GTA Online role-playing server launches a new stage with wild custom options
While fans eagerly await Grand Theft Auto 6players still benefit greatly from the game’s predecessor. Rockstar continues to provide official updates for GTA Onlineand players build their own role-playing servers in San Andreas. The players of these servers build their own culture, implementing home-built mechanics and new ways of roleplaying. One of these servers is PurpleRP, which recently launched a 1.0 update that includes racing and boost systems, housing and property, agriculture, drugs and turf systems. The server currently hosts hundreds of players every day.
GTA Online lets players engage in a dozen professions, from a simple taxi driver to a prestigious nightclub owner. But none of these lifestyles offer much depth; they’re essentially just an excuse to take on new missions. On role-playing servers, a player’s career is of great importance: police officers go on patrol with their partners, criminals join gangs to plan heists or go to war with a rival syndicate, and a variety of citizens work in shops, run agencies , and founded their own companies.
PurpleRP offers unique mechanisms for medical services, justice, auto mechanics and other professions. There are also custom NPCs hanging around in this version of San Andreas, handing out tasks to passing players, like washing nearby cars or completing racing challenges.
These custom servers offer a completely different experience GTA Onlinewith an emphasis on player ownership, creative expression and building a progressive narrative. They feel like broader versions of a Sims game, with plenty of crossover into the realm of cops and robbers. While there’s obviously the abstract role-playing you’d expect on such servers, there are also mechanics from action RPGs.
While FiveM, a popular mod, serves as a broad framework, developers can write their own scripts and develop their own internal systems. For example, players can earn career points that allow them to excel in a certain area, such as scavenging, hunting, cooking or carpentry. Criminals start with petty crimes but slowly build up experience to gain access to larger heists. Players can rent apartments and slowly save up to buy new homes, which they can then decorate and use as a backdrop for domestic role-playing games.
Even though we can expect that Grand Theft Auto 6 releasing later this year, volunteer developers and a community of players continue to invest their time into ongoing experiences like PurpleRP. These worlds have taken on a life of their own and are becoming increasingly advanced.
Rockstar clearly sees the promise in role-playing servers, because in 2023 the company acquired FiveM, the mod that lets players run their own role-playing servers. We don’t know what the future of that deal looks like, but fan developers are already building their own versions of large-scale role-playing environments, and it seems likely that Rockstar will draw inspiration from these vibrant communities.