Trust me, it's not like I enjoy the kill-or-get-killed nature of the game, especially not when it's a freemode session with nothing going on - no freemode events, no business battles, nobody's selling 111 crates from a warehouse - but it is an unfortunate reality (reference somewhat intended), partly of how GTA Online specifically has evolved, partly of how online gaming in general has evolved. Because let's be honest, toxic communities in online games isn't exactly a brand new phenomenon.
The problem - and I'm calling it a problem because it most definitely is in this context - with GTA Online is just how exceptionally well it caters to this style of playing. Just look at the sheer amount of totally-not-unbalanced ways one can turn another into a pile of dust. You physically can't walk up to someone else without expecting to get shot. You can't just hang around without expecting to be run over. You can't fly a crop duster without expecting to be Orbital Cannon'd. In a way it works as a metaphor for the world we live in, I guess, but that's pretty 🤬 dark, to the point where I'm not surprised the whole video-games-kill-people argument is still a thing.
The blame, in my opinion, is two-fold: it's definitely part R*s fault for breeding, nurturing and enabling a community like this (though, as we've just discussed, it was probably meant to be an unpleasant game to "relax" in), but I'm also not going to say the individual player is innocent. Yes, you do get an insignificant amount of RP every time you kill someone else in freemode, but if you're capable of putting that aside, you've got a ginormous sandbox at your disposal - go and do things like Busted, Survive The Hunt or just a plain old car meet - anything's possible. At the end of the day, the game only revolves around killing other players because the playerbase at large has decided that's what the game's about.
On an obviously completely unrelated note, is there any interest whatsoever in getting together and doing an event of some description?
