Six Urgent Requests To Rockstar For GTA 6 Online, From Gamers
Request #5: Drastically Improved Customization
This is creative and cool, but there aren't that many options for parentage, and virtually none of the parents are conventionally attractive. It is a long-standing meme among the playerbase that GTA Online characters generally look like they've lived the kind of life they lead during gameplay: strange facial-features and an almost mannequin-like degree of disinterest in the goings-on around them. Immersive? Maybe, but it's also kind of unsatisfying. Nobody wants to play an ugly character.
While you can adjust your character's facial features to a modest degree, there are absolutely no options to adjust your height, weight, or body shape at all. Every single male GTA Online character has the exact same body model and texture, and likewise for all of the female characters. NPCs express considerable diversity in body shape and fitness, but not player characters, for whatever reason.
Even the options that are presented feel limiting sometimes. Hairstyles are a key example. While Rockstar has added a few over the years, the game has a grand total of 48 different available hairstyles. That's not terrible; I don't want to seem ungrateful. It's also not great, though, especially considering the game's eleven-plus years of updates. To make matters worse, very few of the hairstyles are actually appealing. A disappointing portion of them are either rather similar or extremely ugly.
This is yet another case of the game being limited by its low-tech origins, as doing good-looking long hair was virtually impossible on the seventh-generation consoles, and GTA Online hasn't seen that many updates to its base technology. Doing good-looking hair is still computationally intensive on current-generation hardware, so we won't blame Rockstar if long hair remains unavailable in GTA 6 Online, but a better variety of short- and medium-length hairstyles and facial hair wouldn't go unappreciated.
The same goes for clothing. There is quite a bit of clothing in GTA Online, however, it still feels limiting for a few reasons. Every individual color variation of a given garment is split out into unique purchases, and some garments are unbelievably expensive, costing as much as $30,000 for a single piece of clothing. If you want to have black and white variants for coordination, you're going to be out over $50,000.
That's frustrating enough, but the real problem is simply that there aren't enough "slots" to the clothing system. You have little control over your character's garments besides outerwear; the only layering possible is with jackets, and some of those are weirdly picky about what you can wear under them. I get that Rockstar wants to avoid players' clothing clipping through itself, but the solution seems unnecessarily strict.
There are also whole categories of clothing that seem to be completely missing. There's no option to customize your character's underwear aside from some lacy numbers that female characters can put on as outerwear, and that includes socks. There are no pantyhose, tights, stockings, or even gym or crew socks aside from a few pieces of footwear that include socks "baked-in". Your character's legs will be bare if you choose to wear shorts or a skirt along with shoes that don't include socks.
Accessories, too, are limited. Many wrist accessories will refuse to be worn alongside gloves, even if they wouldn't actually clip into each other. There aren't many gloves to begin with, but there are more gloves available than there are backpacks or bags. The game has you carry duffel bags sometimes for missions, but you can't elect to wear a bag for fashion. There are many selections for glasses and sunglasses, but extremely few for earrings and absolutely zero piercings otherwise.
Obviously, we'd like to see the clothing system become both broader and deeper in GTA VI. Saints Row 2 could serve as a model; back in 2008 on the Xbox 360 it had layerable underwear and socks as well as multiple layers of upper body clothing that could be mixed and matched. It also allowed players to customize the hue of their clothes, if they so wished, instead of selecting from pre-set colors. That feature set would be well-appreciated in the next GTA Online release.
Request #6: No Predatory Monetization
Let's be real clear here: GTA V is the most profitable entertainment product of all time. Let that factoid sink in. As a single product, as a single release, it is the most profitable ever. It has made more money than any other game, any film, any album, anything.
It is likely for that reason that Rockstar has kept the monetization relatively modest: you buy the game up front for $40 (at regular price) and then you never have to pay another cent, if you don't want to. Players who are impatient or simply have money to burn can elect to buy "Shark Cards" that award their character with a one-time lump sump of additional cash, but there are no other benefits to doing so. There's nothing you can buy with real money that you can't earn by simply playing the game.
This monetization model is more than fair. It certainly results in some of the more tedious elements of the game, like the high-priced clothing and weapons as well as the need to grind criminal activities like drug sales to earn large sums of money, but the game also gives you a lot of tools and opportunities to passively increase your in-game income. It's certainly far behind your classic MMORPGs in terms of required grinding.
It is likely tempting for Rockstar to add features to GTA VI Online like randomized real-money lootboxes, monthly premium subscription fees, or a "Battle Pass" like the ones that so many other games have, now. These features, in a word, are predatory. They prey on players' fear of missing out (FOMO) and exploit dark patterns to encourage players to spend money when they don't necessarily need to, just to get that extra reward or bonus of questionable value.
When implemented well, a battle pass or premium subscription can be acceptable. Many games, like SEGA's Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, set up their battle pass such that you will earn all of the rewards simply from playing the game as you would otherwise. They're still arguably predatory, as they do serve to make players feel like they must engage with the game every day or miss out on rewards, but the truth is that most players are probably going to do that anyway, so it's not so bad.
Unfortunately, GTA Online already has a subscription service in place for players on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles. Called "GTA+", it has a number of exclusive benefits that are only available to GTA+ subscribers. This is a real downer, and concerning in the context of what it means for the monetization of GTA VI.
Grand Theft Auto VI is undeniably the most-anticipated video game on the planet, and likely "of all time", at least until something dethrones it. Even considering its assuredly-titanic development expenses, this game is definitely going to make its money back tenfold in the first year; probably the first month, and maybe even the first week. There's no need to lock content behind additional microtransactions or subscription fees. Something like GTA+ might be acceptable if it simply gives players who want to pay for it an optional boost, but it's not clear if that's the path Rockstar will ultimately take with GTA VI.
If you skipped to the end of this article hoping for a coherent summary, well, you might be disappointed. Basically, it comes down to this: I want GTA VI's Online component to be more of the same, yet without the limitations that came from GTA V's multi-generational development. A tightly-optimized immersive multiplayer life-sim experience with custom characters and all the crime-action gameplay we've come to expect from the series, just with an emphasis on the player character, not on the celebrity guest star of the year, and without abusive monetization. It's a lot to ask, to be sure—but if any developer can deliver on the potential of the concept, it has to be Rockstar.
