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GtaV's missed opportunity: Character switching.

V

Vex_

Banned
They give you 3 different playable characters (with their own special skills), but you don't get to choose when to use them a majority of the time.

Example: one mission has you driving with Mike, but shooting with Franklin? I think to myself, "oh I'll just switch to a character that has bullet time while shooting like mik--"

NOPE.

Your character wheel is locked! Wtf! And this happens all the freaking time.

Why???? This could've added a light tactical element to the game (switching characters depending on what you needed, when you needed it) Instead, it is like they thought of that, but then forfeited the idea to stereotypes of their character, rather than their actual skillsets.

A lot of the time, they don't even let you switch characters period. It's like, why the fuck did you even give me a fucking character wheel in the first place.

Trevor: the crazy TANK (damage res)
Mikey: The gunslinger (DPS)
Franky: The DRIVER. (Slo mo driving)

WAIS. TED. OP. POR. TUNE. IT. TEE


I'm actually surprised I haven't seen this complaint about the game yet.
 
X

xxracerxx

Don't worry, I'll vouch for them.
So you would rather have had it be like Assassin's Creed: Syndicate where if you switch to a new character they just appear where you were standing?

Nah, I liked how they handled the character switching.
 
V

Vex_

Banned
xxracerxx said:
So you would rather have had it be like Assassin's Creed: Syndicate where if you switch to a new character they just appear where you were standing?

Nah, I liked how they handled the character switching.
Click to expand...

No. I'm saying that when all three or two of them were together, it would make sense NOT TO disable the character wheel seeing as how they are going to end up at the same destination anyway.

There is no justifiable reason for this. They're right there!
 
K

Kain

Member
They can't even design proper character controls, don't expect them to create something as complicated as three different point of view for each main mission.

Though speaking of this particular issue, I always saw this character weel as a way to break the illusion of linearity in the main storyline.
 
V

Vex_

Banned
I just hope if they reintroduce this character wheel in the future they at least allow us the tactical freedom to do as we please.
 
X

xxracerxx

Don't worry, I'll vouch for them.
Vex Krone said:
No. I'm saying that when all three or two of them were together, it would make sense NOT TO disable the character wheel seeing as how they are going to end up at the same destination anyway.

There is no justifiable reason for this. They're right there!
Click to expand...

Ok, that I agree with. I thought you were talking about choosing characters on the individual missions. Carry on.
 
B

Betty

Banned
It does let you switch between them on some missions though, like the one where they blindside a truck, you can freely switch between all three at any moment.

I'm guessing since it was such a new feature for the series it was more of a test for what they can pull off in the future.

Having three different characters to play as when off missions though was fantastic.
 
S

Screaming Meat

Unconfirmed Member
Betty said:
It does let you switch between them on some missions though, like the one where they blindside a truck, you can freely switch between all three at any moment.

I'm guessing since it was such a new feature for the series it was more of a test for what they can pull off in the future.

Having three different characters to play as when off missions though was fantastic.
Click to expand...

Namely, RDR3 where we'll hopefully get to switch between The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. ;)
 
G

Garrett Hawke

Member
Gez said:
Don't mess with the Houser brothers Oscar worthy cinematic storytelling.
Click to expand...
Totally overhyped tbh
Also most of the missions don't even make use of the sandbox - go here in this car and shoot people with this gun then go back in this other car. Linear as hell.
 
ReBurn

ReBurn

Gold Member
There were missions where you could switch between the three. I can see why on some missions they didn't let you, though. There were times when the driving itself wasn't as important as trying to do some other task to drive the mission's story forward.

Overall I was ok with it. It's definitely low on the list of flaws for the game, IMO.
 
Consumer

Consumer

Member
Despite being somewhat of a GTA fanboy, I must agree; there were many times when I wanted to switch characters during missions but couldn't.
Definitely something to work on in GTA VI (or even SP DLC).
 
V

Village

Member
The reason is because they needed to create difficulty.

Think about it. How easy would every driving mission be if you could just be Franklin, all the time. You put the character who isn't so good at the thing in the drivers seat to create difficulty and tension with in the story and with the player.
 
V

Vex_

Banned
Village said:
The reason is because they needed to create difficulty.

Think about it. How easy would every driving mission be if you could just be Franklin, all the time. You put the character who isn't so good at the thing in the drivers seat to create difficulty and tension with in the story and with the player.
Click to expand...

That's bad game design.

If they couldn't figure out a way to balance their own characters, then they need help designing missions and ai more than I thought. Why even bother having abilities if you can't balance them? That's sad. Your ai not good enough?

It's not like the skills are an unlimited resource. It was limited. You had to do stunts (near misses in car etc), get kills to refill the bar.
 
D

doofy102

Member
The real missed opportunity is not being able to use all 3 characters together in the sandbox. Even a basic "they folllow you and fight police," AI would suffice.
 
V

Vex_

Banned
doofy102 said:
The real missed opportunity is not being able to use all 3 characters together in the sandbox. Imagine being able to go on rampages with two AI buddies.
Click to expand...

It almost seems like they wanted that, but opted to drop it for some reason.

For all the hype of gta finally getting more than one protag, it just fell flat. It felt like I was playing 1/3 of 1 character rather than 3 whole characters.
 
A

Alienous

Member
GTA V's has a few major missed opportunities.

Not using Max Payne 3's movement and shooting was a bad move. The combat would have really benefited from that combat system.

Another one was the heists. Only half of them followed the formula laid out by the first heist mission, and the other half break the rules to a point where they are basically just missions.

Compared to those I didn't have as much of a problem with character switching. It was lazy as far as game design went but character swapping didn't seem like something the game was concerned about having as one of its pillars of its missions; it was there more to avoid having the player do tedious parts of a missions because the character they are playing would have to, and less about freedom of player choice.
 
B

Black Mantis

Member
Totally agree, this was the first thing I thought of wen they announced this feature and it would've made multiple playthroughs a bit more interesting.
 
A

Auto-Reply

Member
It had a few missions where you could do that but it required that all characters are in the same mission. I hope they open this up in the next GTA, I can't imagine another GTA without several characters to switch between after V.
 
N

Net_Wrecker

Member
Character switching was only interesting like 3 times in the whole campaign. At some point after the awe of the game's world wore off I realized the mechanic was just a glorified quick travel and "skip to next scene" option. GTAV is nothing but missed opportunities all over the place. Gunplay, movement, missions, narrative, economy, properties, locations, etc.
 
Seraph_Nicholas

Seraph_Nicholas

Member
I feel like it would have required a different approach to balancing the game, and GTA has gotten easier with every installment since 3. It would have been fun, yeah, but it also would have been challenging, and potentially confusing to the lowest common denominator.

It does sound like fun, though.
 
L

liliththepale

Banned
Vex Krone said:
That's bad game design.

If they couldn't figure out a way to balance their own characters, then they need help designing missions and ai more than I thought. Why even bother having abilities if you can't balance them? That's sad. Your ai not good enough?

It's not like the skills are an unlimited resource. It was limited. You had to do stunts (near misses in car etc), get kills to refill the bar.
Click to expand...

This post contradicts itself: Skills are artificially limited so it's bad game design. It's not like they need to be artificially limited because they're already artificially limited. Huh?


For the record, I thought character switching in the missions was handled masterfully. I appreciated that it let you play with whomever you like for several parts of the mission, then escorted you to whichever character had the more urgent action at hand. Much like how Madden/FIFA moves you to whichever player is handling the ball.
 
L

leng jai

Member
Well they somehow went backwards with their gunplay compared to even RDR, so it's not surprising that this aspect was poorly implemented. For a game that involves so much shooting the gunplay was terrible.
 
V

Village

Member
Vex Krone said:
That's bad game design.

If they couldn't figure out a way to balance their own characters, then they need help designing missions and ai more than I thought. Why even bother having abilities if you can't balance them? That's sad. Your ai not good enough?

It's not like the skills are an unlimited resource. It was limited. You had to do stunts (near misses in car etc), get kills to refill the bar.
Click to expand...

I mean if you don't like that fine, but the idea of creating levels around the things certain characters are bad at , or need assistance with or forcing people to handle a situation differently isn't unique to grand theft auto at all and has been used in a bunch of good games.

Not saying it can't be be bad, but I understand why say for example credo , one of the best boss fights in DMC in general is the way he is, is because nero is the main one who fights him in the story. he teleports away from you , he throws shit at you . he makes you think and dodge and use your arm, however, when you play through with Dante in Bloody palace, or Vergil in SE they can teleport, making that boss fight actually a shit ton easier. It was still fun, it was just nero focused. That boss fight is fun no matter who you play with, its just easier for some than others.
 
dr_rus

dr_rus

Member
I personally felt that the character switching in GTA5 was a bad idea in general as it made the plot disoriented and characters undeveloped in general. For as much as was done badly in GTA4 I think that I very much preferred to play as one character for the whole game instead of GTA5's switcheroo.

With that in mind I actually liked when they've locked the game to one character instead of forcing you to jump around all the time - even though there were a couple of missions where the switching was really cool but in most of these missions they could've made the switch automatic instead of forcing the user to perform it.
 
S

SomTervo

Member
This happens in a handful of missions, IIRC.

But yeah, they never really ran with it.

Classic GTA design: "Here are all these great things you have the freedom to do! Now do exactly what we tell you."
 
B

Black Mantis

Member
dr_rus said:
I personally felt that the character switching in GTA5 was a bad idea in general as it made the plot disoriented and characters undeveloped in general. For as much as was done badly in GTA4 I think that I very much preferred to play as one character for the whole game instead of GTA5's switcheroo.

With that in mind I actually liked when they've locked the game to one character instead of forcing you to jump around all the time - even though there were a couple of missions where the switching was really cool but in most of these missions they could've made the switch automatic instead of forcing the user to perform it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Franklin's story development pretty much died after Trevor showed up. Which was a shame, as he was my favourite character to use.
 
L

leng jai

Member
SomTervo said:
This happens in a handful of missions, IIRC.

But yeah, they never really ran with it.

Classic GTA design: "Here are all these great things you have the freedom to do! Now do exactly what we tell you."
Click to expand...

Classic GTA = A shit ton of features and mechanics which all end up being half assed. Quantity over quality.
 
S

SomTervo

Member
leng jai said:
Classic GTA = A shit ton of features and mechanics which all end up being half assed. Quantity over quality.
Click to expand...

I guess, although the world and AI behaviours were still best-in-class. Driving was great, too, imo. Shooting has always been the biggest problem, along with far too on-rails mission design. However, re this:

leng jai said:
Well they somehow went backwards with their gunplay compared to even RDR, so it's not surprising that this aspect was poorly implemented. For a game that involves so much shooting the gunplay was terrible.
Click to expand...

It's worth noting that the PC version has phenomenal gunplay and action. Better than any of the other GTAs on PC, too. Mouse-based gunplay, in FPS or TPS, on a super-well-optimised game is a fucking joy to play and it has gun combat almost on par with Max Payne 3 and far better than RDR. Legit fantastic gunfights and encounters, although it's almost too easy because the AI is tuned for console-control-difficulty.

Only PC though. On all other consoles it's still flawed af.
 
V

Vex_

Banned
liliththepale said:
This post contradicts itself: Skills are artificially limited so it's bad game design. It's not like they need to be artificially limited because they're already artificially limited. Huh?
Click to expand...

Except that's not what I said. I don't even know how to respond to what you typed there. Holy shit.

SomTervo said:
This happens in a handful of missions, IIRC.

But yeah, they never really ran with it.

Classic GTA design: "Here are all these great things you have the freedom to do! Now do exactly what we tell you."
Click to expand...

Precisely. That's bullshit.
 
dr_rus

dr_rus

Member
Black Mantis said:
Yeah, Franklin's story development pretty much died after Trevor showed up. Which was a shame, as he was my favourite character to use.
Click to expand...

Yeah, at some point in the middle it just turns to be a game about Michael even though you can switch to Franklin and Trevor.
 
T

Tatsumi Oga

Banned
Agreed. When the game wasn't out yet they said you could pretty much switch all the time except for a few parts. Turns out its the exact opposite, you can only switch in a few parts. V actually had several missed opportunities in my book.
 
P

Putosaure

Member
It was really nice when missions allowed you to choose your approach, bust most of the time it was just a cosmetic change.
 
ODDI

ODDI

Member
doofy102 said:
The real missed opportunity is not being able to use all 3 characters together in the sandbox. Even a basic "they folllow you and fight police," AI would suffice.
Click to expand...
Actually you can do this! Just call them up using the hang out option get them all the in 1 car and go nuts, when in any combat situation the remaining 2 will act as personal bodyguards and you can switch out with them anytime heck there is a achievement for this.
 
E

EBreda

Member
Not once I thought having 3 characters made ANYTHING better. Going back to a single character wouldn't have diminished a thing, imo. Sticking with a character and having the other two appear in cutscenes or in game dialogue would have had the same effect on me, personally.

So I think switching between them on missions would have the same effect as letting me using different loadouts or something. During planning stages, chose your gear, your perks and that's it. I'd be okay with that, much more than being forced to play one or bother depending on the devs mood in situations that most of the time does not make sense (like the one OP described).

Hopefully the next GTA goes back to a single character and is able to tell a coherent story for a change.
 
R

RipperGrim

Member
I'm pretty sure most of the missions with all three of them allowed you to swap between the characters at will at some point. You people are talking like it never happened at all.
 
S

slavesnyder

Member
As those missions are scripted to give you the best possible experince (in the eyes of the developer at least), switching characters would end in a mess.
It's great like they did it.
 
S

SomTervo

Member
Vex Krone said:
Precisely. That's bullshit.
Click to expand...

leng jai said:
Classic GTA = A shit ton of features and mechanics which all end up being half assed. Quantity over quality.
Click to expand...

In Rockstar North's defence, they are trying.

I live near their offices in Edinburgh, have friends that work on the GTA games, and encounter members of the development team quite often.

Honestly, straight-from-the-horses-mouth - they try. One time a R* North dev asked me what I'd improve about GTA, and I told him all this stuff about the flawed mission structure, the lack of dynamic structures (even if the world is dynamic), the mediocre gun combat, and he just said:

"We know."

He explained in very loose terms that they have been trying for years to improve all this stuff, but every time they try, it breaks, because the thing they're making is so massive that adjusting one thing in a big way impacts everything else. So, to prevent the games breaking, they keep iterating on how it was done in the past.

Which is fair enough. It'll just take a longer time for improvements to come.
 
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