GTA Online players furious over “nightmare” loading times

Loading directly into GTA Online expedites an annoying process of going through story mode, but a player unearthed a major flaw in the quality of life feature.

GTA Onlinedevs don’t plan on slowing down any time soon, despite intensifyingGTA 6rumors. In an interview with GamesRadar, Rockstar North design directorScott Butchardclaimed the development team still has plenty of surprises in store for fans.

gta online invite only

One of those surprises came on March 16, as new missions were added to GTA Online as part of the “Los Santos Drug Wars: The Last Dose” update. Unfortunately, community members slammed the update forrecycling a GTA V story mission.

Disgruntled players also raised concerns over a recent quality-of-life change that contradicts its purpose.

Group of GTA Online characters with guns running inside building

Under Settings and Startup in the GTA Online menu, players can load directly into GTA Online. This is a vast improvement over having to go through story mode first.

However, a playercompared load timesand discovered it’s just under a minute faster to enter an online lobby through story mode.

jason next to gta 6 logo

Loading online directly takes longer because searching for a public lobby to join takes time. Players questioned why they couldn’t have the option to load directly into a solo or invite-only session.

One user responded, “Leave it to them to add a long awaiting QoL feature and somehow absolutely butcher it. How do you have a main menu with ten panels, and not one is defaulted to send you to invite only.”

GTA Online character with pistol

A second community member joked, “name something more synonymous than GTA and taking a long time to load.”

Some commenters suggested load times are much faster on next-gen consoles. “This must be a PS4 version because, on PS5, you load into story in like 10 seconds.”

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Whatever the case may be, loading into story and then going into online will be faster for whatever you are trying to play in GTA Online.