Grand Theft Auto Grieving Thread - Yep, I've been drinkin' again...

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Dude, they make hand over fist with those shark cards alone, they can easily afford to license music for their old games.

No, their problem is that they don't give a shit about preserving their games, just look at that horrible San Andreas port.

Oh I'm not saying they CAN'T afford it, I'm saying they don't want to pay now that everyone knows they can afford it. (I guess I should have said they have trouble WITH licensing the music, not just trouble licensing it)

Edit: Also everything to do with Online feels like it's done with a shoe string budget. Even though Online has been their money maker for 7 years now, it's like they still somehow treat it as an afterthought and aren't willing to put any actual money or work into it.

 

[The Last Stand]

Edit: Also everything to do with Online feels like it's done with a shoe string budget. Even though Online has been their money maker for 7 years now, it's like they still somehow treat it as an afterthought and aren't willing to put any actual money or work into it.

It's all peer-to-peer too. Which explains all the hacking and DDoS attacks in game. Not to mention the frequent server issues. You'd think with all that money, they'd invest in better architecture and security.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

It's all peer-to-peer too. Which explains all the hacking and DDoS attacks in game. Not to mention the frequent server issues. You'd think with all that money, they'd invest in better architecture and security.

I remember people used to say it was impossible because they never planned for Online to be huge and couldn't replace the architecture, but now we have Red Dead Online that is somehow worse than launch GTA Online was 5 years later.

It's just so damn weird. It almost feels like Rockstar the developers don't care about Online at all and just do it to shut Take Two up.

 

[The Last Stand]

I remember people used to say it was impossible because they never planned for Online to be huge and couldn't replace the architecture, but now we have Red Dead Online that is somehow worse than launch GTA Online was 5 years later.

It's just so damn weird. It almost feels like Rockstar the developers don't care about Online at all and just do it to shut Take Two up.

Corporate greed has ruined yet another company.

Red Dead Online isn't as popular as GTA Online evidently. Is it because of the lack of updates? The Old West setting? Being cannibalized by GTA Online?

GTA Online's success proved to be its inevitable downfall. I don't know who to blame: Take Two, the players, the industry?

 

[Vault Boy]

How come Saints Row doesn't have this problem with their music rights? And Volition is a smaller company than R*.

The snarky answer would be that Volition and Deep Silver cares about preserving their old games, but I don't know.

And yes, a small company like Volition being able to preserve the music means that Rockstar is perfectly able too.

 

[The Last Stand]

And yes, a small company like Volition being able to preserve the music means that Rockstar is perfectly able too.

In Volition's defense, they started off with lesser known music for Saints Row 1-3. I'm sure it didn't cost much to have their music, but it was more authentic. I remember adult swim having their music into Saints Row 3.

III and LCS had lesser known music so their soundtrack was allowed to stay intact, thankfully. Although Flashback FM had Scarface licensed music. Shake It Up (Tonight) was my favorite.

 

[Vault Boy]

In Volition's defense, they started off with lesser known music for Saints Row 1-3. I'm sure it didn't cost much to have their music, but it was more authentic. I remember adult swim having their music into Saints Row 3.

III and LCS had lesser known music so their soundtrack was allowed to stay intact, thankfully. Although Flashback FM had Scarface licensed music. Shake It Up (Tonight) was my favorite.

Maybe for 1, but 2 & 3 had some popular music like 2's 80s station and Kanye West's Power.

Those games are 10 years old and haven't had to remove their music, so what's Rockstar's excuse besides being miserly?

 

[The Last Stand]

Saints Row 1's soundtrack was great. I love hearing underground rap. It set the stage for the gangsta setting beautifully. Voilition even composed a couple of their own songs for the radio.

III & LCS had MSX FM (9. Which was a drum and bass type station. So funky, but indistinct chatter with the DJ. Nice touch with the music.

I think R* is just being cheap, given the money they made. I heard of licensing issues, but I didn't know they lasted upward of ten years.

 

[Exterminate Leftists]

Corporate greed has ruined yet another company.

Red Dead Online isn't as popular as GTA Online evidently. Is it because of the lack of updates? The Old West setting? Being cannibalized by GTA Online?

GTA Online's success proved to be its inevitable downfall. I don't know who to blame: Take Two, the players, the industry?

Everyone. Publishers are almost always shit, the best/innovative games usually end up being self-published imo. Can't hate the publishers for wanting to make money, it is a business, but it's unique in how the customer interacts with it. It's not like a book or a movie where you release a product and that's it, it used to be, but now that the industry is balls deep in subscription models and paid DLC, games end up consuming a lot more resources after release than they ever did in the past. Used to be that you bought a game and if it was bugged, it was bugged for months or years. If you were lucky and a PC gamer, you would get a patch down the line. The biggest games had communities large enough for people to makes patches for games, but you were downloading it off of moddb or one of the hundreds of other scattered sites back in the 90s/00s. The industry is shit because it got flooded with a bunch of "ideas people" aka grifters and con artists, like the tranny john flynt. It's also shit because of people like DSP and other fat retarded pay pigs who spend thousands of dollars on special hats and other faggot shit. Why would any publishers/developers even bother putting out a good product when millions of stupid motherfuckers will smile and hand over their money while people like Todd Howard shit in their mouths year after year? Nah, on second thought the blame lies solely on the gamers. Like battered trailer park wives, they keep coming back and defending the people abusing them while paying $60 or more at a clip. There's a lot of sad and disgusting things in the world, but nothing is more loathsome and revolting than someone who calls themselves a gamer.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Red Dead Online isn't as popular as GTA Online evidently. Is it because of the lack of updates? The Old West setting? Being cannibalized by GTA Online?

It's literally the wild west setting. It doesn't appeal to the GTA Online crowd of just owning shit to feel rich, it appeals to people who want to be cowboys. Something that you already get in a much better package in the single player component.

Red Dead Online wasn't even a good idea on paper. All RDR2 needed was another basic multiplayer component. Some death matches, maybe a few co-op missions and a free roam to fuck around in. That's it.

"But if that was it the game would get boring." It's like...no shit. I got news for you, nothing stays fresh forever. Adding stupid shit to buy doesn't make Rockstars online content good or fun, it makes it into a grind half these people bitch endlessly about.

 

[The Last Stand]

Red Dead Online wasn't even a good idea on paper. All RDR2 needed was another basic multiplayer component. Some death matches, maybe a few co-op missions and a free roam to fuck around in. That's it.

I feel like R* was trying to strike lightning twice with Red Dead Online.

Red Dead Online could've worked. A simpler, more balanced version of GTA Online. Multiplayer in the Wild West, hell maybe the original concept of Red Dead Redemption's multiplayer would've worked.

Or matchmaking like Max Payne 3.

 

[jje100010001]

Corporate greed has ruined yet another company.

Red Dead Online isn't as popular as GTA Online evidently. Is it because of the lack of updates? The Old West setting? Being cannibalized by GTA Online?

GTA Online's success proved to be its inevitable downfall. I don't know who to blame: Take Two, the players, the industry?

Problem is that it was rushed out of the gate, whereas it would have been far better received if they took a few more months and released it in time for Christmas. Second issue is that people just wanted Online to be single player with friends (like GTA IV or RDR's multiplayer), but they got a gimped, stripped-down version of the world, monetization in the beta, and lots of unfun shoot-em-ups in compensation.

Honestly, I think that Rockstar's secrecy and disdain for its fanbase does it no good and causes fanbase speculation to go into overdrive (leading to inevitable disappointment). Case in point- I was actually seriously anticipating RDRII's artbook (which was announced), but then nothing came of it.

It's one of the cases where I sort of wish Take Two would be able to force some changes to Rockstar, and make them open up and engage with the fan community. With Dan Houser leaving, it may be signs of change, but I think that it could also go the other way considering Take Two's robber-baronesque avarice.

 

[The Last Stand]

It's one of the cases where I sort of wish Take Two would be able to force some changes to Rockstar, and make them open up and engage with the fan community. With Dan Houser leaving, it may be signs of change, but I think that it could also go either way.

The Houser Brothers WERE R*. The pride, integrity, fanfare was all thanks to those two men. Remember during the PS2 era that R* was releasing games behind each other of various styles. It died down a bit after the 360 era, but their games were made with heart and soul.

Now they're a shell of their former selves.

 

[jje100010001]

The Houser Brothers WERE R*. The pride, integrity, fanfare was all thanks to those two men. Remember during the PS2 era that R* was releasing games behind each other of various styles. It died down a bit after the 360 era, but their games were made with heart and soul.

Now they're a shell of their former selves.

There's a long-running debate on whether or not the missing third partner was Leslie Benzies, who left Rockstar on bad terms around the time GTAO began to get popular. I think he had a vision of GTAO being a more realistic simulation, but what actually transpired since its original release has obviously produced something very different.

I think the the Housers also experienced some degree of Druckmann-esque butt huffing- in that they wanted to make their games increasingly cinematic- a quality that began with GTAIV, and increased in GTAV and RDRII.

They got lucky with RDRII (like Bioware and DA:I), but I recall that RDRII basically languished in development hell for most of its 8-ish years of development, and only firmed up in the final two years before release, resulting in the awful working environments that were exposed last year. There's still signs of a somewhat unfocused game in RDRII despite its high degree of technical polish, much like TLOUII (which failed in its narrative elements) with some clearly cut mechanics, while some of the narrative pacing and story beats are a bit off. That being said, it's still a beautiful cowboy game.

I personally think that looking at the inflating costs of development and increasing chances of massive busts like Anthem, Take Two has essentially given Rockstar an ultimatum to move towards shorter development cycles, and Dan Houser quit because of the possibility of losing some of the control he had over the development process.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Normally I'd be hopeful that the games would become less movie and more fun with Dan leaving, but there is absolutely no good that can come with Take Two getting more control. It's more likely we'll now just get less cinematic, less fun, more microtransactions.

I think you're spot on about Leslie Benzies. I remember he did some interviews before GTA Online came out and basically it sounded a LOT different than what it became. He made it sound much more like they would keep expanding the world, not just sell a bunch of clothes and cars. I'll try to see if I can find it.

 

[jje100010001]

Another issue with RDRII is that it increasingly runs into the problem of tight narrative-driven missions in an open-world game, which I gauge as Rockstar essentially giving up in face of development issues and returning to their time-trusted mission templates utilized in the GTA series. Many of the game missions are essentially corridor shooters, and the game actually punishes you with failure screens for approaching the missions from a different angle. Normally this wouldn't be too bad in an urban setting (streets are corridors), but its issues are more apparent in a wide open rural setting like RDRII's world.

As such, there's very little actual mission replayability beyond returning for the story, and which is also why the only encouragement for replaying missions is for mission completion times.

Not 100% sure, but earlier leaks of the game's development problems sort of indicated that there were supposed to be more procedural and player-driven game mechanics- one leftover of this is the useless camp system that loses most of its purpose halfway through the game. Likewise, there's a substantially complete gang companion system that was teased in pre-release press statements, but is only really utilized in missions.

I personally am looking forward to OpenIV getting full RDRII support, so that modding can being in earnest.

 

[The Last Stand]

Here's the lawsuit involving Benzies and Rockstar Games, Take Two and the Housers if you're interested.

Inbetween the legal jargon, I like the development history inside with Benzies' contribution or perspective.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

So the weirdest thing is that I'm pretty sure I found the interview where Benzies talks about their plans for GTA Online, except it's been completely scrubbed since CVG apparently became or got folded into Games Radar?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/423020/gta-v-interview-rockstar-north-president-leslie-benzies-on-gta-online/

That's the link for it I found on GTAforums but yeah, apparently it's lost. Convenient for Rockstar I guess :/

 

[HeyYou]

I find it impressive how much Rockstar downgraded the radio from IV to V. All stations in V sound like Flying Lotus DJ mixes. Previous game was packed with boss tunes. Piloting a chopper in a rainy night listening to The Journey was my favorite thing to do in the game. Fedorable, I know, but also relaxing as fuck. And it came with a funny DJ too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1K-Xg3GVE0

The only good music in V is the OST (which was partially or entirely produced by Tangerine Dream, I think?).
Also, I imagine that if they're picking songs for a new game they might be struggling to find someone who will still sound fresh when they release it.
If you could suggest tracks, DJs or stations, what would you suggest?

Sorry to bring this subject up again but I missed the discussion.

You're sleeping on Radio Mirror Park and Rebel Radio in V, my man.

Another issue with RDRII is that it increasingly runs into the problem of tight narrative-driven missions in an open-world game, which I gauge as Rockstar essentially giving up in face of development issues and returning to their time-trusted mission templates utilized in the GTA series. Many of the game missions are essentially corridor shooters, and the game actually punishes you with failure screens for approaching the missions from a different angle. Normally this wouldn't be too bad in an urban setting (streets are corridors), but its issues are more apparent in a wide open rural setting like RDRII's world.

As such, there's very little actual mission replayability beyond returning for the story, and which is also why the only encouragement for replaying missions is for mission completion times.

Not 100% sure, but earlier leaks of the game's development problems sort of indicated that there were supposed to be more procedural and player-driven game mechanics- one leftover of this is the useless camp system that loses most of its purpose halfway through the game. Likewise, there's a substantially complete gang companion system that was teased in pre-release press statements, but is only really utilized in missions.

I personally am looking forward to OpenIV getting full RDRII support, so that modding can being in earnest.

I was wondering why there hasn't been any major RDRII mods. I bought it on PC just to mod it, but it's basically just been trainers and difficulty overhauls.

 

[Personal Jesus]

So the weirdest thing is that I'm pretty sure I found the interview where Benzies talks about their plans for GTA Online, except it's been completely scrubbed since CVG apparently became or got folded into Games Radar?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/423020/gta-v-interview-rockstar-north-president-leslie-benzies-on-gta-online/

That's the link for it I found on GTAforums but yeah, apparently it's lost. Convenient for Rockstar I guess :/

You can try the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013081...north-president-leslie-benzies-on-gta-online/