2 Cents About In Game "Reporting"

[Thr33X]

I was originally going to post this in a recently closed topic on the GTA Online forum, but I'll post it here because it's relevant to not just GTAO, but any online game.

 

 

If I wasted time doing that I would get nothing done. Most on the mic are teaching each other how to glitch or cheat in some way or are underage squeakers screaming racial crap.

Was a in a lobby just the other day where the guy was giving 222 million bounties and I left vs wasting my game time. R* knows what's better by done. It's their job to fix.

See? That's where you're wrong right there, thinking the onus of improving the game is entirely on the game devs themselves. The userbase has a say, they just seldom use it, but then the ones who say nothing are the same ones who complain when things are changed that they didn't want to be changed. Players have more power than you think.

 

This is the difference between "users" and "supporters". A user of a game just plays it to entertain themselves regardless of faults and flaws. A supporter will give feedback to the people who make the game, whether it's called for (of which in this case it is, hence why R*'s given us the option) or not. Supporters want improvements, users don't give a f*ck.

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The person I quoted falls somewhere within the middle, a person who thinks it's the game devs job to "fix what's broken". But how then will they know what's broken or when or how someone can break it, if it's not reported. In this instance, we're talking mass money bounties in GTAO, which was believed to have been patched away, but yet it's still happening. So rather than report the fact it's still possible to Rockstar, the quoted simply leaves the session and does/says nothing.

 

And so the saying goes, "If you're not a part of the solution..."

 

The fact that GTAO is a persistent online world means that there is a constant flow of activity going on at any given time, user generated or otherwise. When things are found to be messed up in the game and we the players have the option to let the creators know when, where and how, it's our...I wont say duty but more obligation to do so, for the better of the game possibly in the future.

 

Using Battlefield 4 as example, that game if you don't know by now is rampant with bugs. Recently a major patch was deployed that's fixed a lot of them, but even still there are a lot more still that are affecting players. For DICE to be able to track down each instance is impossible. That's where we the players come in, and many of the bugs that were patched by DICE were ones reported by players. They've got a long way to go before it's up to snuff though.

 

Now, in the case of GTAO, the problem persists not only in the bugs, but the people who are exploiting them. I don't care what you say about "cheating isn't exploiting" or any other convoluted excuse you come up with to justify cheating the game, it's a problem. Rockstar's given us the players the power to be able to at the very least report when we see these actions being taken. Once again, this ridiculous notion of "snitching" on players is another excuse for it to keep going on, just as justifying yourself is...and does anyone else find it convenient that it's usually the same people who say both?

 

This isn't the 'hood. It's a game, and when there's something wrong with the game, there's a certain responsibility that players have to make these things known, so that they can hopefully and eventually be fixed. The key terms is hopefully and eventually, because no, it's not guaranteed that your own feedback is going to change the world, but it's a start...and as I said in that closed topic, if you don't speak up, you have no right to speak out.

 

TL;DR- Damn the politics and ridiculous gamer "bro code" about reporting anything in online games. To quote the NYC Transit Authorty's anti-terrorism campaign, If You See Something...Say Something. And f*ck anyone who's got a problem with it.