Does this happen? I played GTAO on and off from 2013-2022, primarily in invite sessions with friends, and this has never once occurred to me.
To my understanding, invite only sessions remain invite only. If you’re in a public lobby but alone, it would ping occasionally with “you’re playing solo, find a new session to play with others”. Others could join, but it would say they joined. You couldn’t join a populated lobby without finding a new session, but people could start trickling in.
I’ve never once seen an invite session merge into a public lobby, would dozens of people just show up at once without notice? I haven’t played in a couple years so if they added that, I wouldn’t have seen it
I think it was a bug or some kind of resource saving technique. The original did all online servers, AFAIK they were hosted by Rockstar. So I would be in a new game I started as “friends only” and after a while (I imagine, alternatively, if their servers got busy, IDK), it would just transparently merge your current session into another session. Suddenly I would live join a populated public server.
IMO, it was an effort to limit their resource use. When someone was solo in a game, it would just merge your online session into another one that’s populated to consolidate resources. Ignoring any game settings for friends/invite only or whatever.
I gave up on it quickly afterwards, because people insisted on being trolls and griefing anyone they could. Not everyone, I’m sure, but they’re was plenty of it going around.
They may have changed away from a server/client model, to a more peer-to-peer model, I don’t know. I lost interest in everything GTA after I finished the GTA5 campaign and tried to play online.
I don’t know if I’ll return to GTA when 6 comes out. At this point, I’m leaning towards not doing that. I might just wait for a sale and pick it up to play the campaign, but I’m done with their online gameplay.
Dunno if it still happens, but getting a lobbies to remain invite only was something of a black magic trick for a while there. Can confirm this happened though.
Does this happen? I played GTAO on and off from 2013-2022, primarily in invite sessions with friends, and this has never once occurred to me.
To my understanding, invite only sessions remain invite only. If you’re in a public lobby but alone, it would ping occasionally with “you’re playing solo, find a new session to play with others”. Others could join, but it would say they joined. You couldn’t join a populated lobby without finding a new session, but people could start trickling in.
I’ve never once seen an invite session merge into a public lobby, would dozens of people just show up at once without notice? I haven’t played in a couple years so if they added that, I wouldn’t have seen it
I think it was a bug or some kind of resource saving technique. The original did all online servers, AFAIK they were hosted by Rockstar. So I would be in a new game I started as “friends only” and after a while (I imagine, alternatively, if their servers got busy, IDK), it would just transparently merge your current session into another session. Suddenly I would live join a populated public server.
IMO, it was an effort to limit their resource use. When someone was solo in a game, it would just merge your online session into another one that’s populated to consolidate resources. Ignoring any game settings for friends/invite only or whatever.
I gave up on it quickly afterwards, because people insisted on being trolls and griefing anyone they could. Not everyone, I’m sure, but they’re was plenty of it going around.
They may have changed away from a server/client model, to a more peer-to-peer model, I don’t know. I lost interest in everything GTA after I finished the GTA5 campaign and tried to play online.
I don’t know if I’ll return to GTA when 6 comes out. At this point, I’m leaning towards not doing that. I might just wait for a sale and pick it up to play the campaign, but I’m done with their online gameplay.
Dunno if it still happens, but getting a lobbies to remain invite only was something of a black magic trick for a while there. Can confirm this happened though.