I’ve surpassed the Rank 120 milestone, and unlocked the last rank-restricted weapon: The Minigun. I’d used it before, because you can get it in certain jobs and missions, plus the random special prize boxes that drop. It is a very powerful weapon, but uses too much ammo to make it economical to use instead of the all-purpose rifles. Still, having it feels good, and there are enemies which are tough enough that the cost to kill them doesn’t matter.
I’ve stuck strongly to doing the things I’ve suggested, especially doing the Daily Objectives and the easy jobs. Rockstar has offered bonus GTA$ and RP for specific things over the last month as well, which is good for ranking up and buying things. It is very, very easy to fall into the temptation to buy new vehicles, even if you don’t really need them for any practical purpose. That is part of the joy of playing this game, to get things which are cool yet truly unnecessary.
GTA Online is fun if you play mostly solo, doing missions against other players or in cooperative games on the fly. But it really shines when you can get together with friends. One of the big strengths of the GTA series is its sandbox aspect: you can play and do whatever you want, with no need to be working towards any objectives at all. This becomes even better when you are doing it with someone else for fun. It definitely does pay — in both fun and game rewards — to work together with friends, but the freedom to simply mess around without caring about any of the game’s serious aspects really only works well when playing only with friends.
To best do that, you need to start the game in single player, then create either a friend, crew, or invite only session. Then, let your friends join in, and have the entire game world all to yourselves. You lose out on some of the competitive aspects versus strangers, but gain greatly in both freedom and safety, with no unknowns playing who may be out simply to cause grief.
The only downside of this is that, when playing jobs together, the changing hosts and sessions may split everyone up once you go back to free mode. This can require everyone to figure out who, if anyone, is still in a private session, then get everyone to join it again. Or even require someone to leave GTA Online and rejoin it to create such a session.
Friends make doing the Daily Objectives much, much easier. Many require a cooperative opponent to accomplish. Asking politely in a public session might get you one, but friends are more reliable. And the pay off for doing them is so good, it is always worth doing if you are going to play the game regularly.
Helping Out The New Guy
I’ve covered some of the things which can help a new player get going in GTA Online. I strongly suggest taking the introductory missions and get set up in the game a bit, which only takes about an hour or so, before playing with other people. Playing with friends in a private session can make getting acquainted with the environment a lot less painless. While I’ve often joined games with no players causing trouble for others, there are sadly too many who take joy in attacking defenseless players. While the player rank isn’t shown at all times, so it may not be obvious when you engage an enemy, it isn’t that hard to check.
The game doesn’t make it easy for you to give aid to another player directly. You can’t give anyone money. While you can drop weapons, it doesn’t unlock them for ownership, so they will only keep it during the current session (same as weapons picked up on certain jobs). There is a very limited ability to share cash from jobs in the game — most of the money earned can’t be traded or dropped.
One thing which would seem nice to do would be to customize a car, then let another player take it. Unfortunately for people trying to help out this way, once you customize a car at all, you own it. Even if you don’t install a tracker or get insurance, the car can’t be taken into someone else’s garage or into a custom shop.
This does protect you if you forgot to get insurance on your new car after modding, and it also offers protection for the Export cars you resprayed for Simeon. So I can see why it was done this way, but it does remove yet another thing players could do to help out a friend.
So what things can you do to directly help a friend? First, as you may know, if you carry large amounts of cash (over $5000), you’ll drop some when you die. It is only about $200-500, so it isn’t going to help all that much, but it is worth keeping in mind.
You also can invite a friend to shoot you when you get a bounty on you. That is $1000-$9000, but it doesn’t cost you that much — only the medical costs for death. Better to let a friend get the money than worry that some random stranger is going to hunt you down.
You can invite your friends with you on jobs. Especially ones too dangerous for a beginning player. Just let them sit in the car, and do most of the work yourself. You can, of course, let them take action when it won’t risk the mission. But a lot of the missions, especially the contact missions, have limited lives and you can’t afford to let anyone die unnecessarily.
Just playing regular jobs with an experienced player is a big help. While new players can just join in with any random player, having a friend or two along can make the situation much easier.
