still the worst in GTA Online. You have to imagine this: The absolute best feature for a gangster game comes along and it turns into a disaster because the players are absolutely incapable.
The most important rule of the Heist Club is: Never play with randoms!
In the community, two rules for heists have been established. First rule: “Always play the heists with friends.” Second rule: “Never play the heists with randoms.” To all the wise gangsters out there: I really tried. I tried to “convince” my friends to play and looked for player groups. But in the end, I had no choice but to let matchmaking decide with whom I would go on a robbery.
In rare cases, I got ridiculously lucky and ended up in a group that would have made the A-Team envious. Everyone knew what to do. For every section, they knew a clever solution. And their driver was a devil behind the wheel, elegantly avoiding the cops without getting a scratch. I have rarely felt so cool in GTA Online. I would have sacrificed all the earned money just to stay in that team.
But if I didn’t have the absolute pros on my team, then bloody beginners enriched my group. And that was almost invariably the case. Honestly, waiting minutes for a full lobby was the most pleasant part of it. When the round finally started, the arguments began. How do we ensure everyone can play the pilot, even if only one person is designated for it? Or how can everyone get the entire loot at the same time? In many cases, I wanted to abort the heist after the preparations.
My worst heist in GTA Online
To explain why I hate the heist missions with such “hardcore” gangsters, I could pull out hundreds of stories. But why, when the worst provides the best example? It wasn’t even the finale for the prison break, but just one of the preparation missions that we had to play six times. Yes, six times. And no, we couldn’t complete them.
In this case, one player and I had to steal a car from a ship. The mission isn’t actually difficult; it can be solved quickly with some precision and stealth. But that’s the big problem with heists in GTA Online: In Team Deathmatch, it’s all about the most kills. But heists, on the other hand, suddenly require patience, teamwork, and a certain interest in the mission’s objective. That’s a novelty in gangster multiplayer.
The typical GTA Online random still wants to quickly finish the heist like any other mission to get the money because he’s currently saving for an overpriced sports car. And heaven forbid the heist doesn’t work out the first time. For such things, the GTA Online random has no time. Then he plays even more brutally and senselessly. Back to our car theft on the ship: The said player always rushed in and died repeatedly, causing us all to fail.
First, he fell off a container, and the next times the guards killed him. We couldn’t throw him out, as that would have aborted the mission. It increasingly felt like a Saw trap that apparently we could only survive together. I told him he could wait on the dock; he didn’t have to worry, I would take care of it. It didn’t help; the random completely freaked out, and in the end, he shot everything down, even the car.
In the last attempt, I took the car by myself and left him behind. He then left the game. Instinctively, I turned off the console and yelled into a pillow.
Heists promise so much, but they are a festival of frustration
Ultimately, he’s not to blame: The heists are strictly speaking tactical coop campaigns and do not fit into a chaotic PVE/PVP multiplayer like GTA Online. I hate the heists for opening the dream of the big gangster coup but rarely fulfilling it. Moreover, the wow factor quickly fades. After I played them through in a few afternoons, that was it.
Now I can only repeat them to grind for money. Because if we’re honest, you don’t make the “big” money with them. By the twelfth time, the plan behind the heists doesn’t seem so brilliant anymore. Then I just bluntly go through the steps. Over and over again. The heists are an extremely cool feature on paper, but they demand too much from the community – and thus are only really fun on rare occasions.
After nine years of GTA Online, Rockstar can no longer shock me as a hardened gangster. But the heists cause me pain. Because they show what could be possible. But that indeed is not the case.
If you want to read more posts from me in the GTA Online universe, I can heartily recommend my dangerous taxi challenge.
