Custom license plate dilemma / rant

[tsto]

To some, this may come off as ridiculous. To others, it may echo some things we may not always feel confident sharing. But I must.

 

Launch day PS3 --> PS4 player.

Over 2200+ hours logged, on one character. Level 649.

 

Not once ever a griefer, cheater, or exploiter of any sort (and proud of it).

 

Simply a car guy with some self-diagnosed severe OCD for certain things.

 

But go fig. I created a custom license plate back on the PS3 days. My username (as shown here).

Started placing it on all of my cars. Grinding legitimately like a maniac over the years to build up a massive collection. Kept doing this up until last week. Had an epiphany, realized it's not "realistic" to do so (same plate on everything ugh). Panicked, OCD went into overdrive mode. Been trying to find a way to have all of my vehicles reverted back to generic, random alphanumeric license plate strings. Contacted Rockstar Support about half a dozen times, only to end up disappointed each time again.

All they could do is reset my one lousy custom plate from iFruit. Couldn't do anything with all the cars. This process repeated throughout the multiple Support interactions. Even bought a shark card for the second time ever just to have an excuse to speak with the Shark Card live chat support. I already know all of their Support teams are outsourced, third party rep centers with limited access at this point and so they're pretty useless when it comes to this.

 

To note, my collection is on the upwards of 160+ vehicles all bearing the same custom plate. I... stopped doing this a few days ago and have avoided applying it to my latest vehicles.

I've considered different solutions, all of which are practically impossible, all but one: sell each vehicle bearing the custom plate, and rebuy it while avoiding the plague of the custom plate feature.

I have since started this project/process, but at a snail's pace as despite my years of grinding, the game always finds a way to drain you of all your income, especially if you're a car nut.

The other reason this will take a while is because of the dreaded, terrifyingly bad "dirty" detection system that affects even the legitimate players who have never used "dupes" in their lifetime playing this game. I would never support cheating personally, but could somewhat understand the frustrations some players might have with the dramatically expensive economy this game presents at first sight. Especially to newcomers without all the businesses and experience to properly run them.

 

There are several ways in which Rockstar could do right by this sort of thing. We can easily label this a Quality of Life (QoL) issue (even though it's so much more than that to some of us). One way is (and this is probably the most desirable one) to allow us to change our license plates at will, free of charge, or at least for a modest sum, preferably through the actual ingame mod shops, infinitely. They can keep the profanity filters on if they so desire.

Another way, also a great option, would be to allow a reversal of  the plate from custom-to-generic. Have it so the system remembers the original generic plate the car was first bought or prized with, and allow a "Back" button of sorts. Accidentally selecting a custom plate has surely happened to more than a few people at this point. How is it that we still can't do something that simple?

Third option, possibly final actual option, would be to simply remove the limit of 30 custom license plates which let's face it, is archaic and poorly aged at this point. We're 5 years out from that update, we have 18 or so garages to store vehicles in. 30 plates is a goddamn joke. Any long-time collector will have surpassed that amount years ago. Ideally, also lower that insane cost of $100,000 per every new custom plate made. Something like $5,000 or even $10,000 would be more reasonable.

 

Alternatively, they could overhaul their silly automated cheat-detection system to properly understand when players delete plates from iFruit in order to create room for new ones it should not label those cars as "dirty" when they aren't. But the previous option I mentioned would be a lot easier and smarter.

 

If this resonates with anyone please feel free to chime in. I hope you understand this means something to me and several others I've been in contact with in regards to this, so I'd appreciate it if you don't comment bash me just for stating how I feel. It feels to me that this needs to be put out there so that there's more awareness about it, and that it would hopefully lead to a solution by Rockstar. If Rockstar is reading this, please address this small-yet-significant pain and continue to do a great job at making addictive and enjoyable franchises. I'll continue to support you because I love these games. Been playing GTA since the 90s starting with the original "GTA" and I hope to continue for years to come.

 

 

 

Edited August 9, 2019 by tsto
some typos.

[SummerFreeze]

San Andreas DMV allows you to put the same plate on multiple cars. The actual identification occurs via a RFID tag stored inside the plate.

 

Lester switches that electronic ID to clear your wanted level. That's how you simply disappear from the LSPD tag readers.

[tsto]

4 minutes ago, SummerFreeze said:

San Andreas DMV allows you to put the same plate on multiple cars. The actual identification occurs via a RFID tag stored inside the plate.

 

Lester switches that electronic ID to clear your wanted level. That's how you simply disappear from the LSPD tag readers.

Touché. That's a pretty great RP-esque way to look at it.

[Maxxi]

The plate text layout is 2 numbers, 3 letters, then 3 numbers. So, they typically read as 11XXX111. If you wanna invest in a realistic plate setup, you can set and delete new plates in the typical GTAV layout. 

[tsto]

18 minutes ago, Maxxi said:

The plate text layout is 2 numbers, 3 letters, then 3 numbers. So, they typically read as 11XXX111. If you wanna invest in a realistic plate setup, you can set and delete new plates in the typical GTAV layout. 

 

Thank you Maxxi. I'm familiar with the layout. I have no issue with investing the money ($100k each) to create fake random plates all over again via iFruit, the problem herein lies with the flawed anti-cheat detect system that labels cars as "dirty" if they possess a plate you created that you later on deleted, in order to make room for new ones. Being that i have over 150 vehicles to run through in order to complete this task, and being that the limit per iFruit is 30, this poses a great risk for being false flagged in order to live out the RP dream again of having random plates. This is why this needs more attention.

[kenmy13999]

5 hours ago, tsto said:

 

Thank you Maxxi. I'm familiar with the layout. I have no issue with investing the money ($100k each) to create fake random plates all over again via iFruit, the problem herein lies with the flawed anti-cheat detect system that labels cars as "dirty" if they possess a plate you created that you later on deleted, in order to make room for new ones. Being that i have over 150 vehicles to run through in order to complete this task, and being that the limit per iFruit is 30, this poses a great risk for being false flagged in order to live out the RP dream again of having random plates. This is why this needs more attention.

Shouldn't be a problem as long as you only make one of each plate 

[tsto]

11 minutes ago, kenmy13999 said:

Shouldn't be a problem as long as you only make one of each plate 

What happens if I ever want to sell the car?

[kenmy13999]

Just now, tsto said:

What happens if I ever want to sell the car?

As long as you only have one of each plate you should be good. Afaik plates will only be flagged as dirty if you have two or more of the same plate that's not tied to your ifruit/social club. 

I'm not 100% sure but take a look at the threads I'm linking and ask there if you don't find the answer in the op there 

https://www.se7ensins.com/forums/threads/daily-sell-limit-for-personal-vehicles.1602531/

 

https://www.se7ensins.com/forums/threads/warning-must-read-before-duping-or-selling-dupes.1630717/

 

It says in the last one not to delete plates you have equipped but I think as long as you only have one I think you should be fine 

[tsto]

Thanks kenmy13999.

 

I don't know what I did wrong, but I just lost access to custom plates completely. I had the Rockstar rep reset the 30 plates I had in iFruit, and now I can't make any, the order supposedly processes, but then in LSC, I got no options at all for the custom plates. Anyone know how to fix this? Did I just get "dirty detected" falsely?

[kenmy13999]

5 minutes ago, tsto said:

Thanks kenmy13999.

 

I don't know what I did wrong, but I just lost access to custom plates completely. I had the Rockstar rep reset the 30 plates I had in iFruit, and now I can't make any, the order supposedly processes, but then in LSC, I got no options at all for the custom plates. Anyone know how to fix this? Did I just get "dirty detected" falsely?

If the R* rep reset your plates with them still being on your cars you're falsely detected. You should contact them again and explain what happened and maybe they can do something about it 

[Tails Prower]

3 minutes ago, tsto said:

Thanks kenmy13999.

 

I don't know what I did wrong, but I just lost access to custom plates completely. I had the Rockstar rep reset the 30 plates I had in iFruit, and now I can't make any, the order supposedly processes, but then in LSC, I got no options at all for the custom plates. Anyone know how to fix this? Did I just get "dirty detected" falsely?

 

It sounds like a false detection but I would follow the steps that we know for having your plates come back to normal which is sell only 1 car every hour and no more than 6 in a period of time.

 

My personal thoughts over all these years are that it's stupid we can't change licence plate back to a stock one which is why I never use custom plates now but hopefully it's something they actually think about next game!

 

 

[tsto]

2 minutes ago, Tails Prower said:

 

It sounds like a false detection but I would follow the steps that we know for having your plates come back to normal which is sell only 1 car every hour and no more than 6 in a period of time.

 

My personal thoughts over all these years are that it's stupid we can't change licence plate back to a stock one which is why I never use custom plates now but hopefully it's something they actually think about next game!

 

 

I agree Tails, I regret ever having started using the custom plate feature with how broken this experience has been. How long does it take for this false detect situation to subside any idea?

 

I really hope for GTA 6 they do the feature justice, or scrap it altogether. This is a nightmare to deal with.

 

I was in the process of spending millions just to make all my cars have sorta-ish-random plates after all having "tsto" on them beforehand. Only got through the 30 before it locked me up now. Shame.

Edited August 10, 2019 by tsto
added more info

[kenmy13999]

2 minutes ago, tsto said:

I agree Tails, I regret ever having started using the custom plate feature with how broken this experience has been. How long does it take for this false detect situation to subside any idea?

 

I really hope for GTA 6 they do the feature justice, or scrap it altogether. This is a nightmare to deal with.

Have you sold vehicles so you hit your daily limit or sold any cars that have been flagged for being a dirty dupe?

Op was relatively long so I scimmed through some of it. 

[tsto]

1 minute ago, kenmy13999 said:

Have you sold vehicles so you hit your daily limit or sold any cars that have been flagged for being a dirty dupe?

Op was relatively long so I scimmed through some of it. 

My original plan was to sell off my cars slowly and rebuy them back with generic plates. All my cars are clean, I've never even tried any of the glitches. Don't know much of anything about the duping systems and all that stuff. I've been told that if I delete a plate myself from iFruit and it's still on one of my cars, that car will get false positive detected. I spoke to a support rep a few days ago that said that if they delete the plates from iFruit it won't do that. Before I thought of the new plan to make 30 plates in the app and then have the rep help me by resetting them, so I can make more, my original plan was what I was trying to do. I sold 7 cars within 30 hour timespan and no more than 1 per hour, and even though my cars are legitimate I knew that it can still false-flag the cars if you sell too fast. So now when I realized it's better to just do the 30 plates and then have the rep reset, I did that. After the reset, I think where I messed up is I made a different initial (free) custom plate from what my cars normally had (TSTO). I should've just made TSTO again and I think I would've been fine if that was again the original plate. After setting the new freebie plate on one car, I tried creating another plate for my Mamba, and when I went to LSC it didn't give me the "process order" button and then when I went to look at the Plates section, it was empty of any custom ones.

[kenmy13999]

2 minutes ago, tsto said:

My original plan was to sell off my cars slowly and rebuy them back with generic plates. All my cars are clean, I've never even tried any of the glitches. Don't know much of anything about the duping systems and all that stuff. I've been told that if I delete a plate myself from iFruit and it's still on one of my cars, that car will get false positive detected. I spoke to a support rep a few days ago that said that if they delete the plates from iFruit it won't do that. Before I thought of the new plan to make 30 plates in the app and then have the rep help me by resetting them, so I can make more, my original plan was what I was trying to do. I sold 7 cars within 30 hour timespan and no more than 1 per hour, and even though my cars are legitimate I knew that it can still false-flag the cars if you sell too fast. So now when I realized it's better to just do the 30 plates and then have the rep reset, I did that. After the reset, I think where I messed up is I made a different initial (free) custom plate from what my cars normally had (TSTO). I should've just made TSTO again and I think I would've been fine if that was again the original plate. After setting the new freebie plate on one car, I tried creating another plate for my Mamba, and when I went to LSC it didn't give me the "process order" button and then when I went to look at the Plates section, it was empty of any custom ones.

As long as you're legit you should just contact support again and explain the situation. I've heard they can remove the false positive manually and what you say seem to back that up a little so your best shot is to contact them again. Maybe ask them at the same time if they can revert all your plates back to the one they had when you bought them, they probably can't/won't but it's worth a shot

[Tails Prower]

I agree with kenny13999 to contact support again.

 

If they can put your original plate back and remove the false flag you should be able to start using the plate system again.

[tsto]

6 minutes ago, kenmy13999 said:

As long as you're legit you should just contact support again and explain the situation. I've heard they can remove the false positive manually and what you say seem to back that up a little so your best shot is to contact them again. Maybe ask them at the same time if they can revert all your plates back to the one they had when you bought them, they probably can't/won't but it's worth a shot

Thank you friend, I truly appreciate the help! I have been in contact with Rockstar for the past week ever since my OCD took over my mind lol. I have asked them a number of times if they can revert all the plates on the actual cars to ones they originally had when I bought them. The 4 or 5 different reps I spoke to over the course of the week said that this is out of their control and cannot be done. All they could do is just reset the iFruit plates. It's kinda hard with the support reps, explaining specific detailed things to them seems to sometimes fly over their heads a bit. Here's hoping they can assist me with this uncomfortable situation.

 

[kenmy13999]

1 minute ago, tsto said:

Thank you friend, I truly appreciate the help! I have been in contact with Rockstar for the past week ever since my OCD took over my mind lol. I have asked them a number of times if they can revert all the plates on the actual cars to ones they originally had when I bought them. The 4 or 5 different reps I spoke to over the course of the week said that this is out of their control and cannot be done. All they could do is just reset the iFruit plates. It's kinda hard with the support reps, explaining specific detailed things to them seems to sometimes fly over their heads a bit. Here's hoping they can assist me with this uncomfortable situation.

 

I was afraid it was out of their control to revert the plates back to original. Maybe try and get the next tier of support and see if that can help any. 

The dupe detection system is flawed and can potentially harm as many legit players as glitchers 

[tsto]

20 minutes ago, kenmy13999 said:

I was afraid it was out of their control to revert the plates back to original. Maybe try and get the next tier of support and see if that can help any. 

The dupe detection system is flawed and can potentially harm as many legit players as glitchers 

It's a real shame how backwards their system is... I guess we can thank the 'dupers' for this mess.

It looks like there is a cooldown of 3 hours in between support ticket creations. I somehow have little faith in them assisting me if they have no way of verifying my legitimacy... This false detection flagged over 120 vehicles now if this is the case.

 

I'm almost positive now that it was because I didn't make the freebie plate on the second go-round as TSTO like all my other cars were normally set as. This screwed me.

Edited August 10, 2019 by tsto
more

[kenmy13999]

21 minutes ago, tsto said:

I guess we can thank the 'dupers' for this mess.

 

I think you can thank us them for that  

[tsto]

Haha, man truly I don't have any ill-feelings for players who use glitches. Those are bugs that Rockstar overlooks and naturally people will find them. I personally do not care to use them as I very much enjoy the grinding aspect of the missions, businesses, etc. It's just unfortunate that it caused for Rockstar to put in place a system that can hurt anyone and everyone without discrimination. Once I sort this thing out with support and get my plates set up, I never want to touch this feature again. What a headache!

[kenmy13999]

1 minute ago, tsto said:

Haha, man truly I don't have any ill-feelings for players who use glitches. Those are bugs that Rockstar overlooks and naturally people will find them. I personally do not care to use them as I very much enjoy the grinding aspect of the missions, businesses, etc. It's just unfortunate that it caused for Rockstar to put in place a system that can hurt anyone and everyone without discrimination. Once I sort this thing out with support and get my plates set up, I never want to touch this feature again. What a headache!

I didn't get the impression you had anything against people using glitches but this would probably never be implemented if people didn't feel the need to glitch/dupe either I personally blame it on R* with the way they made the grind unnecessary long with the intend to sell shark cards 

 

[tsto]

2 minutes ago, kenmy13999 said:

I didn't get the impression you had anything against people using glitches but this would probably never be implemented if people didn't feel the need to glitch/dupe either I personally blame it on R* with the way they made the grind unnecessary long with the intend to sell shark cards 

 

I definitely get you there. The grind can be insanely daunting, the payouts compared to the price of most items in the game has become so out of balance over the years. I can only imagine brand new players to the game or those that don't have as much time to play, how tough it can be. Especially difficult if you don't have the means to make good money the regular way by not having all the different businesses and VIP jobs. It's like a war between the disgruntled playerbase and Rockstar. The big corporation though always finds a way to win in the end, with all their resources. Their panic mode anti-cheat systems though are a cancer and need to be overhauled. This kinda stuff shouldn't happen to anyone.

[Tails Prower]

Yeah, the anti dupe system also doesn't help players who legit find or buy a car and the game then delivers a car with the exact same plate as another you have in your collection  and WHAM two dirty cars and risk of

plate loss.

 

When we had the original system and the game changed the plates in LSC (albeit it would sometimes randomly take away your custom plate) that was easier to sort than current situation and of course it doesn't help

that the dupe glitches mostly work around the dupe detect system anyway but we could be here for hours discussing that!.

[tsto]

The old system was so much better dude. They really screwed this thing up.

[tsto]

1 hour ago, Tails Prower said:

Yeah, the anti dupe system also doesn't help players who legit find or buy a car and the game then delivers a car with the exact same plate as another you have in your collection  and WHAM two dirty cars and risk of

plate loss.

Oh snap, I didn't even think of this before. So me making all these plates in the "generic style" of GTAV is increasing my risk of buying one day a car or stealing one from the street and storing it with a similar plate which will cause the whole thing over again? Oh god.. it never ends

 

But guys, you won't believe this, I sat on the chat with this rep "Josh", and I freaking fixed it!! He reset my plates and then TSTO was stuck there, and I wasn't able to do anything still. So we tried all kinds of things. Finally, I went into single player and ordered another plate for Trevor, XTSTOX. Did that, made sure to save, went back into Online and VIOLA! I was able to recreate a TSTO plate again, and now my cars with TSTO have the custom plates option again! Dude I literally fixed their issue for them. The funny thing is the poor fella was saying how Rockstar is "working on a fix", do you guys really think they would take this long, how many years now to have this fix out? Man... I don't know.

 

A few pointers for everyone here to be aware when it comes the custom plates that I've learned over the course of the past week or two:

 

1. Custom plates can lead you down a rabbit hole you will have trouble getting out of. If you've never used them before, you're better off not using them at all.

2. The system that R* put in place to prevent people selling 'duped' vehicles has done more harm to people who never did such a thing. Having 2 vehicles in your possession with the same exact license plate if you do not own that plate can cause for the game to think your cars are 'dirty dupes' even when they aren't, like Tails mentioned above me.

3. The fix that worked for my situation (and also proved that I was legitimately wronged) was seeking help from Rockstar support, requesting a reset for the plates and THEN I went into singleplayer, ordered another custom plate for Trevor, it was applied on the go when I got into SP. Then I went to save the SP, switched back to Online and I was able to make an order for the cars that had my TSTO plate on them again. So I remade a TSTO plate again so that it understands that it's there. Now that that's outta the way...

4. Deleting the plates can trigger this false-detection thing if more than one car has the same plate that was just deleted.

 

The final worry now is buying a car one day and it having the same plate as one of my other ones and the whole issue will begin anew.

Edited August 10, 2019 by tsto
things

[Tails Prower]

13 minutes ago, tsto said:

Oh snap, I didn't even think of this before. So me making all these plates in the "generic style" of GTAV is increasing my risk of buying one day a car or stealing one from the street and storing it with a similar plate which will cause the whole thing over again? Oh god.. it never ends

 

But guys, you won't believe this, I sat on the chat with this rep "Josh", and I freaking fixed it!! He reset my plates and then TSTO was stuck there, and I wasn't able to do anything still. So we tried all kinds of things. Finally, I went into single player and ordered another plate for Trevor, XTSTOX. Did that, made sure to save, went back into Online and VIOLA! I was able to recreate a TSTO plate again, and now my cars with TSTO have the custom plates option again! Dude I literally fixed their issue for them. The funny thing is the poor fella was saying how Rockstar is "working on a fix", do you guys really think they would take this long, how many years now to have this fix out? Man... I don't know.

Well that's good that you fixed it and handy to know as I have a similar plate problem of one plate not appearing on an old account so I might give that a try!

 

Yes that's the reason I mentioned it, you've got to be very careful with custom plates!

[tsto]

3 minutes ago, Tails Prower said:

Well that's good that you fixed it and handy to know as I have a similar plate problem of one plate not appearing on an old account so I might give that a try!

 

Yes that's the reason I mentioned it, you've got to be very careful with custom plates!

So do you think it would be better for me to do something that's not the usual 11xxx111 pattern for the remaining cars then? something like 1xxxx111 or mix in a letter in the middle somewhere there like 11xxx1x1 so that I reduce my chances of running into that problem? I've already made 33 vehicles with quasi-random license plates through the iFruit tonight to make them look like generic. Best to cut the bleeding by changing up the pattern a bit yeah?

[Tails Prower]

Yeah that's one way to do it but with me being a train/car fan I tend to do mine a bit more randomly. There is never a guarantee but the likelyhood of these plates appearing is a lot less I'd say.

 

Examples I've made are 91STH023 ((23 June 91 Sonic the Hedgehog), 09MIK031 (31 Aug 09 - Miku Hatsune Song).

 

Just work with what you think is best!

[tsto]

Hmm. That's quite clever. I guess the 30 or so cars I've already done I'll let them be, because the chances of those particular plates showing up is probably pretty minimal, but it's best to change it up while I still can for the remaining cars.

 

I really just want to do this so I no longer have the same plate on all of my vehicles as it's bothering the heck outta my OCD. This process has been so difficult that I regret from the bottom of my heart ever starting to use the custom plate feature 6 years ago. But like we said earlier, R* with the faulty system is the culprit.

 

I made a plate for the Mamba labeled "66C0B427"

66 for the year 1966, for the year of the Cobra production, 427 for the engine cubic inches. C0B for Cobra, where the O is a zero.

 

All the other ones I've done before this whole fiasco earlier are written out just like the generic plates, but with a bit more intention depending on the car. I can only pray from this point forward until GTA6 releases that any car I end up buying and adding to my collection does not share any of the other cars' plates. Just thinking about that out loud makes me cringe at the way they set this thing up.