Free Roam v2 - A suggestion

[DaCosta]

With the announcement of 30 player Free Roam on Next-Gen GTA:Online, I'd like to present a suggested revised version of the online gameworld.

 

If you don't like posts that are suggestions, or long posts, then do yourself a favour and move straight on to the next topic - otherwise, I'd be glad to hear your feedback.

 

 

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Free Roam v2

 

Blips no more

The key to version 2 is that player blips are removed from the radar by default. They only become active based on local noise, line of sight and being under police attention. This means I am only aware of a player if I can see them or if I can hear them (or they are within a police cone of detection.) I have presented the full design of this mechanic in a previous topic, if you care to see in more detail: http://gtaforums.com/topic/624254-blips-game-mechanic-improvement/

 

Bring us together

With player blips removed, the game needs to bring people together in more intelligent ways. The game already has these features in place - they are just not utilised well yet.

 

Simeon's Car Export - Every so often, Simeon needs a car delivered to his garage. Most people avoid this because it's repetitive, a bit dull, not worth the risk and not very rewarding. With player blips removed - but the Export car clearly displayed on the radar - the game becomes very different. You won't know how many players are also attempting to steal the car until you arrive and then you have the potential to lose those players - if you get to the Export car first - with some fancy driving. This isn't possible as the game stands currently.

 

Because you have lots of informants in Los Santos and because the stolen car makes a lot of "noise", players will receive updates on the location of the car and can choose to intercept. Meanwhile, there are several LS Customs where you can spray the car, and reduce noise, and there will also be several possible entrances to Simeon's garage in the industrial 'Terminal' district (instead of one) and only the car driver will know this entrance. This will prevent people stalking the exit point.

 

I will mention an alternative reward system for delivering the car, based on San Andreas's car collection mini-game, later in this post.

 

Crate Drop - As you may already have seen, the Crate Drop will also suddenly take on a new lease of life. There might be 30 players headed to the crate drop, there may be none. When you arrive, you can move in stealthily or you can rush in and hope. There will be no blips on the radar to help you decide how quick you need to be, or for them to know if you're already on site or not.

 

Bounties - Bounties are one of the best ideas in GTA:Online but with blips removed they can become even better. Players that move into line of sight, make noise or receive police attention are marked on the map, and also their bounty icon is labelled. So some players might decide to "lay low". However, bounty hunters can choose to hunt bounties. If they take on this quest (from Maude, I would say) then they receive updates on the approximate area that their target is in (i.e. a highlighted circle on the map) and it will be a careful cat and mouse game unless contact is made, in which case all hell will break lose. The bounty will be declared to all until he loses line of sight (or any resulting police attention) - or noise, if he's flying a "noisy" helicopter or plane.

 

Robbing Stores and Cops Mode - Store robberies would have a whole new dimension if other players thought it worthwhile to steal the thief's money and take it for themselves. Version 2 would prevent online banking and so any stolen money would have to be safely deposited in an actual bank, your safehouse, or an ATM machine (which would admittedly take incoming notes.) But this means that your icon would appear to all if you robbed a store and were under police attention. During this time you'd want to not only escape the police, but also any nearby players that may look to grab your takings. Even once you'd lost police attention - and you became invisible on the map again - you might want to remain vigilant as another player could have stealthily followed you, and is waiting for you to drop your guard or prowling your approximate area. Players can also activate 'Cop Mode'. They receive a text, saying an arrest is available and selecting yes will transport you to a relevant place in the map and a different character that is a cop. Make the arrest and earn your cop rank points!

 

Heists - Taking the robbing stores idea above and expanding it. Once a Heist is completed, you'll need to get your ill-gained loot to your (or any of your crews) hideout. Choose to split the money evenly, or risk one player getting the cash back while the other crew members fight off the vultures - but the Heist could end in disaster if you fail to get the cash back. Your blips will be on the map whenever the police have you in a cone of detection and expect five stars after a Heist. All the players on the map might want a bit of the action if they find a Heist has just gone down and the team has just arrived in their map, desperately trying to deposit their hard-earned loot. This would be an essential bit of GTA gameplay. With blips removed (unless under police attention/line of sight etc) it would be a tense and exciting time indeed. Much more exciting than anything in GTA: Online currently.

 

Death - So, with the mini games updated to be more intelligent and structured, GTA:O would be less about killing people, them killing you back and people trying to "grief the blips." Therefore, the game could also recognise that a player killed in a Crate Drop location should be dropped from that mini game. So they can no longer collect the crate and their character should spawn further away. A bit annoying for them but this would only be in the crate drop vicinity. If a bounty killed their hunter, the bounty hunter would have a diminished perception of their targets blip for the next few minutes. The game would basically attempt to have players participation in these mini-games reduced, or ended in some cases, by their death.

 

War zones - Sometimes a war will break out in Los Santos. Gangs will begin a shoot out or players will take on the police. On these occassions the event will make the news and the map will update to show an event is happening. Players looking for trouble will be brought together but be warned, it might get messy!

 

 

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Interactions - Friendship Matrix - Interactions are hardly rewarded or encouraged in GTA: Online. In v2 players are able to hire players to rob stores, attempt gang wars or work heists (when they come out.) After the events they can choose to rate their accomplices. Players that rate each other will become common acquaintances and this way player relationships will naturally happen.

 

Next time you think to rob a store, you can bring up a list of active 'accomplices' and call on them for help. This never happens at the moment (unless you play with a crew) but I always thought it would be a fundamental part of the experience.

 

Realistic chat - I've always wished that the player chat in GTA was localised and not map-wide. So you don't just all lobby chat, you can actually hear people in your physical location of the map. The closer you are to them, the better you can hear them. The only exception is if you activate your phone to be able to hear crew members, friends or accomplices. This allows good communication on missions or for crews. With this realistic chat option I believe random player communication will actually become a positive thing in GTA.

 

Gang Wars and Achievements - Gang Wars are great fun in GTA but pretty useless. The cash/ammo you receive is not that rewarding. A better reward would be that the gang area you just conquered now works for you for the next 48 hours. Anyone that enters your gang area and attacks you will get attacked by your gang!

 

Other motivations could include Simeon's Export car is not just about getting $10,000 for dropping off a car. The idea is instead for you to claim 1 of every type of say 30 cars. By completing the collection (a bit like San Andreas's car collection games) you receive mega rewards. And big rewards for every set of 5 cars you collected.

 

Stores could continually gain cash, each game hour, unless they are robbed. Once they have received $10,000 or more then an armoured truck collects the cash from the store and takes it to a bank, where it becomes untouchable. Players might rob a store and find the clerk has no cash! Or they might get a full taking if they watch the store closely. All robbed banks are declared on the map as the robber will also be marked when under police attention.

 

This is much better than just having loads of armoured trucks randomly flashing up on the map every so often for no particular reason.

 

Missions in free-roam - With blips removed, the possibility of some missions being moved from private lobby to free roam would be possible. There are times it could get messy but generally players would be able to undertake missions, races, parachute jumps etc without any attention from griefers. It would certainly be heavily reduced. But who wants random player interaction removed completely? Nobody.

 

Job Ladder - Jobs are activated by visiting the client marker, exactly as in single-player. Jobs are either run through in an exact order (as in single-player) or you get a choice of three jobs and complete them in any order before moving up the ladder to a next set of jobs. Each rung of the ladder receives you huge rewards, such as new weapons or car upgrades. These are gained for completing Jobs, rather than simply ranking up. There would then be much greater emphasis on completing the Jobs. The idea is more fully explored here: http://gtaforums.com/topic/655367-missions-under-used-in-gtao/

 

Crime Bosses - With all the jobs completed, the game could become infinitely playable by having other players becoming Crime Bosses. Using the upcoming Mission Creator, players would be able to create a set of custom missions that underlings could then attempt before rising up to move onto the next Crime Boss. New sets of missions would always be available as there would be literally millions of crime bosses. Rating missions would ensure you could always pick only the best quality.

 

 

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This version of GTA: Online would be fundamentally different from the current version with the removal of blips providing a whole new dimension to online play, including missions in free-roam, fun bank robberies, thrilling heist conclusions, car chases where you can actually lose someone, snipers that can actually stay stealthy and positive interactions between players building relationships in crime. I hope you like some of the ideas but I doubt we'll see any - but I can always dream!

[Dumb guy]

So in other words a new game.

[DontCallMeSurly]

Hey there,

 

Don't get me wrong, these are fantastic ideas! I'm just happy to know that other players out there actually think that the current Free Mode we have now is just.... bad, in almost every sense of the word.

 

But I don't think we should be pushing these ideas. Instead, I personally think we should push the idea on Rockstar Games to adding "Server Settings" for Free Mode lobby hosts. By "Server Settings," I'm referring to GTA IV's multiplayer host settings which allowed you to disallow/allow certain weapons in-game, change the time of day, weather, turn off/on police, turn off/on blips, etc., etc.

 

That way all of us can have the Free Mode we want to be in, not just one version of it that's always the same thing... that nobody (excluding those who are not 13 years-old that is) really likes in the first place.

 

Of course, I'd agree that if Rockstar Games denies us "Server Settings," then I'd be all for your idea of Free Mode 2.0!

 

- Good topic!

 

 

[ana lill]

I really like your ideas. Would be A LOT more immersive without the blips and with contact missions available from FR and playable in FR.

 

I never understood why they didnt incorporate mission trees in the first place. Would provide a sense of storyline to GTAonline which would/could be expanded upon with small updates every once in a while.

[k33g]

Definitely like some of these ideas - But I'd prefer if they kept the traditional FR and added this as an option for a sort of 'hard core' free roam.

[GG14876]

Considering there is only one way into the area where Simeon's drop-off is, those who want to camp the area will just move there. Unless you plan on having a way to use a Cargobob and air-drop the delivery, the problem still persists.

 

Bounties might be a bit better if you also add in the "informant" bit to this instead of Maude. Maude might be better suited for a cluster of NPC bounties, like Lester's "Kill Target" but on a larger scale/similar to level 10+ Vigilance missions and perhaps ambushes (Oh, one guy back here, eas... what? 30 guys with Combat MGs?!?).

 

"Cop Points"? This seems like a version of "Cops & Crooks", just in free-roam and for "points"... What would the points be used for?

 

Heists outside of missions? You'll never see that happen in a Public Free-Roam unless it's 80% of the lobby on the same side.

 

The "Death and drop from 'Minigame'" seems to be more of a "Camp the location until everyone dies, then rush in".

 

"Friendship Matrix"? Just a random though, is your next update going to add "romance levels" and "dates"? I think it is fine already; you happen to meet someone who helps you rob some stores, maybe steal a Lazer, you friend them when you have a chance.

 

The realistic chat seems like a great idea until you realize that there are bound to be a load of players who will blast noise they couldn't hear in order to disorient, force enemies to mute their TV or through in-game. Then the whole idea seems to fall apart.

 

So now we're gang leaders but can't do much? Why not just bring back the Gang Territories from GTA:SA, have them give $/Ammo every "hour" or so and then have NPCs invade/forcibly take over areas so low-pop lobbies aren't too easy to game.

 

"Missions in Free-roam"? Well, for one, I would like to remove random interaction. If there was a way to join those who liked the same things you do, say Missions, Parachuting and Exploring, (Friendship matrix remake?) and exclude those who are just free-roam sociopaths, that would be great. As for the actual missions, what happens when there are people doing missions that cover the same area, such as "Chop-Chop", "Landing Gear", "Base Invaders"... If they all happened at once, great opportunity for a huge mess and "Mission Failed: Other mission guy destroyed your target" just by accident.

 

Job Ladder seems nice, though there would have to be a lot of new weapons/car upgrades for this to work well. Otherwise, it seems almost exactly like a (longer & with pauses) Playlist.

 

Crime Bosses seems rather... poorly though out. Would existing crime bosses be able to "fall from grace"? If not, then you will (most probably) eventually have everyone be a crime boss. As for ratings being an indicator of quality, may I mention "Prison Thugz Fight"...

 

Hope this helps, seems like a nice set of ideas.

[elfoam]

HATE blips and the unjustified violence that comes with them. They ruined this game.

[ChrilLe]

I wann give some positive feedback for the effort you've put into this thread, OP, but I just gotta go a conservative way and prefer the way free mode is.

 

In fact, I seriously can't wait to roll down the streets with my friends and kill all the fresh-meat blips and then eat them.

[who-dat]

Blips should be like hardcore mode in RDR free roam, meaning they disappear if the player is crouched/in stealth-mode. It would finally make the stealth stat mean something.

 

Actually, quite a few things from RDR hardcore would fit quite well into GTAonline.

[DaCosta]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Glad to see there are some other blip haters in community!

 

Just putting in some responses in green to GG...

 

Considering there is only one way into the area where Simeon's drop-off is, those who want to camp the area will just move there. Unless you plan on having a way to use a Cargobob and air-drop the delivery, the problem still persists.

 

True. So I guess either a new bridge would need to be opened (new ways in to Terminal) or Simeon could have other drop off points, like his car dealership - so it was randomised each time a car was generated but only the car thief(s) know.

 

Bounties might be a bit better if you also add in the "informant" bit to this instead of Maude. Maude might be better suited for a cluster of NPC bounties, like Lester's "Kill Target" but on a larger scale/similar to level 10+ Vigilance missions and perhaps ambushes (Oh, one guy back here, eas... what? 30 guys with Combat MGs?!?).

 

Agreed. Also Maude's missions were my favourite bit of single-player. Armed with just a camera-phone, Rockstar could add a "Custom Bounty Creator" whereby players could snap some clever shots of an area in LS and other players could hunt this down (where they would find a NPC bounty to kill) for cash.

 

"Cop Points"? This seems like a version of "Cops & Crooks", just in free-roam and for "points"... What would the points be used for?

 

I was thinking cop points would allow you to rank up (higher ranks in the force) providing you with better cop gear and vehicles. Something like that.

 

Heists outside of missions? You'll never see that happen in a Public Free-Roam unless it's 80% of the lobby on the same side.

 

I think the Heist will definitely have to be a private lobby but the aftermath (police chase) should spill out into free-roam with the crooks, after already distributing the cash to one player or evenly between them, have to individually make their way back to the hideout and away from police while other players in the map have a chance of finding them.

 

The "Death and drop from 'Minigame'" seems to be more of a "Camp the location until everyone dies, then rush in".

 

It is true. I wondered about the game only inviting some players. Perhaps those within a certain range. Sometimes it will be just you invited, other times 20 people.

 

"Friendship Matrix"? Just a random though, is your next update going to add "romance levels" and "dates"? I think it is fine already; you happen to meet someone who helps you rob some stores, maybe steal a Lazer, you friend them when you have a chance.

 

The point of this is that if you play a Mission with 3 people and you 'like' them, and they 'like' you, the game remembers this and auto-suggests them next time. It's like a crew, but organised by the servers. Romance levels and dates I can live without.

 

The realistic chat seems like a great idea until you realize that there are bound to be a load of players who will blast noise they couldn't hear in order to disorient, force enemies to mute their TV or through in-game. Then the whole idea seems to fall apart.

 

True. I guess you should have the option to mute people as you can currently. But I feel there would be a lot more mature (sensible, not explicit) language. Stuff like, "Hey there, I'm about to rob a bank. Care to join?" rather than "Hey everyone on the map, listen to my nonsense!"

 

So now we're gang leaders but can't do much? Why not just bring back the Gang Territories from GTA:SA, have them give $/Ammo every "hour" or so and then have NPCs invade/forcibly take over areas so low-pop lobbies aren't too easy to game.

 

Gang territories are a great idea. Surprised Rockstar haven't done this yet.

 

"Missions in Free-roam"? Well, for one, I would like to remove random interaction. If there was a way to join those who liked the same things you do, say Missions, Parachuting and Exploring, (Friendship matrix remake?) and exclude those who are just free-roam sociopaths, that would be great. As for the actual missions, what happens when there are people doing missions that cover the same area, such as "Chop-Chop", "Landing Gear", "Base Invaders"... If they all happened at once, great opportunity for a huge mess and "Mission Failed: Other mission guy destroyed your target" just by accident.

 

The game should manage this, so if one group of players are doing a mission and another want to activate a mission that predicts they'll overlap, it might move them to another server to play it out. Alternatively, it would be pretty awesome to be in a middle of a mission in the city when suddenly a 16 car street race comes flying through. How GTA crazy would that be!

 

Job Ladder seems nice, though there would have to be a lot of new weapons/car upgrades for this to work well. Otherwise, it seems almost exactly like a (longer & with pauses) Playlist.

 

Instead of gaining clothes, car upgrades, weapons etc through leveling up, you get them through Jobs. So if you want that most awesome of parachutes unlocked, you need to complete lots of parachute jumps. Rather than literally level up and unlock everything.

 

Crime Bosses seems rather... poorly though out. Would existing crime bosses be able to "fall from grace"? If not, then you will (most probably) eventually have everyone be a crime boss. As for ratings being an indicator of quality, may I mention "Prison Thugz Fight"...

 

I'm not sure if I posted my full article on Crime Bosses but it has a whole idea behind it. Yes, most people would be crime bosses but Level 20 players would work for Level 50 Crime Bosses, who in turn would work for Level 80 Crime Bosses. Also, when they complete the Mission Set, they play an "End" mission where they get to end the relationship with that boss (or even kill him.) The beauty of this system is that the Crime Boss never actually interacts with their minion. They only ever meet an NPC character model of the player that designed the custom missions, and never actually meet in game. But the Crime Boss gains 'Likes' as people play through their custom missions. Unlike at the moment where nobody plays your custom designs.

 

Hope this helps, seems like a nice set of ideas.

 

[The Lonesome Drifter]

As much as I hate them however... Blips NEED to stay in. It will be a troll feat without them.

[M210F]

What I would most want to see is a separation of lobbies. In RDR, when you joined multiplayer and there was a choice of peaceful, free-aim only or mixed aim. For GTA:O, I want to see 3 lobbies- Peaceful lobbies (which would be GTA4 style, where guns don't cause damage and explosives only cause people to bounce around; perhaps this could be extended to player vehicles too, like where if you plant C4 on someone's car it doesn't damage it but just sends it flying across the map), Regular lobbies (like what we have now) and classic lobbies (which would emulate GTA4 where you get weapons around the map and you don't gain/lose money or ammo)

 

Apart from that, I feel that blips should only appear when firing a gun, driving a car erratically (oncoming, crashing, speeding, while being chased by the police), fighting or sprinting.

[SingingEwe954]

WO I didn't hear about the. 30 player lobbies. Were gonna need a bigger map

[CrazyDog150]

WO I didn't hear about the. 30 player lobbies. Were gonna need a bigger map

No,we don't.

It's gonna be like before,90% of the players in LS and 10% out in BC.

[_Rei]

WO I didn't hear about the. 30 player lobbies. Were gonna need a bigger map

The map is already big enough. Right now 16 players are too dispersed in Los Santos; 30 players will make the map feel more "lively" and "populated".

[bensons]

30 players are not many tbh.

 

No blips pls.