@Kurushio There is no stress test that can tell you what's going to happen when you go live with the massive amount of copies that GTA V had sold. There is no amount of money, nor time that can prevent all problems from a massive online launch, people need to understand this by now, why do companies like Blizzard still have these problems every time they have a massive online release? Blizzard practically pioneered the current form of online gaming with WoW, and yet WoW still has these issues when a new Xpac comes out, or a major patch goes live. Diablo 3 had these issues, SimCity had these issues, CoD still has these problems every single time a new one comes out, I could go on forever, but the point is with these online games, there is only so much a developer can do before going live, there just isn't any way to prevent everything, because they have no idea what is gonna have problems, and there are no tests or simulations that can actually recreate what tens of millions of users logging on are going to do. It's time people stop acting like every developer is sitting on their ass not doing anything, like these problems don't matter to them. This is a nightmare for every single company it happens to, you think Rockstar didn't prepare? They had an entirely separate team working on GTA Online from GTA V single player, both working almost the same amount of time on each, the success of the singleplayer was not their only goal, they had 2 goals, the second of which was to have the online be as big of a success as the single player, these problems were the absolute worst thing that could have happened. They prepared, they spent a quarter billion dollars building the game, they spent 5 years on the game, that's a hell of a lot more preparation than a game with the exact same online functions from one CoD to the next, gets, and yet both games experience similar launch issues, and nobody flips out on Activision/IW/Treyarch nearly as much as people did to Rockstar. I've never seen so many people claim they sold their copies....over 2 days of issues? A game that is guaranteed to give you months, possibly years of new content, sold and given up on because of 2 or 3 days of problems logging on?
When did gamers develop this sense of entitlement? When did gamers turn to this irrational group of people who throw tantrums whenever something doesn't go perfect for them? It's embarassing.
@retsmot You obviously didn't get the memo that missing characters were not deleted, and only inaccessible because of server problems.... I lost my character twice, it came back each time because I have a brain and understood that if I made a new character, it would overwrite my character when it came back. Most people have experienced this when their character looked to be deleted. Sorry you deleted your own characters though, sucks for you. Oh well, Beyond 2 Souls is literally a movie with optional gameplay that doesn't actually care if you play it or not, so you won't have this issue next time.
@senorpianist Calm down, first. Take a deep breath, and think about Skyrims horrific launch on PS3, and how unplayable that game was, and the months it took to get it fixed.... Yeah, GTA Online having server problems for 3 days is totally worse...
@kargion Are you under the impression that GTA Online is as simple as CoD lobby+matchmaking? For one there are several hundred different lobbies within that one 16 player lobby, and those lobbies all connect with people across the online service, not just your one lobby, and then you have the actual world of GTA V, the entire open world, without a single loading screen, seamless from one end to the other, populated with NPC's, animals, vehicles, buildings, stores, police that spawn and follow each individual player as if they were playing single player. You have those 16 players interacting with eachother, fighting, flying, racing, causing general mayhem, etc. And all the while there is a series of missions being sent out depending on each ones location, progress, level, etc. Plus much more..... And you compare it to CoD? Simple 12 person FPS lobbies? Not to mention, CoD BO2 STILL has lag issues to this day that haven't been addressed, not to mention the day one server BS that every single CoD game has.....
And Rockstar should be embarassed? Hahahaha, if you don't understand what it takes to host an online game as simple as CS, or CoD, that's fine, but don't pretend like you do, and make asinine comments comparing GTA Online to CoD, as if what they're doing, and the infrastructure required are anywhere near similar.
@TsK_Makaveli People act like the billion in sales magically showed up in their bank accounts the day after release, instead of understanding that it's coming from thousands of different sources, in all forms imaginable. They didn't release on Sept. 17th, and then get a check for a billion dollars on Sept. 18th, cash it on the 19th, and have access to it on the 20th. Even if they did put that billion into the servers, it would take a long time, and a lot of work to actually build all that extra infrastructure. All the money in the world cannot prevent all problems that can arise from an online game of this magnitude, even WoW still has problems every time a new Xpac is released, or a large patch comes out, and WoW has been around forever, and made far more money than GTA V.
@mpritchard7 Are you kidding? Opening the servers gradually? Do you realize how much more of a problem that would have caused? You're telling me that only turning on 1/5th or even 1/4th of the servers, to the 20+ million people trying to log in, would have lessened the problems? Do you understand the concept of a funnel? Take those 20+ million, and think about the problems they had when they opened all the servers... Now imagine taking that 20 million, and only opening a couple servers..... That would have led to far more people having problems, and would have likely fried the servers they did open, completely.
Postponing it for 2 weeks gave them an extra 2 months to work on the online portion, due to it not going gold with the single player, and being locked out from working on it. That 2 week delay probably cut down the potential problems by at least 50%, if not a lot more. There is no answer to these online problems, every single major release has them, there just isn't anything you can do developer side to actually know what will happen when that many unique IP's start flooding the infrastructure, there is no test, or simulation that can recreate that kind of stress on a network, especially one as big as GTAO. 2 weeks is also not nearly enough time to make the kind of changes necessary to accomodate the record breaking billion dollars in 3 days that GTA V sold. The highest projections prior to release were estimating a billion dollars in 2-3 weeks, that's insane, even Rockstar was caught off guard by the amount of copies they sold, and the people who thought that 2 weeks was enough time to upgrade the network infrastructure have no idea what a server even is, let alone what it would take to build a server setup as big as GTAO requires.
@skipper847 Yes, and it's fantastic. I ran like 10 races in a row with a random group of 16 people earlier, never played the same race/class/track/vehicle type twice. So much fun.
@Shinobi-Neo The new Gamespot broke my chrome install (flash plugin), had to jump through hoops to fix it, but now it works. If you're using Chrome and you get the error (Shockwave flash couldn't load), then google is your friend, lots of methods to fix it, if the video just won't play, no errors, then try disabling adblock, in addition to the flash thing, adblock was blocking the video's, but disabling it made them work.
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