Joining heists as a group of 2 or 3?

[AngelKing4t7]

To preface, I'm playing on Xbox 360. Much of this might be console-dependent, so I figured I would get that out of the way right now.

 

So, I love the new Heists update. It's done a great job of reviving my interest in GTA:O... and also reminding me of all the niggling little problems/bugs/issues/poorly designed features that come along with that. The current problem I'm running into stems from the fact that all the heists (except the Fleeca Job, but come on, that one hardly counts as a heist) require a full team of 4 players. When I'm playing solo, it's no big deal... I can just go to my phone and "Join On Call" for a heist, and then mess around in Freemode while I wait for a lobby to fill up. Easy peasy.

 

The problems start when I get one friend online who wants to do heists with me. Since there isn't any sort of in-game "party system" (as far as I can tell), there is no way for us to join the same existing heist lobby without being specifically invited by someone. Most other games have a feature so that if you're in an Xbox Live Party with another person playing in the same game as you, it will keep you together when you go into matchmaking... but I can't for the life of me find a way to bring another player with me into a heist lobby that I'm trying to join. I know that people spam out invites to everyone in their current game all the time, so we should theoretically be able to just both accept an invite from the same player... but it seems that whenever my buddy and I get an invite from the same person, and try to both join it, one person will manage to get in, but they are filling the 4th spot, leaving no room for the other guy. This just means a whole nother round of loading screens for everyone, and the guys whose room we joined get to be pissed off when their long-awaited 4th player immediately quits (because as much as I hate being That Guy, I'm certainly not going to heist with 3 strangers when someone I actually know is online trying to play with me).

 

Sure, I could just host a heist myself, but then we are both stuck staring at a lobby menu while we wait for 2 other random players to join up, instead of being free to roam about Los Santos causing mischief while we wait (which you can totally do while On Call looking for a heist when playing alone). It's incredibly frustrating for my buddy and I to be forced to sit around in my apartment, unable to even watch TV or get drunk or hit the bong, waiting for two other random people to join our lobby and actually stay long enough to get the f*cking mission started... especially when I know for a fact that there are tons of other players out there doing the same thing, sitting in their apartment with two-out-of-four players in a lobby, waiting for some action.

 

I guess all I'm really trying to say is... you've got two guys who want to do ANY heist mission or setup, regardless of payout, as long as they can do it together... and you have a presumably huge pool of hosts who need exactly two more people in their lobby to start up a mission. Why is it so hard to get those two groups into the same lobby?