There's only a few hours left before Grand Theft Auto Online launches here on the east coast, and I'm sure a great many of you are reading this with your controllers safe nearby, fully charged, just counting the seconds tick by before you're free to unleash untold amounts of havoc on the rest of the GTA Online community. However, if one of your plans was to stock up on an ungodly amount of Los Santos smackers by buying it in the real world, then using it to stockpile a worthy arsenal of weapons and vehicles, I'm happy to report that you're officially S.O.L.
In a Rockstar Newswire post, the publisher said that microtransactions, or as the company calls it, "purchasable GTA$," "won't unbalance the game. In order to even get access so some of the finer things in the game (read - fancy fast things that make other things go boom), they'll first have to earn them.
"The option of purchasable GTA$ should not disrupt the playing field - and there are a few mechanics in place to help ensure that. All players still have to rank up with Reputation Points (RP) in order to get access to purchase high-end items," the latest post reads.
"No one can begin GTA Online and simply spend a lot of money out of the gate to get a leg up. You will have to earn your stripes and play to unlock access to the aspirational clothes, guns and other items. Please also remember that in GTA Online, hustling to afford the finer things by earning GTA$ doing robberies, stick-ups, winning races and other profitable activities is a fun gameplay experience rather than ever being a 'grind'."
Nice...
Just in case, Rockstar is going Orwell with it, and keeping an eye on GTA Online's balance big brother style, and plans on tweaking things if the situation calls for it.
Furthermore, there's also been a fair concern from some players as to the safety of their virtual homes away from home. While a players' cash can certainly be stolen if the proper precautions aren't taken, what about their property, like cars, homes, etc.? Put your fears to rest, humble virtual citizens of Los Santos.
"There's plenty of havoc and treachery you can cause out in the open world of course, but in order to prevent some really annoying 'griefing,' we've designed house party invitations specifically to be a friendly social affair where players can visit each other's pads without fear of having them ruined or losing their hard-earned vehicles in the process. If someone invites you into their property, then it is considered a friendly visit and you will not be able to shoot up their place or steal their cars from their garage. By the way, in any given lobby, if you and another player own the same piece of property, you will each be able to enter your own personal instance of that property at any given time. You will also be able to enter each other's instance of that property if you exchange and accept an invite. This way, multiple instances of ownership of the same property within a lobby can co-exist."
Looking to the future, Rockstar has plans to introduce new content to GTA Online soon enough (such as jobs), and a Content Creator tool is due later this fall.