GTA Online players demand big change to Police via return of one fan-favorite feature

Brad Norton
GTA Online Tank

Grand Theft Auto Online’s consistent updates over the past eight years have increased player power, but they’ve done so without scaling the rest of Los Santos too. As a result, the community wants to see one iconic feature make a return in the near future.

When GTA 5 launched in 2013, it marked a significant change to one of the core pillars in Rockstar’s open-world experience. Police can only reach a certain level of power with a five-star wanted system in place, compared to the traditional six-star rating that was iconic among the game’s loyal player base.

When players commit enough crimes and reach the highest tier, it’s still the usual Los Santos forces coming out to stop them. In previous GTA titles, when the action ramped up, superior armed forces were often called in to deal with threats.

After years of increasingly powerful content drops in GTA Online, players want to see the franchise’s iconic six-star rating back in effect.

“Since GTA got way more militarized over the years, Rockstar should bring back the six-star [wanted level],” Reddit user ‘DaxExter’ suggested on August 10. Not only that, but with the six-star ranking should come the Army as well, the player added.

At first, GTA Online players were equipped with much of the same arsenal featured in GTA 5’s single-player experience. This meant the usual range of weapons and vehicles were available. Since then, however, Rockstar has gone on to add some extraordinarily powerful tools to the online experience.

“Now that we have s*** like a submarine with guided missiles, I think the time has come where we should get that six-star wanted level back.” 

From flying motorbikes to exceptionally beefy tanks, players aren’t really concerned about cops in GTA Online today. “Police nowadays [are] just annoying and not a threat,” DaxExter explained. This shouldn’t be the case.”

Bumping up to the classic six-star difficulty could see some challenge reintroduced to the online mode.

GTA Online Jet
In classic GTA titles, a six-star wanted level would often have military jets hunting you down.

It didn’t take long for thousands of players to chime in and support the notion. “Would love to see it added back,” one player said. “My question is why did they remove the sixth star in the first place?” another asked.

Given we’re already eight years into GTA 5, it may be too big an update to fit the current title. Though with GTA 6 rumors continuing to heat up, perhaps we’ll see the return of the six-star wanted level sooner than later.

About The Author

Brad Norton is the Australian Managing Editor at Dexerto. He graduated from Swinburne University with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and has been working full-time in the field for the past six years at the likes of Gamurs Group and now Dexerto. He loves all things single-player gaming (with Uncharted a personal favorite) but has a history on the competitive side having previously run Oceanic esports org Mindfreak. You can contact Brad at brad.norton@dexerto.com