xOclosedeyeOx
Enthusiast
Best practices for setting up a Heist Crew
At the beginning I've been struggling a lot with the Heist DLC. Not only because of the connection/server issues but also because most of my friends are extremely busy in real life currently as I do, and it's not always possible to be online at the same time. Which led me to a certain amount of attempts with randoms, which can be a real pain sometimes.
But over time I somehow gathered a set of hints that might be helpful when your friends/crew members are not available. In my last GTA online session I played only for approx. 1 1/2 hour and managed to complete Prison Break and Human Lab with RANDOMS ONLY as Leader (from 1st setup to final heist both), by following those hints that I would like to share with the community. I am on PS3 but I hope those hints would also be useful for other systems.
Always start your invite from an Invite Only Session:
- The last thing you want is your fun being ruined because of R* stupid servers. I noticed that when you go to an invite only online session and invite players from there, there are NEVER any connection issues, no delay while loading or downloading, no game freezing and you are almost guaranteed that every player accepting the invite will not get a "the session you are trying to join is full of players...", which is even more frustrating (sometimes you have players joining forever because of that, freezing the whole process and forcing you to restart). Believe me, if you want to play some heists, stay away from public lobbies (Leader or not), after you're done with heists, you can join public lobbies again.
- I heard of a lot of people being completely frustrated because you have to wait an eternity until you get some randoms joining your crew. I noticed that you can dramatically reduce the wait time for that process by canceling the auto invite and then restarting it. I don't want to claim it is a rule of thumb, but I never had to wait more than 10-15 min using that trick to get a full capable crew. Let me know if you have different experiences with it. I guess it is because sometimes the process gets stuck, or interested players might miss your invite while free roaming. So canceling and restarting the Auto Invite seems to bring to some useful "refresher".
- While being in an invite only session, R* invite system also gives you the possibility to invite skill matched players, even if you are alone in a private session. Use that to your advantage. If you go to the list, you'll notice that R* tries to invite all players in the list, but not all of them are worthy of an invite...really (see my next hint below). So cancel invites for players you don't want in your crew and don't hesitate to re-invite those you judge to be skilled enough (speeds up the process), which leads me to my last and most important hint
- I know the low levels out there will hate me for this. I said earlier that I had to wait max. 10-15min to get a capable crew (then I just re-invite them for the next set up and I don't have to wait anymore). It is because I always kick out low levels , WITHOUT EXCEPTION!! Otherwise my wait time would be much shorter. This is not a rule a thumb but a suggestion I make due to the experience I collected with other high lvl players. I think the problem with low lvls is that they die fast, they often screw things up, they need a lot of help and time to understand simple tasks, I think they're just not ready to take on the heists. I think R* should have restricted access to the heists to high levels, giving low levels time to understand how GTA5o is supposed to be played, before they can attend the challenge. You especially need to make a choice when the last invited player is a low level. I mean I know the feeling, you already have 2 players, the crew is almost complete and there comes the low level, and you think you've been waiting for the last player, why not giving him a chance? I personally prefer to kick him em out and wait for a high lvl. This has an implication for your crew which I'll explain in my last point, but it is up to you if you want to enjoy your heist session or experience an absolute nightmare. What is a low level? For me any player with level < 65. I never played a GTA5o mission or heist on easy and I don't intend to. But even if I would, I don't think low levels are up to the challenge. They first need to gather some experience. But I'm aware that anyone has to start somewhere and low lvls might just need help in order to understand the heist principles. I usually don't have time for explaining everything and I'd rather go with experienced player good enough to even complete heists without mics. If you want to team up with low lvls, make sure they have a mic and make the impression that they are smart enough to understand your instructions BEFORE launching the session, otherwise I'll suggest you to avoid them.
- There is an implication for kicking out low levels. Sometimes high level who already joined will get impatient (especially when you just kicked the 4th player out) and leave...believe me...that is also great!! You don't want to team up with with a high level who's not willing to wait 5min for the perfect teammate. I had some high levels leaving in the middle of the heist for no explicable reason. Don't know if those were trolls or not, but by kicking low levels, you end up FILTERING high levels willing to complete the heist. Every High Level who was willing to wait the last 5min ended doing all setups in my crew until the heist was completed. This is the kind of teammate you want!! They are indeed some stupid high levels out there and you don't want to team up with them.
There is also a website to help you find heist crew members, but I never really needed it. You can find it here in one of the posts. Shouldn't be hard to find.
But like I said, you don't need this thread if you can always play with reliable friends or crew members.
Enjoy!!
Edit:
Some players pointed out that they had positive experience with very capable low lvls. With regards to this new information I had to edit the post and soften the hint about low lvls.
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