GTA Online – Dear Rockstar, Fix Or Get Rid Of The “Bad Sport” System

Are we seriously getting punished for playing the game the way it was meant to be played?

Look, don’t get the wrong idea about me. I’m not someone who shoots every breathing thing on a whim. In fact, in most cases, unless a bounty is placed on someone, I will only shoot after being shot at. Nonetheless, let’s talk about the “Bad Sport” system and how it’s labelling genuinely good players as “Bad Sports”.

For those who don’t know what the Bad Sport system is, it is pretty much a system that, based on a player’s behavior, will lock you into a lobby with other players of this play style for two to more real-world days. At first glance, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea, especially if it gets rid of those annoying shoot-on-site players. However, as noble as the idea may be, that’s not to say it isn’t completely broken in some aspects.

Recently, a friend of mine was targeted as a bounty by another player. With a bounty on your head, the most reasonable thing to do would be to, of course, defend yourself from anyone who isn’t on your side, and as such, he did. A few kills later, a team of bounty hunters roll up to him in a car as he shoots away in his attack helicopter, killing the hunters and destroying the vehicle that was both tracked and insured. This prompted him to lose $10,000 while gaining a label that he rightfully did not deserve; “Bad Sport”.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well for starters, this GTA is a game about killing and stealing. This type of behavior is a part of the GTA nature. Secondly, if you blow up an insured vehicle that belongs to someone, sure, you’ll have to pay up the insurance costs, but why should one be labeled as a bad sport in a case like this? No matter if they are shooting at you to claim that juicy bounty, or even if just free-roaming, if the car is destroyed, you are labeled. Self-defense, nor any other type of system to indicate that you were being shot at are in place to prevent the Bad Sport status and that, to me, is broken.

We could let this slide, but the fact that we can’t join his invite-only games or even play with him on the bad sport server, Rockstar is dictating something they should have no control over. It feels punishable not to play with a crew member that you have been playing with since the beginning, all do to a poor anti-greifing system.

I like the idea it, but if it’s going to prevent us from defending ourselves from other players by imposing the risk of destroying their personal vehicle and being labeled as a bad sport, then what is the point? And how contradictory does that make the bounty feature, when the purpose of the labelling is to prevent players from killing one another. We’re not supposed to kill others, but placing a bounty enforces that idea? Meanwhile, players who must pay GTA$100 to enter passive mode are still getting killed by players with vehicles, and they get off scott free.

At least let party, group or crew members enjoy the game together in private lobbies.

I know that there are more pressing matters surrounding Grand Theft Auto Online, but Rockstar needs to add this to their list of things to fix. I might come off as a whiny brat here, but let’s face it, good players are being punished because of this system. More importantly, it’s blatantly ironic to see such a system exist in a game about stealing players’ cars and killing one another.

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Jonathan Shane
2 years ago

Not only that, which I agree 100% on! You get in trouble for using foul language or they block foul language but yet in the game, it is nothing but cussing and swear words, prostitution, sex, killing others, etc….like why would they ban the use of foul language when that is all that is in the game when you play it? So Rock Star is basically saying that when little kids play GTA 5 Online, that it is okay for them to experience this language, sex, killing others, prostitution? COME ON Rock Star, get it together.

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