GTA Online: Kortz Center Heist Review
The Kortz Center Heist is part of GTA Online’s 2026 update. This heist is similar to many other heists, but this article will discuss whether or not it’s worth the effort. Let’s explore.
Preface
The Kortz Center heist, like the Cayo Perico heist, supports 1 player in its job mission. It is now the only other heist that supports 1 player. However with 1 player, your maximum take is around GTA$2 million because of the loot bag size. There are other bugs that you may encounter during the heist that actually make completing the heist much more difficult than it should otherwise be.
The terrain around the Kortz Center also makes this mission into a captive area. When attempting to leave the area, you are forced to make your way down or up very steep hill terrain. There’s no way to make a clean getaway from this specific location in the game. There are also very few places to hide during the getaway.
This issue is compounded by the job mission saddling you with very limited types of weapons, very limited access to vehicles and that no Mechanic vehicles called during the mission will spawn on the Kortz Center hill. No, they won’t spawn in the parking lot area or on the road leading up to the Kortz Center. The closest spawn area for vehicles is on the road running in front of the Kortz Center entrance, a very very long way away if running. Don’t expect to call the Mechanic to deliver a vehicle to your position wherever you have exited.
Also, don’t expect to get down any of the hills quickly on foot. You will literally be running for minutes trying to run down the hills to get to a road.
It should also be noted that even though you can call the Mechanic for a vehicle and park it on the grounds prior to entering the Kortz center, that vehicle will be despawned upon exiting the Kortz center; it won’t be where you left it. You are forced to use the getaway vehicle you selected when you began the job, assuming you can even find where that vehicle is actually parked.
Prerequisites
As with all heists, you will need a number of prerequisites to even begin the heist. These prerequisites include the following:
- CEO (Agency property) OR Bike President (Clubhouse property) OR VIP (~GTA$1 million) (GTA$1-3 million)
- Own at least ONE Mansion property … PLUS (~GTA$3 million)
- Purchase the Art Studio expansion room for the mansion (~GTA$3 million)
- (Optional) Arcade Property with Drones
To get access to the heist mission planning board, you will need all of the above. These items above will cost you roughly GTA$9 million to GTA$10 million, not including the arcade property.
If you don’t have these, you can join in on someone else’s heist and still help them perform the heist. If you want to be the heist leader, you will need to own all of the above to launch it.
The Heist Setup
As with all heists, there are a number of heist setup missions required (and some which are optional) to begin the heist. I won’t get into the details of every single heist setup mission, but suffice it to say that if you’ve played any other heists, there are no surprises here.
These setups are mostly time wasting missions that really do nothing to help you complete the heist, nor do they provide you with any income. You perform them, waste time and then that “unlocks” some objective. Rockstar is primo at providing heist setups that do nothing to actually help the outcome of the heist itself. Such setups include unlocking heist getaway vehicles, unlocking various weapon loadouts and unlocking various entry and exit points for the Heist. This is not a complete list. Suffice it to say that there are no surprises. Most of the setup missions are relatively easy, but they often require you to traverse the entire map bottom to top to get to the area to complete the objective. You’ll need a fast helicopter, Opressor or Deluxo to move you around faster.
Note that while the heist setup missions allow you to use special vehicles and special weapons, the heist job doesn’t. Be warned.
The Kortz Center Heist Preplanning
The actual heist begins by pressing START on the mission board within the Art Studio on the lowest level of your Mansion. The START button will only become available once you have completed the above mentioned required setup objectives. There are around 5-10 of them. You don’t need to complete everything, but you might want to complete it all to unlock maximum choices during the heist.
This heist also requires that you start and abort it multiple times so you can actually learn things that you can only learn while actually playing through the heist. This includes things like guard placement, camera placement, camera and guard cones of vision, hiding places, sneaking places, how and where you can move without being seen and so much more. There is no way to learn this without starting and aborting this mission multiple times. It also includes learning which entry and exit points offer the best access to the vault.
Unfortunately, there is no way to abort this job without your character losing all of its lives via dying. If you abort the mission by leaving the game via “find new session”, Rockstar penalizes you as potentially a “bad sport” because this mission is started as a “job.” This is one of the bugs I have found with this mission. As a matter of course, there is NO WAY to run through a test mission in advance to learn all of the required details of the mission area. You simply have to deal with Rockstar’s stupidity.
To be able to complete this heist in the way that you prefer, you will need to need to run through the heist multiple times as “trial and error” to find the best ways to get into and out of the heist itself with maximum bank. Yes, that means getting to a specific point in the mission, then aborting it.
Sure, you can “wing” it and get away with whatever amount is left over, but using the actual heist to learn how to navigate through it is the only way to finish the heist with maximum bank.
Stealth Option?
The heist itself leads you to believe that there is a stealthy way to get through the heist, while also getting away clean and undetected. Don’t believe it! That option doesn’t exist. Upon exiting the building after getting through the vault undetected, Raf will say, “It looks like a silent alarm was tripped” followed by a cut scene cinematic of the entire Los Santos SWAT team pulling up in front of the Kortz Center.
Even if you manage to get through the entire heist undetected, get through the vault undetected, get through the laser grid undetected, get through EVERYTHING undetected, the SWAT is still called in and you are still required to “lose the cops”, while trapped on top of the Kortz Center Hill with no way to call any vehicles to you.
You may be saying, “But what about the getaway vehicles?” What about them? I have still yet to find where these vehicles get parked after exiting the building. Clearly, they are nowhere near the exit location chosen. The HUD visibility bug doesn’t help me locate where they are either.
Entry Points
There are 4 main entry and exit points that you can scope. These include the following:
- Rappelling through the Skylight on the roof
- Using the sewer manhole located in the Maze
- Using the employee entrance into the art gallery (upper or lower level)
- Using the basement entrance in an AlphaMail van and outfit
Rappelling
This is probably the most difficult entry point because it requires making your way to the roof, avoiding a number of guards and cameras getting up there. Then, once inside the gallery, you have to again avoid a number of guards and cameras to make your way down into the basement.
See the AlphaMail entry point below to learn more about the basement area. Ultimately, to rappel, you will need to visit and traverse through at least 3 heavily guarded areas before getting into the vault. Wearing any gear other than the AlphaMail or Hazmat suit will work for rappelling. Though you can probably rappel in those outfits. You must wear those two specific outfits for the AlphaMail disguise entry and the Sewer, respectively.
Sewer
The manhole sewer requires obtaining a manhole tool to open the manhole cover to enter into the sewer. It also requires wearing the Hazmat suit. You will need to perform the setup that obtains the Hazmat suit if you want to enter through the sewer.
Once inside, Raf will send you a text message describing the proper gates to enter to get into the basement area. You will need a weapon with a flashlight to be able to see the markings on the wall to enter the correct gates. This entry point lands you into the basement, but at a different entry point from the AlphaMail entry point.
Employee Entrance
The employee entry point requires a keycard to enter. You get this keycard during a heist setup mission. You will need to get past a number of guards and cameras to make your way to the employee entrance keypad. You don’t need to hack this keypad when you have a card. You will enter on either the first or second level of the gallery depending on which entry point you choose.
This entry point is very similar to the Rappelling entry point in that you’re in the gallery and you need to make your way down to the basement, which means avoiding a bunch of guards and cameras inside the gallery.
Note, for maximum haul inside the gallery, you will need at least two people. There is a gate that is down on the second level that must be opened using the CCTV camera room. It requires one player to handle opening the gate and another to get into the room to smash and grab. A minimum of two players is required for the upper gallery area.
AlphaMail Van and Outfit
This is the final entry point into the Kortz Center and probably the easiest of all entry points to use. There are limited guards and cameras that you need to handle along the way. This is the only of these four entry points that you can successfully sneak and stealth your way through.
With this one, you’ll wear an AlphaMail employee outfit and drive an AlphaMail van (you get this in the setup). This one gets you into the loading bay of the Kortz Center with no difficulties. You can even walk your way past the two initial loading dock guards with no combat. You will be required to get an employee card to unlock the door, but even doing that doesn’t alert the guards.
This entry point is, by far, the simplest and easiest. You only need to stun about 6 guards and shoot out one camera to get into the vault laser grid area. It’s super simple up to that point.
Getaway Vehicles
The getaway vehicles offered are 4 Manchez motorcyles (one for each team member), an Annihilator Helicopter or an armored Caracara 4×4. None are particularly better than any other in terms of getaway vehicles. I’ve never used the copter because I assumed it would be parked on the roof as a getaway vehicle.
From every exit point, it almost impossible to make your way back up to the roof to get into the copter. That getaway vehicle is nearly pointless, unless you want to lose nearly all of the contents of your loot bag. I have no idea where the Caracara gets parked nor the motorcyles. One thing is certain, they are parked nowhere near the underground exit when following the AlphaMail entry type.
Loot Bag
And here we come to the sour part of this heist. Each player has a loot duffel bag that they carry around as part of the heist. Each player can fill their loot bag with a limited amount of smash and grab gallery loot.
Unfortunately, Rockstar has intentionally made the loot bag size so small per player as to make the gallery area of the heist almost useless. One player loot bag can hold at most two cut paintings. Even though the gallery has probably 30-40 (or more) items that could be scoped and nabbed, the loot bag is so small that there’s no point in even going into the gallery when you’re the one handling the vault.
In fact, there are 4 paintings inside the vault besides the primary target painting (which doesn’t consume loot bag space), only two of those cut paintings will fit inside of the player’s loot duffel. Once you nab the three paintings from the vault, there is no reason to even enter the gallery to smash and grab. This not only negates the entire gallery area as a single player, it forces you to use multiple players to even consider entering the gallery area.
Heist Strategy
If you have 1 player only, the heist strategy should be to use the AlphaMail vehicle and outfit. This gets you straight into the basement and very close to the vault. Because the loot bag is so small, you should ignore the gallery area and focus solely on getting into vault and nabbing the primary target painting along with two of the other stored paintings. This will fill your loot bag.
If you have two players, the second player can loot portions of the gallery while one player loots the vault.
If you have four players, three of the players can focus on the gallery and nab whatever they can fill into their loot bags, with one player focusing solely on clearing out the vault. If attempting this with multiple players, don’t worry about stealth at all. Simply set the alarm off and get started nabbing and grabbing.
Entering the Laser Grid and Vault
There is nothing that you can pre-prep that will help you get past the laser grid. It’s simply a matter of timing to avoid the laser beams. It’s best if only ONE player attempts to get past the beams undetected. Multiple players will inevitably set off the beams.
Inside the laser beam area there are three switches covering three grid areas. Each switch turns off the laser grid behind the player. You will need to sneak your way through the beams to get to each switch.
It is definitely possible to get to the switches and turn them off without touching any of the beams. It simply requires precise timing. However, it’s also a very slow process and rando players joining into this heist may not be patient enough for this kind of stuff.
Also, two new player actions are available while in the beam grid area: 1) crouch flat and 2) jump-in-place. The jump-in-place feature is actually not needed here. The jump-in-place feature is as it sounds. You can ONLY jump in place, not while moving. If you time the area with the ground sweeping beam correctly, you can turn off the switch without needing to jump. The jump in place feature is also not very precise. Inevitably, it’s more difficult to attempt to jump the ground sweep beam than it is to avoid it by correct timing.
This laser grid area will require multiple plays through to get the timing down pat. This is why you may need to abort and reattempt this area multiple times to figure out the timing. It took me about 8-10 attempts to finally get through the entire laser grid undetected.
Once you get past all three laser grid areas and turn them off while undetected, Raf will commend you on getting past all three grids. However, it doesn’t really help with the vault area and it doesn’t buy you anything other than remaining undetected. There is still effectively a “thermal detection” timer to exit the vault before being detected. You’ll want to nab the primary target painting as fast as possible, then grab two other random paintings in that same area and exit the vault and laser grid area.
This is why it’s important to scope out all of the paintings in the entire Kortz Center area before attempting this heist. If you don’t pre-scope those paintings in the vault, you may not be able to grab them.
Once you are out of the laser grid doors, you can use the SecuroServ app to EMP blast the power and turn the lights off. This will help you escape the building easier. There are four exits from the basement including the way you came in, including the sewer, the gallery and the basement loading bay.
Bugs
Vehicle Disappears
There are many bugs present that help ruin the immersion of this mission. If you arrived via the AlphaMail van, that van will have disappeared in the loading bay area. You cannot use it to exit or leave the area. You must run your way up the loading dock road area and back to the exit. You will exit this garage on foot.
Guards Respawning After Vault
Even if you’ve taken out all of the guards in the basement before entering the vault, after exiting the vault and grid area, those guards will ALL have respawned. I recall that this even included fixing the cameras you have formerly taken out. This is a fairly big bug. If you’ve remained undetected this whole time, those guards shouldn’t respawn. If new guards have showed up while inside the vault, those new guards would have alerted that someone is breaking in because of all of the stunned guards. Yeah, big bugs.
Exiting from the Vault / Silent Alarm / No Stealth
Once you reach an exit, Raf says that a silent alarm was tripped and once outside you instantly have a 3 star wanted level. There is no exit that leads you off of the grounds. Meaning, no matter which exit you choose, you will face a 3 star wanted level with not only Kortz guards, but also SWAT and helicopters.
Don’t bother following Raf’s advice by using an Arcade drone to disable guards as that drone will instantly alert the guards that you’re there. Raf suggests using it, but it never works to remain stealthy. Use a stun gun instead. Basically, don’t take Raf’s advice at any point during the heist.
Touchy Alarms
The entire grounds of the Kortz Center is completely touchy for detection. You may find yourself doing nothing at all and still having the guards alert you for detection. It’s really annoying and touchy that this area can instantly alert everyone that you’re there. Like, for example, I drove my car up next to a wall where it can’t be seen like I had done several other times, and somehow it alerted the guards. I place the car up against this wall because I can stand on top of the car and then grab onto the wall. This allows me to get into an area to head up to rappel or use the employee entrance. It’s much faster to do this than having to walk nearly the entire grounds, avoiding many, many guards and cameras.
The touchy alarm nature of the Kortz area is incredibly frustrating. Once the alarm sounds, you’re forced to endure listening to that blaring alarm for the duration of the entire heist. This loud annoying alarm NEVER SHUTS OFF and NEVER quiets. You can’t even shut it off from settings. You have to mute audio on your entire rig. Yes, this is a bug and it needs an accessibility update.
Bad Sport
This part of GTA has been an ongoing bug for years. I’ve also reported this bug at least once. This “Bad Sport” aspect applies only to missions that start up as “jobs.” Not all missions operate as jobs, but many do. All heists operate as “jobs.”
Jobs are a special type of mission that allows for multiple players and for player matchmaking when in a public multiplayer lobby. Technically, you can only be a “bad sport” if you abort a multiplayer job, meaning that there are actually other players in the job with you. If you launched a job alone, you can’t be a “bad sport” because no other players are affected by your abrupt departure from the job. This “bad sport” issue is a bug that needs to be removed when players are playing jobs alone, especially when they’re playing it in an invite only server with one player. Single players should not be penalized after leaving “jobs” when no other players are participating.
Loot Bag Size
As mentioned above, the loot bag size is way too small for this heist. A real duffel bag would be capable of cramming in at least 10-20 rolled up paintings of the size allowed. This overly restrictive duffel bag size is blatantly obvious and I would consider this a bug.
Hard Game Freezes
This bug is unrelated to the heist itself, but instead affects general GTAO gameplay. Since the update that rolled out adding this heist and the Art Studio, the game now periodically hard freezes while moving around the map. The hard freeze happens at frequent intervals and lasts for between 5 and 10 seconds. While I can’t recall experiencing these hard freezes while inside of the heist, it happens often while near my Nightclub, Bail Office, Agency and various other random map locations. I’ve had something like a hard freeze about every couple of hours of play, but since this update, it’s increased in frequency to about every 5-10 minutes.
Radar HUD Unavailable
This bug is absolutely frustrating. When performing heists, I change my settings to use the bigger local map display on the HUD. It allows for better visibility of the guards and their cones of vision. The tiny HUD is just too small for this.
For regular playing, that tiny HUD is fine. For heists, it’s not. The problem is that sometimes the larger HUD remains stuck on the world map, not showing the local map. This means that you are forced to switch settings back to the tiny HUD map and then use the actual full screen map to see where the guards and cones of vision are. This is not optimal for game play. Both the tiny and the large overlay HUD map should display the SAME version of the local map.
Another related bug is that the local area map of the Kortz grounds doesn’t allow for moving very far from the player’s position. This is why I can’t see where the getaway vehicles are. The restricted limits of scrolling this local map means I can’t move it far enough to see where everything is. Even more than this, the local map has stupid view limits. Even if you can move it far enough away from the player, it stops displaying objects too far away from the player’s position. Moving to the world map is just as pointless and doesn’t show anything useful.
Effectively, there is no map that really works properly for this heist.
Gun Loadouts
For this heist, you get the choice of one of three different gun loadouts. Only one of the gun loadouts has a stun gun (Military). All three gun loadouts are very similar (Street, Military and Security), each with a different type of automatic weapon, a shot gun and a pistol. In the Military loadout, the pistol is replaced with a stun gun.
If you’re intent on trying a stealth approach, the stun gun is the only way this works. That means raiding Fort Zancudo to get this weapon loadout as part of heist prep. This weapon loadout is probably the most difficult to get of the weapon gathering heist preps.
The reason it’s great for stealth is that the stun gun drops a guard in ONE SHOT. Because the guards are wearing armor and helmets, it takes multiple shots to take them down with all other weapons provided. The stun gun is the ONLY weapon capable of one shotting the guards and preventing them from sounding the alarm. Keep in mind that some guards groan and gurgle loudly which can sometimes alert nearby guards, which will instantly set off the alarm. The stun gun works to subdue most of the time, but it is not perfect.
As mentioned in the bugs area, Raf does suggest, assuming that you own an arcade with drones, taking out guards with those drones. Trying to use a drone almost instantly alerts the guards that you’re there. Don’t do it. You don’t need to do this anyway.
Best and Worst Strategies
The best strategy to get into the Kortz center is using the AlphaMail van and outfit. This entry point gets you into the basement and into the vault area the easiest and fastest. This strategy requires avoiding only ONE set of guards to get inside. Two of those guards aren’t even combative in the loading area.
The worst strategies include rappelling and the sewer. Rappelling requires avoiding three different sets of guards to get into the vault. The first set is outside on the grounds. The second set is inside the gallery area. The third set is inside the basement area.
The sewer requires running around the grounds to find a sewer key. You can’t pre-prep this one stupid tool and bring it with you. Noooo. You have to find it on the grounds at the time of the heist in one of about 5 different spawn places. That means running around the grounds to each of these different spawn places to find it, increasing the chances of being detected. Once in the sewer, you exit into a different area of the basement that doesn’t make it any easier than using the AlphaMail van. Just stick with the van.
Commentary
Everything above describes mostly what’s needed to complete the heist. This area will discuss the problems and issues with this heist.
No Trial and Error
The first and foremost problem is the required “trial and error.” To be able to complete this mission correctly, it requires scoping out the entire heist actively while it’s live. This live “dry run” gives you information that you can get in no other way, like how many guards there are, where their cones of vision are, their walking patterns, how the cameras sweep and so on.
There’s literally no other way to gather this kind of information other than doing this during a live heist. Unfortunately, Rockstar gives no way to abort the mission other than by losing the character’s life. Rockstar also gives no way to “dry run” the heist and see the grounds as it is with a heist in progress. You’re simply left with two options, 1) do the heist without knowing anything or 2) to keep trying to do it for real over and over until you succeed. I always consider “trial and error” gaming a bug.
When will Rockstar finally allow us to launch a heist as a “dry run?” Meaning, a “dry run” that doesn’t allow for nabbing or grabbing or even completing it, but allows “trying out” various strategies against the guards to see what is successful and unsuccessful, try out various entry and exit strategies and try out other methods like stealth.
No Way to Abort the Mission
Note that calling Raf to request aborting the Heist doesn’t actually abort the live mission in progress. Instead, it resets the entire Heist as though you hadn’t started it at all. You will need to pay GTA$100,000 to re-initiate setup of the heist. Calling Raf is not what you want. This likely also means doing all of the setup and gathering missions all over again. Simply accept the “Bad Sport” consequences of hard “dry run” aborting and move on.
Too Complicated
This heading has many different aspects involved. From the poor choice in guns in each of the 3 loadouts to the lack of using special vehicles during the job mission. Rockstar always feels the need to overly hamstring the player by forcing them to use very limited weapons and limited vehicles, but also using up the player’s actual inventory of supplies, like ammo, armor and snacks.
This means that after the heist is over, whether aborted or completed, you’re going to need to buy more supplies, wherever you get them.
If we’re being forced into a job with limited and forced features, then the pool of supplies should be provided BY the job, not from the player’s inventory. When we exit out of the heist in whatever way, our actual supplies should remain untouched.
This heist also wouldn’t be this complicated if we could simply use our existing weapons, our existing vehicles and our existing perks, like calling Lester to call the cops off. That the heist forces us into these silly hamstrung situations and then restricts our ability to use basic features we already have, it’s stupid.
Is It Worth The Time?
This question is worthy of a debate, but in this author’s opinion, it’s a conditional no. Conditional, because it may be worth it IF you have enough players and IF you have the correct players who can help you through the heist properly.
Matchmaking Problems
Often, matchmaking throws in randos who not only sabotage the heist efforts, they actively play stupid games during the heist to try and cause it to fail. Because GTAO’s matchmaking feature is so poor, it’s really only worth playing this heist with people you know and whom you have specifically invited.
Poor Payout
As with all heists, the payout for The Kortz Heist is too low for the amount of money you’re required to spend up front to get started as well as all of the wasted time doing heist prep.
In this case, because you have to buy so many expensive properties just to be able to run this heist, getting maybe GTA$1.5 million out of the heist is simply not worth the GTA$9-10 million you had to put in. You’d have to run this heist at least 8-9 times to exceed what you had to pay to get access to the heist board.
The Art Studio heist board touts up to a GTA$4 million payout, when in fact the best that you get is around GTA$1.5-2 million per player. You can make this amount of money in an hour or two just doing non-job activities. You don’t need to waste time and frustration on this heist.
Lack of Stealth
Because GTAO intentionally negates the way stealth could be used to complete the Kortz heist, it’s not even worth trying a stealth methodology. With Cayo and the Diamond Casino heists, stealth is not really usable. With a museum heist, stealth is nearly a prerequisite. That is, performing the heist completely undetected. It’s worse, though. The game titilates you into thinking stealth is an option, but it really isn’t.
The game actively prevents this outcome when exiting. You are forced into a three (3) star wanted mode, but not just any three (3) star wanted mode. It’s a “special” five (5) star type of three (3) star wanted mode, with helicopters and SWAT and massive amounts of them… while trapped on the Kortz Center hill with very limited ways to leave.
Not only is the Kortz Museum grounds over-covered with too many cameras and far too many guards, the SWAT response at the end is a severe over-reaction. That painting stolen is not worthy of that level of police action. Rockstar overdid the response.
I realize why. Gamers expect a “hard” level experience, and that kind of police action at the end ensures that it’s difficult for the player to get away. Unfortunately, that over-reactive ending penalizes those of us who choose to want a stealthy option. Stealthy players should be able to end out this heist without a massive police action.
If you try to leave on foot heading downhill away from the Kortz center with the stars still flashing, the helicopters instantly find and target you. What’s worse is that because you’re saddled with a handful of piss poor weapons designed to help you against a handful of museum guards, these weapons do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING against helicopters shooting at you and SWAT teams in armored trucks. Rockstar, where was the pre-heist planning for this absolutely expected level of police action at the end?
You don’t have a homing missile launcher or any necessary long range accurate weapons needed to take down a helicopter. I’m uncertain if the Caracara 4×4 is still weaponized because I’ve not been able to even get to it after exiting the building. The Caracara 4×4 was weaponized when I picked it up from the Arena, but did Rockstar modify the vehicle at the Kortz Center? Even if it is, it’s not really enough to take down the multitude of helicopters flying around the Kortz Center. The Manchez bikes certainly aren’t. The Annihilator copter is really only good at sneaking away, but good luck at getting to wherever that getaway copter has landed.
Overall
This heist’s design is stupid and insipid. It’s exactly what you would expect from Rockstar, but the actual heist itself is stupidly designed. The loot bags are too small to be able to get away with much other than the main painting. Why even bother to head into the gallery itself when you can only fit two paintings in the bag beside the main target painting? Without a usable stealth outcome, the heist is again, stupid.
When all of this is combined with all of the bugs, it’s just not worth playing.
I’m also tired of Rockstar teasing players with a stealth option only to not provide or even allow a stealth closure to the heist. Stealth is actually the most difficult methodology to use because of the touchy nature of the entire area. It’s incredibly difficult to stay in stealth mode through the entire heist, but it’s incredibly easy to set off the alarm.
It’s like Rockstar laughs at all of the people who try to use stealth to make their way through these heists. It’s like Rockstar devs are saying, “Sucker!”
Yeah, no. Don’t bother with this heist… unless you really enjoy wasting your time.
Rating: 1.2 out of 5 stars (it could be much better)
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Game Review: GTA Online
The GTA Online multiplayer world uses the same Los Santos map (mostly) as GTA 5 and is basically GTA 5 with multiplayer support. However, there have been some alterations to the map for certain expansions, such as the Diamond Casino add-on. The Diamond Casino, for example, is a mostly fully working casino with table games, slots and a once-a-day spin-to-win wheel. Unfortunately, all is not perfect in GTA’s online world. Welcome to Randocity’s GTA Online review for 2020. Let’s explore.
Where GTA Online diverges from GTA 5 is how it uses GTA$. While it costs GTA$ to buy stuff in GTA 5 single player campaign, the prices were much more reasonable. When you enter the GTAO world, the prices become astronomically high by comparison. An outfit that costs $500 in GTA 5 might cost you $50,000 or a $1 million in GTAO money.
Cars that might cost you $50-100k in GTA 5 might cost you well over $2 million in GTAO. There are plenty of other examples of exceedingly inflated prices in the online version of the GTA world. They’re inflated for a reason, though. This is where the fun meets tedium. There is actually a name for this in the gaming world. It’s called “grinding”.
GTA Online Missions
Almost every mission in GTAO will give you some amount RP (reputation points) and GTA$ in some amount. Unfortunately, the amount of GTA$ awarded is usually very small, like $10k up to $100k. Some are even lower like $5k and sometimes even less. You rarely ever get more than $100k in one mission. If you are awarded more than $100k, you usually have to split that money (i.e., heist) amongst other characters and players involved. Though, there are a few gun challenges that will award $200-250k for completion.
As another lame example, Lester’s Diamond Casino heist typically awards $2.1 million, but that money must be spread out between all of the participants… leaving you again with maybe $300-500k at most. You don’t get all of that $2.1 million. Most of that money disappears into the ether of the game. The money is claimed by AI NPCs, which is disgustingly pointless. That money isn’t even really there. The award number is all for show since you’re only going to get a very minimal (preset) amount of it.
When you do missions for your nightclub, Tony takes a nearly 10% cut of the money from it… money that again simple disappears into the game’s ether. Tony is a fictional character who appears mostly by phone and doesn’t “need” that money. Instead, it’s a cheat-you-out-of-money mechanic that simply skims that money off of the top and leaves you with far less money than you thought you were getting. This intentionally designed (and poorly thought out) system is not only disheartening for the gamer, it makes gaining money in GTA Online much, much more difficult than it needs to be.
In fact, it’s the way MOST of GTAO missions work. You have $100k worth of products to move, yet you’ll only get $90k (or less) out of the deal in the end.
Consider that your player character is the one doing ALL of the work, then the game turns around and stiffs you for 10%, 20% or even 50% of those earnings? It’s Rockstar ripping the gamer off for no reason. It’s a way to make the game tedious and time consuming without actually rewarding the gamer for a job well done. Plainly, it’s a slap in the face and it’s entirely unnecessary.
Even Fallout 76 plays this game with the vending machines. You lose 10% off of the top by selling items in a vending machine. Granted, though, you can mark up your item by 10% and recoup that cost in Fallout 76. In GTAO, you’re stuck with these lame mechanics. Oh, but these missions get even worse.
Mission Vehicles
Here we have a game called Grand Theft Auto. It’s a game about stealing, modifying and owning vehicles. Yet, when a mission starts, are we given the choice to use the vehicles we have formerly stolen? No. Rockstar decides to give us the most unwieldy, poorest performing, least customized, most horrible handling vehicle in the entire game and then expects us to deliver goods using this thing.
What the hell is with that? We spend $2 million to buy delivery trucks, Terrorbytes and semi-trucks the size of Texas and we’re forced into using a crappy vehicle that can barely drive? I don’t even have any idea what Rockstar was thinking here. It’s called Grand Theft Auto!
The online gaming experience with GTAO is, at best, mediocre. It was designed with one goal, to make money for Rockstar. To that end, they make the missions so lengthy and complex, the payouts so low, the end result so unsatisfying and then they expect us to come back for more? Are we expected to be sadists or something?
I don’t even get why people tolerate this level of garbage in a game. Anyone playing this game can clearly see that its a cash grab by Rockstar. It’s no wonder why players resort to bugs, duping and glitching to make bank in these online games. Would you want to spend 5 real hours making less than $100k in this fictional game world? It would be okay if the prices reflected that income level, but they don’t.
Bunkers, Motorcycle Clubs, Offices, Nightclubs, Garages and Arcades
GTA Online is chock full of properties to buy. So many properties exist, in fact, there is really no way to buy them all… unless you buy into Rockstar’s way overpriced Shark Card system. This is where Rockstar makes their bank. This is why tedium abounds in the game as described above.
Rockstar sells “Shark Cards” that start at $20 real dollars and go up to $85 real dollars. For that $20, that will buy you $1.25 million GTA$. For between $85 (when on sale) and $99 real dollars (off sale), that buys you about $8 million in-game dollars. $8 million in GTA Online will only buy you perhaps 1.5 properties or approximately 2 very expensive cars (Deluxo and Stromberg). You can see that even when plopping down real cash money, you’re not really getting very much for what you’re buying.
This is where Rockstar has pretty much failed this game.
Glitching and Loopholes
At this point, this is where players choose to make their own fun. Instead of playing GTA Online on Rockstar’s terms, they take the fun into their own hands and glitch, glitch, glitch their way until they have a billion or 10. This is why griefing is common in these games. This is why players take advantage of bugs, lagging, mods and other outside game mechanics to make bank in this game. I also don’t blame these gamers for playing this game out-of-bounds. Who wants to subject themselves to becoming a sadist?
If game developers would choose to give us satisfying amounts of reward at the end of a mission completed, we might be more willing to work within the bounds of their system. Unfortunately, they want to make things so costly and drop so little cash at the end of a each mission, you would have to spend literally months grinding, grinding and even more grinding and still never afford most things in the game. Things that they want you to afford to have fun within the game world.
Yeah, it’s that bad.
Multiplayer
One of the biggest problems with Grand Theft Auto is its requirement to force multiplayer activities onto other gamers. Literally less than 1% of the GTAO missions can be played solo. Almost every mission requires more than one person. Sometimes it requires 2 people, sometimes it requires more than that.
Even without a multiplayer system, the missions are challenging. Throwing multiple players and griefers alike into the mix makes some of them impossible to complete. Some of the missions for your businesses force involvement from other players. For example, you will have to transport weapons from one place to another. Yet, the game insists on alerting every other player on the server to that fact. In a real-life scenario, that wouldn’t happen. Yes, in the real world, trucks move stuff around, but they don’t announce what they’re moving to the world. Yet, GTAO does so with careless abandon, “Hey you, this player is moving $500k in goods. Go over there and harass them!”
Why GTA Online insists on announcing this to the game world is a questionable multiplayer system. Players can already see other players on the map, where they are and their marker. That’s already well enough information. If a player is moving cargo, force other players to physically drive over there manually and check it out. If they want to initiate combat to take out the truck, then so be it. There’s no reason for Rockstar to announce every single player movement to the rest of the server.
Missions are mostly okay when dealing with NPC AIs. However, when you throw another player into the mix (who could care less about your mission) and who is there solely to blow you up multiple times… that’s not challenging, that’s ridiculous.
Sure, you can change servers, but that doesn’t resolve the fundamental game problem. You’ll end up in another server with another griefer doing the same exact thing. Again, players end up resorting to glitching to avoid these situations.
Actions and Consequences
Building an online world with an in-game economy is a challenge. To date, I don’t think any game developer has done it right. If you’re planning to charge $6 million for something in the game world and that thing is needed to progress missions, then you need to provide missions that can see the player obtain that amount of money in a reasonable timeframe (a day or two). If it takes longer than this, as a game designer, you have failed.
In GTAO, simply go to YouTube and look for all of the GTA money making videos and you’ll see one common thread. You need to do a crap ton of missions to make that cash flow a reality…. requiring missions that have a high probability of failure due to multiplayer griefing. More about this below.
Glitching Part 2
While Rockstar has offered us single player sessions like ‘Invite Only’ or ‘Solo Session’, Rockstar has restricted many of the missions to being run only in ‘Public’ sessions. This means that Rockstar forces you to endure griefing simply to get your missions completed.
That leaves the gamer looking for alternative ways to avoid this situation and consequence. Hence, more glitching.
For example, on the PC and Xbox One, there are ways to force the game to kick everyone off of the public session you are using. With the PS4, it’s a bit more complicated to achieve. Once every other player has left, this leaves you in a solo public session. As a result, missions that require being in a public session can be performed without the possibility of other online gamers interfering with your mission objectives. That doesn’t mean NPC AIs won’t cause problems, but it does eliminate the problems from other multiplayer gamers. Rockstar should have given us this gameplay choice rather than forcing us to resort to glitching.
Unfortunately, the downside is that some missions require multiple players to complete because of stupid mission requirements. For these missions, you are forced to endure public griefing on servers by requiring multiple players.
Online Missions
Unlike GTA 5, a single player campaign game, the online missions almost always require matchmaking. This means being forced to work with random players who join that specific gaming session. As a result, some missions can be impossible to complete because some of the gamers are simply inept. They can’t perform the combat needed, they play contrary to the mission objectives or they simply end up dying. Because many missions only offer up 1 team life, that means that a single careless or intentionally sabotaging gamer can sink the mission for the entire team.
In fact, I believe some players join missions with the intent to tank the rest of the mission and keep it from being completed. They get some kind of jolly out of doing this.
Because these are the primary kinds of missions available in GTAO, it makes GTAO a far less than enjoyable experience.
Relaxed Restrictions
At some point, Rockstar needs to reconsider the way GTAO is designed. Instead of forcing multiple players on nearly every mission and forcing the use of Public servers, they need to rethink this. It’s probably too late for GTAO on the PS4, but it isn’t for the PS5 version or GTA 6’s online system.
I’m not saying that Rockstar needs to make GTAO fully single player friendly, but it would greatly help if there were many, many more 1 player only missions and missions that don’t announce to the rest of the server.
Mission Types: A History
The primary mission types in GTA Online include deathmatch, race, capture the flag, last team standing, king of the hill (last man standing) and survival.
Keep in mind that other than ‘race’, every other mode is a modified version of ‘deathmatch’. This basically means that you’re joining other players solely for you to kill their characters or them to kill your character. I don’t know about you, but deathmatch is so old it’s not even a fun game mode anymore… at least not for me. I’ve done deathmatch so many times in so many games, I’m bored with it. Why have online games not innovated in multiplayer gameplay space since the 90s? Why must these games rely on antiquated multiplayer features that were designed in 1992 or earlier? Why can’t we move beyond these modes and, like our graphics and sound systems, into next gen multiplayer modes?
It shouldn’t all be about deathmatch or racing. Even worse, King of the Hill and Last Man Standing modes almost never work out like they start. Players join these modes and devolve the entire mode into deathmatch. They don’t even try to become King of the Hill or actually Capture the Flag or be the Last Man Standing. It’s simply about how many kills they can get. Unfortunately, Last Man Standing is really just deathmatch wrapped with a weak shrinking world concept. Ultimately, deathmatch is less about who is left standing and more about continuing the match until a timer expires. Whomever gets the most kills wins. In Last Man Standing, it’s one life, no respawns and whomever is the last one is the winner. It’s all still deathmatch, but as I said, wrapped in a weak concept.
History Lesson
None of these multiplayer concepts are original to GTA Online, nor are they new. They are simply pulled from much older multiplayer games that started the whole thing, like Doom (1993), Age of Empires (2000) and Battlezone II (1999).
I played Doom in 1993 when it first released. We would sit in a computer lab in college eating pizza and playing deathmatch. That is, until, we found out that Doom’s networking system was basically bandwidth hogging the entire network. The software wasn’t designed well from a networking standpoint. The iD software company would eventually fix this network hogging problem, but not before it brought many networks to their knees.
Today, networking systems in multiplayer games are much smarter about the amount of traffic they generate. This is not a problem with GTA Online, but that doesn’t absolve Rockstar for using antiquated multiplayer features within GTA Online. I literally groan every time I log into yet another multiplayer game that has, once again, failed to innovate and relies on deathmatch as its primary objective of online play.
Even Fortnite is guilty of this. Fortnite is a Battle Royale system which is just a fancy way of saying Last Man Standing. I already explained the LMS system above. Deathmatch was first introduced in Doom (iD software) in 1993. Deathmatch was expanded to add network matchmaking in iD’s 1996 game Quake. Today, Last Man Standing is not in any way a new or innovative feature. In fact, the LMS system was first introduced in 1983 in Bomberman. Yes, 1983’s Bomberman was the first game to introduce a deathmatch type game since LMS is technically a type of deathmatch.
The first so-named mode of King of the Hill was introduced a bit more recently in 2006’s Gears of War and appeared again in 2007’s Halo 3. However, this mode actually originated under a different name in a game called Age of Empires II: The Conquerers, released in 2000.
You might think that Capture the Flag is also somehow newer, but you’d be wrong again. The Capture the Flag game mode was introduced in the game Battlezone II, released in 1999.
As you can see, all of these multiplayer game modes began as extensions of deathmatch and expanded into more formalized concepts that were built during the 90s.
Why Rockstar can’t spend a little of that effort designing new game modes that befit the Grand Theft Auto theme is beyond me. You spend all of that time building out a rich, vibrant world and then you throw in antiquated multiplayer features that are about as much fun to play as watching paint dry.
Instead, Rockstar lost their way with GTA Online in so many different ways. That’s not to say that GTA Online’s multiplayer missions don’t offer somewhat newer multiplayer game objectives, but they are effectively deathmatch type missions using matchmaking. I despise matchmaking. I’ve always despised it from the first time I played Halo 3 using it.
The difficulty with matchmaking is that these systems are never smart enough and don’t take into account enough factors. The matchmaking is still very rudimentary. Most times, I find myself paired with a teammate that either is so clueless as to be pointless or that person really only has one thing on his/her mind: deathmatch. They’re not there to complete the mission, they’re there to screw with both YOU and the other players and is there solely to try to kill everyone.
These matchmaking sessions don’t have ‘leaders’ or offer ways of kicking people off of the team if they aren’t carrying their weight. If you don’t like how the team works, you are forced to leave it. That’s not an optimal way of handling multiplayer. In any matchmaking session, there should be a designated team leader. That team leader should have some power to kick players from the team who are not performing or who are performing contrary to the mission.
Unfortunately, Rockstar offers us no such mission management system. You’re stuck with the team you get, for better or, in most cases, worse.
Heists
To round out this article, let’s now talk about the biggest problem with Rockstar’s GTA Online world. Money. I don’t mean that it’s hard to get, but well, it is. But, it’s way more than that.
When the Diamond Casino arrived, they added with it a new Lester casino heist that grosses $2.1 million in GTA$… and therein lies the problem. Well, several actually. $2.1 million in the GTA online world is peanuts. It’s chump change. It’s small potatoes. Grossing $2.1 billion in GTA online might be more worth it. Let’s understand how badly this system gets this heist wrong.
To setup and manage a heist, you’re required to BUY lots of very expensive stuff. From arcades, to vehicles, to clothing, to safe doors, to alarm systems, to personnel… and that GTA$ ALL adds up very quickly. All told, you’re expected to shell out around $5-8 million (maybe more) in GTA$ simply to even begin the heist, let alone finish it.
If you were required to follow Rockstar’s rules, you end up shelling out massive GTA$ simply to even play the f*cking game. Worse, other activities require just as much GTA$ cash simply to even get started. For example, want to start moving loads of cars? You’re gonna need to buy an Executive Suite to the tune of a cool $1.5 million GTA$. Then, you’re expected to shell out between $1.5 and $3 million to add on a vehicle warehouse and another $1.5-3 million to buy a crate warehouse.
Wanna sell guns in GTA online? You’re gonna need to shell out $1.5 million to buy a bunker, then add-on at least $3 million in doodads to make the f*cking thing work. Need to transport that crap? Expect to spend $2-3 million on a Mobile Operations center. Then there’s the $2-4 million Terrorbyte, a separate mobile operations center (?) you need to purchase for yet another setup.
This crap never ends in GTA Online. There’s always this thing they’re expecting you to spend up to $5 million in GTA$ to buy.
Let’s get back to the Casino heist for a moment. After you’ve shelled out all of that cash to even get started with the heist, what do you get out of the deal? A lame arcade that nets about $5k a day. Seriously, you outlay millions of GTA$ for a return of $5k per in-game day? It takes about 5 real hours of playing to even reach $20k in the safe. It’s ridiculous.
Then, after you do the heist, the whole heist grosses $2.1 million. You think, great, I’ll get at least some of my money back… except you’d be wrong. That $2.1 million must be shared amongst ALL of the players including Lester and every person you were required to hire to help with the heist. If you have your live friends join in, they’ll get a cut too. That means you’ll net at most $200k to $300k from that heist.
You’ve spent all of that time, effort and, most of all, massive amounts of GTA$ to buy all of the crap that Lester required for the heist, yet you net $300k (probably less) for all of that effort? Where’s the incentive here, Rockstar?
I don’t even get what Rockstar is thinking. Well, I do, actually. For gamers, GTA online is crap on a stick. The only thing that GTA online is, is a cash cow for Rockstar. You’re lining their pockets with cash every time you buy another Shark Card because you’ve run out of GTA$. You’re just sinking cash into the game with no hopes of recovering that in-game cash back because there’s a never ending smorgasbord of crap that Rockstar makes you buy simply to even begin basic missions. When you do complete the missions, they never give you enough GTA$ back to recover the money they required you spend simply to get started.
As I said, crap on a stick. GTA online has its fun moments. Unfortunately, most of those moments are too few and far between. Like most online games, the only thing I find myself doing is logging on to get their freebies. Speaking of that…
Freebies
The one and only one concession here is Rockstar’s weekly and monthly freebies and discounts. This is the only way you can actually afford to buy most crap in the game… that and spinning the wheel in the Casino in hopes of winning the pedestal car. Rockstar regularly puts property types on discount, sometimes up to 50% off. At 50% off, this means that a $2 million property is now $1 million. The problem is, you never know when Rockstar plans to do this.
You simply have to wait it out and hope the discount comes soon. If you need it now but only have part of the cash, you can do one of two things:
- Buy a Shark Card
- Wait for Rockstar to launch a promotion
It’s really the only two ways. Sometimes Rockstar gives away GTA$ for doing certain things. For example, recently they had a “perform 10 daily objectives and get $1 million” promotion. Others are log in this month and receive $250,000. There are plenty of weekly and monthly freebies that can fill your wallet and help you along with the game.
The problem is that you can’t bank on these. They come when they come, or they don’t. You simply have to play the waiting game and hope Rockstar decides to throw a bone in our direction. Otherwise, you’re limited to whatever in-game money making missions you can play… and believe me, these missions offer up a pittance. Go find a car for Simeon? Sure, but you’ll only receive $5-9k for it when you turn it in. Even then, Simeon’s text is cryptic. He only gives you the names of the cars, not a way to identify them. It’s up to you to go search the bowels of the city to find the car that he wants. Even then, you have no idea of value for any of Simeon’s list of cars. It’s all best guess as to what Simeon will pay you in the end, until you turn it in.
The money does add up some if you do a lot of activities in a short time… such as racing and various multiplayer missions. Even still, if you’re truly lucky, you might be able to net $2-3 million in a gaming session. It’s enough to buy one expensive car, perhaps. That amount won’t buy you the full $6 million Diamond Casino suite, however. That’s why I’ve stated that Lester’s $2.1 million haul is pointless. You’ll need to grind a whole lot more to afford that Casino thing. For this reason, that explains exactly why there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of YouTube videos explaining how to make GTA$ in GTA Online. Yet, most of these videos are actual scams designed to steal from you, so be careful. Some of the videos may see your account banned. Again, be careful.
Banning
Many of the money making schemes involve playing games at the Casino and doing certain things with the actual game in the process. That also means that most of these schemes may see your money wiped out or you might find your account outright banned. Be cautious with following any advice of a YouTuber. YouTubers are only in it for the YouTube views. They don’t care if your account gets wiped or banned from GTAO. Take their advice with a grain of salt. If it looks too good to be true, it’ll probably get your account banned.
I saved this section for last because it’s the one thing that many gamers try thinking they’ll make a lot of money fast in GTAO. Yes, you can make money pretty fast on the high stakes tables, but you can also lose it just as fast if Rockstar catches you playing games with the Casino. They can even lock you out of using the casino entirely. Thinking that you can scam the tables by playing games with the game itself is only likely to get your account banned. Don’t think that Rockstar isn’t watching your account. They watch all accounts.
If your account turns up with an exceedingly large unexplained balance of GTA$ from one day to the next, they’re gonna take a close look at what you’ve been doing. Once they realize you’re using an exploit, they’re going take action against your account. Many gamers don’t realize this and attempt to play games within the game. Don’t do this.
Rockstar knows what it takes to earn cash in the game world by using legitimate means. If an account goes from a $500k balance to $500 million overnight, yeah that’s gonna send up some red flags all over the place at Rockstar.
Thinking you can scam the game out of a lot of GTA$ isn’t the brightest of ideas, either. Rockstar knows the scams because they’re published publicly on YouTube for all to see. If you’ve watched a YouTube video to see how it’s done, you can bet someone at Rockstar also watched that same video. If you choose to ignore this advice and go ahead with attempting to scam the casino out of cash, you’re not likely to have that money very long.
Overall
Grand Theft Auto V single player campaign was an overall fun experience and it also offered player rewards that met with expectations at the end. On the other hand, GTA Online offers no satisfying rewards that are worth the effort. Being handed $5k at the end of a mission in a world where you’re expect to shell out $4 million to simply play missions or buy a decent vehicle, yeah there’s no incentive to play GTAO.
If Rockstar had followed the same money formula in GTAV within GTAO, I wouldn’t be so harsh on Rockstar. Unfortunately, Rockstar fell into the greed trap trying to get people to buy into real USD Shark Cards. Doing so, they jacked up all of the GTAO prices, sometimes 100x the cost of the same thing in GTAV. Even the prices at Los Santos Customs are at least 10x (or more) the price in GTAO.
I really wanted to love GTAO, but Rockstar failed the economy in this game badly. Money on GTAO should be easier to obtain or the prices of properties and goods should be much lower… particularly properties and vehicles required to run missions. Overall, I give the online version of this GTA 3.5 stars out of 10.
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