GTA Online players furious over “nightmare” loading times

Ryan Lemay
gta online invite only

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 Online devs don’t plan on slowing down any time soon, despite intensifying GTA 6 rumors. In an interview with GamesRadar, Rockstar North design director Scott Butchard claimed the development team still has plenty of surprises in store for fans.

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 for recycling a GTA V story mission.

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

GTA Online players slam slow load times

Group of GTA Online characters with guns running inside building
GTA Online still boasts an incredibly strong community years later.

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 player compared load times and discovered it’s just under a minute faster to enter an online lobby through story mode.

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.”

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.”

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.

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About The Author

Ryan is a former games writer for Dexerto. Ryan graduated from Ithaca College in 2021 with a sports media degree and a journalism minor. He gained experience as a writer for the Morning Times newspaper before joining Dexerto as a games writer. He mainly writes about first-person shooters, including Call of Duty and Battlefield, but he is also a big FIFA fan.