To bring everyone up to speed on network topology in games: GTA Online uses what's called a peer-to-peer mesh network setup. This means that every PC/console on a connected session is talking to every other PC/console in that session. The preferred alternative for most multiplayer games is sever-client, where in every PC/console is talking with a single server.
With p2p mesh, this means that everyone shares authority. What this translates to is that a server is not the single authority checking for malicious activity, much of which anyone who has played GTA Online for is familiar with. This
also means that anyone with the know-how can figure out what IP every other person is connecting from. This can lead to other malicious activity outside of the game.
But standing up dedicated servers costs money. Why not avoid that? There are plenty of cases to be made where peer-to-peer connectivity makes sense, especially from a cost-savings perspective. But in some cases, like GTA Online, the benefits/gains from using a server-client setup far outweigh the costs.
So, in no particular order:
What Dedicated Servers Would Have Brought to RS/T2:
M
ore purchases of cash in the Social store. We'll start with the obvious here. When someone can get into a game and ask about
[redacted method of obtaining money] and get a response 50% of the time, it's an obvious miss on being able to purchase prepaid in-game credit cards from the store. There's no incentive. And if they don't want to ask someone to do it, they can do it themselves.
Higher volume of Twitch streamers. It seems easily correlated, but Twitch's research shows that
livestreaming leads to better game sales. The reason this isn't streamed as broadly is because not everyone can get enough reliable people for a heist. Private sessions can be invaded by the same people who also
[redacted method of obtaining money]. This is regardless of the privacy of a lobby, because those same people can find a unique identifier on the public Rockstar social site and join it, regardless of whether or not they're a friend or a crew member-- or simply not invited.
What this translates to are people who have such a low bar to pass to join a streamer's game and hold the experience hostage, crash the session or do any other number of malicious things. They can also impersonate people and send messages as them. So this further leads to things like not being able to do:
Twitch Rivals streams between competing streamer teams. Imagine this: the game is pretty solidly protected from people who
[redacted method of obtaining money] and those incidents they generate are rare, and when they do pop up, they're punished. So, streaming this game is far more viable. Competitive crews start forming, and Rockstar promotes an event with streamers where they're able to host lobbies and get 24, 36 or even 48 streamers in one session running 12 different crews for things like:
- Business goods battles
- Arena wars
- Deathmatches
- Races
And so on and so forth. But because items have to be obtained through legitimate game mechanics, it also implements a grind. Maybe these groups/crews have been running for a while. But then you'd also be able to do:
Streamer Drops through Connected Accounts We've seen other games do this, where viewers can get "drops" into their game by watching the streamer play it. These drops could have been literally anything that was on the Diamond Casino Wheel of Fortune. It could have even been a bonus spin at the wheel, to encourage getting the player in the game.
The Long-Term, Sharded MMO Experience This translates to cash because people would be continually playing the game, which means more people paying for in-game cash and general popularity because more people would be streaming it, but this is the bigger buyback to the player, too.
Imagine a crew that worked hard at completing a certain set of heists on hard difficulty, no deaths, consecutive. Four people who are streaming their attempt like people do for raid bosses. And their reward was a unique yacht only available for them.
A ranked arena war system that awarded players who got 100 wins with a unique vehicle or livery.
The system could have been adjusted to make some things a grind. Making that money with friends, and then knowing that if someone had a high-end apartment, much less a casino penthouse, that they
earned it through blood, sweat and hard work.
Powerful crews that were running around and happen to land on the same lobby and an all-out war with tactics, reinforcements and a consideration of cash drain to get the win in Los Santos.
These are the things that Rockstar and Take2 missed out on by not having dedicated servers with protections against [redacted method of obtaining money]. They were on the verge of greatness.
They were this close. And I know that a lot of this translates over for Red Dead Online, too.
Is It Too Late to Do All of This?
No, I don't think so. If RockstaTake2 were to seek redemption from this, here's what they'd have to do:
Implement a dedicated server gamemode, and only allow characters created for this game mode specifically. If people want to continue messing around in peer-to-peer sessions, maybe they allow that for a time before slowly forcing people over (because it's all about that money, right?). But create a new character (or duplicate the looks of one), and make it only available for play on controlled, dedicated servers.
You can even put Ye Olde GTA 5 spin on it and have Lester come in and say, "Yeah, I know the simulation was pretty fucked, right? It got hacked by kids on Christmas break. But anyway, now that you know what's possible out there in this stupid, god-forsaken world, well... uh, perhaps it's time we started making some money. And you remember Fleeca, right?"
Then people start off fresh, and work on earning things through the grind. I promise you, that'll net you some untold money and viewership. And I have faith enough that even if you made a very solid push into authoritative client-host conversion from peer-to-peer mesh, allowing the authoritative client-host to be controlled by Rockstar servers, you'd get something out of it.
And I will put a disclaimer on here:
I don't know if the game engine is so archaic that it wouldn't allow for this kind of change. And if that is indeed the case, then the only thing that I can say is you missed out on all of the above by choosing to design what you did, because it is a proprietary engine.
But if you can, imaginary Rockstar or Take2 directory reading this, please, I implore you. Push for the change. This has been one of the best social games for me during lockdown, and I can't overstate how much everyone will benefit from this.
Sincerely,
~The Village Idiot
submitted by This is mostly written in the GTA Online perspective, though it has crossover into RDR Online as well.
To bring everyone up to speed on network topology in games: GTA Online uses what's called a peer-to-peer mesh network setup. This means that every PC/console on a connected session is talking to every other PC/console in that session. The preferred alternative for most multiplayer games is sever-client, where in every PC/console is talking with a single server.
With p2p mesh, this means that everyone shares authority. What this translates to is that a server is not the single authority checking for malicious activity, much of which anyone who has played GTA Online for is familiar with. This
also means that anyone with the know-how can figure out what IP every other person is connecting from. This can lead to other malicious activity outside of the game.
But standing up dedicated servers costs money. Why not avoid that? There are plenty of cases to be made where peer-to-peer connectivity makes sense, especially from a cost-savings perspective. But in some cases, like GTA Online, the benefits/gains from using a server-client setup far outweigh the costs.
So, in no particular order:
What Dedicated Servers Would Have Brought to RS/T2:
M
ore purchases of cash in the Social store. We'll start with the obvious here. When someone can get into a game and ask about
[redacted method of obtaining money/goods/vehicles/XP] and get a response 50% of the time, it's an obvious miss on being able to purchase prepaid in-game credit cards from the store. There's no incentive. And if they don't want to ask someone to do it, they can do it themselves.
Nevermind that the same group of people who can
[redacted method of obtaining money/goods/vehicles/XP] will also just grief sessions. Better yet:
Better Control on Hackers/Modders Anyone who is on the outside of RDR2 or GTA multiplayer has probably only heard telltale of what modders do in these games. Here's a list of what I've personally experienced:
- Crash game sessions for individuals or the whole lobby
- Send text messages as players in a session
- Cycle the daytime so frequently that it can cause seizures
- Blow up and kill all players instantly in a session
- Join sessions regardless of session privacy settings (friends only, solo, crew only, invite only)
- This is done by finding a unique identifier in Rockstar online. I don't know the details; that's how a modder described it to me.
- This is especially impactful to anyone who streams, as they only need to see their in-game name and do the aforementioned to join their session and hold it hostage/ruin it. Getting rid of this yields more, is written about later.
- Grab other players and teleport them around the map
- Attach objects to players so they can't get anywhere
- Cage players
- Generate endless in-game currency (which is something Rockstar offers as purchasable in their store).
The list goes on. The biggest reason for using dedicated servers, honestly, is to get rid of the griefers. It's enough so that I've seen people ask if someone is running a specific type of mod, and they know the commands to use to get gifted vehicles, cash, etc. It's prolific and horrible.
But cleaning those things up and preventing them means:
Higher volume of Twitch streamers. It seems easily correlated, but Twitch's research shows that
livestreaming leads to better game sales. The reason this isn't streamed as broadly is because not everyone can get enough reliable people for a heist. Private sessions can be invaded by the same people who also
[redacted method of obtaining money]. This is regardless of the privacy of a lobby, because those same people can find a unique identifier on the public Rockstar social site and join it, regardless of whether or not they're a friend or a crew member-- or simply not invited.
What this translates to are people who have such a low bar to pass to join a streamer's game and hold the experience hostage, crash the session or do any other number of malicious things. They can also impersonate people and send messages as them. So this further leads to things like not being able to do:
Twitch Rivals streams between competing streamer teams. Imagine this: the game is pretty solidly protected from people who
[redacted method of obtaining money] and those incidents they generate are rare, and when they do pop up, they're punished. So, streaming this game is far more viable. Competitive crews start forming, and Rockstar promotes an event with streamers where they're able to host lobbies and get 24, 36 or even 48 streamers in one session running 12 different crews for things like:
- Business goods battles
- Arena wars
- Deathmatches
- Races
And so on and so forth. But because items have to be obtained through legitimate game mechanics, it also implements a grind. Maybe these groups/crews have been running for a while. But then you'd also be able to do:
Streamer Drops through Connected Accounts We've seen other games do this, where viewers can get "drops" into their game by watching the streamer play it. These drops could have been literally anything that was on the Diamond Casino Wheel of Fortune. It could have even been a bonus spin at the wheel, to encourage getting the player in the game.
The Long-Term, Sharded MMO Experience This translates to cash because people would be continually playing the game, which means more people paying for in-game cash and general popularity because more people would be streaming it, but this is the bigger buyback to the player, too.
Imagine a crew that worked hard at completing a certain set of heists on hard difficulty, no deaths, consecutive. Four people who are streaming their attempt like people do for raid bosses. And their reward was a unique yacht only available for that achievement.
A ranked arena war system that awarded players who got 100 wins with a unique vehicle or livery.
The system could have been adjusted to make some things a grind. Making that money with friends, and then knowing that if someone had a high-end apartment, much less a casino penthouse, that they
earned it through blood, sweat and hard work.
Powerful crews that were running around and happen to land on the same lobby and an all-out war with tactics, reinforcements and a consideration of cash drain to get the win in Los Santos.
These are the things that Rockstar and Take2 missed out on by not having dedicated servers with protections against [redacted method of obtaining money]. They were on the verge of greatness.
They were this close. And I know that a lot of this translates over for Red Dead Online, too.
Is It Too Late to Do All of This?
No, I don't think so. If RockstaTake2 were to seek redemption from this, here's what they'd have to do:
Implement a dedicated server gamemode, and only allow characters created for this game mode specifically. If people want to continue messing around in peer-to-peer sessions, maybe they allow that for a time before slowly forcing people over (because it's all about that money, right?). But create a new character (or duplicate the looks of one), and make it only available for play on controlled, dedicated servers.
You can even put Ye Olde GTA 5 spin on it and have Lester come in and say, "Yeah, I know the simulation was pretty fucked, right? It got hacked by kids on Christmas break. But anyway, now that you know what's possible out there in this stupid, god-forsaken world, well... uh, perhaps it's time we started making some money. And you remember Fleeca, right?"
Then people start off fresh, and work on earning things through the grind. I promise you, that'll net you some untold money and viewership. And I have faith enough that even if you made a very solid push into authoritative client-host conversion from peer-to-peer mesh, allowing the authoritative client-host to be controlled by Rockstar servers, you'd get something out of it.
And I will put a disclaimer on here:
I don't know if the game engine is so archaic that it wouldn't allow for this kind of change. And if that is indeed the case, then the only thing that I can say is you missed out on all of the above by choosing to design what you did, because it is a proprietary engine.
But if you can, imaginary Rockstar or Take2 directory reading this, please, I implore you. Push for the change. This has been one of the best social games for me during lockdown, and I can't overstate how much everyone will benefit from this.
Sincerely,
~The Village Idiot
I used to play GTA Online at launch and I stopped after the first set of heists were released. They were challenging and some of the most fun I've had with multiplayer in a long while. But they were very linear and like all co-op content - once you experience it once it's real hard to want to visit it again.
I've returned a few months ago and the Diamond Casino Heist is now my fist heist upon getting back and: wow - BIG wow is this good.
- The setup missions are pretty fun and optional (with real consequences for doing and not doing them).
- They can be done with 2 to 4 players so it's flexible but it can be setup completely solo
- You get paid decent money! This is the biggest one for me. I am never expecting running missions to be more profitable than Nightclub AFK grinding or just bunkeMC sale grinding but when you can spend 2 hours to do some setups, then another 30 minutes to do a mission and walk away with 300,000-1.1M dollars that's just great, it feels like my time is being well spent.
- I want to repeat this heist. Something about being able to choose the three different setups, the many ways each setup can go down. Even if ultimately you go in and out the same comfortable exits each time the fact that it's so non-linear is just wonderful.
The more I think about the heist the more I like it. If all GTA Online mission content was like this from the get-go I don't think I'd take that 4+ year gap. I'm excited for GTA 6 online, I'm excited for more GTA Online content. Even if the next DLC is just some new racetracks and not a whole full blown heist - I can see myself hitting the Diamond Casino for years on end way more than I want to ever deliver that damned EMP again.
submitted by GTA 5 Online’s free update, Diamond Casino Heist, launches today, and there’s a lot to unpack. The Context Petrochemical magnates have taken ownership of Diamond Casino and Resort away from Tao Cheng and the Triads – and the Cheng family is not happy. The Diamond Casino Heist is a content update for Grand Theft Auto Online, released on December 12th, 2019. 1 Description 2 Content 2.1 The Diamond Casino Heist 2.2 Properties 2.3 Jobs 2.4 Characters added to GTA Online in this update 2.5 Character Customization 2.6 Collectibles 2.7 Weapons 2.8 Vehicles 2.9 Radio 3 Changes 4 Discounts & Bonuses 5 Gallery 5.1 Official Screenshots 5.2 GIFs 5.3 The Diamond Casino Heist is the biggest ever to hit GTA Online, and requires drawing up meticulous setup plans to walk away with the maximum payout. Here’s a run-down of the setup board for the GTA Online: Diamond Casino Heist – so klappt der Klau. Mit dem "Diamond Casino Heist" habt ihr in GTA Online eine richtig harte Nuss zu knacken. Unser Guide verrät euch, was euch beim bislang schwierigsten Raubüberfall im Spiel erwartet. von Gloria H. Manderfeld am 16.12.2019, 10:42 Uhr Starting GTA Diamond Casino Heist You can’t just walk into the place all-guns-blazing and make off with the cash. Your Diamond Casino heist all starts off with the planning and preparations. The Diamond Casino Heist is a heist in Grand Theft Auto Online which tasks players with infiltrating or assaulting the Diamond Casino and robbing the secure vault contained within. Players: Up to The Diamond Casino Heist was then made available in December, but there was one thing missing – the ability to steal diamonds. Rockstar Games GTA players have the option of doing their heist GTA Online Diamond Casino Heist is online now with new update. Fans have been waiting for the news for days now, but The Diamond Casino Heist is now officially live in GTA Online. GTA Online’s latest heist is ready and waiting, so here’s how to start the Diamond Casino Heist. Billed as the most secure building in the entire city of Los Santos, the Diamond Casino won’t GTA DIAMOND CASINO HEIST PAYOUTS. According to the team at GTA Boom, the below figures is the maximum potential payout players can earn in the Diamon Casino Heist:. GTA Online Diamon Casino Heist Maximum Payout: • Cash - $2,115,000 • Artwork - $2,350,000
Subscribe for more: http://www.youtube.com/user/tmartn2?sub_confirmation=1GTA Online Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwiTZDxPg_I2jAWzSGF-0Jx... Ex Jewel Thief Larry Lawton reviews GTA 5 Diamond Casino Heist silent and sneaky. How realistic is GTA 5 Casino Heist - Larry tells you!Ex Jewel Thief Larry... MEIN NEUER STUHL: http://bit.ly/quersusstsk * Hype Energy: https://bit.ly/31gUgWb * Mein Gaming Tisch: https://bit.ly/31uZf5L * Mein Controller: https://bit.... This video shows the new Nagasaki Stryder from the free "The Diamond Casino Heist" Update for Grand Theft Auto Online in 4K (2160p / 60fps).GTA Online Update... Among us dar cu multe inselaciuni😏 #amongus #amongusromania #amongusamuzant*****Alatura-te comunitatii de Striker... Wie schafft man ein Finale ohne Optionale Vorbereitung.Hier ein Beispiel. wieder hat mir der Jensens zur Seite gestanden. Pull off the most sophisticated and daring robbery the city of Los Santos has ever seen in The Diamond Casino Heist – now available in GTA Online.The Diamond... SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=DasuberpoopIf you enjoyed the video then click the 'LIKE' button and share the video.GTA Onlin... IN TODAY'S STREAM WE COUNTDOWN TO THE NEW GTA 5 DLC CALLED "Diamond Casino Heist" AND GET SOME NEW GAMEPLAY OF THIS DLC ON GTA ONLINE Hope you all enjoy the ...
