GTA IV wrap up
==============

Monday 30 March 2009 03:20

Being level 8 in multiplayer GTA IV is enough for
me. Earning $1M seems a lot when you just start
out, but once you get better than the average
player it becomes more fun and more efficient to
get there. But taking it to $2.5M or $5M is insane.
I've been mostly doing Mafiya Work, but if you
really want to get the Wanted trophy I think you'd
better calculate what makes the most per hour and
stick to that. And that is probably Deal Breaker,
but that gets boring after a while. Racing is nice
to get some skills to use in Mafiya Work, but I
don't think anyone would want to spend so much time
racing in a non-dedicated race game to get even
close to $1M. But for casual playing racing and
deathmatch are popular enough to always have some
players available.

Since the only other multiplayer online stuff I've
played is Counter-Strike the GTA IV online stuff
just sucks. You can select the type of game, but
then you can't filter on other options, so if you
want Mafiya Work, but not on Bohan, you can't
select that unless you're lucky enough to be
hosting the game. And you can't choose with how
many players you'd want to be. A lot of times some
loser hosting a game doesn't start it and wastes
everybody's time in the lobby, probably while there
is no manual or hint for average players to kick
such a loser to get rid of a zombie lobby. And the
server could monitor that shit and find out by
itself there is not much point waiting more than 1
minute for a 10 minute round. Another issue I have
is that the PSN connection is so unreliable that
going for a game lasting over 30 minutes or $10k
has the huge disadvantage you might be disconnected
with a significant amount of earnings before the
game is over, and those earnings are then lost. And
there are very annoying bugs in the game, which
make Bomb the Base unplayable and in Mafiya Work
spawn tasks in unreachable places, so on an
earnings limit round the players are screwed when
that happens. I've had to have myself killed 13
times to let the other guy reach $10k to walk away
with my own $4k when that once happened. That
should not happen on a top-selling console game
that has been out for 11 months.

The ranking system makes players calculate and find
unbalanced parts of the game. One big mistake is
that it's possible to do nothing in Deal Breaker
and still get about $4k if the other players finish
the mission, so there's a guy who spend about 25000
rounds doing nothing making over $100M. That kind
of power leveling should not be possible. The tasks
in Mafiya Work could also be more balanced. After a
while you know what tasks you shouldn't waste your
inventory on, and you can let some n00b have
himself get killed a couple of times for a couple
of hundred dollars in some far away task while you
are then in a perfect position to complete the next
nearby, easy and high paying task.

The best approach to Mafiya Work is to first get
kitted out with a powerful weapon, body armor and
fast vehicle, and then focus on the tasks. Once you
get into deathmatch style killing of everyone you
encounter, somebody else will be completing the
tasks and make significantly more money. The
spawning points don't help much, so with all
players marked on the map that often leads to n00bs
doing a deathmatch while a more experienced player
can finish all tasks without being bothered by
them. That's why I prefer to only mark the leader
and keep the game focussed on Mafiya Work. Which
player completes a task is determined a lot by
where the tasks randomly spawn. Sometimes you've
just killed a player just to see him spawn closer
to a task, so there would be some respawn time that
would make a death always disadvantageous, but I
don't know what it is and waiting 30 seconds per
death in a 10 minute game seems a waste of time.
I'd rather see the creators of a game put more
effort in setting up a balanced multiplayer game,
and not just give players options that could make
it a strategic or tactical different game, or make
it totally different depending on whether there are
two or sixteen players. Now it seems there is this
online mode and while every player gets some
dollars to help his level go up to keep him happy
there aren't many occasions where the gameplay
alone would keep him happy.

Too bad the tasks in Mafiya Work don't require the
full range of solutions available in the game.
There are no tasks on Happiness Island, none
require a boat, helicopter, motorcycle or walking.
It's fun to complete some tasks with the help of a
helicopter, but it's not the preferred solution. It
would also be nice to have a mixed single/team mode
where for some tasks you'd have to temporarily form
a team to complete a task. I mean GTA IV is a
brilliant platform, but the multiplayer part isn't
what it could be and it feels like nobody involved
with the game cares about what is happening there.

Future DLC? Why would I buy downloadable content
for a game that doesn't get it's bugs fixed? And
since there is this whole GTA universe for Nintendo
DS, PSP, XboX and PC that I'm missing anyway
because I'm not buying the hardware for it, I have
no problem skipping some DLC for PS3. While some
hardcore gamers may have all platforms and can
experience every aspect of the GTA line of games,
as just a PS3 owner I feel just left with half of a
buggy game while the developer seems to be busy
with other platforms. And they think I pay EUR 70
for the next half? DLC might work if they give the
game away for free and then sell DLC content for
those who are interested, but first selling a game
for EUR 70 and then selling EUR 2 DLC items for it
that could have just been part of the game seems
not like a good deal, especially if you don't know
how much DLC there will be when you buy the EUR 70
game. They could come up with another EUR 70 worth
of DLC after that, and maybe you aren't interested
in paying EUR 140 for a complete game. They don't
sell the original GTA IV with only 30% of the
content for around EUR 20, so what's the business
logic behind these things?

by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/play/2009/03/30/gta-iv-wrap-up/