A gamer’s take on how Rockstar can take it to the next level

Cover Courtesy Of Nashville Chatter

Grand Theft Auto has always been known for pushing the boundaries when it comes to the gaming experience, with GTA VI surely around the corner, being the most exciting installment of the coveted franchise, Here’s 15 innovative ideas that’ll propel Rockstar’s next popular game to incredible new heights.

In this top fifteen list, (in no particular order), we’ll break down each section of  ideas into three categories that cover key criterias. That’ll surely make Rockstar Games’ next smash hit  bigger, badder and better than ever before. The categories being:

• The player’s gaming experience
• How Rockstar can progress the franchise
• Crafting remarkable stories and character acts

So let’s start with the first five on this list, on how Rockstar could improve the players’s gaming experience.

1. Player Experience: Bring realism, euphoria and driving mechanics back from GTA IV!

GTA V's Euphoria/Ragdoll Effect

For those who’ve had the pleasure of playing the PS3/Xbox 360 classic, Grand Theft Auto IV (4), you’ll most certainly remember how realistic Rockstar’s gaming mechanics were, in their flawless attempt at revamping the open-world shooter HD World. What GTA 6 needs to take away from GTA 4, is it’s highly iconic and realistic gaming mechanics such as: 

• Euphoria Ragdoll Effect: How people would fall over, wobble, spill blood, express pain from an injury on a specific body part (especially the crouching and holding your abdomen once you’ve been shot). 

• Ultra Realistic Drunk Effect: GTA IV’s drunkenness was so much more ultra realistic than in GTA 5. The heavy camera effects, throbbing controllers, and dangerous driving, all make for a perfect drunk effect in the game. Especially as rumors have it that GTA 6 may reprise its return in the heart of Vice City, I know fans will wonder what happens when too many pina coladas in a Drunk Race. 

• GTA IV's Driving Mechanics: Now some fans say, they are not as fond of GTA 4’s driving mechanics. But on the other hand,  I love the rugged feeling of driving a car that actually tilts around corners (which is how car suspensions work in real life, unless you’re a highroller!) and to bring that  back in GTA 6, may also help it’s game become the best racing game too. With the option to customize your vehicle just like in GTA 5 but with unique mod shops. 

 

2. Player Experience: Bring back a wide variety of activities similar to GTA: San Andreas

GTA: Online Casino

Say what you want about the entire Grand Theft Auto series, but San Andreas had far more side missions, jobs, as well as activities you could indulge in, here a few to help jog your memory:

• Casino: Do you remember the casino in that game, you could go into multiple casino floors and suites to gamble and earn big bucks, (I’m glad they opened the casino in GTA online, but it’s almost 8 years too late don’t you think?). But hey, it’s an example of what you could do.

• San Andreas Experience: you could buy multiple types of property, businesses. You could even go as far as to go to the gym and change your fighting style (Boxing? Karate? You name it). Gosh, how cool would it be if you could learn MMA?!

• Gym?: I can definitely imagine Brucie for GTA IV opening up a chain of gyms all across a city with his illusive bodybuilder persona. But to add a variety of gyms across the city (like San Andreas did) would be absolutely spectacular. Boxing Gym, MMA Gym, Bodybuilding Gym among so much more!

• Non-Repetitive Clothing Stores: GTA: SA, had a ton of different clothing stores to choose from, (unlike GTA 5 Story Mode where you go to the same clothing store in a different location… but the items are the same??) GTA 6 needs to change that shit, new shops and different threads, that would be cool.

• Crime Activities: from pimping, dope dealing, burgling, import/export as well as racing, there was literally nothing you couldn’t do in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, added with GTA 5’s lester assassinations as well as strangers & freak, the 6th installment would boast a plethora of ways to make money outside the main storyline so it can tell a personal story with layers through and through.

 

3. Player Experience: Make In-Game Friendships Integral To The Ending!

Franklin (Left), Trevor (Centre), Michael (Right)

The most powerful thing GTA taught me is that your friends are worth more than gold. Trust, broken factions, betrayal and friends-turned-foes are all too common in the GTA universe. And I believe the next game should embark on trying to let the ‘Player’s Decisions’ determine the outcome of acquaintances.

• Friendships Meter: From as little as the small petty invites you ignore (similar to GTA IV) all the way to choosing what friend you  let go or befriend and the outcome of that playing later on in the game. 
• Player’s Choice: Just like from the Tell-Tale games, a player having only seconds to decide how he wants to respond to change the dynamics of the game at hand.

(Mafia III did a perfect job with this feature, by letting the player choose how to respond to questions about territory, which changed the relationship of the game.)

• Friendship Status: friends is what makes the world go round, and in GTA 4, you wasn’t left with the option of just hanging with two other people either Michael, Trevor, Amanda, and Jimmy, but you have a wide variety of Criminal Mates who you could hang with, and like GTA IV, the more your friend likes you, the more favors they did for you, (kinda like real life, right? ‘My friend is a plumber you know?’) but you could get access to firearm discounts, hired muscle, free cars, the list goes on.

GTA 6 having the option to turn enemies into friends and hanging out with someone your other friend doesn’t like, (resorting into envy and discussion and possibly betrayal!).

If you’ve completed GTA 4 & 5 multiple times (like I have), you learn overtime that good friends are more valuable than money.

4. Player Experience: Expand the map every 3-5 Years

Cover By. Saintsfan

Gamers (like myself) genuinely wanted rockstar to do something big like expand the map, (I mean, if they added more story mode missions and expanded Los Santos to San Fierro and Las Venturas, that would keep us gaming preoccupied for another 10 Years! Without bringing out another game).

But no matter how beautifully detailed and vast the map is, we end up exploring it until we all ungratefully say to ourselves, Rockstar, We get bored of Los Santos overtime and we want to see the expansion!

• Enhance The Map: Every three years and by making properties, missions, DLCs, and accessible buildings and stores more available to expand on the world of GTA.

• Enhance The Small Details: I Guess that should naturally occur when you re-release Grand Theft Auto on a later console.

• Expand The Map: Expand a map slightly every five years , even if it’s as small as a North Yankton or a Cayo Perico, or as big as another entire city like San Fierro, add an option to visit that landscape, someway or the other.

• Expand The Story: Thus, Bring new tales, new missions, new stores, new purchases to by from these new landscapes too so we can full evolve ourselves around a new horizon in gameplay.

5. Player Experience: Improve the Reward system

Courtesy Of Mr.BossFTW

Rockstar needs to improve the reward system if they want to maintain a player’s retention rate throughout the course of a decade. It’s old an outdated and it can leave a player frustrated to succeed. If rockstar wants to prevent the necessity of MOD’s in their creation, make a better rank system as well:

Transfer GTA 5 Data into GTA 6: First, transfer story mode and GTA online stats, ranks, rp and mission completion % to GTA 6 with rewards going out to the few that have a long standing affair with its predecessor, GTA 5.

• Rank System: Secondly, Sleeping Dogs’s FACE LEVEL meter is much better than GTA Online’s ranking system, but in the new game, your overall skill level, undefeated streak, and player time contributes to extra rp. (all I’m saying, is don’t make the Ranking system a boring grind for the newbies.

• Shark Cards for RP: Which brings me to my last point… Just let us buy our way to increasing our rank and rp unless you make GTA 6 Online a boring and repetitive grind to the top. Give ‘Hard Grind’ rewards specifically to those who grind out the gaming experience? 

• Lobby Options: This is unique, your rank 12, but you have the guts to choose the option to be in a lobby surrounded by 100+ rank players?! That’s ballsy, but if your still able to complete that mission, You should get a higher amount of rp for being in a rank filled with people who are bigger than you. But yes, by default, Rockstar needs to make a lobby of player’s ranks even (unless invited).

  Gaming Progression

Now let’s go into what rockstar needs to do overall for the Grand Theft Auto Series moving forward to making the open-world powerhouse it has become. Here are some of the things Rockstar should keep in mind to grow the Grand Theft Auto story.

6. Gaming Progression: Steer the story away from bank-robber / revenge story arcs

Madrazo Cartel In GTA V

That doesn’t mean I’m saying we should completely scap bank heists and cold-hearted revenge, in the next GTA Adventures, but we can always give our tumultuous player some new background or a new thing to rob like narcotics, or a USB containing FIB leaks used to bribe agents you can use in later missions. What else could Rockstar do that would be interesting?

• The Lance Vance Protagonist: Explore Grand Theft Auto from a new angle, maybe not the eastern european migrant or the North Yankton bank robber, but an enforcer from across the border, and irish traveler hiding in london, a marine trying to live the last of his days but his comrades think he’ll expose the secret. Someone not trying to be a protagonist in the first place, but has the skills that kill.

• Let us build character from scratch: Maybe you play a character who isn’t exactly ‘GTA protagonist material’ yet but a character who sharpens his or hers skills in crime and eventually becomes a full blown gangster who earns his stripes at the end of the game, following in the footsteps of a mentor (a previous protagonist similar to Tony Cipriani’s story).

• Paid the cost to be the boss: Or a play as a self made boss who’s gaining friends,  enemies but needs to protect his empire. And the player is the one in charge,  giving out missions (and handouts to your kids) and making decisions for other associates (potential protagonists in the future?). Making the player have to make smart choices to rebuild their empire.

7. Gaming Progression: Icebergs

Mount Chiliad Mystery

• Unfinished Business: Start the story off from an “unfinished business” perspective. Ending the GTA 6 campaign on a cliffhanger that’s leaving the gamers with never ending conspiracies, that makes them say “what happens now?”. Important for DLC storylines where you can add extended missions

• The Past: Have the main story, go into a character’s reconcile with the past, and have side missions to do with money.

8. Gaming Progression: Multiplayer Roleplay In Story Mode Campaigns:

GTA: Online The Contract DLC

• Intertwine Online/Storymode: Integrating GTA’s Online Character Creator into the story mode to get their start before they venture off into the Online wilderness is a great way for player’s to stock on up ‘rp’ all the way to a capped rank that you can only hold up in story mode by doing  basic mission and following the series. and intertwine it with other players who can play with you once you’ve completed the main campaign, your custom character truly know s the ending and takes the mantle or the legacy of the original story mode protagonist!

• Multiplayer-Only Missions: Have a few side missions you can do with a friend that can build the story with. Maybe a side mission, but nonetheless, getting involved with a highly complicated multiplayer like mission.

9. Gaming Progression: Listen To The Twitch Streamer’s For DLC Ideas!

GTA Online Roleplay Played By Rockstar's Biggest Twitch Streamers

• Listen And Reward The Twitcher’s And Streamers: The Coolest thing GTA could do is touch the hearts of the devoted twitch streamers. Instead of leaving them out to dry and mod gaming lobbies, Pretending to form a respected gang in the heart of South Central. Listen to their popular roleplay ideas and come up with DLC’s Inspired by their creativity.

10. Gaming Progression: Unique Mission-Only Protagonist Wheel

Cover by GearOS Play's via Youtube

• Big Mission Wheel: In Story Mode, You Play One Protagonist Per Campaign, But You Can Switch into multiple characters during a ‘huge score or  mission’ that requires you to switch into more than one character

• Expansion Character DLC: But at the end of a campaign, you can continue the story as the Protagonist's Adversary (Your GTA Online Creation) or an illusive acquaintance (similar to GTA IV) whose path crosses with another protagonist during the main story you play. But sure, GTA 5’s original character wheel is pretty kickass.

Campaign & Storyline

Now, onto the campaign and storyline: what world, story, crazy adventure and character arcs haven’t been done or explored that can make for a very exciting rendition for the Grand Theft Auto Universe in the next phase of the series? 

11. Campaign & Storyline: Rollin 60’s Era

Classic Grand Theft Auto Cover

• 1960’s USA: Imagine you play as a protagonist who can fully interact with the entire United States map, (only it’s set in the 1960’s), inbetween a time period that blends dead presidents and activists, attempts into space?! (where you briefly explore in the last mission) With Red Dead Redemption references as names of old towns with GTA’s landscape. 

• Behind The Curtains Of Politics: High-stakes missions that are amidst riots, mafia formations  (Not to toot the Mafia Game’s Horn), and a crazy ending mission that involves you hijacking a rocket into space to confront your rival. Agh! Maybe the sixties, is a bit too far back to be a GTA, but maybe the 70’s can be a sweet what origins of the deadly protagonist society for the HD Timeline. 

12. Campaign & Storyline: Have GTA Online Integrate with Story Mode (Stop attracting players to boring DLC’s)

GTA: Online The Contract DLC

If GTA wanna make money selling DLC’s into future releases of the franchise, listen to the roleplayers on Twitch as I said previously. Other than that, any meaningful missions should be entwined with the Online/Story Mode worlds.

• Embrace Roleplay: Why not make Rockstar-official GTA: Online roleplay missions, where you can unlock exclusive items.

• Feature Your Biggest Streamers: Partner up with our favorite streamers on the web, getting missions from a character made by Adin Ross or Kai Cenat would be dope!

13. Campaign & Storyline: Winston City (London)

Grand Theft Auto: V 'London' Mod

Although I highly doubt GTA 6 will bring back its original location of a fictional British capital, I do know one thing for sure… It sure as hell won’t be NAMED London:

• London City: Now I’d personally call the city, Winston City (named after the great Winston Churchill), But Winston City kinda sounds like DC Comics’ City name I had in mind for Batman stories as a kid. Exploring a dark, brooding abandoned British cityscape. 

• Niko Bellic Effect: Nevertheless, the protagonist of this game needs to be a character who’s not from London (Better yet England). Something that gives that ‘Niko Bellic Effect’ of moving to a big city with promising assumptions only to turn into a brewing fight for survival in a highly illusive landscape.

• Balkan Connection: An Albanian crime member in London working for a merciless mafia boss. It would be an unuasual storyline we all would not  befamiliar with, but would also give the fresh new world, an inside look into a protagonist day to day life and criminal background in a crime family.

•  Who Dares Wins: A Scottish SAS soldier who just can’t say no to ‘retirement’. using his skills to combat missopportunty he faces during economic decline in London. Plus, it would be call play as grim version of Soap MacTavish in a GTA World.

• The Troubles: Or an Irishman born fighting in the troubles, plotting revenge on his mates who left him for the authorities, imprisoned and badly beaten in The Can since the ages of 17, plots revenge; the ones he once called brothers.

14. Campaign & Storyline: Ex-Operative

Agent 14 from GTA: Online

• James Bond meets Rambo: Loosely inspired by the TV Show, “Person Of Interest” and the movie, “Enemy Of The State”, which heavily centers around a left-for-dead secret agent for the FIB (in-game alphabet agency in GTA) being discovered by a computer whiz, on the run for leaking classified information, as he needs the ex-spy’s skills he learned to protect his country as a means to embroil in the world of crime. 

15. Campaign & Storyline: The Sicario

Outfit Designed By. GrouchyInternal1547 via Reddit

• Welcome To The Cartel: This Campaign Set In a fictional rural community, south of the border, where a drugs operation takes place high in the forests away from local enforcement. You play as a drug enforcer who with his best friend works behind the back of your cartel employer’s to start your own drugs operation. A GTA game that allows you to travel from the Favelas all the way to Vice City. As you slowly scale your drug empire behind the back of your Cartel Boss.

Conclusion

Did you know Ray Liotta was the voice of Tommy Vecetti? (Courtesy of Tech4Gamers Cover)

Let us know in the comment section below what your thoughts are on what Rockstar Games needs to implement in their next installment of GTA to make it fun and exciting to play. At Gamer’s Decide, we’re passionate to hear the community's answers when it comes to topics such as Grand Theft Auto and the possible release of the 6th Installment of the franchise.

Until then we’ll catch you later. For the Gamers!